TED Radio Hour - What Leadership Looks Like

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

Original broadcast date: April 29, 2022. From workplaces to schools to national governments, leaders everywhere are being called on to solve complex problems with humility and bravery. This hour, we consider what it takes to be a leader. Guests include executive coach Patrice Gordon, organizational psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, former First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon, and educator Shabana Basij-Rasikh. TED Radio Hour+ subscribers now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and a behind the scenes look with our producers. A Plus subscription also lets you listen to regular episodes (like this one!) without sponsors. Sign-up at plus.npr.org/ted. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

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From TED and NPR. I'm Manoosh Zamorodi. Hi, Manish. And on the show today, what leadership looks like. Hi, Patrice. Hello. How are you? I'm really good, thank you. This is Patrice Gordon. She works in finance at Virgin Atlantic.

But a few years ago, the head of HR came to her with an unusual request. And she said, oh, Craig, who's the CEO of Virgin Atlantic, is interested in this reverse mentoring scheme. And he doesn't have any black females within his personal circle or within his work circle. Would you be interested in being Craig's reverse mentor? Basically, would Patrice be willing to mentor or coach Virgin Atlantic's CEO? I didn't have to think long and hard. It was an automatic yes almost. I didn't really know what I was getting myself involved in, to be honest.

Maybe you've heard of reverse mentoring. Since the 90s, companies have been pairing up younger employees with senior staff to keep them up to date, usually about new technology. But this was looking at it from a different lens, right? It was looking at it from a ethnicity lens and from a female lens. So before you went to meet then-CEO Craig Krieger for the first time, what was going on in your mind? Did it bother you that he didn't have many women? black women in his executive circle? No, it didn't bother me because actually it's incredibly common.

Look, across the UK, there's 8% of CEOs are female. I think there's only one that is a woman of color. So it didn't surprise me at all. For several months, Patrice and Craig met one-on-one. And actually, I drove us to our first meeting, which was a little bit nerve-wracking. I thought, well, they're not speed. And as they got to know each other, Patrice told him more about, what it was like to be a woman of color at Virgin Atlantic, and in the world more generally.

His intention was to understand the lived experience of someone who's very different to him and figure out actually within the organization, were there any barriers to my success that he could help influence or change. What did you say? I said to him, one of my key things was when you're looking at your pipeline or when you're asking your leaders to look at, at their pipeline or look at who they mentor both officially and unofficially, are they replicas of themselves? Are they hiring and promoting and developing because of that similarity bias? And he fully took that on board and he challenged his leadership team also. From discrimination to climate change and inequity, leaders today are being asked to solve

big systemic problems. Many are also being pressed to take a new, more humble approach to taking charge. But can authority and humility coexist? And at a time when stories about authoritarian heads of state dominate the headlines, who can show us what leading differently looks like? Well, today on the show, ideas about evolving leadership. We'll hear how the head of one of the head of one of the of the world's smallest countries is leading the biggest nations on fighting climate change. We thought, how could we make a difference? What issues could we choose to champion to try to shift the dial? And we'll learn what it takes to nurture a new generation of female leaders in a nation where educating girls is outlawed. Afghan women have fought many hardships. Each one of those acts of silencing women only awakens the anger and sense of

resistance in thousands more. But first, let's go back to Patrice Gordon, the Virgin Atlantic exec who mentored her boss, the CEO. The experience changed him as a leader, and it gave Patrice a stronger sense of belonging. I knew that the work that I was doing made a difference, but from that relationship, I really felt like I mattered. The best type of feedback you can get is feedback from your employees. But most leaders suffer because they think too highly of themselves,

because their opinion of themselves is actually disconnected from what others see. This is Thomas Chamorro-Pramujic. And I'm an organizational psychologist. So Tamas studies human behavior at work. Specifically, he researches why some people become leaders. And what actually is, or qualities people actually should have in order to lead effectively. And Thomas says empathy and making an employee feel like they matter, that is good leadership.

But he thinks the reason why Patrice's story sounds so remarkable to us is because it's still so rare. Empathy, kindness, emotional intelligence. It's far less controversial today to talk about these traits as emblematic of good leadership. And yet how many of us are capable of naming famous CEOs who are known for their humility? There aren't that many. So you're saying we pay a lot of lip service, that we say we want compassionate and smart leaders. But the people who actually rise to the top of organizations are who? We go for people who are confident rather than competent.

