Lessons from the Red Circle
My TED journey began in the offices of Sir Kensington watching Anand Giridharadas and Paul Polman duke it out on whether purpose and business could ever be aligned. They did the classic ‘debate’, arguing and posturing and ignoring the audience, while all around me I heard people muttering about what they wanted to add to the subject. As I stood up to leave, super frustrated that we hadn’t heard from the very well-informed audience and had a real conversation, I was introduced to a woman in the audience who happened to be the business curator for TED. I immediately launched into a tirade about hero culture and the benefits of replacing heroism with collaboration and told her that TED made this kind of bullshit even worse-One person in a red circle sharing their brilliance. She smiled patiently and we exchanged cards.
I got to reckon with my own ego many months later when that same TED curator invited me to give a talk to tell everyone what I felt so strongly about.
A year later, I stood on the TED stage in Mumbai, making my point about Heroism and Interdependence but humbled and more aware of the subtlety of this subject. I began writing the speech like a journalist, making fun of Jeff Bezos and other likely targets, but over the months, I had needed to come to terms with my own desire for heroism.
The Hero story is deeply embedded in our cultural narrative. It is part of kid’s stories and the most popular films. (I once asked a woman I was coaching who has a deep religious faith how she saw her relationship with God and she quoted ‘Big Hero Six’.)
Not surprisingly then, we want to be independent and powerful and be the heroes of our own story. The problem, as I pointed out in my TED talk, is that the big challenges of the world require radical collaboration. It’s more like biology than Tom Cruise. It’s more like that joke that people tell about which organ in the body is the most important…(contact me if you want the punchline). The reality is that interdependence, not heroism is how the natural world operates. The sun, the rain, the earth, the seeds- they all work together to make the food you eat. Your organs all work together to make you the extraordinary creature you are…and so it is in leadership, if we want it to be, but it’s a different skill set. It requires the ability to listen, to understand, to share credit. There were many times during the preparation of this speech that I wanted to tell the TED folks and the endlessly patient friend who was helping me with the process to go to hell because I didn’t want to hear what they had to say. The irony of behaving like an arrogant hero while writing a speech decrying heroism was obvious.
The fact is that the metaphor of the world needs to move from a battlefield to a forest, from triumph to trust. If we are to make that change as individuals, we need to recognize our desire for heroism, smile at ourselves patiently and then focus outwards again.
The 3 points that I outlined in my talk are the best I have so far;
1) Pick a goal that matters a lot to you that you can’t achieve alone.
2) Tell others about it as an invitation to join you
3) Set up meetings and interactions with others carefully so they know they are needed and can bring their best to the subject.
