Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

by Simon Sinek

We follow those who lead not for them, but for ourselves.

Apple inspires. Apple starts with Why. 3.

Just about every person or organization needs to motivate others to act for some reason or another.

Great leaders, in contrast, are able to inspire people to act. Those who are able to inspire give people a sense of purpose or belonging that has little to do with any external incentive or benefit to be gained.

This is important because our behavior is affected by our assumptions or our perceived truths.

That the result went the way you wanted does not mean you can repeat it over and over.

Every instruction we give, every course of action we set, every result we desire, starts with the same thing: a decision.

There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.

The Golden Circle provides compelling evidence of how much more we can achieve if we remind ourselves to start everything we do by first asking why.

By WHY I mean what is your purpose, cause or belief?

It’s worth repeating: people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.

The same cannot be said for companies with a fuzzy sense of WHY.

No matter where we go, we trust those with whom we are able to perceive common values or beliefs.

We are drawn to leaders and organizations that are good at communicating what they believe. Their ability to make us feel like we belong, to make us feel special, safe and not alone is part of what gives them the ability to inspire us.

Henry Ford summed it up best. “If I had asked people what they wanted,” he said, “they would have said a faster horse.”

Great leaders and great organizations are good at seeing what most of us can’t see.

Great leaders are those who trust their gut. They are those who understand the art before the science. They win hearts before minds. They are the ones who start with WHY.

If we were all rational, there would be no small businesses, there would be no exploration, there would be very little innovation and there would be no great leaders to inspire all those things.

Ask the best salesmen what it takes to be a great salesman. They will always tell you that it helps when you really believe in the product you’re selling.

Authenticity is when you say and do the things you actually believe.

The goal of business should not be to do business with anyone who simply wants what you have. It should be to focus on the people who believe what you believe. When we are selective about doing business only with those who believe in our WHY, trust emerges.

Trust is a feeling, not a rational experience.

Trust begins to emerge when we have a sense that another person or organization is driven by things other than their own self-gain.

Customers trust us if we are driven by purpose.

those who trust work hard because they feel like they are working for something bigger than themselves.

We’ve succeeded as a species because of our ability to form cultures. Cultures are groups of people who come together around a common set of values and beliefs.

What all great leaders have in common is the ability to find good fits to join their organizations—those who believe what they believe.

Average companies give their people something to work on. In contrast, the most innovative organizations give their people something to work toward.

The role of a leader is not to come up with all the great ideas. The role of a leader is to create an environment in which great ideas can happen.

What few people realize is that this innovation was born out of struggle.

The goal of business then should not be to simply sell to anyone who wants what you have—the majority—but rather to find people who believe what you believe, the left side of the bell curve.

people often go out of their way, pay a premium or suffer an inconvenience to buy a product that resonates on a visceral level with them.

Those who believed what he believed took that cause and made it their own. And they told people what they believed. And those people told others what they believed. Some organized to get that belief out more efficiently.

The part of the brain that influences our behavior and decisions does not have the capacity for language.

Energy motivates but charisma inspires. Energy is easy to see, easy to measure and easy to copy. Charisma is hard to define, near impossible to measure and too elusive to copy. All great leaders have charisma because all great leaders have clarity of WHY; an undying belief in a purpose or cause bigger than themselves.

Charisma commands loyalty. Energy does not.

For a WHY to have the power to move people it must not only be clear, it must be amplified to reach enough people to tip the scale.

Great organizations don’t just drive profits, they lead people, and they change the course of industries and sometimes our lives in the process.

Yemen is also one of the poorest nations in the region. But when you tell people WHY you’re doing what you’re doing, remarkable things happen.

Like Martin Luther King and his social movement, the leader’s job is no longer to close all the deals; it is to inspire.

Just as the cone demonstrates, the CEO’s job, the leader’s responsibility, is not to focus on the outside market—it’s to focus on the layer directly beneath: HOW. The leader must ensure that there are people on the team who believe what they believe and know HOW to build it.

The WHY exists in the part of the brain that controls feelings and decision-making but not language.

He loved that Kelleher was just like everyone else. He too had holes in his socks.

Before it can gain any power or achieve any impact, an arrow must be pulled backward, 180 degrees away from the target. And that’s also where a WHY derives its power.

Every company, organization or group with the ability to inspire starts with a person or small group of people who were inspired to do something bigger than themselves.

When you compete against everyone else, no one wants to help you. But when you compete against yourself, everyone wants to help you.