https://www.ted.com/talks/regina_hartley_why_the_best_hire_might_not_have_the_perfect_resume

For my final event blog post, I decided to watch another Ted Talk, this one called “Why the best hire might not have the perfect resume.” I thought this could be very applicable to not only leadership, but also college students. Regina Hartley discusses why the “silver spoon” candidate, who has the impeccable education, experience, and skills may not always be the best person for someone to hire. In fact, she says it is the job of a boss or leader to look a bit further into the potential employees, and weed out the “scrappers” in order to find future workers who will not be successful despite their adversity, but because of their adversity.

Hartley goes on to say that a series of odd jobs or a lower level education may indicate inconsistency and unpredictability in a candidate, but it also has the potential to indicate “a committed struggle against obstacles.” The question then becomes, is the leader willing to take a risk? According to Hartley, taking this risk has many possible benefits. She says that it is more likely to be beneficial to have an employee or follower who will be passionate, hard-working, and determined to perform the task at hand properly. The  candidate with the picture perfect resume may be able to complete the job, but their passion and focus may be at a lesser level because it is simply another job to them.

https://www.ted.com/talks/alicia_malone_the_overlooked_legacy_of_hollywood_s_first_female_directors

While looking for my second event for my blog post, I decided just to browse the Ted Talk website and came across Alicia Malone’s talk called “The overlooked legacy of Hollywood’s first female directors.” This immediately caught my eye because I hope to one day potentially join the broadcast media and news sector of work, which may be similar to a woman’s role in entertainment. I have always learned about female leaders and guides within the journalism role in my classes such as Barbara Walters and Katie Couric, however I wanted to take this opportunity to learn about female pioneers in the entertainment piece of broadcast.

Malone calls storytelling one of the most powerful gifts given to humans, and film is one means that we have the ability to tell a story. These films are also able to preserve history and exporting culture according to Malone. However, she notes that these stories tend to be told from one perspective: the male perspective. Even today, 96% of films released in Hollywood are directed by men. This has caused the number of stories films choose to tell to hold certain patriarchal beliefs and stigmas. However, in order to change this, the leadership over these films needs to change. Whenever someone regards Hollywood as a “boys club” that probably won’t ever change to Malone, she likes to note that some of the first filmmakers were women including Alice Guy Blaché. In fact, before the 1920’s, there were more female movie makers and directors in Hollywood than there is today. Blaché ended up being one of the first directors ever to create a film that would tell a story. So my question now is, if the business first began with a large number of female leaders, how come there is such a lack of them in the Hollywood leadership positions today? Did men simply choose to take back Hollywood and the women had little power over keeping a piece of it for themselves, or has the overall standards of leadership in our time somehow taken a step back.

https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_why_good_leaders_make_you_feel_safe?language=en

This Ted Talk was an obvious link to leadership, but was also very eye-opening and informative about what good leadership can look like. Simon Sinek’s talk called “Why good leaders make you feel safe” chooses to emphasize the benefits of a supportive, considerate leader or boss in order to demonstrate the positive outcomes within the followers. He first discussed a personal anecdote in which he was boarding a plane, and one of the flight attendants was extremely terse and authoritative over a passenger who tried to board too soon because if she said she needed to perform her job with 100% accuracy. Sinek then discussed how this employee was scared of her boss, of her leader, causing her to have a negative, fearful time while working for the airline, which was then relayed to the passengers. However, had she not been so panicked over making one mistake, the experience of the customer could have benefited, improving the overall potential quality rankings of the business.

After giving an example for a leader who instills fear in their followers, Sinek then gives an example of a boss who gives their workers a sense of support and comfort. Charlie Kim started a tech company called Next Jump implemented a policy within the company of “lifetime employment.” If someone were to receive a job at Next Jump, they could never be fired for performance issues. Rather, if an employee did run into performance issues, the company will provide support and coach you through the problems. Kim relates his policy to the idea of how we would treat our children if they were to make a mistake. If your kid creates an issue within the family or household, you do not simply “lay them off.” Instead, you help them through the problem, so that you can solve it together. Sinek then says that a good leader would never sacrifice his people in order to save the numbers, but would sooner sacrifice the numbers to save his people. 

If this idea were to be implemented in companies and societies worldwide, there may be a positive impact such as an increase in community within the followers. It does not necessarily seem feasible to implement Charlie Kim’s “lifetime employment” within every business, however ridding of the fear tactics that are installed to followers in order to benefit the leader is a good step in the right direction for any company.

Large portions of this reading can be attributed to the happenings in our world right now. Honestly, it is a scary place where I think the majority feel powerless because of the paralyzing fear placed in our heads. However, one piece of the reading from Zinn’s essay has a bit of a double meaning right now. He states that we must remember that while those with power seem to be untouchable, we must always remember that they are in fact vulnerable if people begin to defy their authority and withhold any and all obedience. This statement is most likely referring to leaders of governments and societies, who seem to hold all the power and that nothing can hurt them. But the people with power who people deem untouchable have changed during this pandemic. I think these leaders are now the people only aiming to make our country safer and healthier.

