WEBVTT

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How many of you are completely comfortable

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with calling yourselves a leader?

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See, I've asked that question all the way across the country,

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and everywhere I ask it, no matter where,

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there's always a huge portion of the audience that won't put up their hand.

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And I've come to realize that we have made leadership

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into something bigger than us.

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We've made into something beyond us.

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We've made it about changing the world.

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And we've taken this title of leader, and we treat it

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as if it's something that one day we're going to deserve,

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but to give it to ourselves right now

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means a level of arrogance or cockiness that we're not comfortable with.

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And I worry sometimes that we spend so much time

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celebrating amazing things that hardly anybody can do

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that we've convinced ourselves that those are

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the only things worth celebrating, and we start to

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devalue the things that we can do every day, and we start

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to take moments where we truly are a leader

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and we don't let ourselves take credit for it,

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and we don't let ourselves feel good about it.

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And I've been lucky enough over the last

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10 years to work with some amazing people

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who have helped me redefine leadership in a way

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that I think has made me happier.

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And with my short time today, I just want to share with you

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the one story that is probably most responsible for that redefinition.

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I went to school in a little school called

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Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick,

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and on my last day there, a girl came up to me

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and she said, "I remember the first time that I met you."

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And then she told me a story that had happened four years earlier.

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She said, "On the day before I started university,

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I was in the hotel room with my mom and my dad, and

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I was so scared and so convinced that I couldn't do this,

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that I wasn't ready for university, that I just burst into tears.

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And my mom and my dad were amazing. They were like,

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'Look, we know you're scared, but let's just go tomorrow.

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Let's go to the first day, and if at any point

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you feel as if you can't do this, that's fine, just tell us,

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we will take you home. We love you no matter what.'"

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And she says, "So I went the next day

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and I was standing in line getting ready for registration,

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and I looked around and I just knew I couldn't do it.

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I knew I wasn't ready. I knew I had to quit."

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And she says, "I made that decision, and as soon as I made it,

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there was this incredible feeling of peace that came over me.

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And I turned to my mom and my dad to tell them

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that we needed to go home, and just at that moment,

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you came out of the Student Union building

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wearing the stupidest hat I have ever seen in my life." (Laughter)

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"It was awesome.

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And you had a big sign promoting Shinerama,

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which is Students Fighting Cystic Fibrosis,"

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— a charity I've worked with for years —

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"and you had a bucketful of lollipops.

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And you were walking along and you were handing the lollipops out

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to people in line and talking about Shinerama.

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And all of a sudden, you got to me, and you just stopped,

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and you stared. It was creepy." (Laughter)

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This girl right here knows exactly what I'm talking about. (Laughter)

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"And then you looked at the guy next to me,

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and you smiled, and you reached in your bucket, and you pulled

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out a lollipop, and you held it out to him, and you said,

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'You need to give a lollipop to the beautiful woman standing next to you.'"

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And she said, "I have never seen anyone get more embarrassed faster in my life.

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He turned beet red, and he wouldn't even look at me.

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He just kind of held the lollipop out like this." (Laughter)

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"And I felt so bad for this dude that I took the lollipop,

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and as soon as I did, you got this incredibly severe look

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on your face and you looked at my mom and my dad,

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and you said, 'Look at that. Look at that.

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First day away from home, and already she's taking candy

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from a stranger?!'" (Laughter)

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And she said, "Everybody lost it. Twenty feet in every

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direction, everyone started to howl.

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And I know this is cheesy, and I don't know why I'm telling you this,

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but in that moment when everyone was laughing,

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I knew that I shouldn't quit.

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I knew that I was where I was supposed to be,

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and I knew that I was home, and I haven't spoken to you

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once in the four years since that day,

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but I heard that you were leaving,

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and I had to come up and tell you that you've been

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an incredibly important person in my life, and I'm going to miss you. Good luck."

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And she walks away, and I'm flattened.

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And she gets about six feet away, she turns around and smiles, and goes,

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"You should probably know this, too.

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I'm still dating that guy four years later." (Laughter)

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A year and a half after I moved to Toronto,

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I got an invitation to their wedding.

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Here's the kicker. I don't remember that.

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I have no recollection of that moment,

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and I've searched my memory banks, because that is funny

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and I should remember doing it, and I don't remember it.

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And that was such an eye-opening, transformative moment

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for me to think that maybe the biggest impact I'd ever had

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on anyone's life, a moment that had a woman walk up

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to a stranger four years later and say,

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"You've been an incredibly important person in my life,"

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was a moment that I didn't even remember.

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How many of you guys have a lollipop moment,

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a moment where someone said something or did something

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that you feel fundamentally made your life better?

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All right. How many of you have told that person they did it?

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See, why not? We celebrate birthdays,

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where all you have to do is not die for 365 days — (Laughter) —

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and yet we let people who have made our lives better

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walk around without knowing it.

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And every single one of you, every single one of you

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has been the catalyst for a lollipop moment.

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You have made someone's life better by something

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that you said or that you did, and if you think you haven't,

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think about all the hands that didn't go back up when I asked that question.

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You're just one of the people who hasn't been told.

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But it is so scary to think of ourselves as that powerful.

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It can be frightening to think that we can matter that much

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to other people, because as long as we make leadership something bigger than us,

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as long as we keep leadership something beyond us,

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as long as we make it about changing the world,

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we give ourselves an excuse not to expect it

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every day from ourselves and from each other.

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Marianne Williamson said, "Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate.

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Our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

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It is our light, and not our darkness, that frightens us."

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And my call to action today is that we need to get over that.

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We need to get over our fear of how extraordinarily

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powerful we can be in each other's lives.

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We need to get over it so we can move beyond it, and our

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little brothers and our little sisters, and one day our kids --

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or our kids right now -- can watch and start to value

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the impact we can have on each other's lives

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more than money and power and titles and influence.

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We need to redefine leadership as being about lollipop moments,

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how many of them we create, how many of them we acknowledge,

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how many of them we pay forward, and how many of them we say thank you for.

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Because we've made leadership about changing the world,

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and there is no world. There's only six billion understandings of it,

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and if you change one person's understanding of it,

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one person's understanding of what they're capable of,

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one person's understanding of how much people care about them,

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one person's understanding of how powerful an agent

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for change they can be in this world, you've changed the whole thing.

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And if we can understand leadership like that,

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I think if we can redefine leadership like that,

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I think we can change everything.

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And it's a simple idea, but I don't think it's a small one,

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and I want to thank you all so much for letting me share it with you today.