Author: Simon Sinek
ISBN: 978-1591848011
Reading the excerpts more than suffices.
EXCERPTS
A good number of our educational institutions and training programs today are focused not on developing great leaders but on training effective managers. Short-term gains are viewed as the mark of success and long-term organizational growth and viability are simply the bill payers.
Marine leaders are expected to eat last because the true price of leadership is the willingness to place the needs of others above your own. Great leaders truly care about those they are privileged to lead and understand that the true cost of the leadership privilege comes at the expense of self-interest.
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
That August night over Afghanistan, Johnny Bravo risked his life so that others might survive. He received no performance bonus. He didn’t get a promotion or an award at the company off-site. He wasn’t looking for any undue attention or reality TV show for his efforts. For Johnny Bravo, it was just part of the “J.O.B.” as he puts it. And the greatest reward he received for his service was meeting the forces for whom he provided top cover that night. Though they had never met before, when they finally did meet, they hugged like old friends.
In the right conditions, the people with whom we work would choose to do those things for us. And when that happens, when those kinds of bonds are formed, a strong foundation is laid for the kind of success and fulfillment that no amount of money, fame or awards can buy. This is what it means to work in a place in which the leaders prioritize the well-being of their people and, in return, their people give everything they’ve got to protect and advance the well-being of one another and the organization.
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. [I wouldn't bet on empathy but rather on remuneration policies that also reward mutual help. E.g. bonus for the 5 most helpful employees, voted by his peers.]
To earn trust, he must extend trust. He didn’t believe that simply because someone went to college or was good at accounting they were more trustworthy than someone who had a GED and was good with their hands. Chapman believed in the fundamental goodness of people and he was going to treat them as such.
“When you have people who trust you, they’re going to do a better job for you to earn or keep that trust.”
And if an employee has a personal problem, they know the leaders of the company—and their fellow employees—will be there for them.
Employees didn’t just become more willing to help each other solve problems, however. They also looked after their machines better. This meant fewer breakdowns and fewer work stoppages (which also meant expenses were kept in check). The changes were not only good for the people, they were good for the company too.
Without coercion, pressure or force, the people naturally work together to help each other and advance the company. Working with a sense of obligation is replaced by working with a sense of pride. And coming to work for the company is replaced by coming to work for each other.
Truly human leadership protects an organization from the internal rivalries that can shatter a culture. When we have to protect ourselves from each other, the whole organization suffers.
When people don’t even want to be at work, progress comes at much greater cost and effort … and often doesn’t last. We don’t even bother measuring a company’s success in decades, instead we focus on successive quarters. A business environment with an unbalanced focus on short-term results and money before people affects society at large. When we struggle to find happiness or a sense of belonging at work, we take that struggle home. Those who have an opportunity to work in organizations that treat them like human beings to be protected rather than a resource to be exploited come home at the end of the day with an intense feeling of fulfillment and gratitude. 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.
To sacrifice the numbers to save the people and not sacrifice the people to save the numbers.
By creating a Circle of Safety around the people in the organization, leadership reduces the threats people feel inside the group, which frees them up to focus more time and energy to protect the organization from the constant dangers outside and seize the big opportunities. Without a Circle of Safety, people are forced to spend too much time and energy protecting themselves from each other.
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. When we believe that those inside our group, those inside the Circle, will look out for us, it creates an environment for the free exchange of information and effective communication. This is fundamental to driving innovation, preventing problems from escalating and making organizations better equipped to defend themselves from the outside dangers and to seize the opportunities.
Absent a Circle of Safety, paranoia, cynicism and self-interest prevail. The whole purpose of maintaining the Circle of Safety is so that we can invest all our time and energy to guard against the dangers outside. It’s the same reason we lock our doors at night. Not only does feeling safe inside give us peace of mind, but the positive impact on the organization itself is remarkable. When the Circle is strong and that feeling of belonging is ubiquitous, collaboration, trust and innovation result.
This is an important point. We cannot tell people to trust us. We cannot instruct people to come up with big ideas. And we certainly can’t demand that people cooperate. 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. Every single skill and strength we have is amplified to better compete and face the dangers in the world outside and advance the organization’s interests vastly more effectively.
And likewise, we as members of the Circle have a responsibility to our leaders—that’s what makes us valuable to them, not our numbers. So when our boss comes down hard on us and we don’t know the reason, it is equally our responsibility to express concern for their well-being. That’s how the Circle of Safety stays strong.
