E.C unit 1 Draft

Neurodiversity Studies: A New Critical Paradigm written by Hanna Bertilsdotter an associate professor in sociology ,Nick Chown a book indexer who researches and documents his findings on Autism , and Anna Stenning a welcome trust research fellow in humanities and social sciences, explore the world of Neurodiverse people and the challenges they face in the workplace. Through their extensive research the authors have been able to maintain their stance of supporting the “Neurodiverse movement”. They reiterate throughout their writing that neurodiverse people, no matter how qualified they may be, face many obstacles when searching for employment. There has been evidence from the PARC, an organization which collects research on autistic people ,that has shown that even when a person with autism holds a doctorates, they are rarely able progress to further research and lecturing contracts. The writers attribute this to the invalidation of “impaired bodies” making neurodiverse people constantly struggle to establish credibility due to the ableist viewpoint prevalent in society today. It was also mentioned that when a study was conducted, many neurodiverse employees have admitted that they have been in situations in the workplace where in order for them to fit in they felt that it was necessary that they mask any characteristics that might indicate to others that there were different. The writers contend that in order for this to be rectified, there must be an emphasis on inclusion in these spaces so these employees can feel safe and work their best.

This article was written with the intention of educating readers about neurological differences and how they don’t limit people from functioning and completing the same tasks as everyone else. Since people cannot seem to look over neurodiversity and appreciate what these people are able to contribute, oftentimes they are treated as if they are beneath everyone else and are not able to showcase their capabilities. It was mentioned in the Austin and Pissano article that since many neurodiverse people do not exhibit the standard “good employee” behavior through characteristics such as “solid communication skills, being a team player, …” they are unfairly screened out and excluded from job opportunities. This article has educated me on methods of including neurodiverse people rather than excluding them. Many people with autism especially have trouble adjusting their vocal tone and pace to match the conversations they partaking in so we can learn to realize the differences in our communication skills so that we don’t misinterpret vocal/motor traits as aggression. We can also make changes in the workplace environment to make neurodiverse people more comfortable in their space such as holding shorter meetings or regulating noise levels. Small changes over time can have everlasting impacts so it is important to take action now and implement more inclusive environments.

In this ted-talk, Tashi Baiguerra a 21 who has been diagnosed with autism mentioned something that stood out to me a lot. Tashi said “Most autistic people don’t actually suffer from our autism. We suffer from the way the world sees and treats our autism. To the world my brain is broken…But my brain is not broken.”. Neurodiversity should be recognized as another thing that makes people different but does not make them any less capable than others. It Is hard for many people to accept all the things that make us different however until we learn, we won’t be able to progress and become the society we have the potential to become.

Expanding the Canon Draft

In the majority of workplaces across the globe, diversity seems to be a problem, evident in the large disproportion of minorities in positions of power or even in minor company roles.  Specifically, the police force is an organization that struggles with diversity.  These two charts show that, while there has been a slight increase over the decades, much can be done to improve.

These two statistics show how small the percentages of women and other minorities are in local police departments.

Three women Debra Langan (Criminology Professor), Carrie Sanders (Criminology Professor), and Tricia Agocs (a citizen who worked in police services for 10 years) wanted to delve into the treatment of women in the Canadian police force to bring awareness towards the issues female police officers often face, especially during pregnancy.  The police force is already a predominantly male profession, so women are, like Kaplan and Donovan stated, an outsider group within the larger organization.  To determine real life examples, Langan et al created a study which, while it only featured 16 Caucasian females from across Ontario, Canada, the authors acknowledged this small size throughout the article.  However small the sample size, the majority of the women reported a poor work environment, in addition to stating that the culture and management is inadequate and in much need of improvement.  This is evident in the study conducted where “one in five [officers] … think about leaving their current police force from once a week to several times a week”.  Women often push themselves extremely hard, believing that they need to prove themselves more to show that they deserve to be there.  When considering becoming pregnant, one woman stated that it was very important to make sure that you have proved yourself because if you get pregnant too early, then you would be looked down upon by colleagues.  It was a fear for many policewomen that, by announcing their pregnancy, it meant judgment from everyone, and when a woman was on maternity leave, their coworkers often had to take over the mother’s work, which further caused poor feelings.  When returning to work, the policewoman now needs to reprove herself to try and remove herself from the new demoted position because after time off she might not be an adequate police officer anymore.  So instead of just proving herself once, earning her way onto the force, she now must do it again, even though all her coworkers already know what she is capable of.  Langan et al want the police departments across Canada to address these issues and expectations for women due to their unfair treatment.  There needs to be change and therefore the authors chose to broach this diversity topic.

