← Becoming You with Suzy Welch
Becoming You with Suzy Welch
The Insult That Changed My Life Could Change Yours — and Probably Should. (Part 2)
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- [00:00]
Susie Welch
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- [01:12]
Susie Welch
Well, hello my friends. I have found some more good put downs for you because you know if you listen to part one of this podcast series, that my social media is a veritable smorgasbord of creative insults. I get them fed day and night and night and day. And so let's hear a few more just to get us started. Keep rolling your eyes, maybe you'll find a brain back there. I'd roast you, but it looks like life already did. If you listen to part one of this series, you know that my algorithm is aware of my obsession with creative insults. And it feeds that obsession like a furnace because of an unfortunate incident in my past when I myself was publicly dissed by a dude named Dan. And not just any like, random dude, but a classmate of mine at Harvard Business School. And it kind of wrecked me, by which I mean it wrecked me in a particularly Sicilian way, by which I further mean it made me want revenge. Which I got. Yes, I did, as you will see if you stick around today. And I certainly hope that you do. Hi, it's Susie Welch. I am in fact of Sicilian heritage, but you know that if you've been listening to this podcast for any period of time. But if you're new, welcome. Welcome so much. I am thrilled that you're here. Thank you. Welcome to Becoming youg Podcast Becoming youg is a podcast where every week we talk about how to get closer and closer to becoming who you were really meant to be. How to get closer and closer, closer to living the life that you were really meant to live. That's what I do for a living. I help people with that. I'm a professor of management practice at the NYU Stern School of Business where I teach management, in fact. But I also teach a class called Becoming youg which presents a multi part methodology to help you answer the question, hey, what should I do with my life now? Listen up. What you should do with your life right now is listen to this podcast, okay? If you haven't heard part one, I'm gonna like recommend that you go hit pause right now and you go back and you do so so that you can catch up and hear that atom bomb of an insult that was dropped in my head in 1987 and why we are talking about it on the Becoming youg podcast in the first place. We will wait for you. Go back and listen to part one and thanks. We'll see you soon. Okay, let's talk about what's ahead in this series. First, today I'm going to talk about what happened to me in the immediate aftermath of the incident. And then we're going to turn to the four ways that you can find out your own aptitudes yourself because I hope by this point I've convinced you you need to know them. I highly recommend getting a lock on your own. And so in this episode we're going to focus on one like kind of the king of assessments. It's YOU science. And we're going to once again speak to Betsy Will. She invented the you science test. She's just so smart and so real and filled with so many good stories. And what she says today is going to really open your eyes to self understanding. I mean, you know, she changed how I saw myself so I can really vouch for what's coming. Finally, next week we're going to wrap up this series discussing the other three assessments that I use in my class for becoming a methodology to find out your aptitudes, the Enneagram, love career traits compass and a360 tool that I think is unlike any that you've ever seen. And to wrap this whole series up. Finally, next time we're going to get to the epilogue of this story which is about my man Dan. And as I said last week, the epilogue is probably not what you expect. Let's get going with the aftermath of Dan's very mean mic drop about me. You kind of know about the immediate aftermath. Right after he said, I agree with everything Suzanne's husband just said, the whole class immediately exploded into laughter, which, well, felt like it went on for about five or six years, but it was probably like five or six minutes. And I actually remember looking at the professor kind of desperately. Like, I was definitely on the verge of crying. I mean, I was definitely working hard not to cry. And he could see that. And I think he was stunned. He was not pleased. He lost control of the class. That's very hard in that moment for the rest of the class. I mean, class was 90 minutes long. I tried to act like nothing had actually happened. Like, as I was walking out, I, like, turned to somebody and said, hey, you want to grab lunch? Or something like that. I mean, I kind of wanted to act like it was no big deal to me, but inside, something had really, really happened. Something had really, really shifted. And every time I think about it, I have this vision in my mind. And I'm about to get very dramatic on you.
- [05:11]
Carvana Advertiser
And.
- [05:11]
Susie Welch
Okay, I'm about to be super dramatic. All right. I think about probably the most famous scene in the most famous movie of all time, which is Gone with the Wind, that was released in 1939. And it's the scene that comes right before the film's intermission. That movie had an intermission which was a total cliffhanger. And we see Scarlett o' Hara emerge from the ruins of her home, which was like this once beautiful plantation named Tara. Right after the Civil War, a big battle had devastated everything. I mean, it's literally like you're seeing a scorched earth, like, a literal scorched earth. And you see her bend over, and she claws through the dirt, and she tries to eat, like, a carrot or a turnip. And she kind of gags. And then she stands up in the ruined fields at sunset. It's really, like, glowing orange. And she vows that she and her family will survive and that she'll never go home hungry again.
- [06:01]
Genius by Global Payments Advertiser
Here.
- [06:01]
Susie Welch
Here's, like, a little clip of it.
- [06:04]
Carvana Advertiser
As God is my witness. As God is my witness, they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this. And when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my fault. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry.
