what makes someone tick

"You have to find out, if you can, what makes someone tick," she explains in that OWN video, "Because personality does affect history. There has to be ambition there. It can't just be pragmatic. There has to be some idealism."

What makes someone tick is not necessarily something that needs to be entirely respected, or entirely ratified.

The key, he said, was “knowing what makes someone tick.”

A: It's very easy to play someone who's just bad, but then hopefully understanding what makes someone tick.

“Networking is sometimes a drag, but I always approach it like an investigator: I try to figure out what makes someone tick, what they are passionate about or what they have to offer the world. Pick an individual and try to figure out why he or she is the most interesting person in the room. Approached from this angle, it almost becomes a game, and you win when you have put the pieces together.”