Many of the articles we have previously explored mentioned the various issues regarding diversity in the workplace.  I wanted to expand on the discrimination that we saw females face in the Kaplan and Donovan article when the executive looked down on the other workers, so I chose a specific career that I knew often contained a lot of bigotry.  Hearing the examples these 16 women gave to show how they are treated was very eye opening and it became clear how brave they are for staying especially since many considered quitting.  This study was conducted in Canada about five years ago.  It is unfortunate that, despite all this evidence showing the problems and where the department can be improved, nothing significant changed.  Problems with diversity within the police force still prevail everywhere.  Three years after the study, this particular TEDtalk, linked below, gives additional evidence on how females face discrimination in the police, only this time, it is focused on the United States. 

A TEDtalk from a woman that has been a US officer for the past 25 years and has worked her way from officer to chief. She talks about the benefits to having women on the force based off statistics and how females are still being discriminated against.

In this TEDtalk, a policewoman who has been in the force for 25 years reveals that a very high percentage of women fail out of the academy due to unfair regiment that favor males over females and have very little to do with what officers will face during their actual career.  This means that out of all American police officers, only about 13% are women, which has statistically been very steady for around the past two decades.  This number is incredibly low especially given the amount of data the TEDtalk gives that shows how valuable they are. 

The reason I chose these pieces of media was to give evidence to our much-researched topic of the lack of diversity in workplaces.  It is important to see these real world examples, how discrimination impacts daily life, and how little has been done to stop it.  More awareness is necessary to fix this issue, which is why we need to keep spreading the media being researched in class.

Article citation:

Debra Langan, Carrie B. Sanders & Tricia Agocs (2017) Canadian Police Mothers and the Boys’ Club: Pregnancy, Maternity Leave, and Returning to Work, Women & Criminal Justice, 27:4, 235-249, DOI: 10.1080/08974454.2016.1256254

Expanding the Canon Draft

Strategic Diversity Leadership

In “Strategic Diversity Leadership: The Role of Senior Leaders in Delivering the Diversity Dividend” (Journal of Management, September 2020), Luis L. Martins shines a spotlight on the role that top executives play in shaping organizational culture and driving organizational performance. In this paper, he discusses his findings from an extensive literature review of contemporary research on strategic leadership and workplace diversity and inclusion, work that led him to develop a new framework he calls “strategic diversity leadership.” His purpose is to share this framework with organizational leaders who are seeking competitive advantage as well as his academic peers to inspire further study.

As a professor and chair of the management department at The University of Texas at Austin, Martins knows a thing or two about organizational cultures and organizational performance. Over a 30-year academic career, he has conducted research and written extensively on the factors that drive innovation, change, and performance, including diversity and inclusion. He has also consulted for dozens of clients, such as Coca Cola, FBI Crime Labs, Samsung, and Waffle House, to test solutions in the real world. Business and academic leaders know that when Martins finds a new way of solving a problem, it is worth taking a closer look.

A missing link

There is a significant body of research that shows diversity leads to better organizational performance, but there is also evidence that shows the implementation of diversity and inclusion programs do not always lead to the desired results. Martins defines the diversity dividend as “the enhancement in an organization’s performance that is attributable to its diversity” (1192). When he investigates why the diversity dividend is not realized, he discovers a missing link between the traditional role of top executives and the role they must play in their organization’s diversity and inclusion efforts. If Martins is right, which I believe he is, implementing a strategic diversity leadership framework to close this gap is the key to better performance.

