TEDSalon London 2009
Fields Wicker-Miurin: Learning from leadership's missing manual
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Leadership doesn't have a user's manual, but Fields Wicker-Miurin says stories of remarkable, local leaders are the next best thing. At a TED salon in London, she shares three.
Fields Wicker-Miurin - Social entrepreneur
Fields Wicker-Miurin wants to improve the quality and impact of leadership worldwide by discovering leaders in unique, local settings and connecting them with one another. Full bio
Fields Wicker-Miurin wants to improve the quality and impact of leadership worldwide by discovering leaders in unique, local settings and connecting them with one another. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
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I'm going to talk
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about some of my discoveries
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around the world through my work.
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These are not discoveries of planets
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or new technologies
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or science.
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They're discoveries of people
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and the way people are, and new leadership.
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This is Benki.
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Benki is a leader of the Ashaninka Nation.
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His people live in Brazil
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and in Peru.
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Benki comes from a village
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so remote up in the Amazon
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that to get there, either you have to fly
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and land on water,
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or go by canoe for several days.
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I met Benki three years ago in Sao Paulo
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when I'd brought him and other leaders
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from indigenous peoples
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to meet with me and leaders from around the world,
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because we wanted to learn from each other.
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We wanted to share our stories with each other.
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The Ashaninka people
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are known throughout South America
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for their dignity, their spirit
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and their resistance,
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starting with the Incas
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and continuing through the 19th century
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with the rubber tappers.
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Today's biggest threat to the Ashaninka people
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and to Benki
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comes from illegal logging --
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the people who come into the beautiful forest
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and cut down ancient mahogany trees,
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float them down the river to world markets.
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Benki knew this.
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He could see what was happening to his forest, to his environment,
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because he was taken under his grandfather's wing
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when he was only two years old
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to begin to learn about the forest
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and the way of life of his people.
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His grandfather died when he was only 10.
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And at that young age, 10 years old,
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Benki became the paje of his community.
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Now, in the Ashaninka tradition and culture,
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the paje is the most important
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person in the community.
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This is the person who contains within him
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all the knowledge, all the wisdom
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of centuries and centuries of life,
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and not just about his people,
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but about everything that his people's survival depended on:
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the trees, the birds,
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the water, the soil, the forest.
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So when he was only 10 and he became the paje,
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he began to lead his people.
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He began to talk to them
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about the forest that they needed to protect,
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the way of life they needed to nurture.
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He explained to them
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that it was not a question of survival of the fittest;
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it was a question of understanding
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what they needed to survive
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and to protect that.
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Eight years later,
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when he was a young man of 18,
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Benki left the forest for the first time.
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He went 3,000 miles on an odyssey to Rio
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to the Earth Summit
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to tell the world what was happening
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in his tiny, little corner.
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And he went because he hoped the world would listen.
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Some did, not everybody.
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But if you can imagine this young man
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with his headdress and his flowing robe,
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learning a new language, Portuguese,
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not to mention English,
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going to Rio,
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building a bridge
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to reach out to people he'd never met before --
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a pretty hostile world.
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But he wasn't dismayed.
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Benki came back to his village full of ideas --
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new technologies, new research,
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new ways of understanding what was going on.
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Since that time,
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he's continued to work with his people,
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and not only the Ashaninka Nation,
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but all the peoples of the Amazon and beyond.
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He's built schools
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to teach children to care for the forest.
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Together, he's led the reforestation
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of over 25 percent of the land
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that had been destroyed by the loggers.
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He's created a cooperative
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to help people diversify their livelihoods.
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And he's brought the internet and satellite technology
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to the forest --
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both so that people themselves
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could monitor the deforestation,
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but also that he could speak from the forest
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to the rest of the world.
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If you were to meet Benki
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and ask him, "Why are you doing this?
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Why are you putting yourself at risk?
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Why are you making yourself vulnerable
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to what is often a hostile world?"
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he would tell you,
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as he told me,
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"I asked myself," he said,
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"What did my grandparents and my great-grandparents do
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to protect the forest for me?
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And what am I doing?"
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So when I think of that,
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I wonder what our grandchildren
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and our great-grandchildren,
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when they ask themselves that question,
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I wonder how they will answer.
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For me, the world is veering
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towards a future we don't much want
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when we really think about it deep inside.
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It's a future we don't know the details of,
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but it's a future that has signs,
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just like Benki saw the signs around him.
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We know we are running out of what we need.
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We're running out of fresh water.
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We're running out of fossil fuels.
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We're running out of land.