- [06:37]
Susie Welch
As God is my witness, they are not going to lick me. I am going to Live through this. And when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again. And by the way, Vivian Leigh won an Oscar for this performance. And if the Academy could have heard my internal monologue after that class went down with Dan. And maybe I would have won an Academy Award too, because I was so on fire for self determination, for revenge. I was so, so enraged that I let a bunch of spoiled, bratty finance bros define me and attack my integrity. And so in so doing belittle me and diminish me, that I thought, with God as my witness, I am never, ever going to let that happen again. Here's the thing. I knew I was good at finance. I was good at everything at business school. Why was I perpetuating this narrative of astonishment?
- [07:31]
Betsy Wills
Why?
- [07:32]
Susie Welch
Why couldn' I own my gifts? Why couldn't I own my aptitudes? Now let me be clear. I can't be clear enough about this. I was bad at a lot of things. I was not good. And I will never be good at art. I'm terrible at virtually anything creative. It doesn't stop me from doing pottery, which I absolutely adore. But my output is literally pathetic. I mean, one time my daughter, who is a professional artist, sweetly told me that sometimes people regress when they do pottery. And I shouldn't feel bad about the fact that I was one of those people. That's how bad my pottery is. I throw at everything I make. I can't say sing, I'm not very good at cooking. I have no hand eye coordination. So you can forget almost every single sport. So I'm not claiming that I'm an all around talent here, but I had talents. I had aptitudes in business, in marketing, and in operations and in finance. I just didn't know it. And I wasn't claiming them. I didn't know how. I didn't have the words. Now there's a great quote, and if you've tuned to any of Becoming youg Podcast about values, you've heard me use it. The limits of my language are the limits of my world. Ludwig Wittgenstein said that in 1922. I use it to talk about values, but I think it's true about aptitudes also. You have to have a language to talk about what you're good at. And then you have to use that language to speak your own narrative. Because if you don't, you end up letting other People write your story for you now. In my vestigial brain, after the Dan incident, after it actually happened, I knew I wasn't going to let that happen to me. I hated the feeling too much. They weren't going to write my story. So I want to be clear. I did not have a 30 year game plan for revenge at the time, but I had one year game plan. I had one year game plan, and that was that I was going to be a Baker Scholar. That was a super special thing at Harvard Business School. It was given to the top 5% of the class. They were the goats. It was said with awe. The way you would talk about Tom Brady or Albert Einstein. They were the people who were the super, super, super, super smart ones. Get out of their way. I was gonna be one of those people, were not gonna wonder what I was good at anymore. They got to wear different graduation robes. Everyone wore black. The Baker Scholars wore red. And the color of my graduation robe was. Would tell them for me. Let us hear Eric, who we heard from last week, the wonderful person who I was married to at the time, a good friend of mine, recount what happened when I decided to become a Baker Scholar.
- [09:44]
Eric (Susie's husband)
You had your eyes set on that prize very early on. You had succeeded so much undergraduate high school in your career, and you were not going to have your first failure. You were absolutely not going to let that happen. And you worked your butt off and you did it.
- [10:02]
Susie Welch
Yeah, thanks. This is sort of this weird thing. You remember. We were. We lived in a very dangerous, crappy neighborhood because we had no money. And we got burglarized more than once. And one time they burglarized us. I don't know if you remember this. They took my special Baker Scholar pin and look, our whole apartment was a wreck. I remember when you went in and saw our apartment torn apart. You said, don't go in there, Susie. And I went in and like, they
- [10:24]
Carvana Advertiser
stole my Baker Scholar pin.