The nurses and doctors who are risking their lives everyday to simply go to work to help those affected by COVID-19 and any other ailments truly hold a lot of power over who can be helped and how we can help them. “Generals become powerless when their soldiers refuse to fight,” Zinn wrote. Our fight right now is to stay home and stay healthy for the benefits of everyone in our city, state, and country. However, if we do not stay home we simply add on to the increasing numbers of those affected by COVID-19 and begin to overwhelm the doctors and nurses working everyday to save these people. We are taking away their medicine, tools, and hours of rest that right now all add up to the amount of power they have. We have always looked up to medical professionals and view them as saviors who cannot be harmed, but we are only hurting them and increasing their vulnerability by not following their simple requests.

Out of the Democratic and Republican advertisements I watched in favor of opponents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, my favorite was an advertisement called “Women Votes” that was in support of Eisenhower. When looking at all the advertisements, I typically looked for ones that covered a wide variety of topics and did not attack the other opponent, because I believe attack ads are unnecessary if you have enough of a personal platform to stand on. For the “Women Votes” ad, it first empowers the U.S. female population by letting them know they hold the majority vote in these presidential elections, because they belong to the larger population. It lists a few other reasons why women specifically should vote for Eisenhower, but then also fans into a row of interviews on different women giving their personal reason for why they will vote for Eisenhower.

Through the strategy of including numerous interviews of different women, that was also seen in another Eisenhower ad with just different civilians, the advertisement has the ability to include numerous platforms and reasons for why Eisenhower, or the candidate they are supporting, would be a better President. Through the stream of women, there was talk of family, education, powerful leadership, unity, taxes, social security, prosperity, and honesty. The list of advantages in voting for Eisenhower was able to be so long in this ad because they included upwards of a dozen different women giving their opinion on why they would vote for the Republican candidate. I believe advertisements that get the true opinion of the people and can touch upon a large number of advantages and platforms are the best for a presidential candidate, which is why the “Women Votes” advertisement was my favorite from the 1956 campaign.

My favorite ad has always been the Budweiser “Someone Waits for You” ad that discourages drinking and driving with an emotional pull of a dog and an owner that almost doesn’t make it home. The idea of “man and his best friend” always has seemed to be a good way for any company or product to get the US to pay attention to their advertisement, because they want to ensure the relationship remains intact and positive. The Budweiser ad starts with the dog as just a puppy when the owner first picked him up, to show the immediate connection that began early on. It goes through them spending time together and playing, both making them happy. The footage they use is purposely relatable for anyone who has ever owned a dog. Though one night, the owner leaves with his keys for a night of drinking with his friends, and does not return home even though he told the dog (for some reason like it was his wife) that he would be home later that evening. When he doesn’t return home, the dog becomes extremely upset and worried, convincing the audience the owner died in a drinking and driving accident and leaving his best friend behind. However, it is revealed at the last second that the owner in fact spent the night at a friend’s house so he did not have to drive under the influence, therefore allowing him to return safe and sound to the dog and best friend.

The idea of having a dog who you can call your best friend that cares and watches out for you in my mind relates to the idea in Huff’s reading that there is often a skewage caused by purposely confusing “normal” and “desirable.” Through the creation of advertisements or the spread of information to the consumer, Huff states that the readers tend to miss the important figures or numbers that somehow disappeared in the process. Rather than include the scary and disheartening statistics of drinking and driving and the deaths related to it, Budweiser chose to completely side step and the scary side and instead show a loving story of best friends reunited after one decided to not make the decision to put his life in danger.

In Bezio’s essay, there is a large discussion over England’s past government, and how it has shifted, in both directions, between absolute monarchy and more of a democratic state. There is a lot of comparison to Shakespeare’s Pericles, which I find intriguing and relevant for me specifically because my research project is based around the Royal Family, and I have honed in on the levels of power between Parliament and the Royal Family in my recent findings. Based on Pericles and Shakespeare’s time, decreasing personal ownership of the state helped preserve a type of monarchy that allowed for democratic pieces which led to a sort of “modern Western nationalism.” All of this information was led into a discussion over the “Brexit” vote, which I believe is unnecessary and should not take place. But then again, I am a part of the “under 45” population who are generally against Great Britain seceding from the European Union.

Those under 45 tend to side with the idea of a sense of a global community, rather than a national community. Belonging to the entire globe rather than just England is also a characteristic that was depicted in Pericles. Those under the age of 45 have had the privilege of growing up in an age where the global community has been connected both physically, through further opportunities in travel, and technologically with the new advancements of social media. Much like Marina, these people are able to identify with the global community, rather than just the English community. I agree with Bezio’s final statement that we must continue with this sense of globalization, just as Marina did. While it may not be extremely obvious to those over the age of 45, those coming of the age of leadership in Great Britain will hopefully be able to uphold a larger sense of community that expands further than the national borders.