We go for people who are charismatic rather than humble. and we often even pick people who are narcissistic rather than honest. The reason for this is that for 99% of our revolutionary history, we needed people who were tough, who were brave, who were courageous. It was easy to choose people who are ethical and honest because we mostly hang out with the same 10 or 20 people all of our life, and everyone had a very, very accessible reputation. But if you fast forward 250,000 years,

in a complex world where we still want to cling to what we see and we want to decide whether somebody should be president based on whether they look good on television or in our own imagination, it will be fun to have a beer with them. Unfortunately, the results are what we mostly see, which is not so much competence in leadership roles. Okay, so we may think that our ideas about leadership have evolved a lot. But according to your research, we continue to consciously or subconsciously associate certain attributes with leadership.

Like what? One of the attributes that first comes to mind is actually gender. If you ask people to think about a leader, probably eight or nine out of ten people that come to mind will be men rather than women. The other thing we know is that irrespective of the gender that people think of, when they imagine a hypothetical or a real leader, they tend to think about attributes that are mostly masculine, things like confidence, assertiveness, bravado, toughness, dominance, aggression.

But the big paradox that I have research is that if leadership selection was like a wine, blind tasting contest, and we actually ignored the gender or the sex of the individuals, and we only picked people based on their talent, on their merit, or on their potential, we would actually end up with something like 60 or 65% of leaders being female rather than male. So the main question we should be asking is not why there aren't any more women leaders, but why so many incompetent men become leaders. Here's Tomas Chomoro Premuzic on the TED stage. My research suggests there are three main reasons for this.

The first is we assume that confident people have. have more potential for leadership, but in any area of talent, including leadership, there is just very little overlap between confidence, how good people think they are at something, and competence, how good they actually are at something. The second reason is our love for charismatic individuals, particularly since the 1960s mass media explosion, but this has been turbocharged by the recent digital age. But in fact, the best leaders are humble rather than charismatic,

to the point of even being rather boring. For example, imagine a movie on Angela Merkel. She wakes up, has breakfast with her husband, goes to meetings well-prepared, lets other people talk without interrupting them, makes rational decisions, there are no scandals about her. In contrast, there is a surplus of captivating biopics

on charismatic leaders with a fascinating dark side who end up ruining their countries and organizations. The third and final reason is our inability to resist the allure of narcissistic individuals. Much of the popular advice that focuses on helping people become leaders nurtures and promotes a narcissistic mindset. Unfortunately, this creates a surplus of leaders who are unaware of their limitations and unjustifiably pleased with themselves. So, Tamas, I have to ask, so far we've been using terms like masculine and feminine to describe different attributes of leadership.

But, you know, nowadays so many of us are trying to avoid stereotypes based on gender. So are those really the right terms to use? It's absolutely fair to acknowledge that this labeling or, you know, denomination of masculine or feminine is based on somewhat archaic and ancient archetypes or stereotypes. It's also important to acknowledge that when we talk about femininity and masculinity, it is precisely an attempt to go beyond their biological gender or their sexual orientation to look at quantitative differences, so ordinal differences in traits that have historically, been seen as either more dominant or, you know, more pro-social, more altruistic.

You're suggesting turning traditional ways of leading on their head. But if someone has never seen that kind of leadership modeled for them or they've never seen it succeed, this could feel incredibly risky, maybe even scary to them. Yes, absolutely. And, you know, fundamentally, it requires taking risks. It requires a lot of humility and courage to try different things, you know. We evolve to trust our instincts, but actually the best leaders learn how to go against their nature to be the best version of themselves. So simply from a kind of group selection point of view in a crude Darwinian way, if you like, the safe and rational prediction to make is that institutions, organizations and societies that are better led and that have. have more good, decent, competent leaders in charge will outperform their competitors.

Good leadership is always an argument with tradition. Leaders fight with the past. They argue with tradition to replace it with something better. That's organizational psychologist Tomas Chamaro Pramujic. His book is called Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? Earlier you heard from Patrice Gordon, her book is a good. called reverse mentoring, removing barriers and building belonging in the workplace. You can see both of their talks at TED.com. On the show today, what leadership looks like. I'm Anoush Zamoroti, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back.

