Blog

Real beauty

Avantika Sinha
Sep 04, 2012

The paradigm that drives most of our lives is ‘Have-Do-Be’. The message driven by many advertising campaigns is that once you ‘Have’ certain things (like a beauty soap) you will be able to ‘Do’ certain things (like go out with a good looking guy) and that in turn will imply you can ‘Be’ a certain type of person (beautiful, attractive, sexy).

But we all know, at least on an intellectual level, that it’s possible to acquire all the external symbols without them ever generating the inner experience we hoped they would.

In fact we believe the world works according to a completely different paradigm: ‘Be-Do-Have’ and this is the model we use in our leadership development programs. ‘Be’ing a certain kind of person allows you ‘Do’ certain things that produce the results you will ‘Have’. The results a leader creates are generated by his or her character or in other words his or her way of being.

The Dove Global brand team took this concept out of the workshop and converted it into the highly successful and counter-culture campaign for real beauty – real beauty is not about looking good. It comes from inside. It’s above all about feeling and just ‘being’ beautiful.

You can apply this concept if you’re currently facing a challenging problem and not getting anywhere by asking yourself ‘What do I need to do?’ You may want to step back and first explore an even more fundamental leadership question – “What kind of person do I need to be?”