Inside Out Culture

Our favourite Ted Talks

• Inside Out Culture • Season 1 • Episode 29

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In this episode of the Inside Out Culture podcast we share the Ted Talks that have inspired us and that we share with others in our workshops.

They are as follows:

  • How to Start a Movement - Derek Sivers
  • Forget the Pecking Order at Work - Margaret Heffernan
  • The Transformative Power of Classical Music - Benjamin Zander
  • Do Schools Kill Creativity - Ken Robinson
  • Everyday Leadership - Drew Dudley
  • Why winning doesn’t always equal success - Valorie Kondos Field

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Colin:

Welcome to the Inside Out Culture Podcast, where we look at insides of working culture and provide ideas, insights and actions for you to take on the outside. I'm Colin Ellis.

Cath:

And I'm Cath Bishop, and in each episode we'll examine a different question or a different organization, and we'll use case studies, research and our own insights and experiences to help you change the way things get done in your world.

Colin:

We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please like, subscribe and, of course, let us know what you think. Hello everybody, Welcome to another episode of the Inside Out Culture Podcast, and today Cath and I are going to be talking about our favourite TED Talks. We didn't talk about this before, but what was the first one you remember watching, Cath? Can you remember TED Talks?

Cath:

Oh, I think it might be one of the ones that I'm going to choose, actually.

Colin:

Oh, okay.

Cath:

Yeah, that's good. Do you have a specific memory? Yeah, I have a specific memory.

Colin:

It was Simon Sinek's TED Talk on.

Cath:

Oh yes, what was it? It the why and the how? Yeah, people buy. Why people don't buy what?

Colin:

that's right, yeah people don't buy what you do. They buy why you do it, which is nonsense. But yes, that was the first one that I remember and yeah, I've, I'd say, and Cath done two ted talks. We shouldn't it like you should. The thing at the end that you go need to go and do is watch both of Cath TED talks. They're quite old now it as a thing.

Cath:

I often recommend it to people, actually sort of sometimes as part of coaching, if they're sort of either wanting to think about their career or who are they as a leader. And I'll say imagine you're going to give TED talk, maybe just a five minute one, because there are now these TED shorts how would you sort of put it into that? Or people who are thinking about writing a book and they're like I don't know what the theme would be, I don't quite know. I've got these different ideas and I'm like well, could you create a TED Talk? That's your USP, that's who you are. So I do think it's quite a useful concept for things like that to really hone in on what's your key message, what are the two or three stories that would really demonstrate that? And so it is a good thought developer as a tool. It's hard because you have to be really disciplined about what you leave out and you have to really be clear about what you want to say. So the process of doing one is as important as what the outcome is.

Colin:

Right. Well, let's talk about our favorite TED Talks. I'll get straight into mine, and my first one is a favorite of mine, which I share in all of my workshops, and it's by a guy called Derek Sivers. Derek Sivers, I think, is a software developer, or was a software developer. He developed some software around like a. It's like a Napster-type app, for those that you remember it. I think that's what it is. I'm not suggesting any way shape or form. It was piracy, but it was some form of music app that he then sold, which allowed him to do other things.

Colin:

From what I've read about him I've read a couple of his books he's a fairly introverted individual, which makes this three minute TED talk on how to start a movement all the more impressive if he's nervous to actually do it. It's called how to Start a Movement. Basically what he does in three minutes, or just over three minutes, he completely deconstructs leadership. As listeners to the show will know, Cath and I have talked about this a lot. Leadership is one of those things that are very, very difficult to do. We talk a lot about leadership. It's very, very difficult to put yourself into service to somebody else 100% of the time. It's almost impossible, but the intent has to be there.

Colin:

And what basically Derek Sivers talked about and how to start a movement, is about becoming somebody that people would follow, and which is when I saw this TED talk, you know and I was just starting out in my own career I'm like this I want to be someone that people would follow, but then it's really, really important and he talks about this in his TED talk to nurture that first follower as an equal and recognize the ripple effect that followers have. The other thing that he talks about is publicly proclaiming your standpoint this is who I am, this is what I stand for but then being accountable to that. It's not enough, and we talked about this in a previous podcast. It's not enough just to say these things. You have to live it every single minute of every single day. And the last thing he talked about every single day and the last thing he talked about which I loved is this kind of cultural sensitivity is how the context within which you're working really influences the dynamics of your leadership style.