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.
Leaders, the study showed, have overall lower stress levels than those who work for them. “It’s possible, in other words, that the feeling of being in charge of one’s own life more than makes up for the greater amount of responsibility that accompanies higher rungs on the social ladder.”
A child’s sense of well-being is affected less by the long hours their parents put in at work and more by the mood their parents are in when they come home. 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.
We are at our best when we face danger together. Unfortunately, there are too many leaders of companies who believe, in the face of external challenges, that the best way to motivate their people is by creating a sense of internal urgency or pressure.
Visions of being the “biggest” or “the best” or any other words that so often show up in vision statements are, on a biological level, pretty useless if we want to inspire people to work hard to achieve those visions. A good vision statement, in contrast, explains, in specific terms, what the world would look like if everything we did was wildly successful.
We can imagine that; we can see what that looks like. And if we find that vision inspiring and worthy of our time and energy, then we can more easily plan the steps we need to take to achieve that vision. Short or long term, the clearer we can see what we are setting out to achieve, the more likely we are to achieve it. It’s exciting, thanks to dopamine. This is why the best visions offer us something that, for all practical purposes, we will never actually reach, but for which we would gladly die trying.
When the [dopamine] system works as designed, we stay well fed, get our work done and make progress. What’s more, we are better able to support and provide for those in our family and tribe. Dopamine can help us get through college, become a doctor or work tirelessly to realize an imagined vision of the future. But there is some fine print at the bottom of the bottle that is often missed. Dopamine is also highly, highly addictive. As helpful as it is, we can also form neural connections that do not help us survive—in fact, they may do the complete opposite. The behaviors we reinforce can actually do us harm. Cocaine, nicotine, alcohol and gambling all release dopamine. And the feeling can be intoxicating. The chemical effects notwithstanding, the addictions we have to these things (and lots of other things that feel good) are all basically dopamine addictions. The only variation is the behavior that is reinforced that gives us the next hit of dopamine. There is another thing to add to that list of things that can hijack our dopamine reward system: social media. Texting, e-mail, the number of likes we collect, the ding, the buzz or the flash of our phones that tell us “You’ve got mail,” feels amazing. As it should. We have associated the dopamine-releasing feeling of “ooh, something for me” with getting a text or e-mail or the like.
In a performance-driven organization in which dopamine is the primary means of reward—hit the goal, get the money—like gambling, we can become addicted to “making the numbers.”
It is because of dopamine that, in our modern day, we like shopping or collecting things—though there is no rational benefit to most of our hobbies, we enjoy them because they satisfy our prehistoric foraging desires. If we get addicted and can’t stop, like any dopamine addiction, as good as it may feel, it often comes at a high cost. We spend more time and money than is wise and sometimes sacrifice our relationships just so we can get another hit. Accomplishment may be fueled by dopamine. But that feeling of fulfillment, those lasting feelings of happiness and loyalty, all require engagement with others.
Without endorphins to give us the edge we need to keep going, we would not keep striving even when we were tired and exhausted. Dopamine rewards us with a chemical rush when we’ve accomplished something, making us want to do it again and again, which is exactly what it takes to find things, build things and get things done.
When we cooperate or look out for others, serotonin and oxytocin reward us with the feelings of security, fulfillment, belonging, trust and camaraderie.
The less our colleagues and leaders look out for us, the less we look out for them. The less we look out for them, the more selfish they become and, as a result, the more selfish we become. And when that happens, eventually everyone loses.
As social animals, we more than want the approval of those in our tribe, we need it. It really matters. We all want to feel valuable for the effort we put forth for the good of others in the group or the group itself.
And when others offer us that protection and support, because of serotonin, we feel a sense of accountability to them.
Remember, these chemicals control our feelings. That’s why we can actually feel the weight of responsibility when others commit time and energy to support us. We want them to feel that the sacrifices they made for us were worth it. We don’t want to let them down. We want to make them proud. And if we are the ones giving the support, we feel an equal sense of responsibility. We want to do right by them so that they can accomplish all that they set out to do.
This helps explain why it feels different to cross a finish line alone, without spectators, compared to when a crowd cheers as we break the tape. In both cases, the accomplishment is the same, the time is the same, even the effort is the same. The only difference is that in one case, there are others there to witness and cheer for us.
