How to Be A Great Leader According to Simon Sinek

Hey, is Marie Foro and you are seeing Marietv, the place to create a business and a life you love. If you have ever wondered what is needed to inspire

great

ness not only in yourself, but in those around you, then today's program is a must. Simon Sinek believes in a brilliant future and in our ability to build it. Described as a visionary thinker with a rare intellect, Simon's goal is to help build a world in which the vast majority of people go home every day feeling satisfied with their work. He is the author of two best -selling books: begins with Why: how the

great

leader

s inspire everyone to take measures and the

leader

s are last: why some teams join and others do not.

It is better known to popularize the concept of why, which is the third most watched Ted talk of all time. He speaks worldwide and has commented for the local and national press, including New York Times, Inc., NPR and Businessweek. Simon, thank you very much for being here. You are welcome. Thanks for inviting me. So we have known each other for years and I just want to thank him for his work because I have shared the beginning of why innumerable times in Marietv before and with our B schoolchildren, so it is great to finally have it in the chair.

Thank you. I really appreciate that you make me disseminate the message. Yes of course. So I want to take you back to when you had your own business and lost your passion for what you were doing. And I wondered if you could talk a little about how that experience led to your understanding and the whole concept of starting with why. So, many people think that this concept of why it was a kind of academic exercise that came out and studied it, and I did not. This is not how it began. As you said, it started by pain.

I owned my own small business, it was a strategic marketing consultancy, and superficially my life looked quite well. I had my own business, I earned a decent life, we had incredible customers and did incredible job. Except that after a few years of doing that, I lost my passion for it. I didn't want to wake up and do it again and I was really very embarrassed because of that because there are people who had real problems. As, poor me. Know? And then I kept it for me and pretended. All my energy was destined to pretend that I had more success, happier and more in control of what I felt.

And it wasn't until a friend of mine came to me and expressed concern like: "Are you different. Is everything right?" And it was not until I had a kind of safety network of someone close to that, I had the courage not only to face the problem, but really confront it. And that was the birth of this concept of why. There was a confluence of events. And I realized that each organization, including my own career, worked on 3 levels: what I did, how I did and why I did it. I knew what I did, that was easy to explain.

How I did it was also quite good. It was good explaining what made me different or special than others. But I could not tell you why I was doing it, and it was that missing piece with which I obsessed. And once I found my why not only my passion was restored to the levels that I had never experienced before, but put me in a trajectory in which I could not have been without it. And I learned many things from that experience. A lot. Well, I know that every time I mentioned his work or, you know, you spoke in one of our live events and often share your Ted talk, literally makes people cry because there is such a sense of alignment.

And then, of course, they naturally want to focus their energy on why am I doing it? And I think it is very important and it seems that it was the perfect jump point for your last book. You know, and I know that you have spent a lot of time with men and women in uniform, you traveled to military bases and had a deep experience in Afghanistan. I wondered if you can share some of that and how it led leaders to eat at the end. Yes, I thought it was a unique pony. You know, I thought this why ...

It was a good trick, I mean, I don't get meling, but ... is it ... Are you teasing me? It is an incredible trick. But I even love that you have said that, I just want to interrupt that for a second because many people have a great idea or we listen to people from our audience that say: "That's it. I have finished. I have no other good ideas. My creativity, through the window." That is, you know, I was at peace with that. You know, and people always wondered what follows and say: "I don't know." You know, it's as if the first was born of pain.

I thought: "I have no idea what will happen later." And it was fine, as I said, it was ... it's a good trick. But it was an experience that I had in Afghanistan that he launched what became the leaders who ate at the end. I worked a lot with the mobility forces, which is a branch of the Air Force responsible for all the large aircraft such as oil tankers and the load plans, even Air Force One. And the general who directed the mobility forces at that time said, you know, you have known yourself quite well. Would you be willing to go to Iraq or Afghanistan to see our men and women do their duty in the theater?

So I agreed and decided to send me to Afghanistan. I didn't tell my family because I didn't want them to worry. I told them that I was going to Germany, truth. I told them that I would be out of contact, truth. I told them that I would be in many planes, true. I just didn't tell you that I was going to Afghanistan. So I had 2 companions, we were me and 2 officers who went with me, all three. And we went as basic strangers and returned as brothers. It was a ... everything on our trip basically went wrong. 10 minutes after landing in Bagram in the middle of the night, the base was under a rocket attack. 3 rockets ...

