Ralph Schonenbach is a serial entrepreneur whose work centers around developing and nurturing relationships. www.trymeerkat.ai is his latest start-up, and in this episode of the Leadership 2.0 podcast, I talk with Ralph about this venture, as well as his book ‘Relationships matter’, which was recently published.
In our conversation, we touched on the following topics:
What do the notorious former marketing director of American Apparel, Ryan Holiday, and renowned Dutch reformed theologian Bram van de Beek have in common? They both have written a book about the danger of egocentricity.
Social media offers endless possibilities to promote ourselves and serve as outlets for our vanity. It enables us to humble brag about our professional achievements on LinkedIn, share evidence of our successful ‘friends & family’ life on Facebook, and demonstrate our cutting-edge lifestyle on Instagram.
However, looking at our current society and world history, it seems we as human beings always have been prone to self-centeredness and self-promotion. Social media therefore merely enables us to express something that is already deeply rooted in us.
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According to Moises Naim, polarization, together with populism and post-truths, is one of the three p’s undermining democratic societies.
Observing the public debate, which is becoming more and more polarized, it seems we are losing our ability to talk with people who have other opinions. Instead, we talk about them.
We try to classify people who have a different opinion than us, with a label. Once this label has been issued, we feel we do not have to enter in debates with them anymore. On the contrary, we try to prevent debates, since this would provide our opponents with an opportunity to share their opinions.
The difficulty however is that the effectiveness of human societies depends on our ability to cooperate and reconcile our differences.
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The invention of the printing press proved to be a pivotal point in the development of our society because it enabled the dissemination of ideas and information at an unprecedented pace. It is unlikely that, without the printing press, the Reformation in the 16th century would have had such a huge impact, so quickly.
In the 20th century, radio and television increased the speed of information even more. It is likely that the public opinion about the war in Vietnam (the first television war) changed significantly as a result of the coverage of this war on television.
No wonder that many governments tried to control these media, either in the form of censorship, or by creating monopolies for news dissemination (e.g in the former Soviet Union).
At the end of the 1990s, social media platforms started to emerge, disrupting the traditional media landscape of newspaper, radio, and television organizations.
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I am a big fan of LinkedIn. Since I joined the platform 12.5 years ago, it has proved to be an incredible source of connections and information, as well as a great platform to publish my ideas. As a matter of fact, I like the platform so much, that I took a premium subscription a couple of years ago.
In order to celebrate this jubilee, I decided to publish my personal wishlist with features I wished LinkedIn would implement. I wish LinkedIn would enable me to:
Dirk Verburg 