The more we give of ourselves to see others succeed, the greater our value to the group and the more respect they offer us. The more respect and recognition we receive, the higher our status in the group and the more incentive we have to continue to give to the group. At least that’s how it’s supposed to work. Whether we are a boss, coach or parent, serotonin is working to encourage us to serve those for whom we are directly responsible. And if we are the employee, player or the one being looked after, the serotonin encourages us to work hard to make them proud. Those who work hardest to help others succeed will be seen by the group as the leader or the “alpha” of the group.
And being the alpha—the strong, supportive one of the group, the one willing to sacrifice time and energy so that others may gain—is a prerequisite for leadership.
Oxytocin is most people’s favorite chemical. It’s the feeling of friendship, love or deep trust. It is the feeling we get when we’re in the company of our closest friends or trusted colleagues. It is the feeling we get when we do something nice for someone or someone does something nice for us.
Without oxytocin, we wouldn’t want to perform acts of generosity. Without oxytocin there would be no empathy. Without oxytocin, we wouldn’t be able to develop strong bonds of trust and friendship. And without that, we wouldn’t have anyone we could rely on to watch our backs. Without oxytocin, we would have no partner to raise our children; in fact, we wouldn’t even love our children. It is because of oxytocin that we trust others to help us build our businesses, do difficult things or help us out when we’re in a bind. It is because of oxytocin that we feel human connections and like being in the company of people we like. Oxytocin makes us social.
Oxytocin is the chemical that helps direct how vulnerable we can afford to make ourselves. It is a social compass that determines when it’s safe to open up and trust or when we should hold back. Unlike dopamine, which is about instant gratification, oxytocin is long-lasting. The more time we spend with someone, the more we are willing to make ourselves vulnerable around them. As we learn to trust them and earn their trust in return, the more oxytocin flows. In time, as if by magic, we will realize that we have developed a deep bond with this person. The madness and excitement and spontaneity of the dopamine hit is replaced by a more relaxed, more stable, more long-term oxytocin-driven relationship.
My favorite definition of love is giving someone the power to destroy us and trusting they won’t use it.
Not only does the person performing even the tiniest act of courtesy get a shot of oxytocin, not only does the person on the receiving end of an act also get a shot, but someone who witnesses the act of generosity also gets some chemical feel good. Simply seeing or hearing about acts of human generosity actually inspires us to want to do the same.
Unlike dopamine, which is largely responsible for instant gratification, oxytocin gives us lasting feelings of calm and safety. We don’t need to check in to see how many likes or followers we have on Facebook to feel good. Because of oxytocin, just knowing our friends and family are there, just looking at a picture of the people whom we love and who love us, make us feel good and not feel alone. And when that happens, we want more than anything else to do what we can to help them feel the same way.
If we fear our boss doesn’t like us; if we are constantly worried that if we make a mistake, we will get in trouble; if we think that someone we work with will try to take credit for something we did or stab us in the back to get ahead; if we pay attention to too much media hype; if we fear the company isn’t going to make its numbers this year and layoffs may be around the corner; if people are generally disengaged; if we do not feel the Circle of Safety, cortisol starts to seep through our veins. Drip. Drip. Drip. This is a serious problem. For one thing, cortisol actually inhibits the release of oxytocin, the chemical responsible for empathy. This means that when there is only a weak Circle of Safety and people must invest time and energy to guard against politics and other dangers inside the company, it actually makes us even more selfish and less concerned about one another or the organization.
If we work in an environment in which leadership tells the truth, in which layoffs are not the default in hard times and in which incentive structures do not pit us against one another, the result, thanks to the increased levels of oxytocin and serotonin, is trust and cooperation.
This is what work-life balance means. It has nothing to do with the hours we work or the stress we suffer. It has to do with where we feel safe. If we feel safe at home, but we don’t feel safe at work, then we will suffer what we perceive to be a work-life imbalance.
Oxytocin relieves stress, increases our interest in our work and improves our cognitive abilities, making us better able to solve complex problems. It boosts our immune systems, lowers blood pressure, increases our libido and actually lessens our cravings and addictions. And best of all, it inspires us to work together.
People who wear phony couture clothing actually don’t feel the same burst of pride or status as those who wear the real thing. Faking it, it turns out, makes us feel phony, as if we are cheating. Status is biological, we have to earn it to feel it.
Even though we can indeed raise our status with material goods, the feeling doesn’t last.
