I watched a TED talk by Drew Dudley called “How to be a Great Leader”, and I thought it was so powerful. At first, I assumed it would be another talk on influence and followership and how to create that persona of a leader. However, he opens by talking about his “lollipop moment”. He told the story of a moment when a girl came up to him before he left college and told him that he said something that completely changed her perspective, and she wanted to thank him for being an incredibly important person in his life. However, he doesn’t remember that moment at all. It’s crazy to me that we can have that kind of an impact on someone’s life, and you may not even remember it. In a world where what we say matters so much, I think that’s important to keep in mind.

He goes on to say that all of us probably have that “Lollipop moment”, and that moment where someone said or did something that you believe fundamentally changed you or made your life better. But we rarely tell the person that impacted us so greatly. It goes to show just how powerful words and actions can be, no matter how small. I talked about this in another blog post, but it reminds me of Jepson and how we strive to show that leadership can manifest itself in so many different ways.

Dudley concludes his talk by asking the audience to start to value the profound impact we can have on each other, and to redefine leadership into these “lollipop moments” because, “we’ve made leadership about changing the world, and there is no world. There’s only six billion understandings of it. And if you change one person’s understanding of it… you’ve changed the whole thing”. I think that especially during these stressful times, it’s important to remember that we are not alone, and even the smallest act of kindness can greatly impact someone.

Here’s the link to the video! https://www.ted.com/talks/drew_dudley_everyday_leadership/transcript?referrer=playlist-how_leaders_inspire