Simon Sinek

self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is Simon Sink, an author best known for popularizing the concept of the

golden circle. And start with why. His first ted X talk on how great leaders inspire action is the third most viewed video on ted dot com. His two thousand nine book on the same subject. Start with why, how great leaders inspire everyone to take action. Dells into what he says is a naturally occurring pattern grounded in the biology of human decision making that explains why we are inspired by some people, leaders, messages, and organizations over others.

His latest book is called Leaders Eat Last, Why some people pull together and others don't. Before we get started, if you like what you're hearing on the show week to week, but you're having trouble putting all the ideas into practice, send an email to Eric at one new feed dot net and we can discuss how to make real change in your life. Here's the interview. Hi Simon, Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I'm happy

to have you on. You talk a lot in your writings about meaning, about purpose, about why we do things, and you talk a lot about how communities work together to support each other. And so those are some of the things we're going to explore. But to start, i'd uh we'll start with the parable, like we always do. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that

are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work

that you do. That is the definition of leadership um that you get the behavior um that your reward and the responsibility of a leader is to create an environment in which people can feel safe and be at their natural best. And so often bad leaders create environments of fear and politics and selfishness and paranoia and the and that is the that is the culture that prevails, and

that's the behavior that prevails. Where a good leadership fills the environment with love and empathy and caring and patience. And what ends up happening is people care much more about each other, their jobs, each other, uh the organization um and ultimately the organization thrives as a result. In your book, leaders Eat Last, one of the things that you talk about is the four chemicals that are in our body that sort of regulate human emotion. They're responsible

for a lot of what we do. You talk about endorphin, dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin, and there's a lot of information out there about those and how they work. But I've got a couple of questions for you that I think are are that I'm interested in you. You said that oxytocin, which is sort of the bonding chemical, inhibits addiction. Yeah, I mean the release of oxytocin, and it's sort of a magical chemical. It's it's Oxytocin is responsible for the feeling

of friendship and love and trust. Um. And the more oxytosin we have in our bodies, not only do we actually become more generous people, um um uh, the more oxytotin we have in our bodies that actually boosts our immune systems. You know, it makes it so. Oxytocin is the feeling of happiness and fulfillment. So the happier people actually live longer, and happier people have lower rates of

cancer and diabetes and heart disease and all of these things. Um. And one of the other benefits of having lost of boxytosin in our bodies. Is it actually inhibits or is makes it more resistant to all addiction, which is sort of fantastic. In other words, the stronger our relationships, the more easy, the more easily we are able to cope with a stress. And most addiction is usually sort of compensation to help overcome, like alcoholism. Most alcoholics drink for

either social stress, career stress, or financial stress. So the stronger our relationships, the more the more easily we can deal with the stresses in our lives, so we don't actually become addicted to some of these coping Like, yeah, we interviewed somebody recently. He wrote a book about the War on drugs, But that's not the important part. The main thing is he was he was bringing up a

lot of alternate theories of addiction. And one of the things that he that there's a bunch of people that are really starting to study and realize these days, is that they say that that addiction is often a you know, almost simply a lack of bonding. That is, that is one of the core symptoms that dislocation. And so when you said that oxytocin inhibits it addiction and and that you know, oxytocin is what comes from bonding makes us more resistance to addiction. Yeah, exactly, yep. And I just

thought that was interesting. The other thing that you talk about that I thought aligned with this as you talk a lot about the environment and how important the environment is, and there's a series of studies out there, the rat park studies again around drug addiction, where there's the old story that you have a you know, if you give a rat cocaine, it will drink it till it dies, right, But the truth is that those were done with rats

and isolation. When you put rats into sort of a rat park, rat heaven where there's lots of other rats, where there's bonding, where there's all that stuff, very few of them will ever drink and become addicted to that. So I just thought it was really interesting the way that that sort of dovetails with your thoughts around environment and how important that is in connection and bonding. Yeah,

that's fantastic. I mean, so social animals, you know, we're social animals, so we were fund we respond to the environments were in and so when you take the people away, um, bad things can happen. And so that makes perfect sense. That's that's fantastic. I hadn't heard that before. Yeah, if you look it up, it's called rat Park. It's really interesting. Um, it's it's kind of very different than what we've normally heard. Yeah, I am. So you say that leadership comes at a cost.