Colin:

I think often what I've seen in some organizations is people get into leadership roles and then they go. I'm a leader now. The hard work is done, when really it's just beginning, and so I really love this kind of how to start a movement, and whenever I look at great cultures, Cisco is a client of mine a fabulous culture. Why is it a fabulous culture? Because Chuck Robbins, the CEO, is that guy that started the movement. The CEO is that guy that started the movement. He's a fabulously personable guy, even though he oversees this multi-billion dollar organization, but he knows what he stands for. He puts it out there, he's got time for every member of staff that he comes into contact with, and Cisco continually evolves to meet the environment in which they're operating right now. So that would be my first pick.

Cath:

Really strong themes there. Followership is something, isn't it, that often the military talk about as well, as a really key element of leadership which you can see working there. We also see how, in this social media world, my God, the whole concept of followers has morphed into something where it's really hard to feel that you're perhaps equal with everyone and have that connected relationship. So, yeah, I look forward to looking at that. So I'm going to start with my absolute all-time favourite, which is from Margaret Heffernan, and it is called Forget the Pecking Order at Work. I love all her books. She's got another one coming out in 2025 about how artists and creative actors, et cetera, the creative world, embrace uncertainty and I think, what leaders and the organizational world can lead from that. But her pecking order TED Talk is a great one.

Cath:

She tells the story of an evolutionary biologist who studied chickens, and he was interested in the question of productivity, which is, of course, something we talk about, everybody talks about in organizations, everybody wants more of, and he said he used chickens because you can count the eggs, so it's an easy measure of productivity, and he wanted to know what would make his chickens more productive. So he devised this little experiment and, of course, chicken live in groups. So he had one group that was just a sort of average flock, and he just left it alone for six generations. He then created a second group of the individually most productive chickens, maybe sort of, you know, the superstar chickens, super chickens, and he put them together in a super flock and each time he just selected only the most productive ones for breeding. So then the experiment kind of goes on, and after six generations what was the result? Well, the first group, the average group, were doing great, they were plump and whatever. Egg production had increased dramatically. And in the second group all but three were dead. They'd pecked the rest to death. The individually productive chickens had only achieved their success by suppressing the productivity of the rest. So it's just such a lovely story and it really.

Cath:

Then she goes on to hone in on the importance of social connectedness and there's lots of research around social capital and that that is what creates a robust company that has a kind of momentum, a sense of growth, a sense of innovation, and I just think it's a great listen.

Cath:

I love all her work. She is very thoughtful and yet it's all common sense, and so she really kind of attacks this question of you know the superstar cultures and you know recruiting the top of the top of the top. You know, because actually it's what happens between people that matters and that's something that I've seen and experienced and see in the work that I do that we really want to kind of think about what happens between people. And again, she uses the artistic world, the music world, where sometimes when they're looking at auditions and the Royal Academies, they're actually not just looking for individual superstars, they're looking for what happens between people, because that's where the drama occurs. And for me, I find increasingly my work in organizations I'm helping people think, particularly when we're looking at teams becoming better as a team, at what's happening between you. Yeah, that's where the kind of beauty happens.

Colin:

I like the idea of super chickens.

Cath:

No, no, no, we don't want super chickens.