I heard the first to enter. 3 rockets landed about 100 yards from our nose. Then, the sirens are and, you know, the calls so that everyone goes to a safe place. I mean, that's how my trip began. Interestingly, I was relaxed. I mean, for anyone who has been in a war zone, you will know, you have all the feelings that you would expect to have, you simply do not have them in the right times. Anyway, everything was finally clear and, you know, we went to bed. The goal was to go to an air drop and we discovered that there was an early airdrop, early the next morning.

And so we took about 2 and a half hours, 3 hours of sleep, we woke up and went to do this aerial mission, which was incredible. Basically, we got on a large C17 cargo plane, we fly about an hour and a half, 2 hours to the middle of the country, we went down to 2,000 feet, the door of the rear load bay opened, and we sat there and we observed how all this load slid in the back and it was in a park to reab on a base of front operation of the army. Incredible experience. Then we came back. Now the goal is to leave Dodge.

Now the goal is to find a flight home. There is nothing that is scheduled regularly and any plane you perform is at the discretion of the pilots anyway. So we found a outgoing aeromedical mission, which takes wounded warriors out of the theater. And we ask the pilots, can we move on? And they said safe. And we wait and wait and wait and wait. And we are all tied in about 5 minutes before taking off, they approached us and told me: "We need to hit you with the plane because we need more space for stretchers." And if there is ever a good reason to get out of a plane, that's all.

That was when we went to look for another flight and that was when we discovered that there was not one and there was not going to be one until Tuesday. It was just Saturday. So, at least, I will be at home 4 days late, my parents ... I have no way to get my family, they don't know where I am, and there is no guarantee that we are going on that plane. And I only remember every fiber of my being that falls. I remember that all the energy left me and I remember being completely obsessed with one thing and only thing, that it was myself.

I became obsessed with my security, my happiness, my security, and I didn't care who had to get out of his way to do what he wanted. There was a public affairs officer who said I can take you on a flight to Kyrguistan, but you don't have the right visa, which I said: "You take me on that plane." I do not talk to people that way and I could feel becoming this person who hated, becoming this boss that at some point we have all worked for who only wants his own promotion and does not care who has to twist in knots so that they can get what they want.

Now I was becoming that person. We returned to the ... to our home, to our rooms, and I went to bed and closed my eyes, but I couldn't sleep, my mind was running. I also became paranoid. I was convinced that there was going to be another rocket attack and I was convinced, absolutely convinced that I was going to land. I was convinced that this is how my parents would discover that I was in Afghanistan. One of the officers said he was going to look for another flight and that he left. And the other said: "Well, I go to the gym then," and he left.

And when leaving, because my eyes were closed, he thought I was sleeping and the light came out. I was alone in this room in the dark, my mind accelerating, completely paranoid. And I realized that what I was experiencing was an unfulfilled race or a life not fulfilled compressed and exaggerated in a 24 -hour period. Because I had an incredible day. I had an incredibly exciting experience. I didn't want to wake up and do it again. I was full of repentance, I didn't do it ... I'm sorry to say yes to this, I didn't want to be there, I felt totally out of control.

And I realized, you know, many people confused emotion with joy or confused happiness with satisfaction. You know, our careers and our works can be exciting and fun and winning the new customer and making a great sale, but that does not mean that we meet, that does not mean that we are inspired, that does not mean that we have joy in our lives. And I realized that this was the mistake I had made. And so I am in the business business, you know. I realize that I felt like that because I didn't have a sense of purpose.

And then I try to invent one. You are here to tell their story and return and worked for, like, a minute and then disappear. And I had ... I ran out of solutions. He was paranoid, he was scared, he was depressed, he was out of control and had no solution. And then I went to bed and gave myself. I just ... I gave up. I had ... I had nothing else. And having resigned, I decided that if I would be trapped here, I could well make me useful. Then, I was going to volunteer to speak anywhere and, so often, they wanted to help some of the incredible people he had met.

