Simon Sinek
Simon Sinek
Simon O. Sinekis an author, speaker, and consultant who writes on leadership and management. He joined the RAND Corporation in 2010 as an adjunct staff member, where he advises on matters of military innovation and planning. He is known for popularizing the concepts of "the golden circle" and to "Start With Why", described by TED as "a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?"'. Sinek's first TEDx Talk on "How...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth9 October 1973
Listening is not understanding the words of the question asked, listening is understanding why the question was asked in the first place.
Those who lead inspire us Whether they are individuals or organizations, we follow those who lead not because we have to but because we want to.
Great leaders see money as fuel, not a destination.
If we were good at everything we would have no need 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. But when trust and cooperation thrive internally, we pull together and the organization grows stronger as a result.
Great leaders and great organizations are good at seeing what most of us can’t see. They are good at giving us things we would never think of asking for.
You have to be careful what you think you know.
Value is not determined by those who set the price. Value is determined by those who choose to pay it.
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.
To spend more money, you have to have more money, but time is fixed and we all have the same amount to spare. How we choose to spend it can make a significant difference on the impact we have in our careers or in the world.
Wal-Mart's size and scale is so vast they literally have the ability to change the face of the entire country. If Wal-Mart were to make a decision tomorrow to refuse to sell a single product made with partially hydrogenated oils, for example, we'd probably see rates from heart disease decline a few years later. That's how powerful Wal-Mart is.
We can't all be good at everything. This is partly the logic behind having a team in the first place, so each role can be filled with the person best suited for that role and together, every job and every strength is covered.
When I was a kid, I was a bit of a space geek. I loved the space program and all things NASA. I would read books about our solar system; I had pictures of the Space Shuttle on my bedroom wall. And yes, I even went to Space Camp.
When we can communicate from the inside out, we're talking directly to the part of the brain that controls behavior, and then we allow people to rationalize it with the tangible things we say and do. This is where gut decisions come from.