Colin:

Yeah, they've all got these little capes on and they're running around. It's a really great TED Talk, again, if you haven't seen it, and I love those TED talks. And Brene Brown doesn't make our list, and yet Brene Brown's TED talks are peppered with humor, and for me humor is crucially important. Which brings me onto my second one, which also then touches on music. Now, as someone who uses music in the, so I use music in my workshops a lot and I remember the vet it was either the very first or the second workshop that I did with music. Someone said to me oh, that's, that's quite a novel approach using music. I didn't think it was that novel. I'd been to a workshop years and years ago that used music and I loved it. I was like I'm going to copy that and so I was like, oh right, no-transcript. So he talks about vision, he talks about possibility, all through the medium of music. The reason that I love the TED Talk and I mentioned right at the start the anti-establishment nature is vision, kind of. With a TED talk, there's like a little area where you're supposed to stand and you don't really move and you deliver. He just goes into the crowd straight away Like nobody's expecting it. He goes straight into the audience, starts interacting with people and the camera's kind of if you watch it, the camera's kind of trying to follow him go, what's he doing? Why is he in there? But it's fabulous. So he talks about vision, he talks about possibility, he talks about leadership, about how it's not about command and control Again, all through this kind of conductor because he's a conductor of an orchestra and it's about the leader's role is awakening the possibility in others. What you're swept along with and it's a fairly long TED Talk, but it's one of those things you can't stop watching because he's just so passionate about his subject matter and you know that it means something to him and I guess that's where passion comes from is that sense of authenticity around this subject matter. You just can't fail to be swept along with it and obviously there's a lot of it's credibility.

Colin:

But the key thing that he talks about is he talks about the long line, and the long line is don't get bogged down in the day-to-day minutiae, the day-to-day detail, and it's very easy for us to do that. When I first saw the TED Talk, I was working in a government job and at that time I must've been bogged down in the day-to-day details you do in the public service and it just gave me the sense of, yeah, just keep focusing on the vision, focus on the medium to long-term goals. I was very much thinking about my own development at those times. Those day-to-day issues are just challenges that you need to overcome in order to get you down what he calls the long line, and obviously we talk a lot about culture and it being evolutionary. Cath even wrote the book the Long Win. These things take time. Yes, there are things that you have to do day to day, but it's keeping that center focus.

Colin:

And then the last thing that I took from it, which I mentioned, is this the sense of breaking convention. There are certain conventions and I'm pretty sure he used the TED Talk and the way that he did it as a mechanism to demonstrate how you should do that. And again, that's something else that I always did in my career is I recognized the conventions that were worth breaking, and I'm not talking about breaking rules, I'm talking about challenging certain things, but there are just culture. You know we're very social animals. We tend to follow a lot and sometimes we follow the bad as well as the good, and so you know he very much made the point about, there are these rules, there are these conventions, and I think the example he used was Chopin and he said you know, there are some things that you can challenge that will give you an advantage. So yes, that's my second. One is Benjamin Sanders.

Cath:

I really like his book the Art of Possibility, and that is something I drew on, a lot kind of writing my own book. He's a very inspirational character. So my second one is actually going back to a real inspirational character, a real classic. I think it's sort of one of the leading TED Talks of all time. It is the incredible, sir Ken Robinson, do Schools Kill Creativity? And he tells stories in such a compelling way.

Cath:

And he just takes this step back to think about what is education for, how have we now constructed it? And he talks about how, if an alien came to look at education, sit and say, oh, what are you trying to do? You're trying to rank people, find out who's the best at something. Why are we hierarchical about education? Why aren't we unlocking what every child is capable of? So, in a similar way to Benjamin Zander, in a way, he's trying to explore human possibility and he realizes that's a very diverse thing and we don't all have to look the same and this sort of much broader sense of what are we capable of, and for us to get more aware of our education systems, but also our work systems, which are stifling us, constraining us. Again, we have this question about how do we achieve higher targets at work? How do we become more productive? The question is not by constraining people, and yet often the culture, the ways of working are doing that, and so I just love this idea of seeing everyone in terms of what are they capable of, what creative ideas they have.

Cath:

And, of course, children are full of such incredible ways of thinking that aren't stuck in silos and they ask the impossible and they want to draw the impossible. And he tells this lovely story of a little child who is drawing something. The teacher says what are you drawing? And he says, oh, I'm drawing God. And the teacher says, oh, but no one knows what God looks like. And he says, oh well, they will in a minute. Just gorgeous, really again inspiring and tapping into that sense of endless possibility that's within each of us, and that, for me, is a really, yeah, really warming, optimistic view that we need in this kind of sometimes challenging world.

