When I got the “Inspire Someone” task I didn’t exactly know any inspiration techniques so I researched a bit to find one. I came across a guy called Simon Sinek who did the third most watched TEDx talk of all time entitled “How Great Leaders Inspire Action”. It quickly caught my interest as he claimed to have the answer for the question we are continuously dealing with in class. Why is it that someone is able to achieve extraordinary performance, when others are not?
He explains how successful leaders and companies all think, act, and communicate in the same way, by focusing on why the company exists rather than what it does or how it does it. He applies his theory on the cases of Apple, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Wright Brothers – an approach very similar to the one we use in class. He is convinced that companies and leaders who think, act, and communicate according to a strong belief are the ones who succeed.
Although Sinek’s theory doesn’t seem to be grounded in much research it gave me a good tool to accomplish the task. I decided to try it out on my Designing Mobile Experiences the next day. Our group work choosing one of three “it” screens for the app we’re designing. An “it” screen is the most important screen for demonstrating the user experience. Its purpose is to make people “get it”. This was initially proving to be difficult because different team members each had different ideas about what information it should contain and how it should look.
I chose to carry out the inspiration task implicitly because explaining my actions and preaching about inspirational techniques wouldn’t have felt natural in the situation. My inspirational tactic was instead to lead our discussion in the direction of discussing why our app exists instead of discussing how it works or what it does. This actually seemed to work well as it made us take a step back to focus on pursuing our overarching goal: “making it safer to bike.” We ended up agreeing on an “it” screen, essentially by answering the question: “Why should we choose this screen?” “Because it demonstrates how we can make it safer to bike!”
I even found Sinek’s approach applicable when analysing the “Queen of Versailles” speech in the “Pep Talk” task. Although the speaker seems to be a bit of a swindler he follows Sinek’s pattern for inspiring people which seems to be working. He begins with asking why: why do they work? To save lives! How do they save lives? They sell vacations. What kind of vacations do they sell? They sell time-shares. I definitely think Sinek’s TEDx talk is worth a watch when trying to uncover what makes some people able to achieve extraordinary results. Maybe we can discuss the relevancy and validity of his theory in class when we reach the “Behavioral Change” or “Move People” week.
I watched his talk, too. A bit strange that it is the 3rd most watched talk. It sounds a little bit fluffy to say why in selling a smartphone. It is downright fake to say “we savel lives” in selling timeshares people can’t afford in Queen of Versailles. It is however interesting to apply the why question to your effort there. So would you say you were successful in inspiring action, or even unity?
I agree that his theory is a bit fluffy, if not to say scientifically undocumented. I do however think there is some truth to his way of structuring an inspiring/convincing argument. In my case it seemed to work out well. I don’t know if the result was truly inspiring but it let us to make a fast and so far good decision in that specific situation. I think creating unity would require a consistent series of inspiring actions over time.