I don't care if I had to wear heavy boxes or sweep floors. It didn't matter how servil, I wanted to serve those who served others. And when making that decision, this incredible calm occurred to me, even an emotion. I was excited to be now and I couldn't wait to go to work. As if it were a movie, the moment was disturbing, reaching this conclusion, the door opens, it is Major Throckmorton, one of the boys with whom it flies. And he says: "There has been a flight that has been redirected. We can follow if we are going now.

We have to leave now. If we are not going, now we will miss it, they will leave without us. We have to leave now. Where is Matt?" I like: "It's in the gym." So we run to the gym, we get out of the running tape, we return, there is no time to shower, put your uniform again, take all our things and run to the flight line. As soon as we reach the flight line, we can see the plane where we are going, it is a great C17 again, and as soon as we get there, there is a safety curtain that falls and will not let us out to the plane.

And the reason is because elsewhere they are having a fallen soldier ceremony and out of respect when that is happening, everything stops at the base. And so we sat on the sidewalk and wait and told the boys what I spent just a few moments, and I cried like a baby when I told them the story. And one thing that most people do not realize the military, which is crying is fine. Finally, the security curtain emerged and we went to our plane, we climbed on board, we would be the only 3 passengers aboard this plane. What I have not told you is the reason why this flight was redirected is that we would take home the soldier for those who had just had the fallen soldier ceremony.

Then, at the right time, when the army brought the coffin, we all put ourselves at the end of the plane and the soldiers brought the draped cof Our precious cargo. It would be a 9 and a half flight flight during the night back to Germany. We all sat there, the coffin was there while we sat down to the plane to take off. As soon as we got into the air, we all bet on a piece of real estate somewhere on the floor, we take out our sleeping bags to try to sleep a little. On any other flight we talked, we joke.

As soon as a word was spoken in about 10 hours. On each other flight I stayed on the flight cover in the cabin and spoke with thecrew. I did not visit the cabin once on this flight. And I will tell you that it was one of the most rewarding and deep experiences of my life. That after having gone through what I spent on the floor just before during those 24 hours, now I had the opportunity to bring home to someone who knows much more about the service than ever. Our last flight home was in ... we were bringing the wounded warriors of Germany's house back to America, it was around 30 something injured.

And there was a marine in what CCAT call on the back of the plane. His wounds were very severe and kept him in an artificial coma. Finally I gathered the courage to talk to the documents that were assigned to take care of it. It had 2 broken legs, 2 broken arms, shrapnel in the chest, a broken basin, a punctured eyeball. I was in poor condition. And they guided me through their wounds and all the innovations that take place in trauma care that are reaching civil hospitals, which is surprising in itself because even when they are injured they are still returning us.

Know? And the doctor was an Austin reservist, Texas, who works in an emergency room at home. And I asked him a question that I don't think I would have ever asked him if he hadn't happened to what I just happened. I said: "In these missions, do you have a greater sense of satisfaction than at home?" I said: "You are a good guy, you are ... you save lives to make a living." And he looked at me and said: "There is no comparison." He said that 95 to 95 percent of people in the emergency room are drunk or idiots. That is what lands them in the emergency room.

He says: "There is not a single drunk or an idiot here." Then, when I got home, it shook me for a while and really began to question the environments we work on. You know, we work with people we call colleagues or coworkers. They work with people who call brother and sister. There is a deep sense of trust and love that have one for the other that we simply have, and I want to work with people like that. So, my original conclusion was that they are only better people, but I wanted to learn where they come from trust and cooperation mainly because I want to work with people in environments like that.

And I learned that it is not people, it is the environment. And that is why leadership is so important, because leadership will create an environment that can create relationships like that, and hence the leaders eat for the last time came. From there that book came. What leads us perfectly in what I wanted to discourage and immerse in deeper next, which is the power of the environment. And you wrote in the leaders Eat Last, and I think this with my heart. How when we have the right environment, that humans will do notable things. And that is really true that they are not just that they are better.

That we all have that capacity, and I wondered if you could talk about it. Yes. It is a very basic idea, you know. We are social animals. Our happiness, our joy, our success, everything depends on our relationships. And we respond to the environments in which we are. You can take a good person and put them in a bad environment and are able to do bad things. In the same way, a person can take that the group or even society has renounced and put them in a good atmosphere and are able to change their lives and really do something notable of themselves.