Leaders must lead

Martins defines strategic diversity leadership as “the shaping of the meaning of diversity within an organization by the organization’s senior leaders” (1194). Martins’ strategic diversity leadership framework is extremely useful because it directly links the role of senior leaders to the efforts and outcomes associated with the organization’s diversity and inclusion initiatives. Because they hold positions of authority, Martins asserts, top executives have both the platform and the responsibility for realizing the benefits of a diverse workforce. That is to say, supervisors and other employees can only do so much if the organization’s top executives do not lead the way.

Fig. 1. Strategic diversity leadership framework showing the link between traditional senior leader roles and organizational diversity initiatives (Martins 1195).

Martins argues that senior leaders must use the power of communication to establish a vision and articulate that the “current state is unacceptable” (1198). He also argues that senior leaders must participate in public activities that promote diversity and inclusion, including rituals and ceremonies (1198-1199). In other words, top executives must symbolize the value of diversity and inclusion through both words and actions. Only by taking full responsibility for the design of the organizational culture can senior leaders create organizational performance that maximizes the diversity dividend.

The strategic diversity leadership framework Martins proposes is important because it shifts our focus for solving organizational culture challenges from the level of supervisors, staff, policies, and tasks to the level of executives, vision, strategy, and organizational design. Martins is telling us that those who hold the most power in an organization also hold the most responsibility and they must be held accountable. I couldn’t agree more. While the strategic diversity leadership framework holds great potential for bringing about change, Martins understands that he is breaking new ground and proposes further study to finetune his theories and reveal additional insights. I look forward with optimism to seeing his ideas confirmed.

Works Cited

Martins, Luis L. “Strategic Diversity Leadership: The Role of Senior Leaders in Delivering the Diversity Dividend.” Journal of Management, 1 September 2020, pp. 1191-1204, https://doi-org.libezproxy2.syr.edu/10.1177/0149206320939641.

“Luis Martins Biography.” The University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business. https://www.mccombs.utexas.edu/execed/faculty/luis-martins.

Discussion Questions Week of 6/28

Response to #1

In his TEDxMidwest talk, “Why work doesn’t happen at work” (October 2010), Jason Fried, entrepreneur and founder of Basecamp, argues that it’s time for companies to change their thinking and practices about office work. He asserts that the typical office is an unproductive environment full of interruptions and activities that waste time, and he makes a case that employees will be more productive working in environments of their own choice. Fried’s rhetorical approach is interesting because it relies entirely on anecdotes to support his claims. He does not cite statistics or external sources. Fried knows that office workers are the audience for this talk, and he engages them by telling stories they can relate to. For example, most office workers can relate to Fried’s anecdotes about meetings that were a complete waste of time or a boss who has a habit of interrupting them. He really strikes a chord when he compares interrupted work with interrupted sleep. In delivering his talk, he does not speak from the position of an authority on office work but from the position of a peer, as someone who has developed insights from experiencing office work directly himself. He wears worn jeans and hardly ever makes eye contact with the audience as he shuffles back and forth on the stage. His tone is conversational. All of this helps him convey the message that “I’m one of you,” and create the pathos that helps his audience emotionally connect with his ideas. Fried also knows that radical organizational change is hard to achieve quickly, so he offers some simple and practical ideas that his audience can try wherever they work. For these reasons, I think Fried’s rhetorical approach is effective in getting his audience to believe his argument.

Response to #2

Margaret Heffernan begins her TEDSummit talk “The human skills we need in an unpredictable world” (July 2019) with a story about a grocery chain that tried to use technology to improve its operations. It’s a story of good intentions with poor results and helps her illustrate the main theme that runs throughout her speech, and that’s: the expensive and inefficient human way of solving problems often delivers better results. Her objective tone and poise establish trust with her listeners, which is important because she wants them to understand that her subject is serious with implications for everything from climate change to financial crises to epidemics. To appeal to her audience and build up support for her claims, she uses a pattern of stories followed by ideas. These stories are her evidence, and she draws them from many different areas of life, such as the grocery store, home health care, and sports. These stories create pathos and emotional connection because her audience can relate to these scenarios and outcomes. In her story about home nursing care, Heffernan also incorporates data to support her argument, noting that after an experiment “patients got better in half the time and costs fell by 30 percent.” This tactic helps creates logos and appeals to listener’s sense of logic and reason. Heffernan is a polished speaker, and she is also very skilled at using rhetorical strategies to strengthen her argument and persuade her listeners to share her point of view.