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We know climate change is going to affect all of us.
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We don't know how, but we know it will.
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And we know that there will be more of us than ever before --
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five times as many people in 40 years
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than 60 years ago.
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We are running out of what we need.
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And we also know
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that the world has changed in other ways,
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that since 1960
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there are one-third as many new countries
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that exist as independent entities on the planet.
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Egos, systems of government --
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figuring it out --
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massive change.
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And in addition to that,
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we know that five other really big countries
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are going to have a say in the future,
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a say we haven't even really started to hear yet --
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China, India,
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Russia, South Africa
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and Benki's own Brazil,
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where Benki got his civil rights
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only in the 1988 constitution.
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But you know all that.
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You know more than Benki knew when he left his forest
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and went 3,000 miles.
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You also know
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that we can't just keep doing what we've always done,
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because we'll get the results
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we've always gotten.
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And this reminds me of something I understand
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Lord Salisbury said to Queen Victoria over a hundred years ago,
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when she was pressing him, "Please change."
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He said, "Change?
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Why change?
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Things are bad enough as they are."
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We have to change.
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It's imperative to me, when I look around the world,
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that we need to change ourselves.
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We need new models of what it means to be a leader.
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We need new models
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of being a leader and a human in the world.
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I started life as a banker.
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Now I don't admit to that
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to anybody but my very close friends.
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But for the past eight years,
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I've done something completely different.
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My work has taken me around the world,
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where I've had the real privilege
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of meeting people like Benki
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and many others who are making change happen
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in their communities --
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people who see the world differently,
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who are asking different questions,
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who have different answers,
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who understand the filters that they wear
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when they go out into the world.
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This is Sanghamitra.
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Sanghamitra comes from Bangalore.
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I met Sanghamitra eight years ago
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when I was in Bangalore
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organizing a workshop with leaders of different NGO's
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working in some of the hardest aspects of society.
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Sanghamitra didn't start life
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as a leader of an NGO,
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she started her career as university professor,
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teaching English literature.
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But she realized that she was much too detached from the world doing that.
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She loved it, but she was too detached.
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And so in 1993,
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a long time ago,
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she decided to start a new organization
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called Samraksha
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focused on one of the hardest areas,
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one of the hardest issues in India --
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anywhere in the world at the time --
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HIV/AIDS.
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Since that time, Samraksha has grown
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from strength to strength
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and is now one of the leading health NGO's in India.
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But if you just think about the state of the world
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and knowledge of HIV/AIDS
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in 1993 --
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in India at that time it was skyrocketing
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and nobody understood why,
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and everyone was actually very, very afraid.
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Today there are still three million
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HIV-positive people in India.
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That's the second largest population in the world.
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When I asked Sanghamitra,
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"How did you get from English literature
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to HIV/AIDS?"
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not an obvious path,
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she said to me,
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"It's all connected.
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Literature makes one sensitive,
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sensitive to people,
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to their dreams and to their ideas."
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Since that time, under her leadership,
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Samraksha has been a pioneer
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in all fields related
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to HIV/AIDS.
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They have respite homes, the first,
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the first care centers,
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the first counseling services --
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and not just in urban, 7-million-population Bangalore,
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but in the hardest to reach villages
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in the state of Karnataka.
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Even that wasn't enough.
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She wanted to change policy at the government level.
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10 of their programs that she pioneered
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are now government policy and funded by the government.
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They take care of 20,000-odd people today
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in over 1,000 villages around Karnataka.
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She works with people like Murali Krishna.
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Murali Krishna comes from one of those villages.
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He lost his wife to AIDS a couple of years ago,
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and he's HIV-positive.
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But he saw the work, the care,
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the compassion
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that Sanghamitra and her team brought to the village,
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and he wanted to be part of it.
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He's a Leaders' Quest fellow, and that helps him with his work.
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They've pioneered a different approach to villages.
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Instead of handing out information in pamphlets,
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as is so often the case,
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they bring theater troupes,
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songs, music, dance.
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And they sit around,
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and they talk about dreams.
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Sanghamitra told me just last week --
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she had just come back from two weeks in the villages,
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and she had a real breakthrough.
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They were sitting in a circle, talking about the dreams for the village.
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And the young women in the village
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spoke up and said, "We've changed our dream.
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Our dream
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is for our partners, our husbands,
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not to be given to us because of a horoscope,
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but to be given to us
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because they've been tested for HIV."
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If you are lucky enough to meet Sanghamitra
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and ask her why and how,
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how have you achieved so much?
