A guide to collaborative leadership | Lorna Davis

A guide to collaborative leadership | Lorna Davis

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What’s the difference between heroes and leaders? In this insightful talk, Lorna Davis explains how our idolization of heroes is holding us back from solving big problems — and shows why we need “radical interdependence” to make real change happen.

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45 Comments

  1. “The idea that one person has the answer is ludicrous.”

    This is something that has become more clear to me over time. Just like Lorna is saying, the glorification of leaders in movies and books makes people feel as though they need to be a singular font of answers, whereas in reality, a good leader has support from a good team.

  2. I am glad she brought up the fact that her standing on the stage, as well as this whole TED Talk process, makes it seem like she thinks she is a hero. I do not think she comes off as wanting to be a hero, but it resonates with me because I auditioned to give a TEDxTalk with my university and my talk was about suicide prevention and what we can do as a community (as well as debunking myths about what we think we should do and saying why they are wrong). I wrote that speech specifically so that I would not come across as a "hero" but ironically, I lost to someone who came off that way and also came off as a bit self-congratulatory, pretentious, and just generally like someone in the self-help industry who exploits the insecurities of others because "You, too, can be like them. Shouldn't we all be so lucky?" (I will not name names but I can say their talk is not one of the more famous ones). I refuse to watch it on Youtube, but hopefully the revised version is better. I was confused as to why that one won in general because there were two other talks that were better. There are even more details that make the whole situation mildly sketchy and suspicious.

    I felt like the speaker curator's actions and the choices of him and the judges (yes, he was one of the judges despite helping us revise our speeches) made me realize that this whole process came across like they wanted me to be some "hero"; they did say my speech wasn't agreed on because I didn't make the speech personal enough in that way (though trust me when I say there were some personal elements that were used appropriately). I am not comfortable portraying myself in that way in a speech about such a serious topic and that should have been respected but it was not. I am telling this story because though I still watch TED Talks, I have lost faith in many of them after that incident. It is a breath of fresh air when I see a speaker like this expressing genuine humility and admitting this about the process, as well as trying to promote such good traits in others. Thank you.

  3. This is absolutely amazing. How many of the world's problems has she solved with this paradigm? To be fair it sounds like communist-esq static company style thinking. I am going to have to consider this a lot more.

  4. Leaders tend to chase symptoms and not root of issues, because the root of the issues is often their religion of avarice that can do no wrong, Capitalism; making humanity act like flesh eating bacteria on our body, the Earth, instead of pro-biotic and peaceful and mutual benefitial relationship with ourselves and the Earth.
    As soon as we get to space and setup all resources will effectively soon be infinite making both war and capitalism obsolete…so why not speed things up with that goal in mind? Kardashev (His scale) gave us a Power Leveling goal guide for Humanity.

    Our other core issues are Hubris and Sadism.
    You can see the worst of this when someone believes they are right and therefor justified in anything they do, then they commit human rights violations and crimes against humanity… you will see this often when war and religion/ideology get together… but in the microcosm of everday life they manifest as biggots and sadistic assholes with large egos and we all see how many there of them around…
    Sadism believes pain can purify and make people better, magically, not worse… example in everyday life, that is the core belief behind prisons, and those don't work, especially in the USA…the worse they are the worse the outcomes. This is a fact, feel free to compare prison systems… the better people are treated the better the reform and inclusion into society and less crime thereafter.

    But, the biggest issue is Hubris itself. I believe if humanity has a chief "sin" than this is it and it is the root of everything, including why we still have Capitalism.

    Blinded by hubris, people remain unaware of how little they know and yet feel confident they cannot be wrong; can you ask for a worse combination for leaders?

    In the grand scheme of time, we are still less than Cavemen… we are still dumb naked apes still playing with fire… We are kids putting on mommy and daddies shoes pretending to be grown ups and fighting over toys in a sandbox when there is an infinite world outside the sandbox…

    1,000 years from now, they will look at this as a dark age, unless we change the negative aspects of ourselves and work together and not against each other.

    Love and peace, my fellow dumb naked apes… lets evolve and work together to evolve true collaboration; what makes humanity great, capitalism is merely a cheap and tainted version of what we are capable of… we can and should do better, with eyes wide open.

  5. The biggest problem with interdependence is the amount of morons out there. One moron can sink the whole ship. So if your success depends on others then good luck weeding out the morons in your team.

  6. Thank you Lorma for your talk. A leader valuing Interdependence is really importantly in technology industry as well. One person cannot simply keep up with all rapid development happening and needs inputs from other people to make decisions.

  7. JUST SO DEEP AND AMAZINGLORNA, WHAT YOU SO PASSIONALTELY SHARED. I HAVE BEEN RESTRUCTURED INTO MY NEXT PHASE THROUGH YOU INDEPT TRUTH. GOD BLESS YOU DEAR SISTER.

  8. "Interdependence is harder than to be a hero. It requires us to be open, transparent, and vulnerable. And that's not what traditional leaders have been trained to do"

    Yes, eloquently put Mrs Davis. What an inspiring talk. Thank you for sharing 🙂

  9. This is an amazing speech. Grateful to have watched it today. Hero culture is an illusion and is no longer productive. I’m so grateful to have watched this and it’s inspired me in my individual leadership

  10. Okay, I'll try the interdependence thing … I have an idea for an app to help Christians track and be consistent with their prayer life by keeping track of which prayers God is answering and how. I have the basic things I want it to do worked out and those cannot change, but I can't do it by myself. I'm afraid to share this idea fully because I don't want to be forced to give up the most important parts of the idea by my fellow collaborators. Not because I want credit. I just don't want the original idea to be forced out. Can someone help me?