Expanding the Canon Draft

After discovering that an astonishing 67% of full-time faculty at business schools are white, Professors Grier (a professor of marketing at American University) and Poole (a professor at the University of San Francisco) decided to dive deeper into why diverse groups are underrepresented. To do this, they conducted a qualitative study through interviewing professors in business schools. Through interviews, Grier and Poole were able to study five components of the Critical Race Theory which offered some explanation into why there is not a proportionate number of diverse faculty members to students. The elements include: unchanged race and lasting racism, the interconnected nature of race with forms of subordination, the idea of one dominant ideology, experiential knowledge and commitment to social justice. The interviews also revealed in detail about how many schools care about the ‘best athlete’ construct, where only outputs matter. Schools do not take into account inputs, or extra duties performed by many underrepresented staff, including mentoring diverse students and serving as members in hiring committees. Grier and Poole’s research found that in order to be successful in creating an inclusive environment, everyone must be enthusiastic and open to change. By documenting the issues surrounding diverse faculty in business schools, the professors hope other professors will reflect on their own environments, and advocate for change.

The research done by Grier and Poole is essential in understanding the reasons why there are not more faculty who are considered diverse. In my opinion, by understanding the reasons behind not having a more diverse faculty, people will be able to change components of their organization. For example, we need to start understanding and celebrating how many professors take on different tasks to promote diversity. The dominant ideology has never represented the underrepresented minority experience, yet has always served towards the best interests of dominant groups. Many may find it difficult to embrace change, as they are a part of the dominant group. By promoting change, they are not serving in their own best interests. Along with this, it is difficult for another person to truly comprehend another person’s experiences if they have never experienced them themselves. Being in a dominant group and promoting change through words is different than taking actions to promote change. As a result, many underrepresented groups may not feel as though others are advocating for change.

Source: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/01/06/faculty-members-color-see-illusion-inclusion

We already know why having faculty that is diverse in their views is important, as illustrated by Austin and Pisano, Gundemir, along with this clip:

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owogyWB_lqE

However, understanding what to change is essential in feeling the effects of a more diverse faculty. By understanding different aspects that explain why many organizations do not have a more diversified staff core, we will be able to reflect and change these components, eventually leading to a diverse staff that represents everyone’s backgrounds and experiences. In my opinion, Grier and Poole’s article is critical in helping us reflect on our surroundings and understanding that we all need to be supportive of change.

Expanding the Canon Draft

In Bowen, Havercamp, and Nye’s “A call to action: Preparing a disability-competent health care workforce”, from the Disability and Health Journal, the authors successfully illustrate two initiatives that would eliminate the failure of competence towards those who are disabled as well as their essential care. Being the largest minority group in the world, the authors of this article clearly understand the urgency of this issue. Bowen and the rest of the writers start by dissecting why the needs of those who are disabled aren’t met by evaluating the preconceived notion caretakers have towards them. It is stated that their misunderstanding is a result of a biased mindset, where caretakers believe those with disabilities have a lower quality of life and function and have low expectations for their health which results in less urgency towards proper care. We can see this same mindset in many forms, whether it attacks minorities due to their race, income, gender, and endless others. Bowen et al. state that disability training can address the improvement of accessible treatment and increase better communication and understanding. This will be successful IF there is a balance between intent and effect, where health care workers will have to be conscious of the similarity of their words and behavior, which leads to the authors’ two initiatives towards this issue.


