I watched a TED talk titled: “What if we replaced politicians with randomly selected people?” The title of this really pulled me in, it is a unique idea. But an interesting one because politicians are the leaders of our lives on local and national levels… but they don’t truly represent us. Politicians get a lot of hate, often are biased, and are career politicians not because they are passionate about improving society, but probably more for self-interested ideals. I always hear my dad yell at the TV and say “I should be in charge!” this TED talk explains that maybe.. that would create a more successful democracy.

Brett asks the crowd if they  “think living in a democracy is a good thing?” all of the audience raised their hands. He then asked:  “Who thinks our democracies are functioning well?” and all of the hands went down. He explains that the idea of democracy is ideal: equality, justice, fairness, security. But in practice, it is not working because the current political system is distorted by self-interest.

The speaker strives to answer the question: ”how should we live together?” How should societies organize themselves? This has been a question humans have been trying to answer centuries. Brett proposes a system based on Sortition, which is random selection. This idea at first glance is… absurd. Imagining myself as a politician is laughable. But he starts explaining and it begins to make a lot of sense. Sortition would allow the people in charge to represent the demographic, gender, race, beliefs, socio-economic backgrounds. Politicians would be 50% female, equally representative of race and income to the country as a whole. Every citizen would have someone similar to them in a leadership role. “This would simulate how we would all think if we had the time, the information, and the process to come to the moral crux of political decisions.”

Diversity can trump ability when faced with a wide array of societal questions and problems, he explains that these people chosen would become critical thinkers, “if you give people responsibility, they will act responsibly”

He explains that sortition was used in Athenian culture to fill the majority of political positions, they knew career politicians should be avoided and it was crucial to have the leaders truly represent the citizens. I think Brett is a leader because he identifies a problem and backs up to identify the bigger question. He is able to take a new and creative approach to assist democracies to function the way they are designed to. It opens up an entirely new way of thinking which I find very interesting.

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.

Guy Kawasaki worked with Steve Jobs at Apple, and presented the 12 lessons that he learned from him, two of which I found most interesting and most applicable to our class. Lesson 7 was “Changing your mind is a sign of intelligence.” This clearly relates back to the reading that talked about what makes the best decision makers. The answer was those that take responsibility for their actions and then form a new plan of action are better leaders. Kawasaki provided an example of how Steve Jobs originally didn’t want any 3rd party applications on the iPhone. He realized he was wrong and completely embraced a new path. For leaders in all fields, this teaches us that leaders need to be more married to their/their followers’ success than their own pride; humility in admitting faults, another thing we talked about, is imperative for forward progress.

The second lesson that stuck with me was lesson 9, “A players hire A+ players.” Kawasaki explains that people who are smart are also confident in their own abilities and can therefore surround themselves with smarter people without feeling insecure, lesser, or weak. B level players do not have this same confidence and hire people who they perceive to be less smart or capable than them to boost themselves up; he argues that we need A level leaders who can see their own gaps in ability and surround themselves with people who can fill the gaps. This relates back to the point of humility; overly confident or overly insecure people cannot admit their own mistakes or short-comings, making them worse decision makers and creating a feedback loop where the business/organization/mission will fail because the leader refuses to bring in the necessary talent to save it. This relates back to the previous lesson because the leader cares more about him or herself and their own pride than the larger picture.

This TED Talk was recommended to me and sounded interesting so I clicked on it. Part of the way through I realized that I had seen it before, but it’s such a good one that I finished the talk and think it’s worth sharing. Adichie talks about how when only exposed to one narrative about a person/country/ethnic or religious group, then we form stereotypes based on that single story. She used a lot of examples from her own life as a Nigerian author. Adichie made a compelling and eye-opening argument about how a single story “robs people’s dignity” and “emphasizes differences over similarities.”

I think this talk is super relevant to the readings and discussions we’ve had about how people’s personal biases or interests are intermixed with the narratives that they tell, which can make the portrayal in the story more inaccurate and give it a message about the people, places, or things in that story. Adichie hit on this in a very similar way by talking about how historically, white people have given no attention to black people because they were “lesser beings” and “economic vehicles.” She emphasizes the need to change this and expand the stories and images that we hear or see because that breaks the biases that we hold about large number of groups. This same conclusion that she came to reminds me a lot of the numerous discussions we’ve had about the importance of diversifying the representation of people in our many different forms of media.

In this Ted Talk, Simon Sinek talks about why good leaders make you feel safe. This made me think of our tendency to elect physically dominate leaders in times of uncertainty in order to feel protected. It also made me think back to our studies of evolutionary leadership traits and the need for physically dominate leaders in small scale societies. Similar to the other TED talks I have listened to regarding leadership, he started off with a story of a recent Medal of Honor recipient. While in Afghanistan, Captain Swanson ran into live fire to rescue the wounded. While bringing wounded soldiers to the helicopter, Captain Swanson drops someone off, gives them a kiss on the forehead, and goes back to save more. Simon describes how the military gives medals to people who sacrifice themselves for the benefit of others. While in the business world, people are awarded bonuses for sacrificing others for their own benefit. The difference between leaders in the two worlds is trust and cooperation, both feelings instead of instructions. This trust and cooperation is what kept our ancestors safe millions of years ago with danger all around. When leaders inside an organization put the comforts and needs of their subordinates first, much like in the military, that trust and cooperation is developed. Simon ends by describing how great leaders all want the same thing, to give their followers the ability to achieve more than themselves.

I found the following TED talk when I was researching for my critical thinking project focused on climate change. I think the speaker, Renee Lertzman, is able to empower the viewers by validating their fears. With a topic like climate change, it is easy to feel lost, anxious, and stressed. Her approach is very unique and not commonly talked about. She focuses on the psychology between grief and creativity, and how we can use that as a resource to support the climate change crisis.