What is that cost? Lieutenant General George Flynn from the United States Marine Corps told me this that the cost of leadership is self interest, And basically what that means is, like a parent, there's certain personal sacrifices that we have to make if we choose to become leaders, which is different than choosing to be the boss. You know, leadership has nothing to do with rank. I know many people who sit at the highest levels of companies or organizations

who are not leaders. They have authority, and we do as they tell us because they have authority over us, but we wouldn't follow them. And yet I know many people who sit in the middle of organizations that have no authority, and yet they're absolutely leaders because they've chosen to take care of the person to left of them, and they've chosen to take care of the people to

the right of them. And so leadership is much more like parenting, which is it's a lifestyle decision, and it's the choice that you are going to consider and take care of the life of another human being. It's not about being in charge. It's about taking care of those in your charge. And instinctively, a parent would feed their children before they feed themselves. That's not written in any parenting book that you should do that, and nobody tells

the parents that they should do that. It's their instinct that a parent would always be their child before they feed themselves. Well, that is the instinct of good leadership as well, that a leader would sooner take care of their people than they would themselves. Um. And this is what what what good leadership is. And this is where the sacrifice happens. It's giving up of time, it's giving up of energy, it's believing in people, it's taking bets

some people. It's knowing that everything goes right, you give away the credit. And it's knowing that if everything goes wrong, you take the responsibility. It's taking care of your people so that they can be at their best. That's what

leadership is. And you say that you you learned a lot of this or you studied a lot of this within the military, and you saw these unbelievable acts of heroicism or sacrifice for others, and you your original thought was that, well, maybe these people are just better people. That's the better people find themselves here, you know, they're attracted to this sort of thing. But then you go on to say you don't think that's necessarily the case,

and that some of those qualities can be cultivated. Absolutely, that's true. I mean I was. I was spending time at the military, And the reason the military is such a good example is because the stakes are higher. You know, it really is a matter of life and death, and so the lessons are just easier to see. But the reality is, the way our primitive brains respond to the environment we're in is that almost all of our behavior

is governed by our desire to feel safe. In other words, I mean we we actually do think of these things instinctively in terms of life and death. Think about the way people talk about their jobs, right, I need this job to survive, not really not really, Like if you lost your job, death is not the obvious outcome, you know, um right, Like you'll go live on a couch, You'll be humulated, someone will feed you, you know what I mean, You're like death will not ensue from this layoff. Right.

But but people say that, how am I going to survive? Right? In other words, you can hear even in our language, the way our brain is interpreting sort of our environ My job is killing me exactly right. That's actually that's actually partially true. Um. And so when you actually look at life and death stuff and you try to understand leadership, that the lessons are just easier to see, even though

they're pervasive, pervasive everywhere. And so in the military, I kept meeting these people who would literally sacrifice their lives for people they don't even necessarily like in the business world, we don't even like to give up credit for things, let alone a life, you know. Um. And so I want to understand where where that comes from? Where does that drive come from? Um? And I quickly learned that it's not the people, it's the environment. That as social animals,

we always respond to the environments we're in. You can take a good person, put them in a bad environment, and they're capable of doing bad things. Likewise, you can take a person that maybe society has given up on, maybe they've even perform bad acts, and you put them in a good environment, and they're capable of turning their lives around and becoming valuable members of society. And so it's the same. It's the same in an organization, it's

the same in a company. You know, some of the some of these um things that were done in two thousand eight that produced the financial crisis by these bankers. They're not inherently bad people, but the environments in which they're asked to work are so caustic that these people can perform very bad acts where they can literally ignore forget about the law, but just ethics and morality, that they can destroy an economy for self gain. That was

what happened. They ignored all of the responsibility of taking care of a nation or an economy so that they could get a bigger bonus. Now that's not inherently there. It's not inherently the individuals. It's the environment that their leaders have created, which is so caustic and so destructive, and in well led organizations, the people would actually prioritize ethics and morality and taking care of each other ahead

of absolutely everything. You say that everybody has a right to a job that they love, that's not a not not supposed to be for the special few. And my question for you is is that is that reasonable? Given so, I agree with you about everybody should work in an environment that is is supportive, or we could we could work to bring that about. But what about how do you deal with jobs that are are not necessarily inherently fulfilling, say an assembly line? Can someone work in the assembly