The urgency of these initiatives also circles back to hopes of systematic change. The article mentions that the systematic organizational framework in this country has disrupted the development and growth of disability healthcare. The two initiatives given in this article to facilitate fair and accessible health care would establish learning objectives and core foundations for health care workers which would increase their understanding and urgency, as well as simply continuing education training and bettering it as a whole in hopes of competent health care for those with disabilities. These initiatives are set up by two frameworks, the Disability Competencies and the DCC (Disability Competenent Care). The Disability Competencies provides a set of skills and behaviors needed to provide accommodating health care towards those who are disabled. Through various studies, this framework was proven successful and applied to the full range of disabilities.The DCC offers structure in educating the health care workforce and addresses the patient as a person, not just by their disability.


Bowen et al. do not just analyze these initiatives and calculate their success and stability but recognizes the dire need for change at this very moment in time. The authors acknowledge that the incompetence seen is due to systematic instability and that their initiatives would develop a foundation for practical, real change. This mindset is crucial while tackling the unfair treatment of all minorities. The authors believe these initiatives need to be required and that healthcare licensure should be reevaluated the same way recruitment in the business workforce should. This adds to the understanding that this instability is systematic and has been seen repeated in different shapes and forms, usually all having similarities in oppression. It is safe to say that the authors are aware that using these tactics in other scenarios, letting go of assumptions, uplifting, and acknowledging those who are diverse would create small steps towards competent systematic change. If those who are meant to help a specific issue don’t, who will?

file:///Users/katemehne/Desktop/Disability%20and%20Health%20Journal.html

Discussion Questions Week 4

Response 1

Heffernan, a former CEO, attempts to explain the need for human qualities, as forecasting with technology cannot be solely relied on in the future. In the TED talk, Heffernan first attempts to connect with her audience by using a joke,  in which coconuts are used in the reference as an example. I thought it was well done by Heffernan, as it got her audience interested in hearing more about what she had to say. After using examples of things that AI cannot forecast, such as when a group of high schoolers will need to buy coconuts, Heffernan uses “we” a significant amount. Heffernan is most likely referring to the human population due to how much she references human nature and the qualities that humans have, unlike technology. Along with using “we”, Heffernan does a fantastic job at blending in everyday real-world examples of why human qualities are essential. Heffernan does this by speaking about a hospital that had a strict schedule for each patient, which was changed to a more relaxed schedule based on what the nurse believed was necessary. A nurse who is sitting in the audience might be interested in hearing more about this topic. She uses other topics of individuals in the business world, thereby making other people within that field interested. By referencing a wide range of different industries, Heffernan can appeal to a variety of people in different areas, yet all have one thing in common. Efficiency does not always mean effectiveness, as numbers are not 100%, and cannot predict the future. She also used a personal anecdote where she said she spoke to some rising CEOs, asking who their friends were at work. The CEOs stated that they had no time for that,  in turn not being able to create lasting connections with other meaningful people in the business world.

The most critical part about her speech though is that she spoke more in a conversational tone. She did not bring up any relevant statistical evidence in her examples, rather she spoke through the reasoning. Technology, on the other hand, would solely rely on numbers, not human intuition. For this speech, Heffernan only relies on human interaction and appeals to the audience as “we” to illustrate the need for human interaction and emotions to be involved in organizations.

Response 2

Heffernan chooses to work with evidence in the exact opposite way that AI would work to form an opinion. Instead of using numerical data to back up her findings, Heffernan relies almost only on anecdotes in different organizations to prove her point. To make her points more effective, Heffernan develops her ideas by initially stating what she believes to be true, which is that we must not rely on technology completely, as humans are useful due to their ability to form connections and have emotions. After doing so, Heffernan chooses to use a real-world example to illustrate this point. For example, Heffernan states that having an efficient well-laid schedule may not be effective. Nurses discovered this after following a strict schedule only allocating a small amount of time for each patient and then turning to a schedule where they were able to spend as much time as they would like to with any given patient. After switching schedules, the cost went down while patient recovery times also improved.