We are social animals and respond to the environments in which we are and the leaders are responsible for building that environment. If you create an environment in which people feel safe among theirs, naturally, the natural human response to these conditions is trust and cooperation. Remember, trust and cooperation are feelings, they are not instructions. There is no PowerPoint or launch that can give in the end that someone will trust you. You can't tell someone: "Trust me." It doesn't work that way. They are feelings. Similarly, if you create an environment in which we really fear, we fear the people we work with, the natural human reaction to that environment is paranoia, cynicism, distrust and self -interest.

That is what happens. There is enough danger outside the organization, there are enough things outside that we should not have to fear the people we work with or fear our own leaders. And most leaders do not understand this. Most leaders think that leadership is about being in charge. No, it is not. It's about taking care of those in charge. Most leaders think everyone works for them. No, you work for the people of your organization. It is their responsibility to take care of them, make them feel safe, and naturally want to cooperate and work hard and give their blood, sweat and tears to advance their vision.

All they ask is to take care of them, make them feel valued and valuable, and the rest is taken care of alone. It's like a father, it's like a coach. Teach them, enter them, give them the opportunity to fall and try again. And if they fear the leader, then they will take measures to protect the leader. It is dominant in our world today. If you work in an organization where it is a standard practice that employees feel the need to send a CYA email after each decision they make, it is a sign that they are taking the time and energy of their day, far from doing their job to protect themselves from their own leaders.

That is what it is. You know, anyone who maintains a file of all the good things they have done in their career in case they need it, that is, the people who take time and energy to do their job to protect themselves from their own organization. Therefore, you cannot ask those people to give the best of your thinking and be more productive if you have created an environment in which you are forced to protect yourself from you. Know? And this is what I learned. And so it is this environment, this security circle. Yes, in which I want to immerse myself more deeply and I felt that there was such a powerful question that you write so that you all ask us, whether we consider ourselves in a leadership role or not.

The question is, how sure do you feel where you work? And I thought that was so incredible for all of us to reflect because for me as the owner of a company, he speaks to a large extent of, how, how am I being? How are we interacting? How have we configured things and I feel safe? Does my people feel safe? And I think it is such a brilliant question for us and then answer. And I would love that they may unleash the security circle because I think it's great. Well, let's be clear in what I mean safely.

It does not mean that you cannot get into trouble. It does not mean that there is no discipline. It does not mean that it is a charity and that everyone floats. We are not talking about that. What we want to say is that there is enough pressure from abroad: the ups and downs of an economy, the uncertainty of the future, the whims of the stock market, its competence that is sometimes trying to get it out of the business, sometimes trying to kill it, but at least they are frustrating its growth. As, there is enough pressure on which we have no control.

These things are a constant. The only variable within an organization is the environment. That is completely under our control, and that is the responsibility of the leader. And if leaders make people feel they receive an education on how to do their job, the opportunity to try again and again, the opportunity to develop their trust and become their best being, the opportunity to interact and build solid relationships. This is what I mean by feeling safe, that I love the people I work with, I love where I work, I enjoy going there. The imbalance of working life has nothing to do with how much yoga we do.

The imbalance of working life means that I feel safe at home, but I don't feel safe at work. That is the imbalance. And no amount of yoga or free snacks in the cafeteria will solve that. You know, it's leadership. It is a leadership problem. And so, when that ... when this security circle is provided, two notable things happen. First, people feel safe, so they will work very hard to see that the leader's vision progresses. But in turn they will also take care of their leader. So, if a leader does not feel safe from his own people, it is because the leader is not taking care of his people.

Remember, we call someone leader not because they are in charge but because they were first. First in the unknown, first towards danger, first to protect people. Because everyone is simply standing there and says: "What are we going to do?" It is the leader who says: "I have it. I supported you." That's why we call you leader. I know many people who sit at the highest levels of organizations that are not leaders. They have authority. We do what they tell us because they have authority over us, but we would not follow them, we would not work to keep them safe and advance their vision.

And I know many people who feel at the lowest levels of organizations that have no authority, but they are absolutely leaders because they have made the decision to take care of the person to the left and take care of the person to the right of them. That is what it means to be a leader. Having an authority position simply means that you can operate on a larger scale and influence more people, but a leader can never feel safe until people feel safe first. That is the leader's responsibility, start, go first. So, a concept that shares in the book is this idea of ​​trust that comes from above.