Friends, before we get back to the show, I want to let you know about TED Radio Hour Plus. When you become a plus listener, you get bonus episodes made just for you, with you. more ideas from TED speakers, and you'll go behind the scenes with our producers. What you won't get, though, are those sponsor messages interrupting the show. And that's because you are directly supporting our work at NPR. So if you'd like to show your support, learn more and subscribe at plus.npr.org slash TED, or write in the Apple Podcasts app. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Minouche Zammer. And today on the show, ideas about leadership and how who we think looks like a leader is changing.

I was very shy and quiet and very studious as a child and as a teenager. So I think people would never have believed that I would go on to do the job that I'm doing. This is Scotland's former first minister and first ever female leader, Nicholas Sturgeon. She left the post in 2023. I spoke to her while she was still in office. The most important lesson that I learned from my mom and dad was to follow your dreams, never let anybody tell you that you couldn't have a go at doing what it was you wanted to do.

Nicola's life story is one of a political prodigy. At age 16, she joined the Scottish National Party. At 21, she became the youngest candidate in Britain's general election. She was first minister for a decade longer than anyone else. But the path to being in charge was not that smooth. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but you lost your first seven elections. Is that right? I think I stopped counting, but that's probably true.

But you know what? That was the best, these were the best lessons I could ever have learned. Because you learn about yourself. You develop a degree of resilience. You learn to work out why you had lost and what you could do better to try to win. Now, of course, in politics and in party politics and elections, it's never just down to you as an individual that you lost an election. It's about the standing of your party and the general political context.

But nevertheless, you still have a responsibility to bring something of yourself to that. And those losses, I don't think I'd be where I am today had I not suffered. all of those losses. I mean, to push past those losses, I hate it, but the word that comes to mind for me is balzy, but you were given a different nickname at the time. The nippy sweetie. Yes, nippy sweetie, which nippy is not a nice word, though, right? You see, nippy sweetie is a Scottish term, obviously. And in its negative sense means somebody who's a bit grumpy and bad-tempered and bossy and stride and not particularly pleasant, I suppose. But the nickname was given to me by a guy who, I think, the world of,

he was a trade union official in the shipyard in the constituency I was contesting at the time. And he meant it in its positive sense. He meant it as somebody who was balzy, who stood up for what she believed in, who fought her corner. but in the world of politics, it was immediately taken in its negative sense and used as part of the efforts of my political opponents, elements of the media, to characterize me in a particular way, which lots of young women, I think, encounter in politics and in other walks of life too. Yeah, so what did you do? Would you ignore it or laugh at it? Or what was your reaction? Well, one of the things that I look back on and understand now is when you are a woman, particularly a young woman, in a very, very male environment. In order to be taken seriously, you end up almost emulating the behaviours of the men around you.

Yeah. In terms of, you know, be dressing a bit more severely behaving in a much more, you know, strident adversarial way. And what I now understand is that in trying to do that to fit in, you actually play into the stereotype that people are trying to label you with anyway. Yeah, you know, you've been in office now a long time and you've seen what it was like when women were expected to emulate traditionally masculine qualities, maybe strong-arming people. But I'm wondering, after the Me Too movement, did things change? Do you feel like this younger generation is saying, no, we don't. want you to use those qualities to lead. In fact, that is not leading anymore. I think it is changing. I think it's still got a way to go. I think women are finding it easier, perhaps, to

be themselves and not to fall into those traps. Because it is a trap. What I found was, if you weren't behaving like the men around you, you were not taken seriously. But as soon as you started to do that, you were described as a nippy, sweetie and not feminine. So it's a double bind, a double huammy. And I think we are seeing women now lead in a way that is much more natural and actually makes for much better leadership. And I'm generalising, I suppose, here. But I think women tend to lead with much more emotional intelligence,

with much more ability to understand the real impacts of the decisions that they are taking. So I think we are seeing that female model, of leadership come more to the four. But we've still got a long way to go. So let's dive into the two big global issues that you have been tackling in Scotland in some pretty unique ways. You've actually given two TED talks on these topics. And the first one is about rethinking GDP as a measure of a country's success. Yeah. Well, firstly, I think it's time to turn away from GDP as the sole men. of a country's success. I'm not saying it's not important at all to measure our success in that

way, but I don't think it's sufficient. I mean, if you take GDP measurements, you know, we don't, we don't measure unpaid care, you know, people who look after elderly relatives or children, but we do measure, you know, illegal, the proceeds of illegal drug use. So there's something a bit wonky in having that is the sole measure of our success as a country. I believe, overall, all, the most important metric is how happy are we? Here's Nicholas Sturgeon on the TED stage. You know, when we focus on well-being, we start a conversation that provokes profound and fundamental questions.