Heffernan throughout the speech keeps us on our toes, as she speaks on the fact that no one knows when the economy is going to tank, or when the next epidemic is going to happen. Although this talk happened in 2019, I think it is really interesting. No one ever could have imagined that the COVID pandemic would happen in 2020, as we really could not predict it. Being able to look back on this video two years later is fascinating to me because it solidifies her point that forecasting and technology cannot predict everything in life, especially because ”Efficiency works well when you can predict exactly what you are going to need. But when the anomalous comes along… efficiency is no longer your friend.”  She speaks about how there are organizations that help research vaccines and variations of sicknesses or diseases. If we did not already have research on other diseases such as SARS, then we would not have been able to develop a vaccine as quickly. However, due to some amazing researchers who continued to research SARS a vaccine was developed fast. Some may not have thought that it was efficient to be studying something that was not impacting our society at that present moment. However, it became effective in the long run and helped develop a vaccine.

Another reason why Heffernan is so successful at conveying her thoughts is because of the way that she addresses her audience. She addresses the audience as “we” because both she and the audience have emotions and are people. One of the main points that she tries to illustrate is that the thing that makes an organization successful is the people within it. I believe that her speech was less of an argument and more so went through a step-by-step process of her ideas, which were laid out through logical reasoning and stories.

By using both imaginary and real-world anecdotes to convey her point, Heffernan does a fantastic job at conveying her point about why technology cannot be fully relied on. I enjoyed listening to this TED talk especially because it aligned with many topics covered in my management classes last semester.

Discussion Questions WK 6/28

  1. In Jason Fried’s Tedtalk “Why work doesn’t happen at work” he mainly uses comparisons to help his get his point across that work doesn’t happen at work because of the various distractions present in the office. One of his comparisons was that when a person is trying to sleep they need to be distraction free so they are able to have a good nights rest. Fried says this is the same case for work as well, you must be distraction free to get your best work done because you won’t be able to get deep into your work (or your sleep) if you are constantly being interrupted. He gives examples of distractions that are present at work that aren’t at other places like work meetings or frequent check-ins from managers.I think that by making these comparisons Fried gets across his message that people do their best work on their own schedules when they are in control of their environment.

2)Margaret Heffernan’s use of real world examples allows her to effectively support her claim . Heffernan began by talking about an American Supermarket which switched over to functioning more digitally in hopes of making the store more efficient. She contradicts the idea that it would be more efficient by mentioning that the machines could not do what employees could, things such as predicting when a kid would knock something over, or when someone would drop things. Heffernan said that efficiency is only beneficial when you can predict exactly what is needed, but when the unexpected happens efficiency is not longer an asset. She reasons that this same reason is why “Companies are blindsided when plastic straws and bags and bottle water go from staples to rejects over night.”. We spend too much time relying on things that we do not consider having any alternatives in case these things unexpectedly don’t work out. By including all of these real world examples Heffernan is then able to support that every time we lean on technology to do the things that we can do ourselves the trade-off becomes increasingly steep. Margaret Heffernan is able to utilize this information to express that the idea of efficiency makes us necessarily on Technology which us from working at our full potential.

Discussion Questions Week 4

1.

In Fried’s TED talk, he discusses the reason people do not get work done at work. All three of the TED talks were relatable but I felt that Fried’s was the most because of the way he explained distractions and the way he compared work to sleep. I think that the talk as a whole is significant for many reasons, I also think that the way Fried presented his argument is important because the way that an argument is presented can have an effect on the response by the audience. He gave example after example and explained why each example happened which allows his listeners to actually picture an event that he is describing. He uses so many different types of examples that most people should be able to related to. Even if you are someone who does not work in an office, like a student for example, you can relate to be interrupted by your phone or by your teacher. I found the overall topic to be interesting and significant because work and sleep are things that people do everyday and will do for the rest of their lives.

2.

