Where Do You Look for Accurate Definitions?
August 30, 2023 – I love looking for definitions in places most people think are unconventional: movies, song lyrics, proverbs, advertisements, the Bible or TV shows.
Applying a label or a definition to something makes it official, gives it meaning. This in turn shapes decisions, policies and funding.
However, labels and definitions are influenced by the culture, experiences, and background of the person(s) writing them.
Today’s world is so multi-everything (culture, race, language, generation and so on), that you can ask six people the definition of leadership and get six completely different definitions.
Are those definitions wrong? Nope. Just different. Influenced by that individual’s life, beliefs, culture and experiences.
Outdated Definitions
Our definition of something or someone can also feed into the danger of a single story. Think about the songs “Do they know it’s Christmas” and “Feed the World” from the 1980s that were used as fundraisers to help feed starving children in Africa. Today, 40 years later, people still think everyone in Africa is starving.
Why? Because people haven’t thought or been encouraged to contemplate that just like their home country has changed over the past 40 years, so too have all the countries that make up the continent of Africa changed.
Out-of-the-Box Definitions
In the Masters course I teach on “Leadership, Politics and Multiparty Collaboration”, one of the first assignments I have my students do is define four words: leadership, poverty, collaboration and international development.
This isn’t an exercise in right or wrong. Rather it is an exercise in stretching our brain, opening our eyes, contemplating new and different ways to define words and concepts.
Below are some of my favorite definitions of these words.
Leadership
From leadership scholar, Warren Bennis: “leadership is like beauty, it’s hard to define, but you know it when you see it”
Movie: Nelson Mandela in the movie “Invictus”
Poverty
Movies
o Slumdog Millionaire – would an Indian define their slums as poverty?
o Blood Diamonds – why is everyone working in those illegal mines? Because there are no (or not enough) formal sector jobs.
o Les Miserables – poor people exist in first world countries too; stealing a loaf of bread in 1832 Paris, France, had life altering consequences
Advertisements: starving children, with flies buzzing around their head feeds the incorrect and one-sided stereotypes people have of Africa and highlights the danger of a single story
Netflix documentary: “Lead me Home” shows how the USA, a “first world nation”, has the same problems was countries all over the world – in this case homelessness
Collaboration
Baking: one wrong or missing ingredient and what you are baking will either flop or taste really really awful!
Movies
o Red Sea Diving Resort - Undercover agents open up a fake hotel to real tourists as a cover to help smuggle thousands of Ethiopian refugees to safety. Inspired by true events.
o Cool Runnings – In the face of trash talk, poor equipment, bullying as well as bureaucracy; the Jamaican bobsled team showed the world what tenacity, unity and hard work means…earning the respect of everyone.
International Development
Songs: Do they know it’s Christmas time at All and We are the World
Movie: City of Joy - rebuilding the sense of self and empowerment of women who have been brutally and often continually sexually assaulted in war-torn DR Congo
Book/Movie: Uncharitable - highlighting the different rule books people have for how they expect charitable companies and for-profit companies to operate
What about you? Any favorite, out-of-the-box definitions you’d like to share? You can reach me at drdeannedevries@icloud.com or via LinkedIn at https://bit.ly/DrDeanneDeVriesLI
Photo: My own. Reading to a group of children along the roadside in Uganda while waiting for our tire to get fixed. Being on the ground and interacting with people of all ages, face-to-face is the best way to understand how and why people define things the way they do.