If you’re a frequent internet user, especially on social media, you’ve likely seen videos posted and shared of conferences called TED Talks. Maybe you’ve watched one here or there on various subjects — TED Talks have a lot more to offer than purely entertainment — think of them more as edutainment.
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design and was incepted in 1984 by Richard Saul Wurman; although the conferences initially only addressed topics in the areas of technology, entertainment, and design, they now cover a wide variety of topics. These conferences host influential leaders from different industries around the world to speak on their knowledge and inform others.
One subject of TED Talks that I find to be particularly insightful and inspiring are the ones that cover matters of leadership. I watch them for knowledge, inspiration, and self-development so I can lean how to better lead others on a day-to-day basis. Although I really can’t limit my favorites to a single list without rambling for a million words, there are a few that have particularly struck me. Here are a few of my (carefully selected) favorite TED Talks on leadership.
- How to Make Work-Life Balance Work – Nigel Marsh
- Nigel Marsh is a well-known author, giving us titles like Overworked and Underlaid and Fat, Forty, and Fired that explore the interaction between work and personal life. In this talk he discusses the importance of having a healthy balance between your work and personal lives and offers some advice on how to reach that balance.
- The Key to Success? Grit. – Angela Lee Duckworth
- Angela Duckworth worked for years in a high-pressure consulting job until one day when she left it to take a job teaching mathematics to seventh graders in the New York public school system. It was at this job where she realized that textbook intelligence isn’t the only thing that sets the successful students apart from those had a difficult time; that other ‘secret’ ingredient was grit, which she explores in her talk.
- 8 Secrets of Success – Richard St. John
- If you want a strong shot of inspiration but don’t have the time to sit through an entire lecture series, marketer and analyst Richard St. John’s presentation is exactly what you need. The talk condenses years’ worth of interviews and a two-hour lecture into a three-and-a-half minute talk that gets real about what exactly it takes to succeed.