In Fried’s talk about doing work at work, he provides evidence that most people have most likely experienced. He discusses where and when most people claim they are the most productive by giving some examples of answers to the question he asks, “where do you go when you need to get something done?”. Fried also gives scenarios where people get distracted so they physically can’t do their work. Every piece of evidence that he gives, it is very clear as to how it supports his argument. For example, when 10 people are in a meeting for 1 hour, that is 10 people whose work was interrupted and 1 less hour of work that they are going to get to do. So, as Fried explains, thats 10 hours of work that the company is losing. He walks the audience through all of the examples and evidence that very clearly prove his point. What I found to be the most effective about his argument is the fact that he used a wide spread of examples, the more examples he uses, the larger amount of people are going to relate to it.

Discussion Questions Week 6/28

Response to #1

In Relata Selecl’s TED Talk, I first noticed how honest she was. She would say phrases like, “I wasn’t sure what quote to share with you.” By being honest like this, Selecl makes her speech very relatable for the listeners. She also uses “we” and “us” a lot, which creates the same impact. Salecl also used many examples from personal experiences or her friend’s experiences. This way, many listeners can realize they have seen themselves in similar situations or have seen someone they know in these situations. By doing this, she created laughter. She also created laughter by the way she worded her points. For example, Selecl says, “She was so good at selling cars that then she sold airplanes.” Her friend did not sell airplanes, but it was a clever phrase used to engage the audience. Then, after this laughter, she got more serious about her point. Selecl went into an analysis of choices, then circled back to her own experience with a stranger. She started with a funny punchline that this person needed a sperm donor, which created laughter once again from the audience. However, again, she got more serious after with her tone and talked about how this woman has chosen bad men in her life and how these choices have been risk and stress-provoking. Selecl was very clever with her speeches structure; she creates almost a bond with the audience by using words like “us,” “we,” and presenting stories that most people in the audience could relate to. Using universal terms and ignorance, anxiety, stress, individual choice, and a “veil of obviousness.” A very successful tactic Selecl used was also bringing it back to herself and even asking herself questions. This creates more of a bond with the audience because it shows even the speaker still has questions and that people aren’t alone.

Response to #2

In Margaret Heffernan’s TED Talk, she started her speech with evidence. However, this may have blown over some people’s heads since it was an overview of an experience and ended up being evidence of “dealing with the unexpected.” When Heffernan talks of defying forecasting, she then says an example of this would be when the Bank of England says, “There might be another crash, but we don’t know why or when.” I noticed that some of her evidence did not have to be scientific or relate to a specific event. Heffernan mentions that we don’t know when or where there will be a forest fire, proving her point that we can’t rely on technology for it. Using examples like these where technology is not included in predicting things, Heffernan concludes her introduction by stating that efficiency actually stops us from adapting and responding as humans. This leads into the main section of her speech, asking if efficiency does not help us, what skills will? She gives an example of how we know there will be more epidemics in the future, but we don’t know when and where, but we can prepare. We can prepare with vaccines and safety measures. Heffernan explains that we won’t use them all with an abundance of vaccines, causing these actions to be inefficient. However, she states that this is robust because it creates more options. Heffernan’s “evidence” is hypothetical and does not rely on scientific or scholarly sources. However, I think this was intentional because her whole argument is about relying on ourselves to adapt and grow, not on efficient technology. By using human experiences as “evidence,” she supports her own argument. Heffernan also gives an example of banks, stating that now they hold more capital, being inefficient. However, it protects the system. She also uses climate change as an example, stating that they are forming multiple solutions, and uses the same approach towards trade wars. By dissecting all of this “evidence,” Heffernan’s point is that we can’t rely on something that is “efficient” because we can’t predict the future, we can’t predict outcomes, and it would be better to be “inefficient” and have multiple solutions and preparations for different scenarios. In her Netherlands nurses example, there was an experiment example where the nurses decided what to do with the different patients and how to treat them, causing them to get better in half the time. The nurses had no idea how easy it would be to create this solution since it was not something one could figure out by sitting at a desk, looking at a screen, or analyzing data. Since Heffernan used hypothetical evidence to start, this evidence example was placed perfectly in her speech to prove her point and prove that this type of inefficient thinking actually works. Heffernan did a great job at building a climax in her speech and presenting evidence in a way where the audience could engage by thinking critically about universal experiences with Heffernan’s presented mindset.