I like Mozart candies, which are filled with dark chocolate and marzipan, they are round and wrapped in a golden foil with Mozart’s face on it. I’ve always been fond of their appearance. At the same time, I like what is beyond the packaging. Not all of us like dark chocolate. Of course, there is dark chocolate of an exceptional quality, for example Pierre Herme, Jean Paul Hevin, Marcolin. This chocolate, apart from being really expensive, can be found only in particular boutiques in Paris, Belgium, or in big cities around the world. It is the haute couture of chocolate.
Mozart candies are more affordable, with good quality and a catchy wrapping. For the price I am paying, I feel as though I receive something that pleases me every time.
Those candies are a good metaphor for the idea of shape and substance. They have an attractive shape and a substance that pleases me, taking into consideration how much I pay and my expectations; and as such there is harmony between those aspects.
However, while we often run into glittery shapes but with a questionable substance, equally we can encounter a great substance but, because it does not have an attractive form, we pass by it, without giving it a second thought.
As a coach, I come across situations where a manager or a CEO has a good substance, with all the best intentions, but the way those are seen is inadequate; the shape is rough, somehow unrefined. This type of person is an achiever, someone who makes the company perform better, and yet along the process of achieving those results precisely due to the edgy shape, people around can get scratched, annoyed, upset, hurt, or pushed away. Therefore, it is necessary to work on this shape, to learn how to be more diplomatic, more sophisticated, tolerant, more elegant in our endeavors. A pearl ought to be put in a velvet box, under a spotlight for its beauty to shine through; if we put it in our pocket, no one can see it.
On the other hand, we meet people who have the shape of a pearl, they are in the spotlight, even searching for it continuously, but if you check the pearl with a jeweler, you will find that it is fake; if you ask them a few questions, if you try to take them out of the spotlight, you can see that they are worthless, with no substance about them. They are the shapes without substance.
I saw Richard Branson a few years ago in a conference. Having read his books and some articles about him, I knew he was someone who tried a lot of things in his life with many failures but many more successes. However, he was not a good speaker. Even so, I was so touched to be in the same room with him, with someone that had such a huge influence on the music, writing and aviation industries, who promoted so many names, that I did not pay attention to the shape of his speech but just to the substance; not to the How, but to the What and the Who.
The one who introduced him, a consultant, was all about shape; what he had done in life was to read, talk, and give advice to others. I had an extraordinary example of substance without shape and shape without substance, from my point of view. A lot of people adored the consultant, which is understandable. We have the need to be seduced, to be impressed by glitter; otherwise it seems like we do not have the time, the energy, to search beyond the shine. The danger here is that values become blurry in the process – shapes without substance surely do not. Adibas shoes with a bit of glitter on them tend to be of poor quality.
At the same time, a manager with all the best intentions, who can produce results but who is unpolished, risks to be misunderstood by a lot of people, and being left with only a handful around. And so, between shape without substance and substance without shape, I would argue for shape with substance; but a shape in accordance with the individual, without anything flashy – just with the velvet that will ensure the authentic pearl has a place in the spotlight.