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We all know the conventional career advice. Confidence is important. Dress for the job you want. Be authentic (but not too authentic). Follow your dreams (but also make a living). Don't be afraid to negotiate your salary, always use spell check, and once and for all, stop eating lunch at your desk.
But some of the most valuable advice is the stuff doesn't get repeated ad nauseam, which is why TED put together a playlist showcasing the best unconventional — and counterintuitive — career wisdom ever discussed on their stages.
We watched them all. Here's what we learned.
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Susan Colantuono: There's a reason there aren't more women in the C-suite — and it's not the one you think.
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Colantuono, founder and CEO of the management-consulting firm Leading Women, begins her talk with what we already know: Women are breaking through to middle management, but there aren't enough women making it all the way to the top.
The reason for that, she argues, is deceptively simple. Women are being advised to work on being great themselves, and they're being advised to cultivate greatness in others. And those are indeed two of the three major leadership tenets, she says in the talk. But nobody is talking to women about the tenets that are most important for advancement: strong business acumen and strategic thinking.
If that seems too obvious to mention — obviously hard skills matter — it isn't: Performance reviews, personal-development efforts, and mentorship programs all tend to focus on the personal and interpersonal stuff.
To close the gender gap, that needs to change — and in her talk, Colantuono outlines a plan for making that happen.
Nigel Marsh: Flexible hours and generous parental policies are NOT the keys to work-life balance.
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Pretty much everyone is on board with the concept of work-life balance, but according Marsh, a writer and marketing expert, pretty much everyone is thinking about it wrong.
"Some job and career choices are fundamentally incompatible with being meaningfully engaged on a day-to-day basis with a young family," he says, and no amount of "flexitime," is going to fundamentally change that.
"Corporations aren't going to solve this issue for us," he says, pointing out that it's almost always in the company's interest to keep you at work. (That's the dark side of employee perks: If they offer childcare, you can stay even longer.)
Instead, he uses his talk to advocate for an alternative solution: Change the time frame for balance (a day is too short; after you retire is too long), and — perhaps most importantly — make the right investments in the right places.
Simon Sinek: People don't buy WHAT you do — they buy WHY you do it.
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Every company knows what it does, says leadership expert Sinek. Most companies know how they do it. But only some know why they do it — and that's a problem, because knowing your "why" is the most important tenet of any business, hands-down.
The "why" is what motivates behavior. It's what gets people to believe in your cause. "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it,"he explains in his talk. Belief matters — and that's true for selling iPhones, for motivating employees, and for inspiring social change.
Sinek points to Martin Luther King Jr. to illustrate."Dr. King gave the 'I Have a Dream' speech, not the 'I Have a Plan' speech," he points out.
See the rest of the story at Business InsiderNOW WATCH: Here's the best look yet at the next big game starring Batman
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