A guide to collaborative leadership

What's the difference between heroes and leaders? In this insightful talk, Lorna Davis explains how our idolization of heroes is holding us back from solving big problems -- and shows why we need "radical interdependence" to make real change happen.

It was a fantastic new pink suit

with big buttons and shoulder pads.

It was 1997,

and I was the new boss of Griffin's Foods,

an iconic cookie and snacks
company in New Zealand.

It was my first time
as the leader of a company,

and I was on the stage
to give a big speech

about our ambitious new goals.

I knew exactly what my call to action was,

which was "One in every four times
a Kiwi eats a snack,

it will be one of ours."

I emphasized that we knew
how to measure our results

and that our future was in our control.

Embarrassingly enough,

I finished up with "If not this, what?

If not us, who?

And if not now, when?"

I got this huge round of applause

and I was really,
really pleased with myself.

I wanted so much to be a good leader.

I wanted to be followed by a devoted team,

I wanted to be right.

In short, I wanted to be a hero.

A hero selling chips
and biscuits in a pink suit.

(Laughter)

What happened after that speech?

Nothing.

All of that applause
did not lead to action.

Nothing changed.

Not because they didn't like
me or the message.

The problem was that no one knew
what they were expected to do.

And most importantly,

they didn't know that I needed them.

Now, you may think
that this is a classic hero speech,

where I'm going to tell you that
I overcame that obstacle and triumphed.

Actually, I'm going to tell you

that in a world as complex
and interconnected

as the one we live in,

the idea that one person
has the answer is ludicrous.

It's not only ineffective, it's dangerous,

because it leads us to believe
that it's been solved by that hero,

and we have no role.

We don't need heroes.

We need radical interdependence,

which is just another way
of saying we need each other.

Even though other people
can be really difficult, sometimes.

I spent decades trying to work out
how to be a good leader.

I've lived in seven countries
and five continents.

And in recent years,

I've spent a lot of time
with the B Corp community,

originally as a corporate participant

and more recently as an ambassador.

Now, B Corps are a group of companies

who believe in business
as a force for good.

There's a tough certification
with about 250 questions

about your social
and environmental performance.

You must legally declare your intention

to serve the community
as well as your shareholders

and you must sign
the declaration of interdependence.

Now one of the things
that inspires me the most

about the companies in this movement

is that they see themselves
as part of a whole system.

It's sort of as if they imagine themselves
on a big, flowing river of activity,

where, if they are, for example,
soft drinks manufacturers,

they understand that upstream from them,

there's water and sugar,

and farmers that grow that sugar,

and plastic and metal and glass,

all of which flows into this thing

that we call a company
which has financial results.

And the flowing continues
with consequences.

Some of them intended,

like refreshment and hydration,

and some unintended,

like garbage and obesity.

Spending time with leaders in this space

has led me to see
that true collaboration is possible,

but it's subtle and it's complex.

And the leaders in this space
are doing a few things very differently

from traditional heroic leaders.

They set goals differently,

they announce those goals differently

and they have a very different
relationship with other people.

Let's begin with the first difference.

A hero sets a goal
that can be individually delivered

and neatly measured.

You can recognize a heroic goal --

they use terms like
"revenue" and "market share"

and are often competitive.

I mean, remember pink-suit day?

Interdependent leaders, on the other hand,

start with a goal that's really important,

but is actually impossible to achieve
by one company or one person alone.

I want to give you an example
from the clothing industry,

which produces 92 million tons
of waste a year.

Patagonia and Eileen Fisher
are clothing manufacturers,

both of them B Corps,

both of them deeply committed
to reducing waste.

They don't see
that their responsibility ends

when a customer buys their clothes.

Patagonia encourages you
not to buy new clothes from them,

and will repair your old clothes for free.

Eileen Fisher will pay you
when you bring back your clothes,

and either sell them on
or turn them into other clothes.

While these two companies
are competitive in some ways,

they work together
and with others in the industry

to solve shared problems.

They take responsibility for things
that happen upstream as well.

Around the world,

there are around 300 million people
who work from home in this industry,

most of them women,

many of them in very
difficult circumstances

with poor lighting,

sewing on buttons
and doing detailed stitching.

Until 2014, there was no protection
for these workers.

A group of companies got together
with a not-for-profit called Nest

to create a set of standards

that's now been adopted
by the whole industry.

Once you've seen problems like this,
you can't unsee them,

so you have to ask others
to help you to solve them.

These folks take
interdependence as a given,

and said to me,

"We don't compete on human rights."

The second big difference
for collaborators

is their willingness to declare
their goals before they have a plan.

Now the hero only reveals
their carefully crafted goal

when the path to achieve it is clear.

In fact, the role of the hero announcement
is to set the stage for the big win.

Hero announcements are full of triumph.