- [10:26]
Susie Welch
Yeah, those were the times, all right. So I did it. I made it happen. When I graduated as a Baker Scholar, look, I was of great interest to all the consulting firms and banking firms at those times because they wanted the Baker Scholars from Harvard Business School. And when I got to Bain, they said, well, which practice area would you like to join? You have to join a practice area. And I said, because I was on a mission. Okay. I asked which is the hardest one? And somebody said, oh, that's the heavy manufacturing practice. And I said, well, put me on that one. I started doing economic analysis of factories and supply Chains. And I was like, no one needs to guess about my brain or what I'm good at because I'm over here demonstrating my aptitudes. Okay, so there was one little catch with all of this, and by little I mean big, which was that over the next couple of years of doing this and demonstrating my business aptitudes, I also had four children. The travel of being in the manufacturing practice, which was mainly to the Midwest, was beginning to kill me. And so I ended up taking my writing aptitudes, which I also had, and combining them with my business aptitudes, and going to help run the Harvard Business Review, which was a great job that did not involve travel at all. So this helped me be a big B mother instead of a C minus 1. And I made my accommodation for it. I have to say that it was in this period, 1995 or so, after I went over to the Harvard Business Review, that I started to become really, really interested in career formation and development. I mean, I was fascinated, just drawn intellectually to how people found their right careers. And I eventually came to specialize in this area of business, pretty much purpose and career discovery as a writer and then later a on air person working at CNBC in the Today show. And I was in this period when I was talking to people about their care and reading about how people came by their careers and really getting deeply involved in it and being very fascinated by it, that becoming you as a methodology was starting to be formed in my head. I just kept seeing at the beginning that people who were living purposeful lives all seemed to be operating at the intersection of their values and their interests. And. Drumroll please. Their aptitudes, what they were very, very, very good at. So I want to skip a whole bunch of years in here and jump right to when I started to teach Becoming youg formally in 2021. Because at that point I. I had to decide how I was going to help my students identify their aptitudes. And I landed on four ways for my students to get words about their aptitudes. Four different tests, four different ways to look at and define and get just gritty and clear on what their aptitudes were. And I'm going to recommend these four tests to you. Okay, now listen, a very important point going into this is that social science is split between cognitive and emotional aptitudes. And I am a social scientist who thinks that we need to identify both for cognitive aptitude straight up, we use a test called Youscience. As soon as I came upon Youscience as an Aptitude test. I knew this was the one for my students. I think it tests exactly the right things. It's incredibly cogent test. It gives you very. The report that comes with it is excellent. And so, and so we use it now. I mean, all of our certified coaches are trained in it. My students all take it. I myself teach it over and over again. But when I. My great teacher in it was Betsy Wills, who we heard from last week talking about what aptitudes are. And so Betsy is back with us this, this week to talk to us about five of the aptitudes. Again, overall, there's 52 aptitudes, and in my class, I focus on eight of them. But for the purposes of this podcast, Betsy and I are going to talk about the five that you really need to know about yourself. Now, you can do this by listening to Betsy and me talk about these aptitudes and say, oh, for sure I'm blank. But I'm going to highly recommend you take the youscience test. I am. It's not free, but it's the best money you'll ever spend on figuring out what your aptitudes are. Just go to youscience.com I have no skin in this game whatsoever, but I really support youscience and think it's an incredibly good company. And I think this test is chef's kiss. So welcome back, Betsy Wells.
- [14:08]
Betsy Wills
Thank you. Love being here with you again.
- [14:10]
Susie Welch
Let's go over the aptitudes. As you said last week, there's 52 different aptitudes. There's five that I'd like to focus on today, and the first is the aptitude. That tells you whether you're a generalist or a specialist. Walk us through this aptitude, what it's called, and tell us all about it.
- [14:27]
Betsy Wills
Yeah. On the assessment, it's called work approach. And I will spare everyone any details of how we assess that because I want people to come at it and not have any information. But the result is you're going to find out really the best roles that you're most satisfied playing at work. You know, some people would rather orchestrate or support or, you know, help people on a shared goal, which is the generalist. A lot of managers score like this. A lot of, you know, student body presidents, politicians, CEOs, even, but that's about 85% of the population that scores as this. The second, you know, place you might score on the other end of the continuum is as a specialist. Specialists are a rare breed. These are people who love to go deep. Okay. They they carve out niches wherever they go. As children, they tend to even collect things. They're just people who are not satisfied with anything unless they're all in. And they really can't separate who they are from what they do. That's what makes up a specialist. And understanding that will tell you the types of roles at work that you're going to be most satisfied playing. And we need all types, of course.
- [15:38]
Susie Welch
Is there anybody who's in the middle?
- [15:39]
Betsy Wills
Well, in this case, there is. It's really one of two things. But we do have a score that we call a liaison, and the liaison is like a specialist. Light, if you will. But I do want to distinguish the moniker. Specialist does not mean specialty necessarily. Generalists have specialties. Okay, we all have specialties. Specialists, generalist liaisons. A specialist has a unique relationship with the role they play at work, meaning it's super personal to them.
- [16:09]
Susie Welch
They go deep, deep, deep. I mean, I think that way deep. Whoa, whoa, whoa. To the specialist who gets put into a generalist's job.
- [16:16]
Betsy Wills
Oh, my gosh, yeah. Very difficult. It feels less meaningful to them, honestly.
- [16:21]
Susie Welch
But the vast majority, 85, are generalists.
- [16:24]
Betsy Wills
Correct.
- [16:24]
Susie Welch
Give us some examples of, of, you know, like a generalist. I, when I teach it to my students, always say, like, the mayor of a town is going to be a generalist because they, you know, in the morning they talk to the school department. In the afternoon, they go talk to the construction people who are making the roads, and they're happy going from thing to thing to thing. And it doesn't mean they don't have an area of specialty. Like, they may be very good in the education realm, or they may have come up through education. But a specialist, like, who might be a specialist in a town kind of
- [16:50]
Betsy Wills
government, it might be the person who does approval for new buildings. They're going to know every single plot of land in that town, every measurement, what's correct when you measure it. They're going to think about submissions and things like that. But the thing that's interesting about specialists is they. They rarely give themselves enough credit. To them, there's always that last piece of information they don't know. Even though they know 99% of you know more than anybody else about their topic, if your score does come up, either liaison or specialist, it is a huge aha moment. I mean, I have people break into tears constantly when they get that score and they realize what it means.
