My name's Aaron Greenburg. I'm the chief of staff in the
Microsoft Devices Group. And if you're like me, you've been
just completely captivated and enamored with the work of Simon
Sinek. In fact, it's fascinating to see people walk in and just
talk about how many people are huge fans of his.
And, you know,
we get to see a lot of speakers, but I think today is really
unique and really special. So for me it was a true honor
when they asked me to introduce Simon and introduce him to the
Microsoft Research Visiting Speaker Series.
And for me, Simon has been an inspiration.
What I love about
his work is his ability to really start and spark great
thinking, which for me and so many people is like that lightbulb
going off in your head. He not only gets you thinking, but he
also gets you to challenge your assumptions and provides deep
insights to how great leaders and how great teams function and
inspire people.
And so today, we have Simon here to talk about his latest book
which is called Leaders Eat Last. If you are not familiar with
the book or have it, it is also available at the corner along
with Start with Why, which I know many of you likely have read.
Simon's been nice enough to agree to stay afterwards and sign
copies of the book, as well.
Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Some Don't.
I've been on teams that pull together and teams that don't.
So
I think it's really fitting time to have him here.
Some great
learnings on we can build and pull together to build
high-functioning teams, some deep insights into how humans work,
our emotions, how we connect, how we interact.
And these are
really key ingredients to creating that environment where we can
naturally trust each other and cooperate.
Simon, in addition to being a best-selling author, now his TEDx
Talks, if you have seen him, he now is the second most-viewed
TEDx Talk of all time, which is impressive.
You can understand
why.
So with that, please welcome and please give a well warm welcome
for Simon Sinek.
>> Simon Sinek: So the intention is to, you know, talk about
the book. But I think I'll just wax philosophical; some of
which will be in the book, some of which won't.
I think it's both exciting and depressing that messages like
mine have an audience. You know, I talk about really simple
things like how to be fulfilled, you know, and like how to do
things that inspire us and how to work for a company that sort
of gets the best out of us and makes us feel good while they're
doing it. It's kind of upsetting that people are even wanting
to hear that, meaning that there's a demand for it.
But it also
presents the most remarkable opportunity in the world, which
means there's an opportunity for us to change the way work is
done so that all of those things are not the exception but,
rather, the rule.
You know, it is the exception when somebody says, I love my job.
And you meet somebody at a bar, and like, What do you do? Oh, I
love my job. You're so lucky. Right?
That that should be something special is remarkable.
And so the amazing thing is that the ability to say, I love my
job, I love what I do, is actually not that complicated to find,
and not ironically it has nothing to do with the work that we
do. It has everything to do with the people with whom we work.
And you don't even have to like the people with whom you work.
That's the most amazing thing of all.
If you think about it, in the military, there are people who are
willing to risk their lives for people they don't even like. We
don't even like to give them credit for things, you know.
So what is it that creates an environment in which people care
about so many that they would risk their lives for people that
they don't even like, right, sometimes?
This is remarkable to me.
Human beings in all their complexity and all of the nonsense and
all the messiness what drives us is kind of simple.
And this is
what I like to research and learn about and write about, which
if you understand the very basic mechanics of this machine
called the human being, it becomes fairly obvious as to which
conditions in which the machine will perform well and in what
conditions a machine will not perform well.
Very simply, our machine is a social machine.
We are social
animals, and we respond to the environment we're in.
That's it.
Good people are capable of doing very bad things if they're in
the wrong environment. And people who society may have given up
on if you put them in the right environment are capable of
performing remarkable, remarkable things.
This is the job of leadership, which is to make that
environment. The leader sets the tone, and the tone that is set
will determine how we respond accordingly.
And, again, we are
relatively simple in our motivations.
If you go back to the
Paleolithic era when homosapiens first stepped foot on the
planet about 50,000 years ago, there were hominid species that
existed at the same time, but we were the ones that survived.
They died. We weren't necessarily the stronger.
We weren't
necessarily the fastest. Yet, we've done quite well. Look at
this remarkable world that we've built.
One of the huge advantages we had and have is that we are social
animals, and things like trust and cooperation are absolutely
essential to our survival. They're not just nice ideas.
They're absolutely essential.
You can imagine why. When we
existed, when we lived in populations, that never really got
bigger than about 150 people or 40 or 50,000 of the people on
this planet, we never lived in populations of bigger than 150
people. I understand the scale does present inherent problems.
What it meant was I could fall asleep at night and trust that
someone in my tribe would watch for danger.
If I didn't trust
the people in my tribe, I couldn't go to sleep.
This is not a
very good system for survival, for performance or anything, any
other matric. It's the same at work. When we work with people
whom we trust, I don't need to double check your work, I don't
need to see it before it goes out, you know. You don't need my
approval, right?
When we trust, we can let people go do their work, and even if
they're subordinate, we don't need to double check or approve or
anything. It will happen because we trust them, because we all
have each other's backs. We all have each other's interests in
mind.
The problem with things like trust and cooperation is that they
are not instruction. I can't simply tell me, Trust me. You
constantly ask people to trust your in your advertising, and you
constantly tell people I want you two to cooperate.
Trust and
cooperation are feelings. And this is the problem.
So the question is where do those feelings come from.
Now, again, we are basically pretty simple in our motivation and
our constructions. You can imagine what life -- you can imagine
what life must have been like in these Paleolithic times.
It
was a world filled with danger, all of these forces working
extremely hard to kill us, whether it was the weather or lack of
resources or Saber-Tooth Tiger, nothing personal.
But all of
these forces were working together to end our lives.
And so as tribal animals, we worked together and lived and
worked amongst people around whom we felt safe.
We felt like we
belonged. And when we felt safe amongst the people with whom we
lived and worked, the natural human response is trust and
cooperation. It's just what happens.
When we do not feel safe amongst the people with whom we work,
however, the natural human inclination is cynicism, paranoia,
mistrust and self-interest.
When we do not feel safe amongst the people with whom we work,
if our leaders do not make us feel safe, we have no choice but
to spend our own time and our energy to protect ourselves from
each other. When we do not fear each other, we naturally work
together to face the dangers and seize the opportunities.
It's the exact same thing in our modern business world. There
are forces that are a constant and beyond our control that are
working to kill you, right?
Maybe I'm exaggerating. But there are forces outside like the
uncertainty of an economy, the ups and downs of a stock market,
the new technology that might render a business model
obsolete over night, your competition that sometimes is trying
to kill you, it's trying to destroy that product to put you out
of business, but at the very minimum is trying to frustrate your
growth and steal your customers. These forces are a constant,
and you have no control over them and never will.