And Bob Chapman, incredible human being ... Spectacular human being. ... And I think I read in the recognition of someone you consider a mentor of yours. I do it, I have it ... it has become a friend. Yes. I wondered if you could share a little of their history for those who could not know him. Bob Chapman is the CEO of a company called Barry-Wehmiller. It is a ... It is a company of 2 billion dollars with about 7 thousand employees. So it's not like, you know, "Oh, there are four people and we all love each other like the family." No, this is ... this has a certain scale and extends throughout the country.

And Bob realized many years that each person in his company is someone's son and someone's daughter, and they have given their son and daughter with the hope that their son and daughter will prosper and do well in the world. And he as the responsibility of caring for his sons and daughters. And he realizes this and completely and deeply changed the way he directed his company. Because he used to direct his company as anyone used to direct his company,

according

to the numbers. He saw people as a disposable resource and this deeply changed their point of view.

And I think really, he really endured in 2008. We now live in a world in which the concept of layoffs has become so normal that we don't even perceive it as something bad. You know, that is like being a functional alcoholic. Of course, you can spend the day. It does not mean that you are healthy. Mass layoffs, in other words, who use people to balance books, did not exist as a standard commercial practice in the United States before the 1980s. It did not exist. Good? Only as the last, last, last resort to save a dying company perhaps.

Good? But the way we use it now, as, we will send it home to tell your family that you can no longer provide them because we missed our projections. You know, I mean, that's crazy. Then Bob, his company in 2008, and is a large manufacturing company, an old blue neck. Good? And they lost 30% of their orders due to the 2008 stock market accident. And thus, not only the business was dried, the pipe dried. And so, the Board met, they needed to save 10 million dollars, their working group could no longer afford. And just as it is normal today, the Board says: "We need to have dismissals." And Bob refused because Bob does not believe in head counts, Bob believes in the heart and it is very difficult to simply reduce a heart count.

And instead, what they implemented was a license program where each employee, regardless of their position in the company, had to take 4 weeks of unpaid holidays. They could take it when they wanted and did not have to take it consecutively. And it was how Bob announced the program that was equally powerful. He said: "It is better that we should all suffer from what any of us should have to suffer a lot." And morals rose. And, as expected, when a security circle is provided like that, natural human reaction is not selfish. The natural human reaction is to take care of each other.

Then, the behaviors began to appear that they were not part of the program that nobody predicted. People who could pay it more began to trade with people who could afford less. Therefore, someone would take 5 weeks for someone else to only have to take 3. and when the economy improved and improved the business, everyone had stayed. They replaced all 401K that had frozen, they paid it. You can't steal your employees. They are happy and satisfied. I have met some of them. I have met people who cry talking about their work. It is amazing. It is surprising what he has built and wrote about his experience in his book, Everybody Matters, which really takes you through some of the things he did.

It's ... it's really remarkable. You have another line in the book that really spoke to my heart. "When we feel ... we feel good when we take care of other people. That is not an accident." And what ILoom of their work and particularly of the leaders Eat Last is that my opinion is that it seems that we are all designed to be leaders. You are not giving us a recipe, it is like: "Oh, I want you to go out and do this, this and this, and then you will be a leader." And I wondered if you could unpack a little more about the fact that we feel really good when we take care of people and if we follow those instincts to take care of each other, the natural result is leadership.

Yes. We are designed to take care of each other. As social animals, it is in our biology that we will take care of each other. That is why he feels so good when someone does something really good for us without expectation of anything in return. We have all had the experience in which someone does something good and you say: "Oh, my God, thank you," and then they take out, you are like, "uugh." It is a bit, as, ruins all the experience. Good? Completely. It ruins it. But when they do and say: "No, no, no", and you say "please." "No, no, no.

At all." Do you know not only? That's great, Simon. That is really incredible. "Now, the value of my workforce was worth much less than $ 500, and that is the point. Touch creates oxytocin. Of generosity, time or energy without expectation of anything, receive an oxytocin opportunity. The human body tries to take care of each other. High stress, but in reality ... actually inhibits empathy. For the life of these people. Work, accounting, engineering, whatever things and we don't want someone to have no idea what we are doing. For 6 months EMPTY, The Next Person Who Wicks A Cup, They’ll Make The Next Pot.

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