line love their job? So so, I absolutely fundamentally believe that that fulfillment at work is a right and not a privilege, That it's not just for the lucky few who say I love my job and the rest of us go, oh my god, you're so lucky. Right that, just like the vote, just like uh freedom of speech that we have a right to enjoy, are working a right to be happy and fulfilled by the work that we do and for for someone to say yes. But

only some jobs do that. Like if you're lucky enough to work in a theme park that's really fulfilling, but or a hospital, But if you work, you know, on an assembly line, well, then that that is you're judging the happiness comes from from from an act. First of all, I know people who work in theme parks or hospitals who hate their jobs. And I know people who work in assembly lines that love their jobs because it has

nothing to do with the work that we do. It has to do with the environment in which we work and the people with whom we work. When you ask people, why do you love your job? Hundred if not all the time, they will say the people, right. And if you ask somebody why they hate their job, they may say, oh, it's the work, it's the time, it's the stress. But the reality is it's the unbelievable bad leadership that they that they have, and so they look for other things

to I'm not getting paid enough for something. You know, people who love their jobs may not get paid the most, but that's never In other words, if you're saying those are the as we hate the job, then those should also be the reasons we love the job. Right. If you hate the job because in the number of hours you work and you're not getting paid enough, that means every time somebody says I love my job, it's because I barely work any hours and they get overly paid.

That's not the case. That's not the case. And so take a company like Barry Way Miller, which is a two billion dollar manufacturing company. Good old fashioned American manufacturing where they do just that. They are machinists. They work on a factory uh floor, putting together large machines. That's

what they do. And I've met people there who literally come to tears talking about their jobs and how much do they love coming to work, and how do they feel that the company cares about their well being as human beings, and how they care about each other, and how they will sacrifice to see that this company advances and each other feel safe and does well. It has

nothing to do with the work that we do. It has to do with the people we work with and the environment in which we work, which is all determined by the leadership. And is it how important is the company does or what the mission of the company. So

I'll give you an example. I've you know, I do some e commerce consulting from from time to time, and I mostly do like my job and everything that I do, But I have these moments where I go, well, you know, ultimately, at the end of the day, I don't really care about making sure another package gets out in the mail today, you know, if it's a retailer or that sort of thing. Is that important or can you really find all the satisfaction and love you need within the four walls, so

to speak. So for this, for some organizations that happen to be in glamorous businesses, they can get away with creating enjoyment from the glamor of the of the job itself. However, that runs thin over time, you know, over over the course of time, that will run out, and people will start to feel that they don't they don't feel successful, and they do not feel like they're enjoying it anymore.

They won't know what it is. And it's because it was never a feeling of cause, or it was never a feeling of a greater cause that they felt a part of. They would just end or the glamor or whatever they're doing. But this applies to all organizations. We have to have a sense of cause or purpose, you know. I call it the why. It's why we do what we do, why the organization exists, why we get out of bed in the morning, and why anyone should care, you know. And no matter what the organization is, there

has to be a clear sense of why. Even in the glamorous organizations, you know, because not everybody is involved in the glamour. What about the accountants or the back office people or the receptionists, you know, are they not and why shouldn't they be fulfilled even though they're not directly involved in whatever the glamour is you know? Or like engineering companies are terribly guilty of this. They articulate their vision in terms of the products they're making and

how wonderful those products are. Well, what if you're not involved in the product development? What if you're not an engineer? You know, so you're not, you don't get to enjoy your work, you don't get to be a part of it. And so a well articulated why something that's bigger than the products we make, bigger than what the company does, is always articulated in terms that has nothing to do with the product or service of the company sells interesting. One of the things that you talk about in a

great environment is how important listening is. And you have a story about um a gentleman who tells a story about he uses it as to illustrate listening when him and his wife are preparing to have a baby. Could you tell us that story? Sure, it's actually the story of Bob Chapman. It's he's the ct of Barry way Miller the company. I was just telling you about this wonderful manufacturing company. UM. Bob tells this wonderful story of UM.