What really matters to us in our lives? What do we value in the communities we live in? What kind of country? What kind of society? do we really want to be? In policy terms, this journey for Scotland started back in 2007 when we published what we call our national performance framework, looking at the range of indicators that we measure ourselves against. And those indicators are as varied as income inequality, the happiness of children, access to green spaces, access to housing. None of these are captured in GDP statistics,

but they are all fundamental to a healthy and a happy society. And that broader approach is at the heart of our economic strategy where we give equal importance to tackling inequality as we do to economic competitiveness. It drives our commitment to fair work, our path to a carbon-zero economy. We know from economic transformations of the past that if we're not careful, there are more losers,

than winners. And as we face up to the challenges of climate change and automation, we must not make those mistakes again. So you mentioned climate change here as something that goes along with building a happier, obviously, healthier society. And you actually gave another TED Talk more recently about the role that you and Scotland are trying to carve out for yourselves. At the recent big climate talks. Scotland was the host, but they weren't formally at the negotiating table. So talk to me about how you're trying to position Scotland as a leader on climate change. Well, I just wanted to do, I suppose, a couple of things. Firstly, make sure Scotland and the Scottish government was doing everything we possibly could to contribute to the best outcome from COP 26.

and we thought very carefully, given that we weren't around the negotiating table in our own right, how could we make a difference? What issues could we choose to champion to try to shift the dial a little bit on them? So that's the first thing. But then the other thing I wanted to do was showcase Scotland

because all countries, as we make this transition to net zero, we want to be the places where investment is coming, where the research has been done, where the innovation is happening. And this was a great opportunity to showcase Scotland to countries and companies and investors from around the world. You have really, I mean, despite Scotland being a really small country, you have decided to do a few things that other bigger countries are not doing.

You announced that Scotland was going to be the first government to contribute to a loss and damage fund offering money to countries who have faced harm from climate change. But really, like, what, how much of an impact can a country like Scotland really have. You are part of the UK. You are a very small country. Where do you see your ability to have real impact on the issue? First and foremost, we have to lead by example in what we are doing at home. But I think we demonstrated at COP that small countries can have a big voice. Loss and damage was one of the issues we decided in advance that we were going to champion.

because it's just a recognition that climate change, for many countries, they are suffering the loss and damage right now. They're suffering the harm right now. And the countries that are suffering most of that loss and damage are the countries that have done least to contribute to climate change. So those of us in countries like mine, industrialised countries, have a moral obligation to help those countries deal with that. Small countries have no time for small objectives.

examples of the leadership that small countries show everywhere we look. Take Bhutan, one million people or thereabouts, became the first in the world to commit to being carbon neutral for all time. Since then, 130 countries of all sizes have followed suit. Or Fiji in 2017, it hosted the UN Climate Conference and did so much to highlight the existential threat that climate change poses to island nations. Now, a country like Scotland with a rich industrial past has a special responsibility. We have disproportionately contributed to climate change, so we must do more now to help tackle climate change.

So in recent years, Scotland, this small country, has decarbonised faster than any G20 country. we have just become the first nation in the world that is not an independent nation yet to publish an indicative nationally defined contribution showing how we will meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement. So we've pledged to cut emissions by three quarters by 2030 and to be net zero by 2045. So my point today is that, yes, big countries matter,

but the leadership of small nations matters too. I mean, it means rethinking in the entire economy, right, how Scotland functions. We see Germany going through that as it tries to phase out coal and turn to wind. The United States is trying to figure out how to do that. How is Scotland going to do that? Because you have set very, very aggressive goals.

in terms of reducing your carbon emissions, way before, years before other countries have been called to do so? Well, yeah, I mean, we have, but I would argue that we're only doing what we are required to do in terms of the Paris obligations in order to play our small part in averting climate catastrophe for the planets. But this is something that is, it's an obligation for countries everywhere.

Every country will have particular challenges. Scotland is a country that has a country that has, produced, still produces oil and gas. So that transition is one of the most difficult for us. Every country has its difficulty. But the alternative to this is climate catastrophe and, you know, not leaving to future generations a planet that is habitable. And that is just, in my view, unthinkable. First Minister, this sounds like a naive question, but I really am wondering, do you love your job? Yes. Yeah, I do. I do. I'm, But it's not a naive question.

