“We build them, we cross them, sometimes we burn them.” With those powerful words, TED Content Director Kelly Stoetzel kicked off TEDWomen 2017, how she and conference curator Pat Mitchell developed this year’s rich conference theme, Bridges.
The three-day event included artists and architects, entrepreneurs, scientists and activists, all speaking on topics around bridges – from building them to burning them down. And there were three main messages that left an impression on me. These macro issues are, of course, applicable to every aspect of our lives – including our lives at work. Here’s each key takeaway, followed by how you can apply the wisdom to your company policies, culture and structure.
1. Building bridges is ultimately good for everyone.
Making connections is everything. Avery Bang, an engineer with Bridges to Prosperity, emphasized this in her talk about the nonprofit’s mission to help communities mired in isolation because of the rivers, canyons or peaks separating them from the rest of the world. But Bridges to Prosperity, she says, is less about constructing spans of steel, stone and mortar than it is transforming people’s lives by giving them access to a larger world. She calls on countries and philanthropists to prioritize connecting the estimated one billion people on the planet still stranded due to geography: “Poverty due to rural isolation is a crisis we can solve in our lifetime.”
Azim Khamisa and Ples Felix spoke about connecting, despite what for some would have been an irreparable rift. On one awful night, Felix’s grandson, a young teenager, murdered Khamisa’s son, a college student, in a robbery gone wrong. But “in deep trauma and deep tragedy,” the two found a spark. And together, Khamisa and Felix have used their story as an outline for a better, more merciful society where victims of tragedy can grow with one another and heal.
Employer takeaway:
To learn more about bridging the pay gap, refer to Glassdoor’s 5 Ways to Address the Gender Pay Gap at Your Company.
2. Doing the right thing is often uncomfortable, but it usually pays off.
Self-proclaimed professional troublemaker Luvvie Ajayi spoke about being committed to the discomfort of being the first domino. But she reminded the audience that we can’t simply rely on those who have traditionally spoken up to ignite social change. Instead, she calls for us all to fearlessly embrace who we are as a revolutionary act, to become fellow troublemakers and speak truth to power despite trepidation.
Gretchen Carlson, veteran TV journalist and winner of Miss America in the late ’80s, encountered men who pushed unwanted sexual advances on her again and again. In 2016, her story of workplace harassment at Fox News broke and it brought an outpouring of women’s stories that inspired her to write her new book, Be Fierce. Onstage, she outlined the things we can all do to create safer places to work – from acting as allies to fighting against binding arbitration clauses in workplace contracts.
Employer takeaway:
For more about what companies must learn from the many stories of sexist behavior in the office that have surfaced in the wake of #MeToo and #NoMore, read the Glassdoor blog post, 5 Steps to Squelch Sexual Harassment in the Office and Beyond.
3. Access is critical – whether it’s to healthcare, education, justice or resources.
Nadine Hachach-Haram, co-founder of Proximie, pioneered augmented surgery interaction from afar – from knee surgery to cleft palate surgery. Her work uses augmented reality and a laptop camera to break boundaries, connect people, democratize access, and transcend all technological difficulties. And it can even be used in war zones when it’s dangerous to get to the operating room.
Liz Ogbu is a trained architect, but she likes to say she works in spatial justice. She spoke powerfully about how all too often justice is impacted by geography. She gave voice to gentrification from the perspective of those marginalized by it. Her mission is to make sure developers, architects, designers and policymakers think differently about development, to “make a commitment to build people’s capacity to stay…to stay in their homes, to stay in their communities, to stay where they feel whole.”
Shameem Akhtar lived as a boy for most of her childhood to get around the oppressive restrictions often placed on girls in her native Pakistan. She experienced the privileges and freedoms of being a boy. She eventually came out as a girl and fought to go to university, and when she found a job and began sending money home, other parents began sending their daughters to school. “Today, not a single girl from my village is out of school.” Change is slow and there is still much work to be done, but Akhtar is now a passionate advocate for girls’ rights and education.
Employer takeaway:
To learn how to break down biases and build a diverse and inclusive company culture, download Glassdoor’s Guide to Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace.
4. We must encourage feedback.
Conservative Republican John Gable and liberal Democrat Joan Blades spoke of the importance of having a real dialogue, where we engage in meaningful exchanges between people from different parties, groups and backgrounds. Gable, alarmed by the filter-bubble phenomenon, founded AllSides.com, which uses technology to present issues from multiple angles. Blades (who co-founded Moveon.org in 1998) is the co-founder of LivingRoomConversations.org, which organizes people to hold small gatherings in their homes to speak to those holding alternate viewpoints. The goal is understanding. “It’s a deep listening practice,” Blades said, “never a debate.”
A few years ago, Gable and Blades created AllSidesforSchools.org, which pairs students with their counterparts in other parts of the country and the world. Gable and Blades remind us that as we face our most intractable challenges yet – climate change, poverty, chronic disease – we will only succeed if we listen and learn from each other.
Dixon Chibanda is one of Zimbabwe’s 12 psychiatrists – for a population of some 14 million. Realizing, sadly, that the country would never be able to scale traditional methods to treat those with mental health issues, Chibanda helped to develop a beautiful solution powered by a limitless resource. In 2006, he launched friendship benches, that empowers grandmothers who are trained in evidence-based talk therapy to be the first line of treatment for depression.
Employer takeaway:
Ignoring reviews about your company on Glassdoor – whether they’re positive, negative or a combination – is a lost opportunity to build trust with job seekers and employees alike. Responding promptly, however, will not only demonstrate that transparency is valued by your organization but will pay dividends in your search for great talent. Learn how best to take part in the conversation by downloading Glassdoor’s eBook, Templates for Hiring Pros: How to Respond to Reviews.
5. We must be accountable.
Political pundit Sally Kohn admits to having been a bully in grade school. Haunted by that memory and reeling from the recent increase in hatefulness in the world at large, she questioned everything. She wanted to understand this early episode of bullying in her life within the broader context of hate and its growing influence in the world, and she began to ask questions. One serious truth she found as she literally wrote a book about hate: It isn’t enough to fight against big hateful expressions and actions, but also the small, everyday ones, too.
Actor, filmmaker, and social entrepreneur Justin Baldoni invites men to reject traditional norms of masculinity. He’s on a mission to empower men to be accountable for and conscious of their actions – and to be vulnerable, express emotions, and disrupt the patriarchy. He says, “As men, it’s time that we start to see past our privilege and recognize that we are not just part of the problem. Fellas: we are the problem. The glass ceiling exists because we put it there and if we want to be part of the solution, then words are no longer enough.”
Employer takeaway:
To have the kind of insight it takes to identify great talent, it’s important for us as hiring managers, talent acquisition professionals and recruiters to be pretty introspective ourselves. Glassdoor’s Behavioral Interviewing Questions and Templates include everything you need to know about conducting behavioral-based interviews that give you a much more realistic picture of how candidates will fare at your unique company.
Every talk at TEDWomen was powerful, and many came back to these key takeaways. They were non-partisan messages of connection, forgiveness, introspection and tenacity that will make us better as global citizens, executives, bosses, managers, employees and individuals – all leading us, in our work lives, to build great companies, manage more fairly, hire more efficiently, and encourage more engagement.
