***TED TALK: How diversity makes teams more innovative

Diversity: Gender Edition

- Most managers accept that employers benefit from a diverse workforce, but the notion can be hard
to prove or quantify, especially when it comes to measuring how diversity affects a firm’s ability to
innovate. Diverse team members with different worldviews and experiences will create
products and services that reflect the communities they serve. So with the growing diversity of
our global community, it only makes sense to reflect it among the teams that work within them.
Diverse teams create understanding, which is key to safeguarding against racial bias and
preventing gender bias.
- Competition for talent is fierce in today’s economy. If your company wants to attract and retain
great employees, it’s critical to cultivate a diverse and inclusive workforce. The benefits extend
to many areas of business not only does a diverse workforce drive innovation, it also differentiates
you from competition, and can even help attract new clients. So as your small business grows, be
sure to have a plan to recruit, develop, and retain a diverse workforce.

TED TALK: How to get serious about diversity and inclusion in the workplace
SINGLE MINDEDNESS (Racism) - if you have an advocacy, make a movement to make it happen.
Business can dismantle racism. (162 million workers in US; different races)
- Diverse and inclusive work environment can help dismantle racism. (1/3 of our lives in work)
- Ethnically diverse company (33% better performance)
- Best workplaces for diversity have 24% higher revenue growth.
- Diversity and inclusion are two different things. Companies can mandate diversity, but they have
to cultivate inclusion.

TED TALK: Lead like the great conductors

The speaker related his conducting experience and knowledge in inspiring the audience to lead like the great
and how does a leader and his team become successful towards their shared purpose.
Muti - leader (conductor) that have a great control, but didn't let his team (orchestra) to develop
Strauss - leader (conductor) that focuses not about his story, it was only about yours (the team) and he gave
his team (orchestra) room to explore their story (purpose)
Karajan - Karajan’s philosophy was that the worst damage he could do to his orchestra was to give them
clear instructions because that would prevent them listening to each other. (prevent them to acknowledge
one another; get in sync with each other)
Kleiber - He is leading, commanding but is there to enjoy it. Control is no longer zero-sum game, its about
partnership. Control is no longer zero-sum game, its about partnership.
Bernstein - Leading by knowing first the meaning of the story (the purpose why they are there)
Synthesis :
Develop clarity through vision
· The primary responsibility of both leaders and conductors is to make sure everyone is on the same
page, knows the part they are expected to play, and have the skills to perform. They ensure that
people know what is expected of them, are given the opportunity to practice to their part, and
receive feedback to improve individual and collective success. This is leadership at its best.
· Similar to the leader mobilizing others through a shared mission, the successful conductor uses
communication and vision to unite the musicians through a collective purpose – to deliver
exceptional musical performances.
Encourage trust by developing synergies
· Talgam explains that the great conductors were successful because they enabled players to tell
their own musical “stories” simultaneously, as a community.
· Effective leaders should assume a coordinating role. This enabling process creates conditions in the
organization where employees are engaged to become partners.
Non-verbal influence over the process
· Leaders should remember not only to communicate vision but also to embody their vision and goals.
To engage followers in their overall vision and, at the same time, offer them the independence to
use their creativity and expertise to achieve that vision.
·
***TED TALK: HOW LANGUAGE SHAPES THE WAY WE THINK
Language Structure Differences in: Location or direction, time, exact number words, colors,
grammatical gender, and description of events.
CULTURAL
· Difference on how people think of time- If the English speakers are asked to organize a photo of
a person at different ages, they might lay it out from left to right, while when you ask the Hebrew or
Arabic, they might do it the opposite way. It has to do with their writing directions
· Difference in location or direction- The Kuuk Thaayorre people from Abroginal community in
Australia don’t use words like “left” or “right”, and instead, everything is in cardinal directions: north,
south, east and west. (We might also relate it on ancient times where our ancestors only use cardinal
directions).
· Some languages don’t have exact number words- Some languages don’t have an exact number
of words; they don’t have the word “seven” or a word like “eight”. These languages don’t count and
have trouble keeping track of exact quantities.
· Difference on division of color spectrum- Some languages have lots of words for colors, some
have only a couple of words, “light” and “dark”. (e.g. the English the word for blue covers all the
shades of blue, but in Russian they must differentiate light blue (goluboy) and dark blue (siniy).
· Differ in description of events- In an accidental event. (e.g the English speakers might say “he
broke the vase” while Spanish might say “The vase broke”). People who speak different will pay
attention to different things, depending on what their language requires them. (English speakers
they will remember who did it, whereas Spanish speakers less likely to remember who did it if it was
an accident)

GENDER
Languages have grammatical gender- Every noun gets assigned gender, often masculine or feminine.
(e.g. the sun is feminine in German but masculine in Spanish, and the moon in reverse)
Linguistic Diversity- reveals how genius and flexible human mind is.
Speakers of different languages think differently, but that’s not how people elsewhere think. It’s about how
you think. The language that you speak shapes the way you think

TED TALK: HOW TO BUILD A COMPANY WHERE THE BEST IDEA WIN
Make idea meritocracy- which the best ideas would win out and in order in order to do that you need radical
truthfulness and radical transparency, meaning people have to say what they really believed.
Radical Transparency -> Collecting the principles -> Embedding those principles into algorithms
Dot Collector Tool- helps the workers in the company to both express their opinions and separate
themselves in their opinions to see things from a higher level.
PROCESS:
· Dot collector collects the views of each worker in the meeting
· It has lists of someone’s attributes, whenever somebody thinks something about somebody’s
thinking it's easy for them to convey their assessments by simply noting the attribute and providing
ratings from 1-10 (everyone gets to express their thinking including their critical thinking, regardless
of the position in the company)
· Behind the dot collector is a computer that collects their opinions and watches what all these people
are thinking and correlates that on how they think.
· Then draws the data from all the meeting to create a painting of what people are like and how they
think. It was done by the guide of algorithms
 · Knowing what people are like, it helps to match them better with their jobs (e.g. someone creative
who is unreliable matched with someone reliable but not creative) and to decide what responsibilities
to give them. The decisions are based on people’s believability
· This process makes their decisions based on algorithms that takes people believability into
considerations. This process helps them to see things collectively

Collective decision making is much better than individual’s decision making if done well.
Operating with radical transparency and radical truthfulness would help in winning the battle in the industry.

Questions:
How communication can be used to address diversity issues in the workplace
- By radical truthfulness and radical transparency, meaning people have to say what they really
believed and think.

Analysis of the impact of diversity for inclusion programs in different multinational company
- Ethnically diverse company (33% better performance)
- Best workplaces for diversity has 24% higher revenue growth.
- There were linguistic diversities that affects the way people thinks

● Multigenerational
- If everyone, no matter of age would give importance and appreciation to different kinds of
thinkers then there would have been full of innovative ideas.
● Gender
- Speakers of different languages think differently, but that’s not how people elsewhere think.
It’s about how you think. The language that you speak shapes the way you think
- Languages have grammatical gender- Every noun gets assigned gender, often masculine
or feminine.
● Culture
- Racism; Companies could probably mandate diversity, but it takes action or practice in order
to fully say that inclusion is in practice by the employees.