This essay explores the video of Simon Sinek’s speech at TED Talk in 2014 and the video is called ‘Why Good Leaders Make You Feel Safe?’ In this video, Simon explained the answer to the question by illustrating few consequences and outcomes of the examples that he explained in the video. He began with telling a military story, which he saw it from a personal-recorded video and the military story is about the Captain William Swenson (US) rescuing his soldiers under the attack from some local anti-governmental organizations in Afghanistan when they trying to convoy few governmental officers from the US and Afghanistan to meet the local village elders. And Simon found that the captain kissed each injured soldiers’ neck when he saved them from the war; Simon believe that the thing behind the captain’s actions is the true definition of greatest leadership then he started to illustrating his explanations. In order to explore the video deeper, four questions that related to the video will be examined through this essay and they are: What is the intended message of the video? Who is the target audience? What effects does the video have on audience? And what kinds of communicative and aesthetic resources are used in that and why?
Intended Message
Initially, what is the intended message that Simon’s video is trying to present will be discussed. In this video, Simon used few examples to demonstrate his idea that the real leadership is the power that could make followers to be truly
The concept of effective leadership is a topic that has been widely debated by individuals and professional leaders in many societies. In Kevin Cashman’s book, Leadership from the Inside Out: Becoming a Leader for life, the author reveals that leadership is defined through a person’s understanding of their internal nature, rather than the values, beliefs, and morals a society claims that a leader should possess. Even though Cashman does acknowledge the importance of the societal view of leadership, he argues that true leadership is defined by an individual’s understanding of their internal essence. In each chapter Cashman strongly debates that leaders lead by virtue of who they are. He defines this outlook on leadership as the Inside-Out Leadership Method. This is a method that allows an authoritative figure to develop a strong understanding of their physical, mental, and spiritual essence to lead others towards a mutual goal.
In the Ted Talk, the presenter Daniel Reisel talks about how we can change both our society and mindset. Reisel demonstrates an example about prisoners in a high- security and it's filled with aggressive prisoners. He talks about what triggers that behavior that those prisoners have and what can be the cure for them. Reisel talks about the Joe the prisoner and how he tested Joe and his inmates to see their ability to categorize images of emotions. The inmates failed to show emotions and to show physical response for the images they were showed. It showed that the inmates had a deficit in their brain that was ¨amygdala” that was proven by their MRI scan. Amygdala is known for our experience of empathy in which the inmates did not have causing
In his book “Start With Why,” Simon Sinek describes the difference between leaders that inspire and those who simply delegate; he encourages readers to look at leadership with a new outlook, and he motivates people to act upon his vision: start with ‘WHY’ instead of ‘HOW.’ He supports his advice with anecdotes of events inspired by real people like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Write Brothers. He realized that these individuals all had similar leadership techniques, which happen to be the exact opposite of what other, less successful, leaders do. Sinek calls his formula “The Golden Circle” (Sinek, P.37), which provides insight for how people can be inspired, movements can be prompted, and organizations established. Upon finishing his book, I conclude that Sinek is onto something with his theory; in order to be an extraordinary leader, one must start within.
Wheatley (2007) describes the old story of leadership as “a story of dominion and control, and all-encompassing materialism.” It can be explained by analogizing it to a machine; a lifeless object that does not have the capability to think, feel, or make decisions. It, the machine, functions quite like the old story of leadership by where there are
Devine and Winter (2012, p. 25) state, “there is nothing magical about leadership, and there is nothing magical about teaching it or learning it.” They go on to define leadership as the ability to influence those who work for you to want to accomplish and strive to reach organizational goals and objectives. Those who influence others must understand the theories of motivation so that these theories can be applied, communicated and taught in order to motivate followers (Devine and Winter, 2012). Different from supervision, leadership implores the desires of those around you to want to succeed in meeting a goal through you the leader’s motivational abilities.
In the Ted Talk video, "Want to help someone? Shut up and listen", Ernesto Slurry does an excellent job in explaining the three fundamental criteria’s that should be used by any sale person. He states that for a wise sale person he should apply the Ask, Shut Up and Listen to approach. The ask statement is used to engage a prospect into a conversation. A question is asked to makes the prospect answer the question. The sales person is supposed to listen to the response offered by the candidate. According to Ernesto, the journey does not only start at asking the question and the listening to the answer but in between there exist a sage of shutting up. The shut-up stage is relevant as it is the stage where the prospect is thinking about what to
In the Ted talk video, Rev, Jeffrey Brown uses things like gang members, young Latinos, blacks, drug dealers, and community members where they are experiencing violence in ways that are absurd. Rev. Brown stated some examples like shooting someone after school because they bumped into you in the hallway is some of the characteristics that define this kind of culture. These shared acts are some of the example that Rev Brown shared through his video.