The only
variable are the conditions inside the organization.
And when
those conditions are set in the manner that allows us to feel
like we can trust and cooperate, we do.
This is what leaders are supposed to do.
There is an exact
definition of leadership. And it is not my opinion. You know,
I love all the books that come out and all the articles, what
makes a great leader, what are the five things you need to do to
be a leader. You need charisma. You need vision. You know,
all of these things. I can tell you right now those things are
sometimes useful, but they're not essential.
Not everyone has
vision. Does that the mean they're not allowed to be leaders?
You know, some people have remarkable charisma, and some people
don't. Does that mean they will never lead?
Of course, it's all nonsense. You can't manufacture these
things. Some people are good strategic thinkers, and some
people are not. Some people are just naturally good at
basketball, and some people are not.
There are skills you can
get better at them, for sure. But you're either a visionary, or
you're not. These are not things you can manufacture.
In other
words, they're not essential components for leadership.
There's
only one characteristic that I'm comfortable saying that all
leaders must have to become leaders, and that's courage,
because leadership is hard, and it often requires sacrifice.
And it will happen that you will have to put your interest, your
comfort, your advantages aside so that others may gain.
And
that's sometimes really hard. In fact, standing up for others
may mean that you may get your head chopped off.
You know, a
leader sometimes loses their job, because they did the right
thing, right?
That comes with significance risk. The choice to be a leader
comes at significant risk, and this is why not everyone chooses
to be a leader. Leadership has nothing to do with rank. It has
nothing to do with the title you have on your card.
Leadership
is a choice. That's it. I know many, many people who sit in a
senior echelons of a company, and they are not leaders.
They
are authorities, and they have authority.
And we do what they
say, because they have authority over us, but we would not
follow them. I know many people who sit at the bottom of
organizations who have no authority, but they are absolutely
leaders, and the reason they are leaders is because they have
made a choice. They have chosen to look after the persons to
the left of them, and they have chosen to look after the person
to the right of them. It doesn't always mean they have to
sacrifice their interests, but when it really counts, sometimes
they choose to sacrifice their interests, because it's in the
interest of the person to the left and to the right of them.
This is what leadership is.
The role of leaders is not an accident either.
It's built into
our anthropology. It's part of our survival. The reason we
have hierarchy and the reasons we have leaders for those times
when we lived in these austere conditions we had a little bit of
a problem. It was a very practical problem. It wasn't
necessarily enough food to go around all the time.
We didn't
have supermarkets and cars and just go get milk. Sometimes
there was food readily available; sometimes not, which meant if
we were living in a population of somewhere up to 150, we would
all rush in to eat, because we're all hungry, and if you were
lucky enough to be built like a football player, you could shove
your way to the front of the line. If you were the artist of
the family, you would get an elbow in the face.
This is not a
good system for cooperation. It's not a good system for
survival, because the odds are that if I got punched in the face
this afternoon I'm not going to wake the guy if I see danger.
Bad system
And so we evolved into hierarchal animal.
We are constantly
assessing and judging each other who's alpha and who's beta. We
organize ourselves in our hierarchy.
Even in meetings, we go to
meetings, like everybody's equal.
I want to work together. Not
going to happen. We are never equals. We always assess. We
always judge. We always allow some others deference in the role
of leadership, and some of us defer and sort of take a more
subordinate role. It always happens. Not necessarily a bad
thing.
Again, the reasons are very practical based on our history,
because what would happen is when we would assess someone as our
alpha -- let me be clear. Your capacity to be an alpha in any
population is not an absolute. It is relevant to the population
you're in. So you might be a technologist or an engineer, and
you might think you are the hottest, best, fantastic
engineer. So does everybody else. And you go take a dance
class. All of a sudden, you're just not so big anymore, right?
We've all had the experience, right?
We've all had the experience where we shake someone's hand and
we're nervous. You're not the alpha, you know. Or we can sense
that someone is nervous meeting us.
You're the alpha, right?
It's a relative scale. So when we assess someone in the the
system is alpha, we voluntarily step back and allow them first
choice of meat, the first choice of cake.
We let them eat
first. We may not get the best choice of meat, but we will eat
eventually, and we didn't have to get an elbow in the face to
get at that food. Good system.
To this day, we are very comfortable with paying deference and
offering advantages to those more senior than us.
There's not a
single person in this room, zero, that has a problem with
somebody more senior than you in the company making more than
you by having a bigger salary than you.
It doesn't bother you.
You might think they're an idiot, but it doesn't actually bother
you that they make more money than you, because they out rank
you. No issue. It doesn't bother us at all that somebody more
senior than us has a bigger office or a better parking space.
It is no issue whatsoever. So, in fact, we very
often find ourselves deferring to our alpha, doing nice things
for our alpha. We open doors for them, call them sir and ma'am,
and get them tea, and they didn't even ask.
I can promise you
that as you're walking out of this room if as Steven Spielberg
happened to walk in you would hold the door open for him, and
then you would go home and tell your spouse or your boyfriend or
your girlfriend you'll never believe what happened, I held the
door open for Steven Spielberg. How come you don't do that for
anybody else?
It's because we're proud to sometimes do menial labor for those
who we perceive as alphas in our system.
We're proud to work
for the groups that they lead and the organizations that they
lead. By the way, you can't lead a company.
You can run a
company. You can only lead people.
So this whole idea of deference and how we always defer and sort
of volunteer to these alphas is a natural human response, and
it's a survival instinct, and it's all about this.
And that's
the point. None of those perks that you get for being the
leader, for being the alpha, none of them come free.
They come
at a very high expense. You see, the group is not dumb. We
expect that the person who's better fed, the person who's
actually stronger or smarter than us, the person who has a
higher self-confidence, has more self-confidence because
of all of our love, deference and hello, sir, and hello, ma'am,
actually boosts their self-confidence.
We expect that more
confident, stronger, better-fed persons when danger threatens
the tribe, we expect them to rush towards the danger to protect
us. That's the cost of leadership. That's why we gave you
first choice of meat, because you might die, and we want to keep
your genes in the gene pool. We're not stupid.
And this is what it means to be a leader.
The willingness to
rush towards the danger, to protect those in your care.
It is a
choice. You don't have to be a leader. It is a choice. If you
don't like the cost of leadership, you may not accept the perks
of leadership, because they do not come for free.