When someone mentions Christopher Columbus, my mind immediately takes me back to learning this rhyme from yes, a Mini Wheats commercial: “Christopher Columbus sailed the  ocean blue in 1492.” Aside from this quote, I remember pieces of history units in middle school that taught me Columbus discovered North America, and in a way, we have a reason to thank him for being here in the first place. What I, and most students today, never learn are the atrocities Columbus brought with him including enslavement, mass murder, and torture. After reading Zinn’s honest background on Columbus, I am shocked to say that probably 95% of the information given I have never heard. I didn’t even know Bartolomé de Las Casas was a person who ever existed. Aside from the horrible and gruesome acts Columbus led in North America, something I came to realize at the end of the reading was I was always taught to believe Columbus discovered unpopulated land that would now belong to Europeans. However, he instead disrupted a world that in some areas were “as densely populated as Europe itself.

Aside from learning the whole truth behind Columbus’ discovery of North America, another idea of Zinn’s that struck me was “the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress that is still with us.” As examples, Zinn mentions Hiroshima, Vietnam, and nuclear proliferation in general as ways that the United States has dealt with problems violently, but accepted it as needed. However, one act of inhumanity that the U.S. has never been able to back is the Holocaust. Another being the Rwandan Genocide. Or even the Cambodian Genocide. All of these events that have taken place in only the past century are frowned upon by Americans and taught to be intolerable, cruel acts against humanity. So how come in middle school I was taught that our use of nuclear warfare against Japan was needed and supported in order to help the U.S. win the war? Or how about the  Vietnam War, that I was told we technically won because we suffered less casualties? I am sure there are civilians worldwide who look at these violent events and disapprove of the United States’ actions. However, as citizens of this country, we have been taught to believe that if people claim it can help protect us, it is then alright to harm and murder members of other communities and populations.

I had never heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment before today’s reading, and after exploring the website and reading all about it, I am in shock of how successful they were at putting together a true prison simulation. The overall goal of this experiment was not to create a “literal prison,” but to create a “functional simulation of a prison.” This led to a few differences in how the prison was run and how the prisoners were treated. For example, in order to produce the real feeling of male prisoners feeling “humiliated” and “emasculated,” the prisoners had to wear dresses as their uniforms, when in reality prisoners typically have some form of a pantsuit. The prisoners were also forced to wear a chain on their foot, which is uncommon in prisons today, in order to “remind prisoners of the oppressiveness of their environment.” Even with these slight changes, I wonder how the results of the experiment may vary from real life prison. I understand why they had to implement new measures such as these, however why were they not simply allowed to wear a pantsuit without a chain on their ankle as normal prisoners are today?

I found it interesting how quickly the experiment turned into a simulation of what seemed to be a more realistic prison after the prisoners held their retaliation after only their first day. This “rebellion” turned the overwatching guards into annoyed, threatening guards rather instantly. The guards were not required to hold anything back in their punishments, even forcing the prisoners to do push-ups, which was found to be a punishment used to torture inmates of Nazi concentration camps. The guards then began asserting privileges to different groups of prisoners at different times. According to the website, this tactic can be used to confuse leadership and turn prisoners against each other over who has the ability to have privileges at what times. I wonder if these tactics are truly used in real prison, as I thought it was typical of guards to harshly punish any prisoner who stepped out of line, not granting any privileges for a very long time.

For over 95% of our history, humans have interacted and thrived in “small scale societies.” Within these groups, leadership tends to be less formal and institutionalized and more egalitarian (Von Reuden, Van Vugt). However, our modern day world is more accustomed to functioning in “large scale societies,” in which leadership tends to be very structured and civil. There are different attributes to leaders in both societies that affect their status and power over their followers. One of these attributes includes physical build. According to the reading, success in combat and physical warfare contributes to leader emergence in SSSs. The members of these communities who tend to thrive in battle are taller and stronger men. Physical strength also has the ability to indicate strength in hunting and gathering. Therefore, in societies that are ridden with war and also rely on hunting and gathering, men who have these physical attributes are favored for a leadership position. Our history of living in SSSs has led to the automatic desire for physically strong and built leaders in LSSs. While physical cues should be rather irrelevant when choosing leaders in business and politics, people in our modern day world more often than not show preference to tall, strong and masculine leaders.

While the same physical attributes signal leadership in both SSSs and LSSs, personality traits tend to differ among the leaders of these different sized societies. Within SSSs, it seems that citizens are more aware and in closer relation to their leaders, therefore have a better idea of how they act and live. This causes their leaders to be more generous, trustworthy, and fair. Obvious signs of humility are also helpful in gaining leadership in an SSS. Trade and interaction among not only members of the society but with other societies nearby is an integral piece of thriving as a group. A leader who has the ability to be understanding and open with both other communities and its citizens will have an easier time succeeding in a SSS. However, in LSSs, it has shown that individuals who are increasingly narcissistic and over-confident are generally chosen as leaders. While these personality traits may not be favorable to a group overall, people with these characteristics are often “persuasive, charming and sociable,” increasing their pull among followers. These individuals tend to thrive because they are able to take over leadership positions before any newcomers or agreeable members of the society because these citizens may not want any conflict and therefore will not argue as to why they may serve as a more favorable leader.