Creative genius is a myth. And great flashes of inspiration are never the work of just one person, even if one person gets all the credit. So argues author Kevin Ashton, technology pioneer and entrepreneur in his best-selling book, “How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention and Discovery”.
“When you teach people about how their brains work, they become more effective managers as well as leaders.” So says Dr. David Rock, Director of the NeuroLeadership Institute and a frequent speaker on TED as well as Google Tech Talks on such topics as “How to be a Provocateur” and “The Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distractions, Regaining Focus and Working Smarter All Day”.
In 2003, Jessica Jackley heard a speech by Grameen Bank founder and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Muhammad Yunus, an economist from Bangladesh who had pioneered the idea of microcredit: loans offered to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans.
As a teenager in Israel, Dan Ariely suffered life-threatening burns over 70% of his body when a magnesium flare, used to illuminate battlefields, exploded. While he was overcoming his injuries during an extremely long and painful recovery process, he began to ask questions - of himself as well as human behavior in general.
Not words that many of us want to hear – but seriously, if you’ve had enough life experience, you know that it’s true. And the ground-breaking research done over the past 40 years by the folks at Gallup backs it up. As human beings (and managers) we each have talents, behaviors and thought processes that come to us easily, with little to no effort, what some would say are “second nature”. There are others, however, at which we will never excel, no matter how much we practice and work to improve.
What really works if you want to communicate effectively? It’s not necessarily what you would think, according to Adam Grant, our #3 TED Talk for our management video countdown.
