40 TED Talks for Project Managers

People won't pay you what you are worth. Rather, they pay what they think you are worth.  Nothing will boost your confidence as a professional more than knowing people value you properly, so find out how Casey did that.

Roeder's sixth sense is people skills. So, he's very much aligned with our own way of thinking. Here, he takes us through his six priority disciplines, if you want to be a leader of positive change. The talk follows the structure of his book, A Sixth Sense for Project Management.

8 words and 3 minutes, 7 years research and 500 interviews. How can you be successful as a Project Manager? These 8 answers are applicable to YOU.

Susan Cain is the author of the massive-selling book, Quiet. her book and in this TED Talk, she explains why introverts, can be influential. She'll tell you it's okay to be a quiet, introverted Project Manager, and  to hire introverts onto your team.

When I first heard this TED Talk, I thought Galef’s ‘Scout Mindset’ metaphor was brilliant. And I still do. To me, this is a key to good Project management.

Adam Galinsky is a psychologist. If you find it hard to speak up and be assertive when you need to be; this talk is vital watching. He'll show you how to increase yu personal power. Let's face it, Project Managers need to assert ourselves from time-to-time!

Stress is often a big issue for Project Managers. And the implications are bad. Are there systems you can put in place to to prevent those implications? It turns out there are.

McGonigal offers another approach to handling stress… by making it into a positive thing. This will also give a route to reduce your chance of dying early. Can you afford to ignore this? Especially if you’re choosing a stressful role.

Agile or Traditional Project Management? What skills do you need to manage a process? And what process will work best in building a challenging structure? And a valuable insight into the nature of incentives. From 'Oh-oh' to 'ta-da'.

Meetings are a symptom of unproductive projects. They are also a cause. This is one of the more polemical TED Talks. But it will make you laugh and think. Are you afflicted with MAS?

If you haven’t yet engaged with the ideas of Positive Psychology, here is a great place to start. Not only important ideas, but delivery like a top stand-up comic.  Don’t be ‘merely average’. Better still, move the average up.

Are Millennials self-centered, with a sense of entitlement? Are Gen X bosses too stuck in the past? Here’s how the generations rub along in the modern workplace. And how they can learn from each other.

Organizational change is a part of our business. And it can e stressfu for us and for the people around us. Jim Hemmerling shows us how to put people first, and avoid crisis mode. He talks about the role of the 'Inclusive Leader'.

Talgam offers you different styles of leadership (or project leadership). And they are all suggested through the metaphor of orchestral conductors.

Elizabeth Lyle is acoach who sets out to prevent us form perpetuating bad habits. As new leaders arise, they need to find new ways to do things and to constructively break the unwritten rules that the current leaders follow.

Project Managers spend a lot of time in meetings. We sit down or we stand up. In this short (3.5 minute) talk, Nilofer Merchant advocates we walk. When I was deep in my active project management career, I met another PM. He would ‘take people for a walk around the car park’when he needed to have a in depth conversation with them. At first, I thought that was just a metaphor. But, on one rainy autumn morning, I arrived for a meeting. And there he was, with one of his team. They were soaking wet and deep in conversation!

What are the pros and cons of micromanagement? Huang is both wise and funny. And he has learned that if you want to be able to take credit for more things than you can do yourself, you need to abandon micromanagement in favor of trusting your team. 

William Ury (along with Roger Fisher) is a co-author of the single most influential book on negotitaion, 'Getting to Yes'. Here, he talks about some of those ideas, and how you can get agreement in even the most tricky circumstances.

I’ve talked about Grant’s research in my weekly email. This talk will give you new ideas about how to craft a project culture. He finds that it certainly is better to give than to receive.

Do your superchickens achieve their great results at the expense of the rest? Heffernan suggest that competition, status, and stars are toxic. But there’s an alternative… And you can apply this to your projects to get a higher achieving group.