This is the reason why we are so viscerally offended by some of
the banking CEO's have these disproportionate salaries and
bonuses structures. It's not the money that offends us. We
know deep inside us this violated the very definition of what it
means to be a leader. They have accepted all the perks and
bonuses and benefits of being the leader, and, yet, they're not
willing to make any sacrifices of the role they have accepted.
In other words, we know that they allowed their people to be
sacrificed for them to keep their bonuses and perks and
advantages. Worse, sometimes they chose to sacrifice their
people to protect their bonuses and their perks.
This is what
so offends us. It's not the money. If I told you we're going
to give a $150 million bonus to Nelson Mandela, does anyone have
a problem with that?
No.
How about a $250 million bonus to Mother Theresa?
with that?
No.
Got an issue
It's not the money. It's not the money. It's that leadership
is a choice. And in our modern day and age, unfortunately, many
of the people who would like to call themselves leaders are not
leaders at all. They are authorities. That's all they are.
And we have to do what they say, because they have authority
over us, but we would not follow them.
And this is a problem,
because when we do not feel that they have our backs, when we do
not feel safe working inside their organizations, they force us
to spend our time and our energy to protect ourselves from them,
and the organization itself suffers.
It's what happens.
It's ironic to me that organizations like your own who want to
drive innovation and ideas and new ways of thinking would in the
same breath lay people off because they didn't make the numbers
in one year. You do realize those two concepts are completely
counter-productive.
It's like talking to a CEO and I ask what
are your priorities. They say we have two priorities, innovation
and efficiency.
Not possible.
There is nothing
efficient about innovation. Try. Fail. Try. Fail. Try.
Fail. Try. Fail. Try. Fail. Succeed. Not efficient. It
takes, you know, money to try things out.
You can be
innovative, or you can be efficient.
You can be efficient and
hope for innovation, and you can be innovative and hope for
efficiency. There's always going to be one subordinate to the
other, not better or worse, but let's not kid ourselves and
think they can be equal ground. They cannot. It is impossible.
But worse, if an organization that claims or hopes or desires or
aspires to be innovative must at every expense commit themselves
to the safety of their people, because only when we feel safe
and protected will we voluntarily commit ourselves to support of
each other and the advancement of the vision.
There are very
simple ways to do this.
Here are just a few:
Great leaders would never sacrifice the numbers -- would never
sacrifice the people to save the numbers.
Great leaders would
sacrifice the numbers to save the people.
And so when we live
in a day and age when our leaders are so comfortable sending you
home to tell your spouse and your kids I'm sorry I no longer
have an income because the company had to make its numbers for
the year, forget about the people who lost their jobs.
What
about the people who didn't get laid off?
How inspired do you think they feel to come back to work every
day?
How safe do you think they feel?
Do you think we're going to give our best knowing that the next
time that the company doesn't make its number, which by the way
may or may not have anything to do with us.
Remember all of
those outside dangers, the up and downs of technology, the up
and downs of stock markets, the up and downs of an economy?
You think when you have a bad year you say, kids, it's been a
bad year. We have to get rid of one of you?
[laughter].
Or worse -- or worse. I got to keep my Mercedes, and so it's
either you or the car. And we pick you, right?
No. We tighten the belt. We work together. We figure out ways
to make it happen, to see it through the hard times.
We cannot
judge the quality of a crew based on how they perform in good
times. We judge a quality of a crew on how they perform in
rough waters. And, unfortunately, we throw our crew overboard
when we hit rough waters. What makes them want to commit to see
the ship make it through the rough waters?
What they do is they sit down and watch their own backs, because
nobody else is going to watch my back.
There is no innovation
in a group like that. There is no innovation in a group like
that. Back stabbing, idea stealing, plenty of that.
So number one, people come first. Numbers are always
subordinate to people. Numbers will not rescue you in hard
times. People will. Numbers will not come up with new ideas.
People will. Numbers are not innovative. People are. That's
number one.
Another one which is really, really, really easy is honesty.
It's really easy to be honest. Just tell the truth. And if you
tell the truth on a regular basis, we will say you have
integrity. That's all it means. These are really basic
concepts.
So, for example, if somebody calls and your secretary picks up
the phone and says, Dave's on the phone, and you say, Tell him
I'm not here, you just sanctioned lying inside your
organization. That's what you've done. You've said that when
it suits you, even if the lies are big or small, you may tell
lies. That is dishonest.
I went to visit Quantico Marine base where the Marine Corps
chooses, selects, their officers, and on the day I was there -true story -- I was waiting in a conference room for the colonel
in charge of OCS to come and give us a briefing on the base
about OCS, about the selection process.
And he arrived late.
Marines don't ever arrive late. And he showed up late. He came
and apologized. He said, I'm sorry. We had an incident with
one of our Marines. So I go, What happened? And, right, he
said, Well, we're considering throwing him out of OCS, which
means throwing him out the Marine Corps. I'm thinking what did
he do. And the colonel said, Uhm, he fell asleep on watch.
And
I said, that's it, he fell asleep on watch in the woods of
Virginia? You know, I'm like, You guys are tough.
He said -and then he explained. He said, No. You don't understand. He
said, When we asked him about it, he denied it.
When we asked
him about it, he denied it again. And only when we gave him
irrefutable proof did he say, quote, I want to take
responsibility for my action. The problem we have, he said, is
we believe you take responsibility for your action at the time
you perform your actions not at the time you get caught.
We have another marine who fell asleep on watch.
He admitted
it. He got punished. We have no problem with him. And he went
on to explain. He said, You have to understand. I cannot put
this marine in a leadership position where they're responsible
for the lives of other Marines, because if they're in a combat
situation and his Marines doubt for one second that the words
coming out of his mouth are anything but the truth, if they
believe for one second that the words he is speaking are only to
make him look better or cover his own ass, trust will break down
in the whole group, and people will die.
Now, we are not in life-and-death situations, but the way our
minds interpret information that is given to us in terms of life
and death. This is why we don't trust politicians.
They tell
us the things we want to hear. We don't prima facie disagree
with anything we've been told, but we know that they don't
believe the things that they're saying.
And so we as human
beings who are very, very smart -- and this always ingrained in
us -- we always make sure just to keep a safe distance from
anybody who we don't believe is honest, because if we were to
find ourselves in a life-and-death situation with them, you know
what I'm going to -- if I had to gamble -- won't go with them.
When someone is honest, they're willing to tell us good news,
they're willing to tell us bad news, they're willing to be
upfront with them, even if it is news that we do not want to
hear, even if it is not in our interest, we're okay with it.
We
actually trust them. Hey, listen, I got to be honest with you,
your performance has been really bad these days.