Interdependent leaders, on the other hand,

want other people to help them,

so their announcements are often
an invitation for co-creation,

and sometimes, they're a call for help.

At the North American division
of the French food company Danone,

I announced that we wanted
to become a B Corp.

And unlike pink-suit day,

I had no plan to get there.

I remember the day really clearly.

Everybody in the room gasped,

because they knew we didn't have a plan.

But they also knew
that we had seen our role

in the river that is the food system,

and we wanted to make a change.

Making that declaration without a plan

meant that so many
young people in our company

stepped up to help us,

and B Corps around us all rallied around.

And the day we became a B Corp

wasn't just a self-congratulatory
moment of a hero company --

it was more like a community celebration.

Now when you gave goals
that you can't achieve alone,

and you've told everyone about them,

inevitably, you'll end up
at the third big difference,

which is how you see other people,

inside your company and outside.

Heroes see everyone
as a competitor or a follower.

Heroes don't want input,

because they want to control everything
because they want the credit.

And you can see this
in a typical hero meeting.

Heroes like making speeches.

People lean back in their chairs,

maybe impressed but not engaged.

Interdependent leaders, on the other hand,

understand that they need other people.

They know that meetings
are not just mindless calendar fillers.

These are the most precious
things you have.

It's where people collaborate
and communicate

and share ideas.

People lean forward in meetings like this,

wondering where they might fit in.

When I was in Shanghai in China,

where I lived for six years,
running the Kraft Foods business,

selling, amongst
other things, Oreo cookies,

we had a problem with hero culture.

We kept on launching
new products that failed.

And we would find out afterwards

that everyone in the company
knew they were going to fail,

they just didn't feel free to tell us.

So we changed the way we ran
our innovation and planning meetings

in two important ways.

First of all, language
went back to Chinese.

Because even though
everyone spoke great English,

when I was in the room
and the meeting was in English,

they focused on me.

And I was the foreigner,
and I was the boss

and I apparently had
that intimidating hero look.

The second thing

is we asked every single person
in the meeting their opinion.

And our understanding
of the subtleties of the differences

between American taste
and Chinese taste, in this case,

really improved,

and our new product success rate
radically turned around

and we launched a lot of winners,

including the now famous
green-tea-flavored Oreos.

Hero culture sneaks in everywhere.

At Danone, we had a lot
of great stuff happening

in one part of the world,

and we wanted it to spread
to another part of the world.

But when you put a person in business gear

up in front of a group of people
with PowerPoint,

they have the urge
to become sort of heroic.

And they make everything look super shiny

and they don't tell the truth.

And it's not compelling
and it's not even interesting.

So, we changed it

and we created these
full-day marketplaces,

kind of like a big bazaar.

And everybody was dressed up in costume,

some people a little, some people a lot.

And sellers had to man their stalls

and sell their ideas
as persuasively as possible,

and people who were convinced
bought them with fake check books.

Creating just a bit of silliness
with the environment

and a hat or a scarf

drops people's guard and causes
ideas to spread like wildfire.

There's no recipe here,

but time together has to be
carefully curated and created

so that people know that their time
is valuable and important,

and they can bring
their best selves to the table.

Hero culture is present right here in TED.

This whole process makes it look like
I think I'm a hero.

So just in case there's any doubt
about the point that I'm trying to make,

I want to apply these ideas

in an area in which
I have zero credibility

and zero experience.

I'm originally South African,

and I'm deeply passionate
about wildlife conservation,

most particularly rhinos.

Those majestic creatures with big horns.

Every day, three rhinos are killed,

because there are people
who think that those horns are valuable,

even though they're just made
of the same stuff

as hair and fingernails.

It breaks my heart.

Like all good recovering heroes,

I did everything I could
to reduce this goal

to something that I could do by myself.

But clearly, stopping rhino poaching
is a goal way too big for me.

So I'm immediately
in interdependence land.

I'm declaring my goal on this stage.

I found other people as passionate as I am

and I've asked if I could join them.

And after today, there may be more.

And we're now in the complex
but inspiring process

of learning how to work together.

My dream is that one day,
someone will stand on this stage

and tell you how radical interdependence
saved my beloved rhinos.

Why does hero culture persist,

and why don't we work together more?

Well, I don't know
why everyone else does it,

but I can tell you why I did it.

Interdependence is a lot harder
than being a hero.

It requires us to be open
and transparent and vulnerable,

and that's not what traditional leaders
have been trained to do.

I thought being a hero would keep me safe.

I thought that in the elevation

and separation that comes
from heroic leadership,

that I would be untouchable.

This is an illusion.

The joy and success that comes
from interdependence and vulnerability

is worth the effort and the risk.

And if we're going to solve the challenges
that the world is facing today,

we have no alternative,

so we had better start getting good at it.

Thank you.

(Applause)