Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't

by Simon Sinek

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

It is not the genius at the top giving directions that makes people great. It is great people that make the guy at the top look like a genius.

Stress and anxiety at work have less to do with the work we do and more to do with weak management and leadership. When we know that there are people at work

rank. It is not the demands of the job that cause the most stress, but the degree of control workers feel they have throughout their day. The studies also found that the effort required by a job is not in itself stressful, but rather the imbalance between the effort we give and the reward we feel. Put simply: less control, more stress.

This is the power of oxytocin. It actually makes us good people. The more good things we do, the more good we want to do. This is the science behind “paying it forward.”

Faking it, it turns out, makes us feel phony, as if we are cheating.

Unless someone is willing to make personal sacrifices for the good of others to earn their place in the hierarchy, they aren’t really “alpha material.” Simply acting the part is not enough. Just like the phony couture wearer, they may feel insecure about their position, or work extra hard to compensate or try to prove to the public (and themselves) that they are deserving of all the advantages they get.

The rank of office is not what makes someone a leader. Leadership is the choice to serve others with or without any formal rank. There are people with authority who are not leaders and there are people at the bottom rungs of an organization who most certainly are leaders. It’s okay for leaders to enjoy all the perks afforded to them. However, they must be willing to give up those perks when it matters.

“This is the most important lesson I can impart to all of you,” he offered. “All the perks, all the benefits and advantages you may get for the rank or position you hold, they aren’t meant for you. They are meant for the role you fill. And when you leave your role, which eventually you will, they will give the ceramic cup to the person who replaces you. Because you only ever deserved a Styrofoam cup.”

We cannot motivate others, per se. Our motivation is determined by the chemical incentives inside every one of us. Any motivation we have is a function of our desire to repeat behaviors that make us feel good or avoid stress or pain. The only thing we can do is create environments in which the right chemicals are released for the right reasons. And if we get the environment right, if we create organizational cultures that work to the natural inclinations of the human animal, the result will be an entire group of self-motivated people.

If good people are asked to work in a bad culture, one in which leaders do not relinquish control, then the odds of something bad happening go up. People will be more concerned about following the rules out of fear of getting in trouble or losing their jobs than about doing what needs to be done. And when that happens, souls will be lost.

As much as we like to think that it is our smarts that get us ahead, it is not everything. Our intelligence gives us ideas and instructions. But it is our ability to cooperate that actually helps us get those things done. Nothing of real value on this earth was built by one person without the help of others. There are few accomplishments, companies or technologies that were built by one person without the help or support of anyone else. It is clear that the more others want to help us, the more we can achieve.

It’s not how smart the people in the organization are; it’s how well they work together that is the true indicator of future success or the ability to manage through struggle.

In fact, the more financial analysts who cover a company, the less innovative the company. According to a 2013 study that appeared in the Journal of Financial Economics, companies covered by a larger number of analysts file fewer patents than companies covered by fewer analysts. And the patents those companies do generate tend to have lower impact. The evidence supports the idea that “analysts exert too much pressure on managers to meet short-term goals, impeding firms’ investment in long-term innovative projects.” Put simply, the more pressure the leaders of a public company feel to meet the expectations of an outside constituency, the more likely they are to reduce their capacity for better products and services.

As Bob Chapman, CEO of Barry-Wehmiller, is fond of saying, “No one wakes up in the morning to go to work with the hope that someone will manage us. We wake up in the morning and go to work with the hope that someone will lead us.” The problem is, for us to be led, there must be leaders we want to follow.

Leaders who put a premium on numbers over lives are, more often than not, physically separated from the people they serve.

The moment we are able to make tangible that which had previously been a study or a chart, the moment a statistic or a poll becomes a real living person, the moment abstract concepts are understood to have human consequences, is the moment our ability to solve problems and innovate becomes remarkable.

“Those at the top,” explains Captain Marquet, “have all the authority and none of the information. Those at the bottom,” he continues, “have all the information and none of the authority. Not until those without information relinquish their control can an organization run better, smoother and faster and reach its maximum potential.”

It is a leader’s job instead to take responsibility for the success of each member of his crew. It is the leader’s job to ensure that they are well trained and feel confident to perform their duties. To give them responsibility and hold them accountable to advance the mission.

Responsibility is not doing as we are told, that’s obedience. Responsibility is doing what is right.

Leadership comes from telling us not what we want to hear, but rather what we need to hear. To be a true leader, to engender deep trust and loyalty, starts with telling the truth.

Building trust requires nothing more than telling the truth.

Every single one of us should look at our managers or the leaders of the companies we work for and ask ourselves, “Would I want to be in a foxhole with you?” And the managers and the leaders of companies who rely on our hard work should, in turn, ask themselves, “How strong is our company if the answer is no?”

Legacy is not the memory of better times when the old leader was there. That’s not legacy, that’s nostalgia.

If children see the reward as the only reason for doing something, studies show that once the reward is gone, they will have even less interest in the activity than they did when they started.

The evidence is indisputable. Despite what they or anyone else believes, with rare exceptions, those who think they are more productive because they are better at multitasking are just wrong. What they are better at is being distracted.

What I believe is likely happening is that more young people are developing an addiction to distraction, or rather, to the dopamine-producing effects of the digital technologies and online activities that are distracting them.

It’s as if many Millennials are standing at the foot of a mountain and they can see what they want—to make an impact or find fulfillment—they can see the summit. What many can’t seem to see is the mountain. This has nothing to do with an older generation insisting that the younger generation “do their time.” Though we may all advance up the mountain at different paces, some of us faster and some of us slower, there’s still no avoiding the mountain.

The evidence is strong that a healthy release of oxytocin, through acts of service, sacrifice and selflessness on behalf of others, might actually reduce the possibility of a corporate culture becoming toxic in the first place.