I'd love to
sit down -- sort of like getting kids to eat their sandwiches,
give them the good news, give them something general and generic
they don't believe anyway, hey, you're really smart, and on this
one project that you did -- like it's really specific when they
give us the negative, right?
In other words we didn't believe the positive in the first place
we knew they were just biding their time to get to the negative
I'll give you another example of honesty and how we respond to
it. We've all had this happen. You get an e-mail that says to
you, Dear Simon. I get that. You wouldn't get that. If you
get that, send it to me. Dear Simon, haven't talked to you in
years. Hope you're doing well. Congratulations in all your
success. It's really amazing. Would love to catch up and get a
cup of tea sometime. By the way, if you could go to this
website, I'm trying to raise money for a project I'm doing, I
would really appreciate if you could vote for me or Tweet it
out. Thanks a lot, Dave.
And what do you do when you get something like that?
You're like that [sound effects], you know.
Right?
Now what if we simply reversed the information?
Dear Simon, I'm trying to raise money for this project I'm
doing. Would really appreciate it if you could click on the
link and maybe vote for me and maybe even tweet it out.
Haven't
seen you in years. Hope you're doing really well.
Congratulations on your success.
Would love to get together
with you for a cup of tea sometime, Dave.
In other words, tell me the reason you sent me the e-mail,
right?
The niceties are fine. But that's not the reason you sent me
the e-mail. It was dishonest. It was disingenuous. Honesty is
such a simple thing right?
And when it is afforded to us, we respond with loyalty and trust
and the commitment and devotion and loyalty, because why
wouldn't we?
By telling me accurate information, it helps me better survive.
I like that. I appreciate that. I'm going to stand next to the
honest man. Honesty is king. Hard, but important. And if we
screw up, be honest about the screw-up.
I want you to now I
wasn't honest with you. I was in a weird position, and I should
have told you the truth, and I didn't.
And I got embarrassed.
Then I made it worse. I'm sorry. I'm ashamed. Like we can be
honest about the failings even. We can accept punishment.
Great organizations, people screw up. You can be punished, but
it doesn't mean you'll lose your job.
If we fear that we will
lose our job, we don't work in safe organizations.
If we fear
getting in trouble, that's okay. We fear getting in trouble by
our parents. We don't fear that they're going to throw us out
of the house, right?
Same thing.
Same thing.
Here's another thing that is easy to do and is a component of
leadership, right?
Allowing others to fail. My friend David March Kay who wrote an
amazing book called Turn the Ship Around -- check it out,
M-A-R-Q-U-E-T -- was a Naval -- is a captain of a submarine,
nuclear-powered Los Angeles class attack sub.
And Marquet
believed like us do that his credibility as a leader was closely
tied to his competence, to his intelligence.
We believe that we
have to know as much or more as those in our report, because
this what is gives us credibility as leaders, right?
And so in typical Marquet fashion, when he was assigned to one
of the great honors of his career to be captain of his own
submarine, the USS Olympia, he spent to a year learning every
button, every switch, every pipe, every valve of this submarine.
He went through the dossiers of his crew.
He knew everything
about his crew. He was going to be prepared, and he was going
to know as much or more as to everybody else on board, because
he was the captain now. He had to. He had no choice.
Two weeks before he took command of the Olympia, they said,
Yeah, you're not going to captain of the Olympia; you're going
to captain of the Santa Fe. It was a slightly newer submarine,
still a Los Angeles class submarine.
But Marquet knew some of
the things were different and he didn't want anybody to know
that he didn't know everything, because he kind of kept it to
himself and pretended he knew everything.
But that's okay.
He's a smart guy. He's a competent guy. We obviously trust him
enough to be fine. He was fine.
Then there was another little wrinkle.
Where the Olympia was
the best rated crew in the United States submarine fleet, the
Santa Fe was the worst rated crew in the submarine fleet.
They
ranked last and close to last in almost every readiness
measurement in the entire that the Navy had, right?
But Marquet figured that's okay, I have a bad crew.
It's all
right. I'm going to be a good leader. I'm going to give
orders, and I'll have a great ship.
So they set sail, and about two or three days into -- into being
out there, you know, when they got ready, he was, like, barking
orders, Get ready for this, get ready for that, and everybody
was following his orders. And off they went to sea.
was doing what they say, right?
Everybody
About two or three days out, they were submerged, and they
decided to run an exercise. They turned off the reactor
manually and pretended they were having a meltdown, and they ran
the boat on battery power. It's called EPM, right?
And Marquet decided he wanted to add another tension, see how
well they would do with a more difficult situation.
Then he
gave I simply order, Ahead two-thirds.
What that means is run
the boat two-thirds at maximum speed.
To his side was the
navigator who was the second in command at the time on the -- on
the -- on the -- in the bridge, and he was also the most
experienced sailor on board. He had two and a half years aboard
the Santa Fe. And he repeated the order, Ahead two-thirds.
And
nothing happened and Seaman Jones, junior sailor, sitting at the
controls was squirming, literally squirming in his seat.
So
Marquet peers out to the side with the periscope and said,
Seaman Jones, what's the problem?
And Seaman Jones replies,
Sir, there is no two-thirds setting. Apparently, on the slightly
newer Los Angeles there was no two-thirds setting on EPM. He
says -- turns to the navigator.
He says, Did you know? The
guy goes, Uh-huh.
He says, Then why did you give the order?
He said, Because you told me to. And that's when Marquet
realizes he's aboard a ship that he doesn't understand and has a
crew that's trained for compliance.
It's not like you can just
turn around ask for a new boat or change the crew out
We in the private sector think we can have an advantage, because
we can hire and fire people. You're assuming we're hiring and
firing the right people. We think when things don't work just
change the people, get rid of the -- get rid of the weak links.
Marquet didn't have this. This was his crew. He's stuck with
it. It's not like anything else in the world.
In submarines,
there's no one person who dies. You either all live or you all
die. That's it. Those are your options on a submarine.
So Marquet is forced to literally reexamine everything he knows
about leadership, because bad things will happen, and that's the
way it goes. So one of the things he realized he had a
permission-based society aboard his boat.
Sir, permission to
dive to 400 feet. Permission granted.
Aye, sir. Dive to 400
feet.
In other words, all the authority, all of the accountability
lies with the person in charge, with the captain.
If something
goes wrong, the captain allowed it to happen.
Marquet banned
the words "permission" on board his boat, and he replaced them
with "I intend to". The hierarchy is not affected at all.
The
chain of command is not affected at all.
The difference is
psychological. "I intend to dive to 400 feet." Okay.