I suppose it's, what does that mean? I wouldn't do my job if I didn't love it. It is the biggest privilege imaginable to be the first minister of your country. And I love it and I wouldn't do it if I didn't love it. But that's not to say, I think what makes me sometimes, you know, step back from that question is when you say you love something, it kind of creates this impression that it's really, easy, it's a bit of a breeze and it's always joyful. And none of those things are or should be

true about a job like Mike. You know, there are some days, particularly in the last two years, where it's been, you know, really, really tough, where the decisions have been awful, where I've, you know, really struggled with the magnitude of all of that. So yes, I love it, but I don't want in saying that to create the impression that it is, you know, a walk in the park because no job like this ever should be or ever could be. So when we first started talking, we discussed the different challenges that women face as leaders, sometimes the double standards that they have to navigate. And I want to bring up a topic that you have been asked about recently, which is menopause.

I mean, on the one hand, it's kind of frustrating that this question is even being put to you in the first place, no male politician would be asked about his body. but on the other hand, as a one one myself, I feel like it's refreshing to hear you be honest about it. Well, yeah, I mean, that's what I've kind of said. I will try to do. I'm only beginning to, I suppose, experience what that means in reality and work out how I'm going to deal with it.

But I suspect I and most women in positions like mine will find that going through the menopause, you just have to work that much harder to overhaul. come some of this so maybe we just get better. I don't know, maybe having the world ruled by menopausal women would be the best thing for everybody. But I don't mind admitting it's not something that I feel all that comfortable with when even although I know intellectually there's no reason for me not to feel comfortable with it. Every woman goes through it. But I don't. It's very personal. It's not something that women have been openly talking about yet for very long. So I do feel a little

bit nervous and uncomfortable about it. But then I also feel if somebody like me doesn't, you know, open up about what it's like and how I cope with it, then I'm not doing what I could do to make it a bit easier for the next female First Minister of Scotland to might go through this to not feel quite so at sea about it. I mean, that's kind of what leadership is, I guess, right? Talking about things that affect everyone when you'd really rather just keep it to yourself. Yep. So as you reflect on your many years in government, what do you think? Is leadership changing?

Is it changing for the better? Yeah, I think, I hope leadership is changing in a way and that leaders feel able to be a bit more frank and open about the challenges of leadership, about the fact that leaders are also human beings and human beings are at fallible and we make mistakes. And that when we make mistakes, it is much better. to acknowledge that and learn the lessons from those mistakes

rather than do what politicians have traditionally done, which is never ever admit to ever making a mistake. And for anybody in a position of leadership, you're developing your approach to leadership all of the time and the day you stop doing that, it's probably the day you should give it up. Leadership changes you to some extent. It also reveals a lot about who you are to start with,

But it's also the case, I believe, that you should try to learn something from that to make you a better leader in the future. First Minister, thank you, thank you so much for your time. I know you have a lot going on. Thank you. Lovely to talk to you. That's Scotland's former First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon. You can see both of her talks at TED.com. On the show today, what leadership looks like.

I'm Manus Zamoroti, and you're listening to The TED Radio Hour from NPR. Be right back. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Anoush Zamoroti. And on the show today, what leadership looks like? And is it possible to lead your country if you're forced to flee it? Welcome to special coverage of Afghanistan. The breaking news out of Afghanistan.

Next to Afghanistan. The Taliban. Our reasons for remaining in Afghanistan become increasingly unclear. In the summer, of 2021, as the U.S. was withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan. It's time for American troops to come home. Fears were growing that after 20 years, the Taliban would return to Kabul and take back control of the country.

I stand squarely behind my decision. You know, I had two different types of reaction. One was almost the complete denial that we were headed into this worst case scenario. How could the world allow us to happen? It's just not going to happen. This is Shibana Basij Rassah. But simultaneously, as a leader of an all-girls school, being responsible for the safety of young women

whose families completely trusted us, obviously the response and the preparation was different. Shabana is talking about the school she founded, the School of Leadership, Afghanistan. or Sola, for short, which means peace in Pashto. Sola is Afghanistan's first and only all-girls boarding school. And Shabana knew what it was like to grow up in the country when educating girls was illegal.

