Spontaneity: a double edged sword but few great performers score below average. Spontaneous talent think in mosaics, are reflexive (sometimes to their detriment), and are always ready to pivot to a thought, impulse, or emotion. On a scale of 1 to 5 the best talents rank in the 4-5 range.
Assertiveness: we almost never findtalent who is easily dissuaded from a show plan or content within that plan. They are usually unwilling to back off something they believe is a high-value content target and they press their point. 90% of the time, they're right. On that same 1-5 scale top talent scores minimally a 3, with most in the 4-5 range.
Organization: there seems a direct correlation between a relatively low index of order (organization) and the high ranges of Spontaneity and Assertiveness. It's not uncommon to find highly talented people relatively low in traditional "organization" ranking in the 2-3 range on our 1-5 scale. Somewhere there's an explanation for this polarizing relationship.
Risk-taking: the best of traits, the worst of traits. This index keeps some PD's and managers awake at night. Like pilot Aces, risk takers take chances, cross the borders, and are occasionally disciplined for it. This is not new of course; recall Don Imus' Medgar Evers "Lookalike Contest" or playing When Sunny Gets Blue following the Claus Von Bulow trial for murdering his wife Sunny. Very few long-running, top-rated personalities crossing all format boundaries become "stars" absent this trait. They may be "good" but seldom "great." They may also be unemployed.
Empathy: even the most hardened talent such as Howard Stern has an often unnoticed but ever-present sense of empathy masked by their irreverence or bellicosity. It is this often unspoken and unobserved trait that allows a great talent to be highly sensitive toward a cause or a topic. For only a moment and often much to their chagrin, a poignant story will give them pause to notice and seem out of character for just an instant before flowing forward, back to their usual identity.
Storytellers: great talent-truly great performers-are natural story-tellers. Average talent reads prep copy. A story-teller may read the same narrative, but then turns it into a story; if only for 60-90 seconds. They score a 4-5 on our 1-5 temperament profile.
Gorge Johns put it this way: "there are only three types of people in radio: the gifted, the creative, and everyone else. The Beatles were gifted, The Monkees were creative. Both sold millions of records." Overlay Audience Development Group's Talent Temperament Scale with your lineup.