All right. All the accountability lies with the person
performing the action now. And so what started happening is
people took their jobs more seriously and instead of wanting to
get permission from boss, now if the boss asked a question, you
wanted to be able to have the answer, which means when the boss
says, Did you check the depth? Sometimes yes and some times he
didn't. Did you check the depth? What's the depth? 400.
Now, you know, in other words, you could never be caught not
knowing before you made a decision.
The accountability went up.
There are lots of other things that Marquet did which he talks
about in his book.
Within a short period of time, the crew of the Santa Fe became
the highest rated crew in Naval history.
Not that year, not the
submarine fleet, in Naval history.
Same people, same equipment.
It's not the people. It's the environment. It's always the
environment. The people are fine. It's always the environment.
And this is what leadership is.
One of the things that Marquet realizes in most organizations
the people at the top have all of the authority and none of the
information and the people performing job have all of the
information but none of the authority.
And in most organizations, they try to get the information up.
No. Push the authority down. This is what creates great
organizations. And what that does is it makes us feel that our
work and our lives have value. We want to be given the
opportunity to make mistakes. We want to be given the
opportunity to work hard and have responsibility.
It feels good
to work hard to have responsibility for something.
If somebody else -- we've all had the experience, sometimes
junior, sometimes senior, in our jobs -- I can remember in my
own career, I used to have a boss who did the opposite.
And I
would write something, and she would cover it in red pen and
tell me to make her changes. So I'd go make her changes. I'd
come back, and she would tell me to make her changes.
And at
some point, I stopped caring about the quality of my first
draft, because I knew she was going to change it all to whatever
she wanted anyway. No longer felt valuable or valued.
As
opposed to telling me the macro issues she had, this is not
clear, I know what you're trying to say, but it doesn't come
across, try again.
Responsibility.
Accountability.
I remember the first time that somebody gave me accountability.
I had to produce something that I had to send out to the client.
The norm was to show it to my boss before it went out to the
client. Except this time, he decided to leave early.
And I
said, Do you want me to e-mail before it goes out?
He goes,
Nope. Good night. Make sure it goes out tonight. Bye.
Now, I knew what good was, and I knew what had to be done.
Guess what?
It was fine, and I worked hard.
I wanted to do it right.
One of the things great leaders do is they allow us to try and
fail.
And one other thing Marquet -- one of the things Marquet talks
about is the importance of training, the importance of
practicing, the importance of small projects, because you can
punch a hole in the side of the ship above the waterline,
and you fix it. It costs some money whatever. But you do that
over and over again so you don't punch a hole in the ship below
the waterline.
In training matrix is supposed to go down, because you want
people to try hard and fail and find out where the line is.
In
combat training, you want them to get shot, because you want to
find where did getting shot happen.
You don't want to out score
everybody else in training. It's ridiculous, right?
This is the time to push the limits or give people little
projects that the worst -- think about what we do for a living,
right?
Nobody here is looking for a cure for cancer or working in an
ER. The worst thing we can do, the absolute worst, is lose a
multi-billion dollar corporation some money and not enough that
it will get noticed. And if it is enough to get noticed, it
won't put you out of the business. Like seriously, death and
destruction and Armageddon are nowhere to be seen.
That's the worst.
And so when we have leaders that understand that and allow us to
try and fail and try and fail and understand if we screw it up,
it's okay, the ship's not going to sink.
Now try again. Let's
sit down and talk about maybe what you would like to do
differently next time. I want to learn. I want us to try
again, kind of like what we do with our kids.
And that's the
final point.
The closest analogy I can give to you about what leadership is
is parenting.
Think about what makes a great parent, you know?
First of all, not having kids, is a better life.
You get a
bigger house. You take nicer vacations. You can get the car
you want not the car you have to get, right?
Much more sleep, right?
Yet, we choose for some reason to have children.
We choose to
make these sacrifices, because in time, it's kind of worth it to
see this little thing grow up and make something of itself that
we got to look after. It's kind of worth it.
The problem with leadership, the problem with parenting, is
they're both like exercise. They cannot be measured in small
discrete chunks. I can give you a compelling presentation about
the importance of exercise, and it will change your life and
improve the quality of your life and let you live longer, and
you'll believe me. You'll go to the gym. And you'll come back,
and you will look in the mirror, and you will see nothing, but
you go the next day, and you come back and you look in the
mirror, and you will see nothing. And worse, you're in pain.
And so you have no matrix to show there's any value to anything
I show you. So you stop. But if us can stick with it, after
three months, you look at an old picture of yourself.
You're
like I can't believe I ever looked like that.
You have no idea if you're being a good parent on a daily basis.
None. In fact, sometimes you're a bad parent.
But you kind of
have a sense of what it should be. And you stick with it, and
there's these little glimmers that you get that make you proud
that you're kind of doing the right thing and the sacrifice is
worth it like the little things that the kids do.
But you won't
actually see a return in your investment for like 30 years.
You
know, some of our parents are still waiting for us, right?
Leadership is the same. I have -- I have no way of measuring
that you're being a good leader on a daily basis.
Even the best
leaders are sometimes terrible leaders. There's no good matrix.
The problem is it's very hard to measure in short discrete
packages, but it's very easy to measure over distance, over
time. That's the problem. Good leadership is obvious. You
measure it in things like churn, you know, what's the average
lifespan of your employees. The trend is that people are
spending less and less time at their jobs now.
Maybe it's
because they're looking for more adventure.
No. It's because
they don't feel safe. And why would they stick around? There's
no loyalty. It's not a good trend. It's a symptom.
Parenting.
Think about what a great parent is.
A great parent
is willing to sacrifice, give of themselves, you know,
discipline when necessary, provide opportunities, provide
education. Also, this young little thing can grow up and
achieve more than they ever thought they could do themselves.
What's a great leader?
Somebody who's willing to sacrifice and give of themselves and
provide opportunities, education, discipline when necessary,
sometimes help them up, sometimes make them get up themselves.
All of this so they'll grow up and build confidence and achieve
things I couldn't even achieve for myself.
Same thing.
There's a photograph in the New York Times a bunch of months
ago. Do you remember those shootings in Kenya?
And the amazing thing was there was a photographer who was on
the scene. Usually, we see the aftermath, right?
And in this particular one there was a photographer in the mall,
and so we got to see pictures of what was going on.