- [17:29]
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- [18:34]
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- [18:49]
Betsy Wills
But let me give you another example. Let's say, Susie, you worked at a travel agency and you're a specialist. You can do all the roles of that travel agent. You're booking the Disney cruise, you can get everybody, you know, set for their convention in Vegas, et cetera. But within a week of starting that job, you're over here, you know, writing about Cuba and you're going deep on Cuba and you want to be the go to person for Cuba.
- [19:13]
Susie Welch
Okay.
- [19:13]
Betsy Wills
Does that make sense?
- [19:14]
Susie Welch
Yes.
- [19:14]
Betsy Wills
So you're carving out niches. No matter what job you're in, the specialist will just naturally carve out niches within that job.
- [19:21]
Susie Welch
I've seen specialists in action. It's like they can't get enough, enough information about Cuba. Soon they're reading all the great novels of Cuba and they're like finding out. So they're really, really deep into it.
- [19:29]
Betsy Wills
Okay, now let me say one more thing too about it is they will. If they are not interested in something, you could basically forget it. They have a they. So there's always a shadow side for all of these scores. And that can be more enlightening even than, you know, the positive side to kind of realize the realization of that might give you encouragement to be, you know, tolerate the things you have to do to get to the things that you love to do.
- [19:52]
Susie Welch
What is the shadow side of the generalist?
- [19:54]
Betsy Wills
Well, the generalist needs to understand and appreciate that specialist. Okay. Because we're going to have specialists. They're going to have specialists on their team. They're going to love those specialists, but they need to recognize them and give them the recognition for the things that they're offering and understand that to get the most out of them, they need to see how personal their contributions feel to them.
- [20:15]
Susie Welch
Yes. I mean, but I would go a little bit further. Tell me if I'm wrong. I mean, I'm a generalist, and sometimes I just cannot be bothered with the details.
- [20:21]
Betsy Wills
Exactly. If the specialist doesn't respect that in you, then they can feel like, well, you don't know as much about this as I do. The generalist just has to, you know, be able to verbalize, like, look, I'm. I'm running, you know, 50 balls here, and I'm. I trust you.
- [20:34]
Susie Welch
One of the great things about knowing your aptitudes is being able to explain yourself to other people. I was on the phone last night with two curriculum designers for becoming you labs. They're. They're both specialists, okay? They're deep, deep curriculum designers. This is a perfect field for them. And they were telling me something, and I said, please do not put another idea in my head. Later today, I'm talking to some psychometricians. I'm doing this, I'm doing that. I'm counting on you to be the specialist. You are. Please count on me to be the generalist. I am. This is the beauty of knowing your aptitudes, Betsy, is that I was able to immediately say, oh, look, I'm. I didn't feel to myself, oh, God, they're so stuck in the details. I can't stand it. I thought, thank God I've got specialists on my team.
- [21:08]
Betsy Wills
Exactly right. Exactly. It's all about advocating and supporting.
- [21:13]
Susie Welch
Let's talk about future focusers versus the present focusers. We talked a little bit about these last week, so let's. Let's hear more about them.
- [21:20]
Betsy Wills
This is in the assessment called time frame orientation. And interestingly, it's the most connected of all of the aptitudes to creativity, because what we're looking at is your ability to imagine possibilities, both good and bad. The future focuser, which is one end of the continuum. This is how they set goals. They set goals 10 to 12 years out, okay? And they don't need incremental reward to stay with it. They're imagining future that are way out in, you know, way far out, and they are not really satisfied unless they're working on goals that involve, you know, a distant goal. Okay? So that's one End of the continuum. The present focusers at the other end of the continuum to stay motivated, they really need to see that short term win. Okay. They like working on jobs or enrolls where they're going to have, you know, a daily goal, a weekly goal, a monthly goal that they celebrate.
- [22:13]
Susie Welch
Right.
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Betsy Wills
That's their happiest place. So it really is about the choices you make, where you're most satisfied, what types of goals you like setting.
- [22:21]
Susie Welch
How does this skew in the population? We heard that it was 85% for generalists. What about these two? Is there any general population data?
- [22:29]
Betsy Wills
This really falls out more. Third. A third. A third is what I'd say just generally. But if you're a future focuser, and I think you are actually. Susie. Yeah. You're thinking of what's possible for people with their careers in 10 to 12 years as far as how can we make this better? That's your long term goal. You're going to have people on your team that are working, you know, thinking in terms of, well, this week we, you know, finished this app or we, you know, we've got that accomplished and they're going to be the people who are going to bring the cookies to the break room and you're going to be like, oh, I forgot we needed to celebrate that. I mean, you know, so. So different types of approaches and all necessary on a team.
- [23:06]
Susie Welch
What is the. The if you're a little bit of both and you're in the middle of the continuum, what's it called?
