Leaders Eat Last Deluxe: 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.”

empathy, Johnny Bravo says, is the single greatest asset he has to do his job.

Ask any of the remarkable men and women in uniform who risk themselves for the benefit of others why they do it and they will tell you the same thing: “Because they would have done it for me.”

These exceptional organizations all have cultures in which the leaders provide cover from above and the

people on the ground look out for each other. This is the reason they are willing to push hard and take the kinds of risks they do. And the way any organization can achieve this is with empathy.

When the people have to manage dangers from inside the organization, the organization itself becomes less able to face the dangers from outside.

If we feel safe among our own people, in our own tribes or organizations, we relax and are more open to trust and cooperation.

employees—they set out to change the conditions in which their employees operate.

This book attempts to help us understand why we do what we do. Almost all of the systems in our bodies have evolved to help us find food, stay alive and advance the species.

The cultural norms of the majority of companies and organizations today actually work against our natural biological inclinations.

This should be the rule for all of us, not the exception. Returning from work feeling inspired, safe, fulfilled and grateful is a natural human right to which we are all entitled and not a modern luxury that only a few lucky ones are able to find.

Every single employee is someone’s son or someone’s daughter. Like a parent, a leader of a company is responsible for their precious lives.

“It is we, the companies, who are now responsible for these precious lives,”

Leaders of organizations who create a working environment better suited for how we are designed do not sacrifice excellence or performance simply because they put people first. Quite the contrary. These organizations are among the most stable, innovative and high-performing companies in their industries.

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.

Shift from time telling to clock building--to teaching your people how to persist beyond you, the leader

As employees or members of the group, we need the courage to take care of each other when our leaders don’t. And in doing so, we become the leaders we wish we had.

The ability of a group of people to do remarkable things hinges on how well those people pull together as a team.

Intimidation, humiliation, isolation, feeling dumb, feeling useless and rejection are all stresses we try to avoid inside the organization. But the danger inside is controllable and it should be the goal of leadership to set a culture free of danger from each other. And the way to do that is by giving people a sense of belonging. By offering them a strong culture based on a clear set of human values and beliefs. By giving them the power to make decisions. By offering trust and empathy. By creating a Circle of Safety.

Only when we feel we are in a Circle of Safety will we pull together as a unified team, better able to survive and thrive regardless of the conditions outside.

This is the primary role of leadership, to look out for those inside their Circle.

The standards a leader sets for entry, if based on a clear set of human values, significantly impact people’s sense of belonging and their willingness to pull together and contribute to the team.

Strong leaders, in contrast, extend the Circle of Safety to include every single person who works for the organization.

It is easy to know when we are in the Circle of Safety because we can feel it. We feel valued by our colleagues and we feel cared for by our superiors. We become absolutely confident that the leaders of the organization and all those with whom we work are there for us and will do what they can to help us succeed.

These are always results—the results of feeling safe and trusted among the people with whom we work. When the Circle of Safety is strong, we naturally share ideas, share intelligence and share the burdens of stress.

we as members of the Circle have a responsibility to our leaders—that’s what makes us valuable to them, not our numbers.

it is equally our responsibility to express concern for their well-being.

Whether you’re in a leadership role or not, the question is, how safe do y...

Our ability to provide for our kids, make ends meet or live a certain lifestyle sometimes comes at the cost of our own joy, happiness and fulfillment at work.

The price we pay for a perception of stability comes at its own cost.

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 who care about how we feel, our stress levels decrease. But when we feel like someone is looking out for themselves or that the leaders of the company care more about the numbers than they do us, our stress and anxiety go up. This is why we are willing to change jobs in the first place; we feel no loyalty to a company whose leaders offer us no sense of belonging or reason to stay beyond money and benefits.

people who didn’t feel recognized for their effort at work were more likely to suffer from heart disease.

And . . . it’s also bad for business.

when our bosses completely ignore us, 40 percent of us actively disengage from our work.

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.

Feeling unsafe around those we expect to feel safe—those in our tribes (work is the modern version of the tribe)—fundamentally violates the laws of nature and how we were designed to live.

Even when we know that feeling insecure at work hurts our performance and our health, sometimes even killing us, we stay in jobs we hate.

we will have to learn that our strength will come not from the sharpness of our spears but from our willingness to offer others the protection of our shields.

Not from what we can do for ourselves but what we can do for others

The best companies almost always make it through hard times because the people rally to make sure they do. In other words, from a strictly business standpoint, treating people well in any economy is more cost effective than not.

Children are better off having a parent who works into the night in a job they love than a parent who works shorter hours but comes home unhappy.

By putting up with miserable, we may be doing them harm.

Any opportunities came from their will and hard work to create them. And create them they did. Our species was built to manage in conditions of great danger and insufficient resources.

Everything about our bodies was designed with one goal—to help us survive. This includes the feelings of happiness.

endorphins and dopamine, work to get us where we need to go as individuals—to persevere, find food, build shelters, invent tools, drive forward and get things done. I like to call these the “selfish” chemicals.

The other two, serotonin and oxytocin, are there to incentivize us to

work together and develop feelings of trust and loyalty. I like to call these the “selfless” chemicals. They work to help strengthen our social bonds so that we are ...