We would have these daily reminders from our teachers in the Sikhs school. Say, when you get out of the house, walk away as fast as you can. And remember if you get caught by the Taliban, take them to your home. Don't bring them here. Less people will be killed in your house, more people will be killed here. That vigilance stuck with Shabana. And so as the Taliban closed in on Kabul that August, she was ready. Probably the most dangerous thing you can do in these kinds of overwhelming situation is not moving forward,

not making bold decisions. Without being able to get into too many details, I'll say that we'd been working around the clock for pretty much most of the summer. I was very closely tracking the districts across the 28 provinces where our students come from against the districts that were falling to the control of Taliban throughout the summer. And obviously that increasingly looked bleak.

And this was happening at a time when we had an eat holiday and the girls went home. They came back in the beginning of August. and as they were trickling into campus, Kabul fell to the control of Taliban. And panic and pandemonium at Kabul airport today. And as people desperately try to leave, turned into last-minute evacuation out of Afghanistan.

It's described as a chaotic exodus. Now, people are literally kicklinging on the US military air. What can you tell us about getting the girls out? What I can tell you is that I think the most difficult experience for the girls, was getting through the airport. That was quite traumatic. And then obviously later on, concerns for the safety and well-being of families

and loved ones left behind. We left Afghanistan shortly after the fall of Kabul City. We got to Doha from Kabul. And then five days later on August 25th, The entire group left Doha to get to Rwanda. August 25th is when we arrived there, and four days later, August 29th, is when we resumed classes for our students.

These dates were like signed toasts on a road I never wanted to be on. Here's more from Shabana Basij Rossach on the TED stage. Seoul's departure from Afghanistan made headlines. And I think it has drawn the attention partly because how swiftly the Taliban took over Afghanistan and how quickly so much of what was beautiful about my country turned to dust. I never imagined Afghanistan would fall as fast as it did. No one imagined it. But I want you to know I haven't stopped dreaming.

Neither have those girls of solar. We have taken our dreams and adapted them. agility, adaptation, resilience. These concepts are core to everything that Sola is. I'll explain. Back in 2012, we ran a program where girls lived at Sola, but primarily studied at high schools in Kabul. And we secured scholarships for these girls

to pursue their education overseas, including here in America. It worked. It worked well. But I realized I was contributing to something I never wanted to see. A brain drain of Afghanistan's educated woman. So I realized I had to adapt. I wanted to educate Afghan girls who would become educated Afghan woman, who would then educate other girls, and all of them together over time would build a new Afghanistan from the bottom up.

And they would be among its leaders. I needed a place where these girls would learn to read English and Koran. I needed a place where the administration and instructors would be women. A place with a notion of female leadership, Afghan female leadership, would become known for every student. I needed a place that quite simply did not exist in Afghanistan. So my team and I created it. In 2016, Sola became a full-fledged boarding school for girls.

The first and only. Educating girls, breaking barriers, this is what we do at Sola. We became known for this nationwide. Parents came to us from across Afghanistan asking us to admit their daughters. I want to ask you about the word in the name of the school, school of leadership. Why did you decide you really wanted to include that word? What does it mean for you that it's a school of leadership? And how do you explain that to your students and their parents?

Yeah. When talking about our students, I used to say, we are educating future leaders of Afghanistan. And I quickly dropped the word future because already the girls are demonstrating leadership at such a young age, and most importantly in ways that is organic that we haven't even asked them to, but they engage in themselves. But one example that was quite amazing to me is we have a number of girls from Helmand province in southern Afghanistan where girls' access to education is just well below 10%.

And so when our girls from Helmand province would go home for their winter break, schools would be in session in their province. And they decided, on their own, four of them, to go to the local public school and volunteer to teach for the two and a half months they were home. And in doing so, they doubled the number of female teachers in that school. Wow. That school only had four female teachers. And these were our seventh, eighth, eighth, and ninth graders. mind you, one of them continues to talk about her desire to open a branch of Sola in Helmand province one day.

And so what I love about it is that by having this critical word as part of our school name allows our girls at a really young but a really critical time in their life to reflect on what it means to be a leader or to become one. You are now the head of a school of leadership of a country where the students cannot go back, at least not now. How do you teach your students to be leaders of a place that they can't live in and be who they are? I come back to where we have landed. You know, we have many Rwandan friends who remind us that they themselves were once refugees. But as refugees, they prepared for a return someday. They worked hard.

They deliberately worked towards that. And now they're back. And so we have a responsibility to prepare for that return someday. But until then, we have a lot of work ahead of us. On February 25th, 2022, exactly six months to the day since our arrival in Rwanda, we announced our new admission season at Sola. And we are admitting Afghan girls from refugee communities across the world. For a young girl, those are the most critical years of her life.