Colin:

It's brilliant, utterly inspiring. It is the most popular. I just checked it's the most popular 26 million. Maybe more than that 78.3 million views. It's from 2006. Still relevant today, yeah.

Colin:

Unfortunately, that's what's so amazing it's still relevant today. Okay, my last one is actually a fairly obscure one, by a guy called Drew Dudley, who did a TED talk on everyday leadership and, much like Margaret Heffernan, where she focuses on the small common sense things that you can do. This was a 2010, I think, recorded in Toronto. If anyone's seen it, drew Dudley he's got this really big hat on. Yeah, just utterly memorable. Everyday leadership.

Colin:

The key thing that I took from it he talks about the impact of small acts, which he calls lollipop moments, and he tells this great story about how he's collecting money for charity and he's doing it at a university where parents are dropping their children off for the first time, and he could tell there was a really nervous student getting out of the car. She really didn't want to go and so he went over and gave her a lollipop because he was doing the. I think it was for cystic fibrosis that he was doing this collection for. He gave her a lollipop and he said to the parents look at that, she's already taking candy from a stranger. It kind of broke the ice and then this other guy came over. Anyway, long story short, these two people that met on this very first day ended up getting married. He got invited to the I'm spoiling the TED talk for you. He tells it way better, obviously.

Colin:

However, the point is and the lollipop moments is you don't realize and this is the everyday leadership you don't realize that the impact that you, your behavior, has on people at any one time.

Colin:

And I remember doing an interview, I think it was last year, and the interviewer said to me something like what's one thing that you're always thinking about and obviously, besides the family and all these kinds of things, I said I'm always thinking about what's that one interaction that I can have today that might make a difference to the person that I'm interacting with? Because it would be very easy just to think about yourself all of the time, and it all comes back. That answer comes back to Drew Dudley's TED Talk on everyday leadership is those small moments every day. He also talked about the sense of satisfaction that he took from it, not in a kind of hubris kind of way, but celebrating the small win for yourself to say today I did a really good thing, not telling your mates I was brilliant today, but today and that made him feel good. So, yeah, everyday Leadership by Drew Dudley would be my third one Brilliant.

Cath:

It reminded me of a book actually that came out last year by a fantastic executive coach, sarah Langslow, which is called Do Sweat the Small Stuff, and it's making a lot of those points as part of it. Right, for my third one, I'm going into the sports world to Valerie Condos-Field, who is an incredible gymnastic champion, and it's a very moving talk. It's called why Winning Doesn't Always Equal Success and it came out in 2019. And it came out. It was very. For me, it was just a kind of moment of reinforcing the belief in the concept of the long win. I'd been writing the book for three years. It was more or less finished and I still felt it was really heretical and dangerous and risky to challenge winning. It had to be anything other than good. It's the only thing that matters. And I heard her TED talk and I thought, yeah, it's so obvious that we've got things wrong and it just gave me that sort of conviction. I actually reached out to her. She was very lovely, wrote me a testimonial, got really. You had a lovely conversation. But her talk in 2019 is all about why winning doesn't always equal success.

Cath:

She's an incredibly successful gymnastics coach in America in terms of championships won, but she actually talks about that isn't success, you know, just winning the trophy, but she actually talks about that isn't success, you know, just winning the trophy. She talks about the crisis in win at all costs, cultures that are in our schools and businesses and politics and how, you know, we honor the people at the top of the pyramid. We applaud those who win championships or elections or awards, but often they are actually leaving their institutions, their professions as damaged human beings. Kids with straight A's they're leaving school damaged. Athletes are leaving their teams with medals, but they're damaged emotionally, mentally, and the same in the organizational world. We've become so hyper focused on the end result that the human component of how we got there gets swept under the rug and so does all the damage.

Cath:

She tells some beautiful stories of herself, how she started off, sort of copying what she thought good coaching was, being dogmatic dictator all the time, but realizing eventually that actually that kind of produces compliant, good little soldiers, good little gymnast, but it doesn't develop what she calls champions in life.