There he and his wife are getting ready to have had their first baby, and and his wife is upstairs, you know, decorating the nursery, and she calls down to Bob to come and look at the wallpaper that she's chosen. And Bob wants to be a good husband, so he

decides to turn off the TV and go upstairs. And he he says, he repeats the question again as he's going up the stairs, tell me what you think about the wallpaper I've chosen, you know, And she walks, he walks into the street and she holds up the wallpaper and says, what do you think of the wallpaper I've chosen? And Bob says, I don't like it, and she throws the wallpaper at him, right because she was never asking

what do you think of the wallpaper? She was asking do you think I'm qualified to be the mother of our child? And Bob said no. And what he should have done, if he was actually listening as opposed to hearing the words that were being said, was understand the nervousness and the anxiety of the of what she felt, and she wanted to make all the right decisions because she doesn't know if she's going to make a good mom and she wants everything to be right and she's

so uneasy. And if he had just leaned forward and held her and said I love you and I'm so excited that we're having a baby together, you know, that's what she needed. That's listening. It's not actually hearing the words that were said, but trying to understand the meaning of the words that were said. And the next day he can say, hey, can we talk about that wallpaper? You know, when all the emotion has gone out of it, then you can have the rational conversation. And so men,

men are really bad at this in general. Um where we like but that's what you said. I answered your question honestly. You know. It's like, yes, but you weren't listening. Listening is about empathy. Listening is about is about, you know, is trying to understand the position of the person is coming from, not the words that they say. And it's an incredibly, incredibly valuable skill and it is a skill, it is a practicable, learnable skill. Yeah, you say that somewhere.

That listening is not repeating back what you heard, it's trying to understand the motivation for why it was said in the first place, exactly which exactly right, which is amazing. It's and if you think about it in terms of any kind of relationship where it's boss an employee, or boyfriend and girlfriend or even just friends, you know, when somebody says, you know, stop doing that, you know, we're like, why, I've been doing the same thing all the time, why

are you telling me now? It's well, maybe that's not the reason. Maybe it's what you're doing has nothing to do with why they're saying it, you know. And so the practice of empathy is really foundational to being a leader. So, for example, of somebody's struggling at work, you don't walk into the office and say, listen, you're numbers of and down for the third time this quarter. If you don't pick up your numbers, you know, bad things are going

to happen. You know, Um, do you think you're going to get the best out of them with that kind of conversation, as opposed to walking into someone's office and saying, hey, I've noticed that your numbers are down again? Are you okay? Is everything all right? And it's that expression of empathy that when somebody says to you, I'm struggling, and instead of saying, well, let me fix it for you, you say, coming,

what's going on in your life? Because it's not the problem that's it's not it's not the thing that they're struggling with. That's necessarily the problem. That may just be the symptom. And so a good leader wants to get to the root and understand the motivations of the human being and and and and serve them in that way. Um. I say it all the time. Good leadership really is the same as good parents. So a couple of questions,

A little bit more about you in your life? What do you think is the lesson that is taking you the longest to learn? I can tell you that a lesson I learned very suddenly that it came as a as a hard pill to swallow, um, which was that I don't have to know all the answers, and if I don't, I don't have to pretend that I do. UM. That one that one took them getting used to, especially in this modern day and age, you know, where being smart and standing out is what we feel right or

wrong is the means to success. And it's just not. One of the problems with pretending that you know all the answers and not admitting out lad that you don't is that people don't help you because they think you know. So when they say to you, do you understand, you go yep, and they go okay, did and they leave you alone even though you don't understand. And it's not because they don't want to help you, it's because you told them that you understood. And so to say I

don't understand you know, Um, he's really hard. Um. We don't want to be humiliated, um. Or we don't want offend somebody. I I was. I'll tell you a quick funny story where I was. I took this little challenge, which is to tell the truth for forty eight hours. It sounds silly, but it's amazing how much we lie. It's an important social convention. It's an important social convention,

you know. So for example, if someone gives you a birthday president, it's the ugliest sweater you've ever seen in your life, and they say, what do you think You're not gonna say? It's the ugliest thing I've seen in my life. You're gonna say, oh my god, thank you so much. I love it, you know, because we don't want to hurt their feelings. Right. In other words, we're lying, right.

