Be daring, be driven & be down to earth - Heart before Head

We are reminded of what John Shaw (ex Regional Planning Director, Ogilvy & Mather, Asia Pacific) once said about the impregnable reason that creatives sometimes site for not being able to work on a brief. It is something as simple as “I don’t like it!” It sounds simple but actually it is critical and complex. There is no way to counter this.
Same is true for clients and even colleagues. No matter what we do, no matter how good we think we are or our solution might be, no matter how much hard work we have actually put in, if people (in our own office or client’s office) do not like us, nothing moves.
People like to listen constructively to only to those who they like. There is no rocket science in stating, that before expecting great work, we must naturally stoke likeability among colleagues at different levels. It is not easy to do this all the time, especially when contrasting personalities cross each other’s paths and to add to the complexity is the fact that– ‘no two people are alike’ thus no matter how many people we try and understand, we would always need to understand more.
Plus cultural diversity and cross discipline mindsets – they all offer so much variety that you can never ever ask for more. But there is a lot of joy in this diversity, there is a lot of learning to be gained from this diversity and still stoking likeability.