However, all the advantages of leadership do not come for free. In fact, they come at quite a steep price. And it is this part of the equation that is too often forgotten in many of our organizations today. It is true that the alpha may really be “stronger” than the rest of us. We know that all our respect and adoration really does boost their self-confidence. That’s good. Because when the group faces a threat from the outside, we expect the leader, who really is stronger, better fed and oozing with confidence from all the serotonin in their body, to be the first one to rush toward the danger to protect the rest of us.
This is the reason we are so offended by the exorbitant and disproportionate compensations of some of the leaders of investment banks. It has nothing to do with the numbers. It has to do with this social contract deeply ingrained in what it means to be human. If our leaders are to enjoy the trappings of their position in the hierarchy, then we expect them to offer us protection. The problem is, for many of the overpaid leaders, we know that they took the money and perks and didn’t offer protection to their people. In some cases, they even sacrificed their people to protect or boost their own interests. This is what so viscerally offends us. We only accuse them of greed and excess when we feel they have violated the very definition of what it means to be a leader.
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.”
The same is true for politicians during election cycles. It is fun to watch the politicians who announce that if elected they will do all these good things because they care about us. And if they lose their election, many go on to do none of those things. The rank of office is not what makes someone a leader. Leadership is the choice to serve others with or without any formal rank.
Trust is a biological reaction to the belief that someone has our well-being at heart. Leaders are the ones who are willing to give up something of their own for us. Their time, their energy, their money, maybe even the food off their plate. When it matters, leaders choose to eat last.
“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.”
I suspect in other companies that face hard times, most of the people would also rather lose a month’s pay than lose their job.
The selfish chemicals, endorphins and dopamine, give us short-term rewards to which we can, under the right conditions, become addicted. The selfless chemicals, serotonin and oxytocin, take time to build up in our systems before we can enjoy their full benefits. Though we may enjoy the thrill of reaching a goal or winning a race, that feeling won’t last. To get more of that feeling we need to win another race and reach a more distant goal. The bonds of love and trust and friendship take time to feel.
The goal for any leader of any organization is to find balance. When dopamine is the primary driver, we may achieve a lot but we will feel lonely and unfulfilled no matter how rich or powerful we get. We live lives of quick hits, in search of the next rush. Dopamine simply does not help us create things that are built to last. When we live in a hippie commune, the oxytocin gushing, but without any specific measureable goals or ambition, we can deny ourselves those intense feelings of accomplishment. No matter how loved we may feel, we may still feel like failures. The goal, again, is balance.
The rules are there for normal operations. The rules are designed to avoid danger and help ensure that things go smoothly. And though there are guidelines for how to deal with emergencies, at the end of the day, we trust the expertise of a special few people to know when to break the rules.
A technology, no matter how sophisticated, doesn’t care about us at all—it simply reacts to a set of variables. And the rulebook, no matter how comprehensive, cannot consider every eventuality.
This is the reason we find bureaucrats infuriating. They simply default to the rules with no consideration for the people those rules were designed to help or protect. In other words, they don’t care.
The responsibility of leaders is to teach their people the rules, train them to gain competency and build their confidence. At that point, leadership must step back and trust that their people know what they are doing and will do what needs to be done.
In weak organizations, without oversight, too many people will break the rules for personal gain. That’s what makes the organizations weak. In strong organizations, people will break the rules because it is the right thing to do for others.
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 doing what needs to be done. And when that happens, souls will be lost.
Better products, services and experiences are usually the result of the employees who invented, innovated or supplied them. As soon as people are put second on the priority list, differentiation gives way to commoditization. And when that happens, innovation declines and the pressure to compete on things like price, and other short-term strategies, goes up.
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.
People simply cannot maintain more than about 150 close relationships. It’s the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar.
In small organizations, where we are able to know everyone, it is much easier for us to do the work necessary to look after them. We are, for all the obvious reasons, more likely to look after people we personally know than those we don’t. If a person on a factory floor knows who the accountant is and the accountant knows who the machinists are, they are more likely to help each other.
When a leader is able to personally know everyone in the group, the responsibility for their care becomes personal. The leader starts to see those for whom they are responsible as if they were their own family.
This means, for larger organizations, the only way to manage the scale and keep the Circle of Safety strong is to rely on hierarchies. A CEO can “care” about their people in the abstract, but not until that abstraction is mitigated can the care be real. The only way to truly manage at scale is to empower the levels of management. They can no longer be seen as managers who handle or control people. Instead, managers must become leaders in their own right, which means they must take responsibility for the care and protection of those in their charge, confident that their leaders will take care of them.