She brings up three psychological ideas that can help us understand the world’s current emotional state about climate change. The idea I found most interesting was the “double-bind” phenomenon. It comes from the stress of needing to change. Someone knows they need to change, they see the consequences if they don’t, but the issue is so big they begin to feel stuck and powerless. This common human experience is intolerable, and is often pushed away subconsciously so people can be numb. She further explains that this is where a lot of the disconnect about climate change happens, people experience a double-bind, they feel like they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t, so they push down that intolerable feeling. This comes off as a lack of caring about the climate crisis, when in reality it might just be anxiety-induced paralysis. Renee creates a very interesting analogy to explain this:        Someone is experiencing a double-bind, they are stuck, so they go to a therapist. The therapist yells at them “why don’t you care?’ “You need to take action now or face dire consequences!” Obviously, that therapist needs to be fired.

Her point is that we lack compassion and attunement. Both of which are crucial, as it is a global issue and needs a global community to solve it. If we can better understand each other’s anxieties about climate change, that can create a foundation for creative solutions. Properly understanding the psychological factors that play into the climate crisis might be essential to solving it.

I love the approach she takes to a world crisis, it is one I personally have never thought about. I see her as a leader because she is able to take a step back from the climate crisis stress and identify a piece that society might be ignoring.

Before we left for spring break, I went to one of the entrepreneurship lectures in the international center. A woman came in and talked about a company that she had started to read books to kids in developing nations. The organization is called We Love Reading and it was started by Dr. Rana Dajani. They are a grassroots organization that started with Dr. Dajani reading to a group of kids at a local mosque and has grown into so much more. They train people to read to children as a way to keep them interested in school and academics. This program is in 55 countries all around the world, from Syria, to the United States, to Uganda. We Love Reading is an amazing organization that reads to children and distributes books. They have also written their own books on issues such as the environment and religion. I don’t remember the exact numbers, by Dr. Dajani talked a lot about the huge impact that it had on the children and how much they loved coming to listen to her read every week.

This ted talk was particularly interesting for me because I’ve always assumed extroverts were purely advantageous in our society. Growing up, I was an introvert, and I saw this as a disadvantage in the world I was growing up in. Throughout high school I put a lot of effort in acting like an extrovert to become more like one, in the hopes this would put me in a better position. However, I can see how it would be problematic as well. Being “too nice” in business can definitely be seen as a disadvantage, as people view that as the leader not being prepared to do what needs to be done. As shown in the Ted Talk, this is a shame since people prefer to work with nice people who care about them and are friendly.

I also didn’t know there were multiple types of extroverts, though it certainly makes sense. The examples Katherine Lucas used for these types fits very well, and I found it gave a lot of context for why certain leaders struggle and others do well, even if they’re all extroverts. I wonder how we would characterize modern presidents like Barack Obama, as I could see him being called both a Agentic Extrovert and a Affiliative Extrovert. President Obama was seen as a commanding leader by many who thrived in a leadership position,  but he was also very good at social situations while campaigning.

Drew Dudley talks about leadership in daily life during this Ted Talk. He begins we describing how today, people think leadership is out of their reach and an extraordinary feat to accomplish. He goes on to describe how being a leader in everyday life can be accomplished by doing very small things. He redefines leadership with a story a girl told him about the first time she met Drew. She describes her first day at university and how nervous she was. While considering going home because she didn’t think she could do it, Drew, being an orientation advisor, came up to her and made a comical scene. She says that this moment changed her attitude and decision to stay at school. The importance of this story was how little acts such as making somebody feel comfortable in a new setting can create leaders. Without knowing it for four years, this girl looked up to Drew as a leader figure.

Drew claims to not even remember the day, let alone meeting the girl. Everyday actions that may not seem extraordinary to you can effect others’ lives in dramatic ways. Drew explains it as this instance being one of the most extraordinary moments in this girl’s life, he doesn’t even remember. He closes by stressing the importance of acknowledging the people in your life that have made impacts like that. Thinking of ourselves as powerless and thinking leadership is bigger than us gives us an excuse not to take these small actions. Leadership must be redefined by these moments of impacting people’s lives without even realizing. Leadership isn’t about changing the world, it is about changing one person’s experience.

In this Ted Talk, retired Air Force Lt Colonel Brenda Cartier talks about a new vision for leadership in the military. She begins the talk with a story taking place in Afghanistan 2009 when she sent out her aircrafts and airmen to save a ground team who had taken contact. She describes the gruesome scene when the aircrafts land on base, with bloodied medics and soldiers being carrier off the aircraft, a much different scene than shown on the media of draped flags and soldiers in dress blues. She goes on to describe the lone survivor of that special operations team, walking off the aircraft, emotionally shattered. Also a different image than the portrayed tough, emotionless special ops soldiers.

Through this experience, Lt Colonel Brenda Cartier talks about how her femininity benefits her in the military. She describes “precision guided masculinity” which allows her to use the right emotional weapons during the right times; such as comforting that soldier the night he returned. She says being a woman allows her to have a wide range of emotions for the situation and in combat, something many male soldiers lack. This range is what makes her such an effective leader in the military.

This talk interested me very much, because the debate of women in the military and their roles in combat are very debated, and I also have been torn. My philosophy on the issue has always been if the woman is physically and mentally fit enough to drag a fallen soldier off of the battlefield, there should be no problem with it. This talk allowed me to dig deeper into the mental and emotional benefits that women in the military posses. Her balance of hyper masculinity during combat and femininity after makes her much more suited for leadership.