And there's
one photograph you can look it up. It's on online. There's
Tyler Hicks is the photographer's name, not the same Tyler
Hicks. There's a photographer -- there's a photograph of a
mother lying on top of her child. Think about that. At the
sound of a gun, it's a mother's instinct to throw herself onto
her child potentially risking her own live to ensure that the
life of this young precious thing will survive her.
Now, on other days, mom gets to do what mom says, because I'm
the mom, and sometimes mom takes the liberties and enjoys the
liberties of being the leader and being the one in charge.
But
when it matters, when the child's life and survival are at
stake, there's no question what a good mother does.
They throw
themselves on top of their child no questions asked even at
personal sacrifice.
That's called leadership. That's what our leaders do. They can
enjoy the trappings, enjoy the perks, enjoy the parking spaces,
enjoy the money. Nobody says you have to give them up. In
fact, we would be offended if you gave them up.
It's our
pleasure to do things for you. You know, can you imagine if
Steven Spielberg, you know, you made him a cup of coffee, he
said, I can make my own cup. It would actually feel bad. Like
we want to do things. It brings us joy. It makes us proud, and
it gives us joy to make our leaders proud.
We want to do right
by them. But we do so with the knowledge that they would
sacrifice themselves for us.
Back in the Marine Corps, this idea of leadership is viewed as a
responsibility not as a rank. You will never hear these words
spoke in the Marines. You will never hear the words, I am a
leader. I believe I have what it takes to be a leader, aspire
to be a leader. Those words do not exist. Here are the words
they speak. I am a leader of Marines. I believe I have what it
takes to be a leader of Marines. I aspire to be a good leader
of Marines. In their own vernacular, they view leadership as a
responsibility to another human being and not a rank to be
attained.
It's the same for us. You're not a leader. You're a leader of
people. And to say I'm a leader is false. I'm a leader of
people. I aspire to be a leader of people. I believe I have
what it takes to be a leader of people.
I want to be the best
leader of people I can possible be.
And we are reminded every
time we speak the words our responsibility is to the person.
Like the word "parent". I am a parent.
Inherent in that word is
you can't call yourself a parent without a child.
I'm a parent
of a child. It comes with certain responsibilities inherent as
does leadership. And so this manifests in some funny ways.
In the Marine Corps, if you go to any chow hall anywhere in the
world on any marine base, what you will see is they will line up
in rank order during chow time. Most junior man eats first;
most senior man eats last. It is not in any rule book, and no
one tells them they have to. It happens organically because of
the way they simply view the role of leadership, that as the
leader, like a parent, I would let my parent eat before I eat.
That's just what we do. That's one of the ways it shows up.
I was told a true story. I was told a story of a marine officer
who was deployed and they had -- they were eating with the
group, and that officer made sure that his men ate first as is
the custom in the Marine Corps. And they ran out of the food.
The officer didn't get to eat. So when they went out back into
the field, all of his men brought him some of their food so that
he may eat.
This is what happens. When we as leaders commit to the safety
of our people, our people will give us their blood, sweat and
tears, and they will make their own sacrifice to ensure that we
are kept safe and to ensure that our visions are advanced.
We cannot sit with our arms folded and simply complain that our
leadership doesn't look after us, that our leadership doesn't
get it, that they would soonest sacrifice us to save the
numbers, they would never sacrifice the numbers to save us, that
they listen to Wall Street, they don't put people first.
They
claim they drive innovation, but they're not creating
environments that would create innovation.
We cannot complain, because we must be the leaders we wish we
had. We have a person to the left of us and we have a person to
the right of us that we can take responsibility for.
Sure you
don't love your job. But today are you committing yourself
to ensuring that they feel happiness, that they have the job
they love, that they feel like they're learning, that they feel
they have opportunity.
We have entire sections in the bookshop called self-help.
We
have no sections called help others.
And, yet, the science is
clear. Our own sense of happiness, our own sense of
fulfillment, our health and, indeed, the success of the
organization itself are tied entirely to our willingness to
serve those in our tribe, to look after those who we would call
brother and sister, which we don't do in companies.
We have
colleagues. In the military, they have brothers, and they have
sisters. We don't always like our brothers and sisters, but my
goodness, you threaten my brother or my sister, and you have to
deal with me.
Thanks very much.
[applause]
>> Simon Sinek:
Thank you.
[applause]
>> Simon Sinek:
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
We have time for questions.
Yes.
>>:
In the back?
[indiscernible]
>> Simon Sinek:
Can you speak up?
>>: Could you throw some light on why, like, organizations like
the armed forces which have a very low tolerance for challenging
authority have such great leaders as opposed to corporations
where there isn't actually a mortality involved?
[indiscernible]
>> Simon Sinek: So the question was why is it that the military
has great leaders where they have low tolerance for challenging
authority where in corporations where we have a culture of
challenging authority we seem to lack good leaders, or there
seems to be a dwindling number.
When you talk about challenging authority, what are you talking
about, you know, when we're talking about challenging
conventional thought and conventional ideas and we're talking
about taking responsibility?
In the military, especially in the Marines, they're expected and
they're taught to think for themselves.
And the idea of
hierarchy is very much something called commanders intent.
The
commander tells us what they need to achieve, but they will not
meddle in how it will be achieved.
The problem in our corporations is we're told what they want to
achieve and how we're going to do it. So the opportunity to
challenge authority is obvious, because you're giving us
something to challenge.
Whereas, in a well-running unit, the commander will say I need
to take that hill, and it's for the lower-level leadership to
fill out. And it's the lower-level leadership of beneath that
say okay that is how we're going to do our component of it.
So there's a lot of respect given to the layers of leadership.
Here, not so much. By here, I mean corporations not so much.
It also goes to the concept of humility.
The best definition of
humility I ever heard was stated by Bob Gaylor the former chief
master sergeant of the Air Force. He said, "Do not confuse
humility with meekness. Humility is being open to the ideas of
others." I love that.
You know, you have the biggest ego in the room.
Being humble is
not like, Oh, no, it's not me. That's not humble. Humble is
when somebody says, I've got an idea, you go, Let's hear it, and
actually be willing to hear what they have to say.
That's
humility. And so great leaders have the humility that they may
not have all the answers, they don't know how to get there.
And it also goes to a question of priorities, right, which is
based on bonus structures. We are largely incentivized to grow
a number within the year. That's how we get our incentive. And
we're not incentivized to create something stable that will last
a hundred years. So what you have are large unstable
organizations. That's what they wanted. That's what they got.
We're fast growing. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Awesome. It's good for
the year, right?
Just talking about this at lunch. This is the difference
between -- this is the folly of the stock market, right?
Make sure this is on the camera.
I'll make sure it's on the camera.