In bigger companies, ones with many hundreds or thousands of employees who are not distributed into groups of fewer than 150, employees tend to have more friends outside of their jobs than inside. The larger the group of people we work with, the less likely we are to develop any kind of trusting relationships with them.
As social animals, it is imperative for us to see the actual, tangible impact of our time and effort for our work to have meaning and for us to be motivated to do it even better.
When we are able to physically see the positive impact of the decisions we make or the work we do, not only do we feel that our work was worth it, but it also inspires us to work harder and do more.
In other words, our bosses telling us how important our work is, is nowhere near as powerful as us getting to see it ourselves.
This is a significant shift in how the employees perceived their jobs and it is foundational to having a sense of purpose in the work we do.
We are naturally cooperative animals that are biologically more inspired and motivated when we know we are helping others.
Most of us, unfortunately, never see the people whose lives our work touches. For the vast majority, the closest we come to “seeing” results is evaluating numbers on spreadsheets or reading about what “customers” like in a report. If the line on the graph goes up, we are told we’ve done well and we should feel proud for what we’ve accomplished. We are expected to feel something for the numbers and think about the people. Our want to invest more time and energy is, however, biologically tied to the opposite—to feel for the people and think about the numbers. It makes sense for social animals that our sense of purpose is always human.
Let’s say you’re moving to a new house. To help you out, one of your friends pays for the moving company. A very generous offer worth $5,000. Another friend comes to your house and helps you pack the boxes, load the truck, travel with you to the new house, unload and unpack the boxes. Two weeks later, both friends need a favor from you on the same day. Which would you feel more inclined to help, the one who wrote a check or the one who committed time and energy?
Someone who gives us a lot of money, as our brains would interpret their behavior, is not necessarily as valuable to our protection as someone willing to commit their time and energy to us.
Given our obsessive need to feel safe among those in our tribe—our communities and our companies—we inherently put a premium value on those who give us their time and energy. Whereas money has relative value ($100 to a college student is a lot, $100 to a millionaire is a little), time and effort have an absolute value. No matter how rich or poor someone is, or where or when they are born, we all have 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year. If someone is willing to give us something of which they have a fixed and finite amount, a completely nonredeemable commodity, we perceive greater value. If we waste money, we can make more (especially in our society). But we’ve all had the experience of sitting in a meeting or watching a movie … or maybe even reading this book … and thinking to ourselves, “I will never get this time back.”
And it’s not just time. The energy we give also matters. If a parent goes to watch their kid’s soccer game but only looks up from their mobile device when there is cheering, they may have given their time, but they haven’t given their energy. The kid will look over to see their parent’s head down most of the game, busy texting or e-mailing the office or something. Regardless of the intentions of that parent, without giving their attention, the time is basically wasted for both parent and child. The same is true in our offices when we talk to someone while reading our e-mails or sit in a meeting with one eye on our phone. We may be hearing all that is said, but the person speaking will not feel we are listening, and an opportunity to build trust—or be seen as a leader who cares—is squandered.
Just as a parent can’t buy the love of their children with gifts, a company can’t buy the loyalty of their employees with salaries and bonuses. What produces loyalty, that irrational willingness to commit to the organization even when offered more money elsewhere, is the feeling that the leaders of the company would be willing, when it matters, to sacrifice their time and energy to help us. We will judge a boss who spends time after hours to help us as more valuable than a boss who simply gives us a bonus when we hit a target.
A leader of an organization can’t simply pay their managers to look out for those in their report. A leader can, however, offer their time and energy to those in their care, and in turn those managers would be more willing to give their time and energy to their subordinates. Then their subordinates would, in turn, be more inclined to give time and energy to their direct reports. And, at the end of the chain, the people with outward-facing jobs are more likely to treat the customer better.
When protecting the results is prioritized above protecting those who produce the results. Destructive Abundance happens when the players focus almost exclusively on the score and forget why they set out to play the game in the first place.
In strong corporate cultures, employees will form similar attachments. They will identify with the company in a very personal way. The employees of WestJet, Canada’s rebellious populist airline akin to America’s Southwest Airlines, don’t say they work for WestJet—that would make it a job. They call themselves WestJetters. It’s an identity. When we don’t have a sense of belonging, we wear a T-shirt stamped with the company logo to sleep in or while painting the house. When we have a sense of belonging, however, we wear the company schwag in public and with pride.
