10 TED talks to put perspective into your career

We all need advice – and an outsider’s opinion is a great way to get perspective, and when it comes to our career, it pays dividends to get as much perspective as possible. A great place to get this perspective is from a TED talk. TED is a nonprofit organisation dedicated to “ideas worth spreading” and plenty of those ideas come in the form of career advice.

Finding your career path

1. Scott Dinsmore shares his story of quitting a miserable job, gives tips on finding a job you love, and explains why taking ‘CV building’ jobs is bad!

2. Susan Colantuono asks why so many women are ‘mired in the middle’. Great takeaways and the career advice you didn’t get to help you move up the career ladder.

3. Employment gaps happen. Carol Cohen discusses the divide between employers and people who have taken a break, explaining how to ‘relaunch’.

Leadership

4. What drives the high performing teams? Margaret Heffernan thinks social cohesion is the way, not competition – so forget the pecking order at work.

5. Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg asks why professional success and personal fulfilment is still a choice, and wonders why we have too few women leaders.

Productivity and performance

6. Psychologist Adam Grant explores giving, taking, and matching, and how they impact workplace dynamics. Are you a giver or a taker?

7. See Nancy Duarte give tips on more persuasive presentations– and on the best way to stand in front of an audience and deliver it.

8. Dan Ariely talks about his studies on what motivates us at work in bite-size pieces– and it’s so much more than money.

Happiness at work

9. What does being good at stress mean? The idea that trying to avoid stress is counterproductive is the first of many helpful ideas from Kelly McGonigal.

10. Tell your manager that eliminating long, inflexible hours benefits the worker and the employer. Here is Dan Kedmey’s business case against overtime.