Okay.
It's in the middle.
This if you look at, like, General Electric in the '80's and
'90's, this is what their stock chart looks like.
If were lucky
enough to sell at the right time, you would have made, you know,
1800 percent on your money, you know, if you invested in the
early '80's. This is not investing. This is gambling. This is
investing.
We invest in our children. We invest in education. Right?
We invest in something that we don't see the result in a year.
Gambling is about hope. I hope this works out. It's about
betting. I bet on your new product. I bet on your new CEO. I
bet on your reorg. I bet on your new acquisition you just made
today. I bet it's going to work.
Oh, Costco was criticized by Wall Street year after year by
stupidly prioritizing employees and customers and ignoring the
shareholder. If you had invested a dollar in General Electric
and a dollar in Costco the day Costco went public, which was
December of 1985, you would have -- compared to today, you would
have enjoyed a 600-percent return on your investment in General
Electric. You would have enjoyed a 600-percent return on your
investment in the S & P 500, and you would have enjoyed a
1200-percent return on your investment in Costco.
That's
investing. If you were lucky enough to get out of GE at the
right time, you would have made a little more.
But that's not
investing. That's gambling. I've got no issue with it.
I've
got no issue with gambling. And I've got no issues with taking
bets. Just call it what it is. We're betting for our
shareholders. We don't have shareholders. We have share
squatters, right?
Think about it. Think
to take counsel from a
do well they'll invest
not loyal, and they're
about this for one second. We're going
disinterested outside party that when we
in us anyway, and if we do badly, they're
not going to stick with us.
Huh? Huh?
I'll stop there.
[laughter]
>> Simon Sinek: And the joke is that's better for the
shareholder, and it's stable, and it's innovative, and people
love working there, and they look after each other, and they
don't turn on each other, and they don't spend tons of money on
churn, because nobody quits. It's good. Forget about idealism.
Forget about soap boxes. I'm talking business. I'm talking the
free market. This is better for the free market, but I digress.
Yes?
>>:
Hate to interrupt.
>> Simon Sinek:
>>:
I know.
Couple weeks ago [indiscernible] came here, as well.
>> Simon Sinek:
>>:
No.
Yeah.
Cool.
That's awesome.
He talked a lot about the intersection of brain machine
interfaces. And I was wondering based on your 99U talk where
you focus a lot more kind of on the neurologic -neurobiological reasons why this things happen, where do you see
kind of the future going?
Will we evolve as companies to be better and figure out we can
actually see, you know, scientifically what's happening, or do
you think we kind of continue to face these same problems?
>> Simon Sinek: Such hubris. Yeah. We're not that smart. You
know, we -- we -- I love -- you know, companies do competitive
analyses. And, yet, it's the competition they didn't see that
always get them. It's the unsuspecting technology that comes up.
My Space was busy studying Friendster when Facebook showed
up out of nowhere, right?
And so we don't know. That's the point. Like, we're so proud
to believe that we've considered everything.
You know, the
space shuttle blew up because of a bolt; okay?
You know, things go wrong all the time, because one idiot
decision about somebody who doesn't see something.
The housing crisis, mortgage-backed securities.
The actuaries
said theses had a 99-percent chance of success.
You know,
because the one percent chance that the whole housing market
would collapse at one time. So there was no plan for that
1-percent chance, because it's one.
That's the point. It's like it's hubris. The human animal,
this machine, is a legacy machine living in a very modern world.
Nothing about us has changed in 50,000 years.
Zippo. The way
we interpret information, the way we make decisions, our drive
to try and form trusting cooperative relationships, our need to
feel safe, to be feel valuable, to feel like we belong, here it
is. And, yet, we're forced to operate in a very, very different
environment, and it produces some inherent problems.
I forget his name, but he's a really great biologist who he was
explaining how back in Paleolithic times you know what the
average life expectancy was?
About 80, 85, 90. There was no cancer, and there was no
diabetes, and there was no heart disease.
It was only the rise
of scale and industrialization -- well, farming did all of the
problems start. So we think we are so nuts because we live to
like 74 now. Where in the Renaissance they died at like 35,
right?
But what we completely missed was the ages were good, and they
went like this, because we started short circuiting this
machine. And so now we've been able to compensate for some of
short circuits naturally and with medicines and things like
that. But if we actually live good lives where we have longer
trusting, beautiful relationships, happier people live longer.
People who are in relationships live longer than single people.
We are social animals. We need each other, right?
So my belief is that no matter how smart we think we are, no
matter how integrated we can make the human being and computer,
there is something that we won't see that will catch us by
surprise, and it will break.
All of these chips implanted in brains and stuff I think it's
cool. It won't work. I mean, come on. We can't even figure
out a cell phone. You know, pretty imperfect technology.
My
Bluetooth thing doesn't really work.
So I don't. Calls get
dropped. And I've got Verizon, and it's better than the others
and I still lose calls. Sometimes the calls aren't clear.
The
handsets are kind of disposal. Like it's kind of junk
technology. It's pretty good. It's pretty good. It's not
great. We don't build things to last anymore.
So, yeah, I think it's nice in theory.
Yeah, it's good.
They'll do some stuff, but it will break.
>>: So it's pretty easy, I guess, to identify if your team or
organization is safe once you're there.
>> Simon Sinek:
Yeah.
>>: When you're looking for a new team or looking for, you
know --
>> Simon Sinek:
Yeah.
>>: -- change in work, how do you identify that place is a safe
place?
>> Simon Sinek: So the question was it's pretty easy to
identify if your team is safe when you're in it.
But if you
need to change it, how do you identify if it's safe.
Great
question.
It's called dating. Called making friends. It doesn't happen
immediately. And you can't tell. You go on a first date, and
it feels kind of good. And so you go on a second date, and it
feels kind of good. After three weeks, you're like this is
ridiculous, you know.
In other words, we make the decision to join teams or we make
kind of decisions too quickly sometimes.
They met everybody on
the team. We like them. Okay. Now it didn't work out. It is
our responsibility to assess the team we want to join based on
their values and based on their beliefs.
It's the concept of
why and the other things that I've written about.
And there's
some way to figure that out, you know.
For example, you have to know your own before you can assess
others, obviously. But here's a great example. Someone will
approach me and say, We want you to invest in our company, our
little start-up. I go great. What's your exit strategy? They
go, It's a five-year exit strategy.
I go, Not interested.
Because I'm not interested in things with short term.
So there's little questions I can ask.