- [23:10]
Betsy Wills
They're the balance focusers. They're very good at that incremental goal setting that are sort of three to five years out. So they're happy in lots of sit. And I think, you know, on this one, both ends of the continuum are probably more telling than the person in the middle.
- [23:25]
Susie Welch
Don't people generally say, oh, I'm definitely in the middle, but then the test reveals they're actually at one of the ends, correct?
- [23:30]
Betsy Wills
Oh, often, yes, 100%.
- [23:32]
Susie Welch
This is why listeners, it's important to actually take the test. If you just don't take the test, you're going to put yourself in the middle of all these continuums because you've seen yourself do everything and you think, oh, I can do both of these. I'm in the middle. But in fact, Bessie, isn't it true that it's very few people are dead in the center? Most people are at a poll.
- [23:48]
Betsy Wills
Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's a combination is what I'm going to say, but yes.
- [23:53]
Susie Welch
All right, so like the future focuser doing a present focuser's work and vice versa. I mean, this is why we want to know about aptitudes, so that we can build lives and careers that are fit for how we're hardwired. Whether or not you're a present focuser or a future focuser comes with the packaging, right? It's in your brain when you're born.
- [24:11]
Betsy Wills
Absolutely. The best way to put it is let's say you are a future focuser doing present focuser work. Okay. You're going to feel like, what does this all mean? I don't have a purpose. It doesn't seem, you know, heavy enough for me that I'm doing this daily activity. Anything that's, you know, sort of day to day, where you clap your hands at the end of the day and you've completed something. They don't really love that long term. Can they do it? Certainly they can do it, but they're, they're always going to be thinking something's missing. I need to be working towards something longer term.
- [24:42]
Susie Welch
This reminds me of a student I had who was in sales. He loved being in sales. He loved the weekly quota, he loved closing a sale. And they promoted him into a strategic role. He ended up quitting. He was like, I don't. They're talking about the future. I want to sell. And this is, this is, this is how it plays out in real life is like if you're a present focuser who loves that close. That loves the sort of like, oh, what? Look what we did this week. You will lose your mind in a room full of present future focusers who are sitting there, like, imagining, you know, the space mining, you know, of the future.
- [25:13]
Betsy Wills
Right, Exactly. That's a perfect example. Exactly.
- [25:17]
Susie Welch
Let's talk about idea rate. I love this one. I think it's so important to know your idea rate. And we talked a little bit about it last week, but why don't you go and explain this whole continuum to us?
- [25:27]
Betsy Wills
Yeah. Okay. So with idea rate, we've got what we call the concentrated focuser, which is just people who generate ideas, sort of like a. It's like a slow drip coffee maker, sort of one idea at a time. You know, they like nursing an idea, developing an idea. They love implementing an idea. And they can feel very out of sorts in a situation when there would be with the other end of the continuum, which are those brainstormers who might be gratuitously generating ideas just for the fun of it. Not, not oftentimes, you know, enjoying the picking of an idea, but loving the generating of an idea. And again, what I like to say is sometimes I call it aptitude's gone wild. You know, you need to manage wherever you fall on these continuums. And so understanding what it is doesn't mean you, you exhibit these behaviors all the time, but it, it means that, you know, if you're not thinking about it, you may fall into a trap of, of, you know, some of the shadow sides of these. So the brainstormer on the other end of the continuum of, of idea generation, I mean, they are, they are pulling ideas out of their hat. You give them a paperclip and you say, what can I do with this? And they're going to come up with 12 different things that you could do within about 10 seconds. Okay. It's fun for them.
- [26:47]
Susie Welch
Yeah.
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Betsy Wills
So channeling, that is what's important. It's an itch that scratched for the idea generator brainstormer. They need to write, they need to speak, they need to act. They love the Q and A more than even delivering the speech because they want to pivot and explain something a new way all the time.
- [27:06]
Susie Welch
You always want a party planner to be a idea generator. Right. Like, oh, you know, what should be the theme? And they'll just like start spewing the ideas and they don't care. They have almost sort of no ego in it. Right. They'll just come up with 30 ideas
- [27:19]
Betsy Wills
and they don't care if they're, they're emotionless about it. And that's where the person in the center of this continuum, the idea contributors.
- [27:26]
Susie Welch
Yeah.
- [27:27]
Betsy Wills
They are awesome at wrangling that brainstormer into the implementation phase. Okay. So they have a special role. They can generate plenty of ideas, but they're really all about, let's move on and get it done again. It takes all types on a team, but there's sensitivities for sure. So a concentrated focuser, someone who doesn't come up with a huge number of ideas is, might massage an idea and let's say they came to you, Susie, with their one beautifully washy, paper wrapped idea and, you know, golden, you know, and you just said, because you're a brainstormer. Oh, no, that'll never work. Right.