Julia Dhar is a debating champion. So, when uses here expertise to explain how to tackle disagreements by finding common ground from which to build agreeement. We know how important it is to encourage divergent ides and challenges. So, here is a way to handle them, rather than react and challenge the person.

This is one of the few TED Talks that is absolutely about Project Management. Biddle talks about being an agile agitator inside the vast corporation of Intel. And he defines what he means by his term 'Plucky Rebel'. If you want practical transformation tips, this is one to watch.

Unfortunately, there is more to success than hard work and dedication. Gender, race, ethnicity, religion, disability, and sexual orientation all factor in. And they can hold you back. Epler talks about how to communicate in ways that support people who face discrimination. And, at the same time, it will mae you a better leader.

If you ever need to restore trust in yourself, or in your project, you need to work on three things: authenticity, logic, and empathy. Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei will show you how.

If you want to understand more about the neural basis for how we communicate, check out this enchanting TED Talk from Neuroscientist Uri Hasson.

For hundreds.. no, thousands of years, professional people have learned to persuade through the art of rhetoric. In this short TED Talks, Camille Langston, shows you the ancient Greek skill of using ethos, logos, and pathos to persuade.

Leading a team for innovation is diffferent to traditional leadership. You need to find a way to unleash creative talent. Hil studied people who make creative leadership work and has found patterns you can apply.

Tom again – this time looking at how we think. Nodes and links should be familiar to Project Managers. But here are some lessons about how to communicate well. It will show you how to produce better models and solve problems better.

Invention and innovation do not need to build on the newest technology. They can harness simple, frugal principles. Three principles your projects can apply to do more with less. It’s the third one that struck me.

How do ‘Originals’ drive creativity and change in the world? And how do you recognize them? Perhaps more important, how can you become more like them?

Not only is this longer than most TED talks, but it’s not a talk. It’s an interview between TED founder, Chris Anderson, and Elon Musk. Musk is an incredible thinker and a hugely energetic doer. His ambition is global and empowering.

Chaouni offers us a transformative goal and exmplary stakeholder engagement.

This TED talk offers a little bit of project management and a big dose of 'Why the *** would he do that?' Witty tales of derring do from the north pole.

Uplifting? Yes. But also a guide to how you can take ideas from one domain and apply it to another, completely different one.

You are familiar with the two pillars of any change: hard and soft components. Morieux will tell you these are now obsolete. We have multi-dimensional matrices and huge interconnectivity. But instead, let’s start to simplify, and Morieux offers you six simple rules.

I expect you’ve picked up a fair amount of psychology on your way to where you are. We all do. And being an effective Project Manager means knowing a fair bit about how people tick. The problem is that there are a lot of persistent myths about psychology, so watch this talk to see how many of them you thought were true… and aren’t.

As a Project Manager, you know the importance of planning. Yet short-termism pervades our lives. In this TED talk, Wallach offers reasons and tactics for long-term thinking. He’ll introduce you to his isea of Longpath.

What are the roles of luck, intuition, and communication in Project Management? How do the forces of luck and skill compete? In a short but powerful talk, based on her experience as a poker player, Liv Boeree will give you some insihts that should read across well to your own professional life. And, of course, understanding probability is vital for your role in leading project risk management.

TED Talk by David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He led the World Health Organization’s global response to the SARS epidemic in 2003.

Sack speaks about leadership, fear, death, hope and how we could use this moment to build a more just world.

'We don't need to gather more: we need to gather better.' How to make meaningful connections with friends, family and coworkers during the coronavirus pandemic.

Why testing and self-isolation are essential, which medical advancements show promise, and what it will take for the world to endure this crisis.

Plus - Gates actually predicted this 5 years ago on a TED stage!

Psychologist Susan David she shares wisdom on how to build resilience, courage, and joy during the Coronavirus pandemic. She answers questions from across the globe, and offers ways to: talk to your children about their emotions, keep focus during the crisis, and help those working on the front lines.