Managers are leaders, leaders are managers, these concepts have long been thought to be synonymous. Ideally, for a manager to be good, the former is the case, but this is not always the case. Further, one doesn’t have to be a manager to be a leader. Anyone can be a leader. They are the people who exhibit superior interpersonal qualities that allows them to create connections to obtain a desired outcome; these are informal leaders (Sullivan). Everyone knows that one or two informal leaders, the people you just get behind and follow because they are so charismatic and influential. They don’t stand up to be recognized, they simply do it, as it comes natural to them. Managers on the other hand are placed in a position of power by an organization
Leadership and management for many go hand in hand, and may be perceived as one in the same. In the book titled, The Servant (1998), James C. Hunter challenged this mainstream view, and literally turned this concept, which so many are coached on, upside-down. The notions of what characterizes a virtuous leader, as well as what it means to serve others, are the primary focal points of Hunter’s book. He did an eloquent job of revealing his theory concerning effective leadership by using an allegorical approach which, made the content easier to digest and much more personable. The Servant deeply resonated with me, and I gained significant value from the attitudes Hunter presented which, I can apply to my schooling, personal life, and future career paths. I was also able to discern what I felt to be applicable elements regarding the mark of a worthy leader, and arrived at my own theories.
A key piece of learning (in this course) was the fact that based on the study and proclamation of Dr. Ricketson, “eternal life” is to know God, and the Lord Jesus Christ. Literally, throughout the semester, each subject matter (block of instructions) that was learned appeared to lead to, a direct path that lead to his profound discovery. Therefore, after completion of the course, rethinking the concept of Followerfirst became inevitable. Furthermore, because I am a visual learner, the demonstrations and illustration of the game of catch, Influence Swing-Bridge, and the Mobius Strip, allowed an ease in rethinking and learning with clarity, the concept of leadership from a leader/follower (followerfirst) approach that is intentional, reciprocal, interdependent, dynamic, within a relationship between a leader and a follower. By the same token, the follower acknowledges the need of a reciprocal response; Interdependence that is displayed by the return of a given gesture.
I enjoyed Simon Sinek’s speech and approach in explaining how good leadership and good leaders make us feel safe. All of his examples adequately describe the important personal traits in leadership.
The ted talk “The Linguistic Genius of Babies” by Kuhl (2010) tells about babies are genius on language learning, and shows some results of research as proof of this idea. The article “Learning a Language as an Adult” by Pakenham, McEntire, and Williams (2013) shows an idea about the “critical period hypothesis”, children during this period learn much better than people older than this age, especially in pronunciation, because their brain activities are different than adults during this time. Personally, I totally believe the idea of children younger learn better, because the scientific research and data are shown to audiences, and they are persuasive enough. And I do see proof in my life, like four of my Korean friends who came China around
In Martin Seligman’s TED talk, he explains the values of positive psychology’s impact on creating happier lives. In 2000, Martin Seligman created a new field of psychology called Positive Psychology. This field of positive psychology is the study of positive traits and behaviors that can contribute to a positive “happier” life. In Seligman’s TED talk, The New Positive Era of Psychology, he categorizes positive lives into three categories. The Pleasant life, the life of engagement, and the meaningful life. But before he begins his speech, he explains the negative actions taken by psychology when treating people.
In Simon Sinek speech “Millennials in the workplace interview” Simon humorously explains using past and personal experiences that millennials are a great and fantastic generation. They have become an addictive generation because of bad parenting, technology, impatience, and the environment and the only way to change this generation is if they are given help to balance physical and social lives. I would agree with this because I too suffer from an unbalanced physical and social life. At the start of his speech, Simon states that the generation of the millennials is everyone born from approximately 1984 and after. Then he describes the millennials as being entitled, narcissistic, self-interested, unfocused and lazy. Then he explains that
Leaders have strong beliefs in their ideas. Nonetheless, Zaleznik clearly showed that leaders have a richer internal life, true leaders sometimes inspire fear mixed with fascination and dedication but they are