- [28:06]
Susie Welch
They're crushed, devastated. Yeah. As the brainstormer, like, my feeling is like, get over yourself. There's 400 more ideas where that came from because that's how I'm wired. And it's like, you know, it's so aligned with different kinds of work. Like if you're at a fancy law firm. You can be hurt by being a brainstormer. Okay? You can be hurt because they'll say, oh, they spew ideas. That's not how we go about it here. I mean, we want one good idea. And it's again, it's about aligning, choosing the career that naturally aligns with your aptitudes. You want your social media manager or you want your creative director to be a brainstormer, but you may not want your legal counsel or your cfo. You would like your CFO to, you know, be following the rules and not be spewing ideas. Most companies left, right, and center, it's again about finding the fit between your hard wiring and the machinery that you're a part of.
- [28:56]
Betsy Wills
Right. And I will say what's. What's interesting, too, is think in terms of outlets and hobbies and avocations.
- [29:03]
Susie Welch
Right.
- [29:03]
Betsy Wills
I worked in. I worked, you know, as, you know, for a hedge fund, and I was in marketing. So that was. Gave me a lot of outlets, but I couldn't get enough outlets for my. The number of ideas I had in the, you know, 2000s. I started a blog just to write, and it was such a wonderful, joyful thing for me to do on the side. Right. So, you know, never fear, if your job doesn't particularly give you enough outlets in this particular aptitude, you're. You're going to have to find other ways as well to express it.
- [29:33]
Susie Welch
I have to tell you, Betsy, to this point exactly, is when I meet somebody and they tell me that they've got a job as a crafter, a hobby as a crafter, I'm like, oh, on the weekends, I like, I make quilts, or they say I have a sub stack. I think, oh, there's a brainstormer in an idea contributor's job because they're scratching the itch outside of work.
- [29:52]
Betsy Wills
Right, Exactly.
- [29:53]
Susie Welch
Okay. All right.
- [29:54]
Betsy Wills
And one more time, one more quick thing on the concentrated folks. Let's say they're doing a yoga class. They can get to that Zen so quickly.
- [30:03]
Susie Welch
Yeah.
- [30:03]
Betsy Wills
Because they're very adept at shutting out the noise. And so there's a ton of outlets when you're a concentrated focuser that are beautiful and, you know, ways to use that in my book. Spoke to a man who was a anesthesiologist and a classic concentrated focuser because they have to shut out the world and, you know, think only about what's at hand in that very moment. And he was also a Zen Buddhist. I thought that was so clear, you know, that, that his aptitude was playing out both in his work and his avocations.
- [30:38]
Susie Welch
You know, I love you saying this about concentrated focusers, because when I teach this, everybody wants to be a brainstormer. But there is a perfect world, a perfect life, and a perfect career for people who are in anywhere, in any of the aptitudes. It's about finding it for yourself. And that, again, is why we need to know our aptitudes so that we can go on that journey fully armed. All right, let's move on to our fourth one, which is Inductive Reasoning.
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- [32:33]
Betsy Wills
Boy, this is a doozy. Okay, Inductive Reasoning. Do you play Connections in the New York Times?
- [32:40]
Susie Welch
I mean, darlin, before 6:30 in the morning, it's done.
- [32:43]
Betsy Wills
Okay. This is one where you're basically able to take take bits of information and we're looking at how quickly and easily and comfortably you feel like you can draw a conclusion under time pressure. So you get six pictures and you're supposed to pick the three that go together. Okay. In this exercise, some people will deliberate over and over, analyze. Look at those six pictures. Think of 50 Ways It could go together. These are your fact checkers on One end of the continuum, they are thorough. They want to go, you know, examine every possibility that's there there. They really don't want to hit the decision button quickly. They want to be thorough. The other end of this continuum, the diagnostic problem solvers, they. They grow up and they're often told, and I know you are this as well, that they're maybe good guessers. They have good instincts. They love a ticking, you know, clock.
- [33:41]
Susie Welch
Oh, give.
- [33:42]
Betsy Wills
They need to be on game shows. Go on a game show.
- [33:44]
Susie Welch
I would love to. I really would. I was. I. And actually just give me a deadline. Love a deadline.
- [33:48]
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- [33:49]
Betsy Wills
Yes, they love deadlines. And so the. The inductive RO reasoning exercise is very critical because it tells us how people act on teams, how they make decisions on teams.
- [34:00]
Susie Welch
Yeah.
- [34:00]
Betsy Wills
And, you know, some people are slow and much more deliberate. Some people go with their gut. And then the people who in. In this continuum fall in the middle, which we call investigators, are incredible at running projects.
- [34:13]
Susie Welch
Yeah.
- [34:14]
Betsy Wills
Because their sense of timing and pacing is so amazing.
- [34:19]
Susie Welch
There's not many of them, though, right? Isn't investigators a very small number, like 14 comm. Yeah.
- [34:24]
Betsy Wills
Correct. A lot of people are diagnostic problem solvers or fact checkers.
- [34:28]
Susie Welch
Wouldn't you say, Betsy, that these two types, these two ends of the polls, the fact checkers and the diagnostic problem solvers, the people at the opposite ends of this continuum, don't they judge the living daylights out of each other?
