Over the past few years I’ve watched many lectures, both live or online. Here’s a selection of 7 stories that have inspired me to grow as a Creative Leader. I’m sure you’ll like them too, so forget about Netflix tonight and start watching!
01 Dan Pink: The puzzle of motivation
When I was doing research on motivation dynamics, I stumbled upon Dan Pink’s inspiring Ted Talk: The Puzzle of Motivation. It dives into the way people are rewarded at work and how this influences their performance.
What’s interesting here is how we reward cognitive tasks such as decision-making or creative thinking. Most managers hang on to classic supervising methods that actually decrease creative performance. Based on years of scientific research, Dan Pink explains how to avoid killing your team’s creative potential.
02 Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
I did not enjoy my time in high-school at all. I was forced into a system where the things I enjoyed most were not important. Nobody seemed to care about my passion for storytelling, sports or music. I was constantly told to try harder and often criticized for failing in things like math or physics.
Just like many other children I was steered away from what I liked, simply because it did not fit the standards of academic thinking.
In one of Ted’s most popular talks, Sir Ken Robinson champions a radical rethink of our education systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowlegde multiple types of intelligence.
→ Watch Ken Robinson’s talk here
03 Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action
There is no leadership without a group of people who are willing to join the ride. Great leaders make a difference by creating an inspiring environment where people are deeply engaged to perform. Especially when things get tough.
So how do they do this? By constantly focussing on why their company exists in the first place. And what it should do to bring its cause to life. Let Simon Sinek introduce you to the golden circle, a powerful model for inspirational leadership.
→ Watch Simon Sinek’s talk here
04 Tim Urban: Inside the mind of a master procrastinator
Have you ever wondered why it can be so damn hard to finish things in time? Or why we wait until the last minute to get things done? As a master procrastinator himself, Tim Urban explains the process of extreme stalling through hilarious storytelling and personal anecdotes.
05 Aral Balkan: Free is a lie
Aral Balkan is a software developer working on social justice initiatives in the digital age. He claims that tech giants like Google and Facebook are violating our privacy and human rights. Dive into a compelling story about corporate surveillance and big brother dynamics. If you are not doing anything wrong, should you still worry? The answer is yes.
→ Watch Aral Balkan’s talk here
06 Brené Brown: Why your critics aren’t the ones who count
Author and researcher Brené Brown is known for her publications on vulnerability, courage and leadership. I had the chance to attend a presentation she gave at 99Conference in New York, where she talked about dealing with fear, criticism and self-doubt.
Her tips and tricks have helped me to deal with the pressure of coming up with new ideas and the criticism that comes along with that. I’m sure it will help you too.
→ Watch Brené Brown’s talk here
07 Ken Norton: 10x not 10%
It’s natural for people to work on things that are probably not going to fail. This is why incremental improvement is the most popular way for businesses to further develop themselves.
The truth however is that this thinking never leads to real break-through innovations. It requires moonshot thinking to land on the moon. So how do you stop taking the obvious path, the safe path, the 10% path? According to Ken Norton from Google Ventures, the key is to add a zero and start thinking about 10x improvements.
In this talk, Ken outlines eight things every company can do to start organising itself to work this way.
→ Watch Ken Norton’s talk here
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— Thomas helps people grow their ability & courage to lead creative teams. He provides in-house coaching and writes weekly publications on Creative Leadership. Previously Creative Director & Managing Partner at Little Miss Robot.