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She would look at you
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and very quietly, very softly say,
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"It just happened.
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It's the spirit inside."
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This is Dr. Fan Jianchuan.
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Jianchuan comes from Sichuan Province
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in southwest China.
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He was born in 1957,
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and you can imagine what his childhood
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looked like and felt like,
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and what his life has been like
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over the last 50 tumultuous years.
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He's been a soldier, a teacher,
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a politician, a vice-mayor
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and a business man.
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But if you sat down and asked him, "Who are you really,
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and what do you do?"
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He would tell you, "I'm a collector,
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and I curate a museum."
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I was lucky; I had heard about him for years,
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and I finally met him earlier this year
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at his museum in Chengdu.
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He's been a collector all of his life,
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starting when he was four or five in the early 1960's.
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Now, just think of the early 1960's in China.
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Over a lifetime, through everything,
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through the Cultural Revolution and everything afterward,
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he's kept collecting,
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so that he now has over eight million pieces
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in his museums
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documenting contemporary Chinese history.
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These are pieces that you won't find anywhere else in the world,
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in part because they document parts of history
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Chinese choose to forget.
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For example, he's got over one million pieces
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documenting the Sino-Japanese War,
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a war that's not talked about in China very much
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and whose heroes are not honored.
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Why did he do all this?
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Because he thought
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a nation should never repeat the mistakes of the past.
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So, from commissioning
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slightly larger than life bronze statues
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of the heroes of the Sino-Japanese War,
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including those Chinese
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who then fought with each other
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and left mainland China to go to Taiwan,
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to commemorating all the unknown,
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ordinary soldiers who survived,
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by asking them to take prints of their hands,
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he is making sure -- one man is making sure --
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that history is not forgotten.
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But it's not just Chinese heroes he cares about.
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This building contains the world's largest collection
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of documents and artifacts
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commemorating the U.S. role
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in fighting on the Chinese side
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in that long war --
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the Flying Tigers.
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He has nine other buildings --
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that are already open to the public --
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filled to the rafters with artifacts
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documenting contemporary Chinese history.
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Two of the most sensitive buildings
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include a lifetime of collection
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about the Cultural Revolution,
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a period that actually most Chinese
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would prefer to forget.
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But he doesn't want his nation
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ever to forget.
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These people inspire me,
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and they inspire me because they show us
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what is possible when you change the way
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you look at the world,
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change the way you look at your place in the world.
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They looked outside,
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and then they changed what was on the inside.
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They didn't go to business school.
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They didn't read a manual, "How to Be a Good Leader
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in 10 Easy Steps."
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But they have qualities we'd all recognize.
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They have drive, passion, commitment.
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They've gone away
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from what they did before,
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and they've gone
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to something they didn't know.
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They've tried to connect worlds
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they didn't know existed before.
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They've built bridges, and they've walked across them.
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They have a sense of the great arc of time
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and their tiny place in it.
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They know people have come before them
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and will follow them.
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And they know that they're part of a whole,
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that they depend on other people.
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It's not about them, they know that,
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but it has to start with them.
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And they have humility.
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It just happens.
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But we know it doesn't just happen, don't we?
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We know it takes a lot to make it happen,
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and we know the direction the world is going in.
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So I think we need succession planning
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on a global basis.
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We can't wait for the next generation, the new joiners,
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to come in and learn how to be the good leaders we need.
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I think it has to start with us.
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And we know, just like they knew,
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how hard it is.
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But the good news is that we don't have to figure it out as we go along;
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we have models, we have examples,
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like Benki and Sanghamitra and Jianchuan.
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We can look at what they've done, if we look.
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We can learn from what they've learned.
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We can change the way we see ourselves in the world.
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And if we're lucky,
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we can change the way
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our great-grandchildren
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will answer Benki's question.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Fields Wicker-Miurin - Social entrepreneurFields Wicker-Miurin wants to improve the quality and impact of leadership worldwide by discovering leaders in unique, local settings and connecting them with one another.
Why you should listen
Fields Wicker-Miurin is co-founder of Leaders' Quest, an organization that brings together leaders from around the world to learn about key trends in their regions, and to explore their role as leaders. Through regional "Quests," leaders learn how their efforts are interconnected and have the potential to improve the world at the global level, too. Leaders' Quest is cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, and multi-generational.
Wicker-Miurin is also a director of CDC Group, a UK development finance institution, and Savills, an international property advisory company. She frequently speaks and writes about 21st-century leadership issues, and is a Governor of King's College London.
Fields Wicker-Miurin | Speaker | TED.com