- [34:38]
Betsy Wills
Without this information, I mean, you are just. It's a. It's a ticking time bomb. You know, the fact checker can feel very anxious in a situation where they're rushing me.
- [34:48]
Susie Welch
They're rushing me. Right.
- [34:50]
Betsy Wills
I'm not ready. Exactly. And that is great. By the way, as you know, hiring managers are usually fact checkers because they'll do the background check.
- [35:00]
Susie Welch
And then the diagnostic problem solvers like me are like, wait, let's solve this yesterday. Let's move. Let's move. And I need. I need a fact checker by my side to slow me down. But now that I know about my aptitudes, now that I know that this is my proclivity, I am sometimes my own fact checker. I say things like, look, I'm a diagnostic problem solver. I go too fast sometimes times am I going slowly enough and is. I literally will say to my team, what am I not thinking of? But that's a learned behavior, Betsy, because I know, because I've tested, I know what my aptitudes are.
- [35:32]
Betsy Wills
Exactly. But think of the harmony this brings to A team, when people can advocate or even that fact checker might say to you, hey, Susie, I know, but this, this doesn't have to be done yesterday. Can you take another day right now? On the flip side, your instinctive let's make a decision and go in certain jobs is really, really necessary and a perfect setting for you. But I. People who do score as diagnostic problem solvers, the truth is they do have more trouble because in jobs, most things are not time sensitive, to be honest.
- [36:04]
Susie Welch
Yeah.
- [36:04]
Betsy Wills
So they need outlets for this. Like, you know, watch a mystery, not, you know, watch a mystery show and you can figure out who done it first or find outlets for it. I know a lot of diagnostic problem solvers who are judges, like daffodil judges or dog show judges because they have to determine a winner within an hour.
- [36:21]
Susie Welch
You know, it's so funny you should say this because I often drive my family absolutely out their minds because when we watch a murder mystery together, in the first episode, I, I have to announce who did it. And we watched this show called like, I think it was called Mayor of East Town. It was a, it was like a miniseries. Six episodes, eight episodes. And I was watching it with my daughters and they were like, if you figure out who it is in the first episode, mom, just freaking keep it to yourself. I was so out of my mind. I figured it out in the first episode. Why? Because I'm a diagnostic problem solver and who, who's been a crime reporter, they made me write it down on a. Of piece. Piece of paper and put it in my drawer and. And I, I couldn't. I was right. Of course I was.
- [36:58]
Betsy Wills
Well, it's fun. I mean, it really is fun. And again, you have the language for this now. So on a team, you can, you can hold back or, or assert it at the right time.
- [37:06]
Susie Welch
It's very valuable, so important to know this information about yourself. So A, you can get along with others and B, you can find the right life. Let's do the last one. Spatial visualization.
- [37:16]
Betsy Wills
Spatial visualization.
- [37:17]
Susie Welch
And I in our last episode, which I hope everyone, everybody has heard, if you haven't heard it, go back and listen to it. I do talk about. I am not a spatial visualizer. I'm at the other end of the continuum. So go ahead and explain this one to us.
- [37:26]
Betsy Wills
Well, the shame is that, you know, there's a lot of studies at Vanderbilt University. Actually for decades they've been studying this aptitude because school does not really recognize it until it's awfully late. My son, you know, was building the Taj Mahal out of Legos at five years old. Okay. And my daughter, more like you, I wouldn't have known what that pile of bricks was. Right. Some people just, in their mind's eye can see things in, in models or 3D. They can walk in a room. They're much more concerned about how the layout of that room is than maybe how people's emotions are in that room. So on this continuum, you have abstract thinkers who are like, you tend to be people who think in concepts and ideas in people's emotions in, in any kind of situation. Whereas the 3D visualizer, you know, thinks in terms of, of physical space, physical things, physical products as a 3D visualizer. So that's, that's how this range goes. But what we're trying to figure out when you take this assessment is, you know, it's a fork in the road for you.
- [38:33]
Susie Welch
Yeah.
- [38:33]
Betsy Wills
And inevitably, if you are a 3D visualizer, there are tons of opportunities that if you didn't know you were this, you might miss. You're going to naturally be drawn to the world of 3D. But do you realize there's so many careers that are out there for you that if you train for them and have the special ability, you will be very good.
- [38:54]
Susie Welch
I have to tell you a story about a student of mine. And he was going to go into consulting. He had discomfort with going into consulting, but these are the high paying jobs coming out of business school. As the semester went on, he was beginning to learn about his values. And he was like, oh, oh. Because that was beginning to like be a red flag for consulting. But then we did aptitudes and he saw that he was a 3D visualizer. And he came to me, he said, this is the final nail in the coffin, Professor Welch. I cannot go into consulting, which is all abstract thinking, as we know. He said, I want to, I want to build a product company. I want to touch stuff, I want a product. And he and his girlfriend, he had a very high value of belovedness and family centrism. And they ended up making, I think it was a non alcoholic beverage of some kind. And they were so in their glory as 3D visualizers. Both of them with the packaging, with the lettering, with the, with the, with I, when the, when it first came out, they brought it to my office and like, I was like one of the first people who tried this very delicious drink and, and I was like, oh my God, this is great. But their joy about having a product, I mean, imagine if he'd gone into consulting, he would have been miserable. He was such a tiny visualizer, Right?