Cath:

It doesn't enable people to really you know again explore what they're capable of be the person, help them become the person that they want to be.

Cath:

And she tells a beautiful story around Caitlin O'Hashey, who's someone who's had this, who had a gymnastics video that went viral, you know, who arrived at her gym broken in body, completely, you know, hating gymnastics, supposedly on a sort of scholarship, but saying, you know, I don't want to be good again. And she was like my goodness, you know, chris, is how the hell am I going to turn this around and how could somebody who's so brilliant get to that point? And you know, it's her journey of kind of learning, that of seeing the human, not the gymnast, and really challenging her own ways of operating, listening to feedback, not just seeing somebody as somebody who scores points, but as somebody who's learning and growing and figuring stuff out. So it's bringing that kind of human piece back into our definitions of success. I'm very aligned with the long way and I quote from Ed and, as I say, she, you know, kindly endorsed the book. But it's just a beautiful example from someone who's very eloquent, who's lived, you know, and explored this question of what is success.

Colin:

So that would I mean, they're our favorite TED Talks. If you've got a favorite TED Talk maybe we haven't mentioned it or haven't referred to it, please do drop us a line inside out culture at gmailcom. Uh, we, you know, we are always looking for ideas. We're always looking for inspiration. Every, at the end of every show, we end with three things something to do, something to get curious about, something to uncover. Uh, which I just captured here, Cath, as as we were going through, I think, do look for inspiration everywhere. I think if you can develop or devote it's probably a better word, devote, I don't know 30 minutes a day to looking for a little bit of inspiration it's often hard to do, I know, but if you can look for it and it doesn't have to be a TED Talk, it can just be in an interaction that you witness.

Cath:

It can be a moment. It can be a moment. Yeah, it's not time bound but yeah, absolutely so.

Colin:

Something to do. Look for inspiration everywhere. Uh, get curious about the action that you can take. You know, Cath, I don't know about you, but sometimes I watch a ted talk. I think, gosh, how do I do that? But there's usually one thing right, one thing that you can do.

Cath:

You're like, okay, well, here's something that I can do, even sharing, just gosh, this has really struck me, it's really resonated with me, and so sharing that can be a great way of also helping that process.

Colin:

Well, that's the thing to uncover. Is one idea worth sharing? I think that's the tagline for TED Talks anyway. Is ideas worth sharing. Don't keep them to yourself. If you found something worth sharing, don't keep it to yourself. You know, we just shared the six TED Talks that we like, but you know, if there's one that really inspires you, why not share it with other people and say no, you can't force them to watch it, but you know, I found this really interesting. I think you might too, but now it makes me want to go and watch more TED Talks.

Cath:

I know there's just so many ideas out there, but, yeah, I think we often consume slightly randomly, don't we? Just whatever comes up on the phone, and so make a conscious choice to I really want to watch this today, or I'm going to share this, you know, ask somebody else, because often people have played around and got a couple that they really like. So it's also a great sort of conversation across the team. Some people are very into them, some might never watch them. People also. Often, you know, it enables you to go in a different direction, a non-work direction, someone who's really into music or really into sport, you know and then they offer stories and metaphors that, of course, apply across the organizational world too. So it often opens our minds, ideas, possibilities, and I think we need a bit more of that in a world that often has too many constraints.

Colin:

Yeah, and different people consume different types of content. You know, Cath and I, you know, write regularly. Cath written for the Guardian. I write a daily blog and people like those short things or they like the longer things. I write a really long article. That people like that, but maybe not the short one. People will like to watch videos. Some people like audio books, people like podcasts, like this. Yeah, recognize that different content can provide different inspiration at different times and, yeah, broaden your horizons and see which one works best for you. Great Thanks, very much. Thanks so much, until next time.

Cath:

Thanks for listening to today's Inside Out Culture.

Colin:

Podcast. Please remember to like, subscribe and, of course, share with others who you think may be interested.

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Cath Bishop

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Colin D Ellis

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