“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”
If character describes how an individual thinks and acts, then the culture of an organization describes the character of a group of people and how they think and act as a collective.
[Culture = what people do, when there are no rules or when nobody's watching.]
And if everyone was going to blindly follow his orders simply because he was in charge, then something very, very bad could happen. “What happens when the leader is wrong in a top-down culture? Everyone goes off a cliff,” Captain Marquet would later write. If he was going to succeed, he would have to learn to trust his bottom-ranked crew more than he trusted himself. He had no choice.
“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.”
Develop an environment in which those who know more, the people who are actually doing the work, are empowered to make decisions.
There are only three things that he can’t delegate. “I can’t delegate my legal responsibilities, I can’t delegate my relationships and I can’t delegate my knowledge. Everything else, however, I can ask others to take responsibility for,” he says.
In an organization with a strong Circle of Safety, not only is the leader willing to share knowledge, but so too is everyone else. Again, the leader sets the tone.
When our leaders reveal their gaps in knowledge and missteps, not only are we more willing to help, but we too are more willing to share when we make mistakes or when things go wrong. Inside the Circle, mistakes are not something to be feared. In organizations in which there is no safety provided, people are more likely to hide mistakes or problems out of self-preservation.
The issue is, those mistakes and problems, if not addressed, often add up and appear later when they become too big to contain.
“The goal of a leader is to give no orders.” “Leaders are to provide direction and intent and allow others to figure out what to do and how to get there.” And this is the challenge most organizations face. “We train people to comply, not to think,” Captain Marquet goes on. If people only comply, we can’t expect people to take responsibility for their actions. The chain of command is for orders, not information.
Responsibility is not doing as we are told, that’s obedience. Responsibility is doing what is right.
The problem we have,” said the colonel, “is that taking responsibility for one’s actions must happen at the time you perform your actions, not at the time you get caught.”
Leadership is about integrity, honesty and accountability. All components of trust. 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.
We need to know that the information we are given by others and especially our leaders, good or bad, is the truth. We need to know that when someone says something, they mean it. If we doubt their integrity, then we cannot trust them with our lives or the lives of those we love.
The most common display of a lack of integrity in the business world is when a leader of an organization says what others want to hear and not the truth. This is the reason we don’t trust politicians. Though we may sit down with a list of statements a politician has made and agree with every single one of them, the reason we tend not to trust them is because we suspect they do not believe all the things they are saying.
Integrity is not about being honest when we agree with each other; it is also about being honest when we disagree or, even more important, when we make mistakes or missteps.
We need people to admit when they falter and not try to hide it or spin the story in an attempt to protect their image.
The emphasis businesses put on shareholder value was “misplaced,” he said. “Your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products.”
Our incentive structures are almost entirely based on hitting goals and getting financial rewards for doing so. What’s more, they are usually set up to reward individual performance on achieving short-term goals—a month, quarter or year. They can even end up pitting coworkers against one another, accidentally promoting behaviors that undermine the progress of the group as a whole.
Generation Y thinks that, because they have grown up with all these technologies, they are better at multitasking. I would venture to argue they are not better at multitasking. What they are better at is being distracted.
To really inspire us, we need a challenge that outsizes the resources available. We need a vision of the world that does not yet exist. A reason to come to work. Not just a big goal to achieve. This is what leaders of great organizations do. They frame the challenge in terms so daunting that literally no one yet knows what to do or how to solve it.
If the leaders of organizations give their people something to believe in, if they offer their people a challenge that outsizes their resources but not their intellect, the people will give everything they’ve got to solve the problem. And in the process, not only will they invent and advance the company, they may even change an industry or the world in the process
But if the resources are vastly greater than the problem before us, then the abundance works against us.
Though it may take small steps to make a big leap, it is the vision of the big leap and not the action of the small steps that inspires us.
And only after we have committed ourselves to that vision can we look back at our lives and say to ourselves that the work we did mattered.
Bob Chapman works hard to ensure his company remains profitable and continues to grow, but he sees profit as simply the means by which he can serve the people who work at Barry-Wehmiller. Profit, in his mind, is a fuel, not a destination.
Everything about being a leader is like being a parent. It is about committing to the well-being of those in our care and having a willingness to make sacrifices to see their interests advanced so that they may carry our banner long after we are gone.