You know, Who's in
charge? Me. Who's your partner? I don't have one. I believe
in mom and dad. I believe in CEO and COO. I believe in
visionary and operator working in concert to make it happen.
When one person thinks they can do it all, not so much.
So
these are little things where I've learned over time to
test my voice. But you have to take time. You have get to know
them. I'm a great believer in dating, in getting to know
somebody, and sometimes it's in the job.
Never expect that
you'll feel like you belong in the first week.
It won't ever
happen. Six months minimum. Sometimes longer. You know, like
how long does it take to fall in love?
Certainly not a week. We know that. But if you've been there
for seven years and you're not in love, time to move on.
Human
relationships are human relationships, whether it's dating,
whether it's work, whether it's sports.
Human relationships are
human relationships. We're always looking for trust. We're
always looking to feel safe. I bet that almost every single
person in this room is sitting next to somebody you chose to sit
next to. Why is that? Why didn't you split up and sit
somewhere else?
This is why we keep the empty seats blank.
I know you guys
don't know each other. Because it's like we go to the movies.
We sit next to our friends. We leave an empty space, right?
We're driven by safety. We feel safe next to someone we know,
and we feel uneasy next to someone we don't know.
Nothing
personal. It's just the way we are. Same thing. So it takes
time. It takes time. And I have no out for that. I've got
nothing that can speed up the human relationship.
I do find it ironic, however, considering I was speaking out of
turn. I might as well go with the flow. I do find it ironic
that companies like Google and Facebook and sort of all these
social media companies invest huge sums of money and time and
energies to figure out ways to organize their corporate culture
so people will cooperate better and have common eatings so
people can sit on benches together and common spaces to work
together, all so they can be much better to produce a product
that keeps us apart from each other.
I just love the irony of
that, you know, that they know what gets the best out of people
is cooperation so they can produce a product that leaves us not
cooperating. I just love that.
Yes?
>>: If you find yourself in that place that you consider
unsafe, is your best strategy exit?
>> Simon Sinek:
No.
The question was if you consider yourself in a place that you
feel unsafe is the best strategy exit.
Absolutely not. The best strategy is
strategy is to be the leader you wish
strategy is to find someone you trust
other. Let's look at each other, but
looking after everybody else.
to step up. The best
you had.
The best
and say we have each
let's also commit to
There's some good research on this, as well.
There was an
article in HPR some time ago about how to deal a toxic leader
and if you have a toxic leader. You can see this in
dictatorships. Same idea. Same thing, right?
So what dictator do is they see paranoia and create separation
amongst the people. Dictators know that if people come together
they're out. Dictators always feel the fear of the people, and
that's because anthropologically it's not the leader that has
the power. It's the group that has the power. We're social
animals. Leaders have power over us as individuals, but as a
group, we control the leader.
So in toxic environments where you don't feel safe, very often
what happens is a environment of fear and paranoia is created
such that the people no longer help each other.
They're too
busy worrying about who watches your back.
But its not enough.
And so they maintain their control.
And so what you want to do
is break down these barriers and say, Hey, guys, and we're at
work and we're going to survive this and we're going to do good
things, we have to look after each other.
And what the research shows is two things happen.
One is this
person becomes completely emasculated.
Usually higher-ups start
to notice, because they are very good at managing us and pretty
bad at managing them.
You're welcome.
Yes, in the back?
Last question.
Oh, wait.
No.
We'll go longer.
>>: How do you know a leader is toxic, a leader says the right
things [indiscernible].
>> Simon Sinek:
>>:
Yes.
In such a way that you devote your lives?
>> Simon Sinek:
Great question.
The question is how can you tell if someone is toxic, because
sometimes they say the right thing, and so they present
themselves as these wonderful leaders.
Again, time.
right?
Time.
And this is the importance of consistency,
There's a difference between consistency and intensity.
consistency always wins, right?
And
You cannot be healthy by doing a cleanse once a month.
You
know, I'm going to cleanse. No. It doesn't work, right?
You know what keeps you healthy; being healthy every day.
You
know going to the gym and working out for ten hours doesn't make
you healthy. Doing a little bit every day makes you healthy,
right?
So consistency is always king over intensity.
don't work, because it's an intense --
That's why reorgs
[laughter]
>> Simon Sinek:
Touch a nerve, did I?
Reorgs. We end up fearing the reorg. And they end up doing all
these Power Points and bringing in all of these outsiders to
tell us how much better it's going to be.
And we all go okay.
And then we end up -- they end up spending all of their time
trying to convince us that it's good.
It doesn't work. Because
then we end up -- it's like -- it's like moving a bulldozer
towards a brick wall from here. The bulldozer is the reorg.
We're the brick wall. Yeah, I know we need to move over there,
and I'm sure this might work, but I just see a bulldozer coming,
not feeling very cooperative.
However, if somebody says, look, slowly is how we're going to do
it, and we don't expect everybody to make the change, but we're
going to take people who might want to volunteer.
It might not
work out. If you want to volunteer and be an early duck, we're
going to try, and we'll take one brick.
And then we take four
bricks, and we have a small one and a few people who were kind
of naysayers say, Well, I guess it will work, we'll try too.
And before you know, you've moved the whole wall and
you can't move back again, because it's now the new norm.
That's how change is supposed to happen.
I don't believe in
revolution, which is what reorgs are.
They're sudden. They're
usually a lot of upheaval. I believe in revolution of which the
result can be revolutionary. So yeah.
What was the question?
>>:
When is a leader [indiscernible]?
>> Simon Sinek:
Oh.
When they say and do the right thing.
Okay. I like my little aside, though. It goes back to the
original thing. Consistency. That's right. I remember what I
was going to say. Consistency, right?
Which is you cannot tell if somebody's a good leader by
something they said once or did twice or three times.
Now, you
can kind of tell a couple of failings are okay.
We don't mind
that. We're patient. We know no one is perfect as opposed to
junk, junk, junk, couple good things, junk, junk, junk, a couple
good things. You know, consistency is what will make our
decision. And we're very, very attune social animals.
We're
highly, highly, highly sophisticated social animals.
You kind
of go, Yeah, yeah. I guess he said all the right things. Like
if you have that kind of sense, the odds are they're probably
saying the thing you want to hear.
And I agree. A lot of leaders say the right thing, but the
question is will they do the right thing.
And the only way to
truly test if they'll do the right thing is when their ass is on
the line, when their bonus is on the line, when their reputation
is on the line, when their life is on the line will they save
themselves or will they save us. That's the best test of have
all.
>>:
[indiscernible].
Thank you.
[applause]
>> Simon Sinek: Thank you.