Strategic & Slim Shady

Before you start reading, click on this link and listen to it in the background while you read.

I often hear people talk about the first music that they were exposed to. The sounds they remember listening to in their house as a kid. Old jazz standards or classic rock & roll albums filling the house and seeding their love of music.

For me, my earliest musical memories are all rap music. My older brother used to give me his me hand-me-down mix tapes to listen to in my room at night, and I’m pretty sure my parents had no idea what I was listening to.

I’m happy to report that unlike the scare tactics espoused by Delores Tucker and others in the 80’s and 90’s, listening to all that hip-hop music did not turn me into a criminal.

That early exposure made me love a lot of things about rap music. The education I’ve received on culture and social conditions different than my own has been immeasurable. So many songs have been the soundtrack of some of my best memories, that often instantly return as soon as I hear the familiar beat.

I also, as someone with zero musical talent, enjoy having songs I can perform on karaoke night without having to actually sing.

Marshall Mathers

Eminem came along when I was in college. Marshall Mathers, also known as Slim Shady. His sound was different and his music was pretty obscene and in your face.

While I can’t say that all of his music holds up over time (a lot of it makes me cringe– the 90’s were different), there’s one song that still gets me going every time I hear it.

Lose Yourself.

Whether I was running, working out, or just needing a little extra motivation, the moment those opening chords hit, I always pushed just a bit harder.

Lose Yourself came out in 2002 and recently it hit a billion streams on Spotify. I guess I’m not the only one who finds it motivating.

So now that you’re up to speed with Eminem, here’s why I connect Slim Shady’s Lose Yourself to the CliftonStrengths talent of Strategic.

Lose Yourself is about seizing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in a high pressure moment. It’s about Eminem’s rise as a freestyle battle rapper. You might think that there are other talents that would serve someone in the moment, but I want to argue why I think Strategic fits here.

Strategic talents are about consistently and quickly seeing the best path forward

The ability to deftly anticipate obstacles right in front of you and move forward by taking them on? That’s exactly what Strategic thinkers do every day– whether they’re in a rap battle or on a team at work.

In the Cypher

People high in Strategic don’t just react to what’s in front of them. They see patterns. They anticipate outcomes and adjust their approach in real time.

They don’t need a detailed, step-by-step plan because they can read the room, identify what may or may not work and then act with confidence.

Back to rap battles for a minute.

If you’re not familiar with how rap battles work (or you haven’t seen the movie 8 Mile), in a battle, two opponents enter the “cypher” and take turns rapping to a beat.

It’s freestyle. They don’t have it all mapped out but they are able to make quick connections in their mind and create rhymes in real time. The goal is to diminish your opponent. It gets personal, but the winner usually has the best rhymes and the smoothest delivery.

It’s a debate, but to a beat, and your arguments have to rhyme. You’re adjusting what you’re going to say in response to what you’re hearing from your opponent.

I have high Strategic talent and I could NEVER win a rap battle.

That’s because while I can karaoke some rap, I definitely can’t come up with lyrics on my own.

But the same talent that a rapper uses in a battle is something I can relate to. The idea of seeing things before they happen. Being a step ahead. When I’m watching a movie, or a football game, or I’m in a meeting… sometimes I can see the play happening in advance. What I mean by that, is often times I can quickly scan all of the conditions and have a really strong educated guess about what’s going to happen next.

I want those with high Strategic to think about what applications in their lives they are able to see the play before it happens, and how they can use that to their advantage.

Seizing the Moment

The opening line in Lose Yourself is a question by Eminem:

“Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity / To seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment / Would you capture it, or just let it slip?”

We all face moments where we need to make a decision and act. A Strategic thinker knows how to recognize that moment and move. A person with high Strategic might get energy from a game, a puzzle or a competition because they’ve quickly scanned and already started for formulate a few strategies.

And if one strategy doesn’t seem like it’s going to work — cool, they have another ready to go.

So whether you’re making a key business decision, leading a team, or figuring out your next career step, take a page from Slim Shady’s rhymebook.

See the opportunity, trust your strategic instincts and lose yourself in the music.