- [39:54]
Betsy Wills
And again, so many opportunities. Now, a lot of people discount this one. You know, they think, well, everybody sees it that way. No, they don't. So this is a special sauce kind of moment for people. It is one of these aptitudes that must be used. So whenever I see a lawyer, for example, score as a spatial visualizer, and they're like, I hate my job. I hate my job. I'm like, well, maybe you should consider patent law or real estate law. Don't quit your job. But think about, you know, at least being in a practice that involves 3D visualization. Represent, you know, engineers or engineering firms or something, or take a pottery class or something on the weekends, okay? Because you need to use this, right?
- [40:36]
Susie Welch
Go scratch that itch in your free time. Go build a man shed in your backyard and start making rocking chairs or something like that.
- [40:42]
Betsy Wills
And you know what's funny is when I bring that up to a spatial visualizer, they're like, well, wait a minute. I took a class one time. I loved it. You're like, see, There you go. Let's do it.
- [40:51]
Susie Welch
Yeah. Yeah. All right. So I thank you, Betsy, like, for running through these five. I mean, I think that if you're listening to this and you've not been thinking about your aptitudes in these terms, I know you're having a holy you know what? Moment. I again recommend the test because it's really going to give you a full picture of what you've got. But in general, have you like me. I'm leading the witness here. And wildly, I mean, have you seen people's lives changed by their awareness of aptitudes?
- [41:16]
Betsy Wills
Oh, I mean, one after another. I mean, since we started assessing people in 2012, I guess it was with this youscience assessment. You know, we've had eight and a half million people take it. But the best story I have that just made me so happy was I was working in investment business, and we had hired a young woman, and she was by this time, I guess, you know, 29. And she found out that I'd been involved in you science originally. And she said, I took it in high school. And she goes, and this is why I went into finance. She goes, I'd never considered doing that before. I was thinking I was going to be interior designer. And it uncovered all these, you know, numerical abilities I had, and it just changed my trajectory forever. And I love hearing that insight that people have. Um, and the earlier you can take it the better. But I will say, any age, never too late, this assessment. Never too late, Never too late, whether it's for your career or for your, you know, applications and full life. It's great insight.
- [42:16]
Susie Welch
Yep. It really is. Oh, Betsy, you're the best. Thank you. I could not have explained it as well as you did by an order of magnitude, so I'm so grateful to you. You're the best. Thank you for enlightening not just us and my listeners here today, but the millions of people that you have enlightened with your work.
- [42:29]
Betsy Wills
Thank you so much, Susie, for all you're doing.
- [42:31]
Susie Welch
All right, big hug. Bye. Bye. All right, so that is we're come to the end of this week's part of this series about knowing your aptitudes. We started with me saying I was gonna get revenge. And look, my revenge was kind of a healthy revenge, right? Wasn't it? Because my revenge was, I'm gonna know my aptitudes, I'm gonna proclaim them to the world, which is what I'm recommending everybody do. And then I went and I sort of polished that narrative when I was at Bain doing heavy manufacturing. And then life went on and no one doubted my aptitudes after that, least of all me. I had the narrative. We moved on to one of the really, I think one of the king of assessments with YouScience to find out what your cognitive aptitudes are. I'm grateful to Betsy Wills for her time with us in this podcast, kind of going deep listening to her. I think you probably have a sense, a better sense of what your aptitudes are, and that may be enough for you. Or you can take that test or another test. I like that test very much. But there is more than you science in the Becoming youg methodology in identifying what your aptitudes are. And that is where we're going, going next week in our final part of this series on finding out your aptitudes. We're going to talk about the Enneagram and then two more assessments that we've developed at Becoming youg Labs that I really like for determining your aptitudes. And then finally, we're going to get to the epilogue of this story, which is what happened to Dan. It's not the epilogue I would have thought. It's definitely not the one I would have written if I was writing a novel. I'm pondering it. I want you to ponder it with me. I'm perplexed by it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. And that's where we'll end. End. So thank you so much for listening. Thank you to Betsy Wills for her insight. And hey, if you know where my Baker Scholar pin is that was stolen in cambridge port in 19, I think it was 88, please send it to me. I'll, I'll pay the postage. Just kidding. I'm over it. I'm over the whole ding dang thing. But I'm not over the fact that you should know your aptitudes and sooner and more clearly and in more detail and with words. I'm never going to get over that. That's really important information for finding out your purpose and living it. I'm Susie Welch. Thank you for being with us. I'll see you next week.
- [44:29]
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