And imagine putting her in a safe, nurturing, educational environment in a community of other young Afghan women. And then working towards this notion of preparing for a return to their homeland one day. but returning as highly educated young women who can then immediately roll up their sleeves and be at the forefront of the new direction that they want to take the country to. And the possibility in this darkest time for us Afghans to know that this potential exists is one that excites me and my team to do more. You are building this network of Afghan girls and women into a sisterhood. And it sounds like you think that's just as important as knowing how to read and write and think critically.

Absolutely. If you look at most effective women's movements, it has always started with this idea of a network of women, a sisterhood that lifted each other up. And for us, sisterhood is an incredibly important aspect of the Sola experience. When we admit a young woman, the very first person that she meets is her big sister. Another student. Yep, it's another Sola student. Because we have students coming to Sola from all across Afghanistan, we have a girl coming from Kandahar, Badakhshan, from Herat. Right now, they are each other's friends.

family. We've had, unfortunately, in the recent years, you know, with Civil War and since then, a huge ethnic tension in the country. And then in the midst of all of this, you bring girls from across the country. And the very first message you give them is that your big sister, the person who's going to make sure that you have the best first year ever, is, by the way, someone who's from the complete opposite part of the country, and it doesn't matter. Because that is not the focus. The focus here is that you are big sister, little sister, and that's the relationship that will define your experience at Sola.

I was interviewing a girl who was applying for sixth grade. I asked her why she wanted to come to Sola. She said, I have dreamed of this. I've dreamed of coming to Sola ever since I was a little girl. In all these years that I have interviewed girls from across Afghanistan, this was the first time that a young girl said that to me. Why do I keep doing what I do despite the risk that comes with it and all the uncertainty? Because Afghanistan is a country of hope and dreams.

It's my home. and it always will be. And now out there in the most remote corners of Afghanistan are young girls dreaming to attend Sola. My community, my students are settling and thriving in Rwanda. And I'm so grateful we're there. I see Afghanistan now through TV news reports or on my phone when friends are still in Afghanistan call me. but Sola is there too. We have planted roots that can never be destroyed.

Years ago, I challenged the world to dare to educate Afghan girls. Those girls are young women now, and they will do what Afghan women have always done, meet uncertainty head on and rise above it. I know they will do their part. I know you are still thinking about the future of your school, And something that you mention on the TED stage is that you and your team had purchased a plot of land in Kabul where you were going to build a new campus. And now that land is just sitting there.

But it is still there, right? Technically, it's still yours. It's still there. We still hold legal rights to that plot of land. We will for a very long time, as originally been decided. We've invested quite a bit in the construction of that. But, you know, in terms of when we are able to return to that, time will tell. And meanwhile, as we've seen, I'm sure this didn't necessarily come as a surprise to you, but the Taliban have broken their promise of letting girls go back to school.

Despite this, how are you managing to stay optimistic, Shabana? Well, the Taliban have walked back on many, many promises they have made in this short period of time. But for as long as they hold a policy to suppress girls and women, they are not going to be in any way successful. They can't silence half of the population. They simply can't. The bravery of Afghan women is not a product of the past 20 years. It has existed all along. Afghan women have fought many hardships for the dignity of human experience in Afghanistan overall.

And I know that they will continue to do that. Each one of those acts of silencing women only awakens the anger and sense of resistance in thousands more. And I don't mean to in any way be dramatic about this, but truly speak about the frustration of Afghan women that is, there, this absolute unshakable, enough is enough, sense that women across Afghanistan feel and will continue to fight for. That's Shabana Basij Rousse. She's the founder and president of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan, which is for now

based in Rwanda. You can see her full talks at TED.com. Thank you so much for listening to our show this week about what leadership looks like. This episode was produced by Fiona Gieran, Katie Montalione, and Diba Motisham. It was edited by Katie Simon and me. Our TED Radio production staff also includes Rachel Faulkner, James Delahousie, Matthew Cloutier, Ramel Wood, Margaret Serino, and Catherine Seifer. Our audio engineer is Brian Jarbo. Our theme music was written by Romteen, Arablewe. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Colin Helms, Anna Feeleyn, Michelle Quint, Sammy Case, and

Daniela Beloreso. I'm Manusse Zamorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.