Last week I had the opportunity to speak in Chengdu, China, at the 2012 China International Friendship Cities conference. It was an exciting opportunity, and simply being in China for those few days, listening to speakers from around the world promote their perspectives and successes, was an inspiring cultural and business education.
My talk was brief (organizers limited us to six minutes each, complete with gong when your time was up...a misplaced motivational choice from my perspective but effective none-the-less), and a little different from the others : I urged the audience to remember to keep empathy at the forefront in our urbanization and development decisions - always keeping in mind that a city's stakeholders are its inhabitants, and prioritizing other goals over the fundamental needs and desires of its citizens will lead to far more lost than gained in the long run.
I kept it well under the six minute mark: no gongs for me.
What I really wanted to speak about, however, had there been time to fully develop the idea for the audience that day, is that empathy - the basis of both design thinking and effective leadership - ties together these two individually effective practices to create an extremely powerful tool for discovering and implementing novel solutions to difficult challenges.
Over the next several days and posts, I invite you to come along and explore some of what developed as I prepared for, spent time in, and finally returned home from Chengdu.
Tune in tomorrow for the first installment of Inspired by Chengdu: Adopting the Leadership Personality of a Design Thinker.
In the meantime, happy leading!
My talk was brief (organizers limited us to six minutes each, complete with gong when your time was up...a misplaced motivational choice from my perspective but effective none-the-less), and a little different from the others : I urged the audience to remember to keep empathy at the forefront in our urbanization and development decisions - always keeping in mind that a city's stakeholders are its inhabitants, and prioritizing other goals over the fundamental needs and desires of its citizens will lead to far more lost than gained in the long run.
I kept it well under the six minute mark: no gongs for me.
What I really wanted to speak about, however, had there been time to fully develop the idea for the audience that day, is that empathy - the basis of both design thinking and effective leadership - ties together these two individually effective practices to create an extremely powerful tool for discovering and implementing novel solutions to difficult challenges.
Over the next several days and posts, I invite you to come along and explore some of what developed as I prepared for, spent time in, and finally returned home from Chengdu.
Tune in tomorrow for the first installment of Inspired by Chengdu: Adopting the Leadership Personality of a Design Thinker.
In the meantime, happy leading!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please share your comments and inspiring stories with our growing community of Inspiring Girls!