Check out these favorite videos from TED Talks and YouTube
by Nicki Weiss
Nicki Weiss is an internationally recognized Certified Professional Sales and Leadership Coach, Master Trainer, thought leader, speaker and facilitator. Since 1992, she has trained and coached more than 20,000 business leaders, sales teams and reps. Nicki has a particular passion for working with manufacturers, distributors and rep firms in the electronics industry. Nicki is ERA’s sales consultant, the brainchild and facilitator of ERA’s free teleforum programs and the founder of the SalesWise Academy. Every day, leaders wake up knowing that they, their technical reps and field sales engineers need to sharpen their focus and their skills. But they don’t have the tools, resources or patience to continually help enhance their strategy, communication and relationship building skills. The SalesWise Academy fills that void and delivers those skill-building lessons. To learn more, go to saleswise.ca or call 416-778-4145.
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My colleagues Mary Ellen, Joanne and I have developed a curriculum and a suite of programs to help progressive, entrepreneurial organizations expand their leaders’ leadership capacity. It’s been a lot of fun, and along the way, we’ve viewed some inspirational TED Talks videos on leadership, collaboration, how to motivate employees, connection and how to self manage.
TED is a small, nonprofit organization devoted to ideas worth spreading. It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: technology, entertainment and design. Since then, its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs, Calif., each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, U.K., each summer — TED includes the award-winning TED Talks video site, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize. TED Talks offers riveting lectures by remarkable people that are free to the world. You may have run across some of them in your own work. I’m always looking for inspiring, funny, and just plain interesting videos and articles, so please send me your top votes. Here are mine.
Bob Newhart – Stop it. This video is my all-time favorite — not a TED Talks, but a TV comedy sketch. Bob Newhart gives some practical advice on how to get the things that might be in your way … out of your way.
Dan Pink – Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. This lively video illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and at work. Daniel H. Pink is the author of four provocative best-selling books about the changing world of work.
Joachim de Posada – Don’t eat the marshmallow. Dr. Joachim de Posada shares a landmark experiment on delayed gratification and how it can predict future success. You will enjoy his infectious energy and humor, captured in this priceless video of kids trying their hardest not to eat the marshmallow. You need to ask yourself, “Am I still eating the marshmallows?”
Dr. Posada created the curriculum for the University of Miami’s Sales Institute, and this video has lots of application for salespeople and leaders.
Viktor Frankl – Youth in search of meaning. Viktor E. Frankl was professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School. He spent three years during World War II in concentration camps, including Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and Dachau, where he formulated many of his key ideas. Logotherapy, his psychotherapeutic school, is founded on the belief that striving to find meaning in life is the most powerful motivation for human beings.
This is a grainy, black-and-white, six-minute video that is fascinating. Shoot for the stars so you can hit the moon.
Brene Brown – Vulnerability. Brene Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. She has spent the past 10 years studying vulnerability, courage, authenticity and shame. She spent the first five years of her decade-long study focusing on shame and empathy, and she is now using that work to explore a concept that she calls “Wholeheartedness.”
She poses the questions: How do we learn to embrace our vulnerabilities and imperfections so that we can engage in our lives from a place of authenticity and worthiness? How do we cultivate the courage, compassion and connection that we need to recognize that we are enough – that we are worthy of love, belonging and joy?
She is an engaging and humorous speaker whose ideas will help entrepreneurs, business leaders and, well, absolutely everyone.
Elizabeth Gilbert – A new way to think about creativity. Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses, and she shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. It’s a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.
Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures, rather than undermines, creativity.
Jill Bolte Taylor – How it feels to have a stroke. Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for. One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement and understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.
To view these videos, browse the TED Talks video library at www.Ted.com/Talks or visit www.YouTube.com.