So it's an important social convention. In other words, we're good at it, and we're good at it to to mask our humiliation or avoid humiliation, and we're good at it to appease someone and and look after them. But it can backfire on us most of the time, especially when, as I said before, if we don't understand something or we don't know what we're doing, we're good at pretending

that we do. And so I took this challenge to tell the truth for forty eight hours, no little white lines, nothing, which is much harder than you think, and just sheer coincidence over that. Within that forty eight hour period, I had a meeting with the head speech writer of the cent A majority leader. And here I am sitting in the capital in this beautiful room and these vaulted ceilings and these frescoes, and she comes out and sits with me, and the first question she asks me is how much

research have you done on the senator right now? On any other day, I would have said a little, right, because I want to avoid humiliation, right. But the reality was I hadn't done anything, and so I sort of like took a deep breath because I took this oath that I wasn't going to tell a lie for forty eight hours. And I said none, and she said, okay, let me tell you what you need to know. Then, in other words, she wasn't testing me. She was finding

out what my baseline was. And if I had lied just to mask my humiliation or to compensate and to avoid humiliation, she wouldn't have told me everything because you would have assumed because I told her that I knew stuff. So I said none, that she told me everything I needed to know. Now, it doesn't always go that way.

Sometimes you do get humiliations, you know. But the point is that there's huge advantages in telling the truth when we understand or don't understand something, when we feel strong or weak in a situation, because the more honest we are, it means that people will come to our aid if we fear that by expressing or demonstrating that we're weak or we don't understand, we falsely believe that that will affect our compensation, our promotion or or and all of

that stuff. But the reality is it makes us unbelievably trustworthy because when we express that vulnerability, when we expressed that we don't know that that animal brain inside us, that primitive animal brain inside us that judges all behavior and words in terms of life and death, will evaluate us and say, this person is an honest broker, that if everything were to go wrong and some bad things were to happen, even if they would make this person

look foolish, they will actually tell me the truth. I'm going to stay close to this person. That's all happening subconsciously. Whereas if everything is always going perfectly and no one nothing's ever wrong, and everything is always dandy, we start to actually not trust somebody. If this is why we don't trust politicians. Politicians tell us everything we want to hear and everything we agree with, but the reason we don't trust them is because we know that they don't

agree with everything they're saying. We know that it's sort of we can feel it, and so we keep a safe distance because our primitive human brains are primoved animal brains are saying, you can't trust that person. Stay away. So there's an immense value in being willing to be humiliated by admitting I don't know something because it will

actually pay dividends in building trust and cooperation. Yeah, that has certainly been my experience, is taking that risk to say I don't know or to to be open does seem to really build a level of trust with the people around you. And it's only hard the first few times, you know, like any like riding a bicycle, you're only rickety the first few times you write it, and you kind of get better at it, and then you just jump on a bike and you go and it's not

really a big deal. And so the first few times that you get humiliated, it really is pretty awful. I mean, let's I'm not gonna lie, it's it's it really is awful, you know. And and and there may be repercussions, you know, somebody might think you're an idiot. You know, it's like, but you get used to that pretty quickly and it

becomes really easy. So when something like you know, I thank goodness I learned this because now if something I don't understand, I'm the first one be like I don't have no clue, what's going on, you know, and I'm really quick to say it, and it is a huge advantage because it means other people come and help me. And it gets back to that environment. The better the environment, the more likely you are to do that, and the more likely you are to do that, the better the

environment is going to be. I mean sort of it. And it inspires other people to be honest as well. And it's fine, it's inspires on it. So when I asked somebody, do you understand, they're much more likely to say no to me, knowing that I would say, though, honesty breeds honesty, and fallacy brings. Fallacy breeds fallacy, right line breeds lying. So the last and I'll ask you

is you've You've written, You've written two books. You it seems your method is you you come up with something that you're interested in, you go out, you study it, and you come up with some theories and write a book. I'm curious, not really what your next book is going to be, but what is a question you're asking yourself these days? What is a question that intrigues you? So? UM, my work as some autobiographical you know, Um, it's all basically my journey and so My first book, start with Why,

was about my loss of passion. How I was doing a job and I lost I's a out of love, you know. I wasn't enjoying it anymore. And people gave me stupid advice like do what you love, and I'm like, I'm doing the same thing and I don't love it anymore. Follow your passion? How do I do that? You know? It's stupid advice. And so my first book was about what I went through to try and rEFInd my passion, and it ended up becoming this thing called the Golden

Circle and the Why. And then the second book, leaders Ead Last, was about my struggle to understand who I could trust. And I was simultaneously spending time with folks in the military who I saw the way that they trusted each other and even the way I trusted them, and they treated me differently than I got treated in the private sector. And because I wanted to just be around people like that more often, and I wanted my friends to be around people like that when they went

to work. UM, I wanted to just try and understand it. It never none of my work ever starts by I'm going to write a book. It never starts that way. I try and learn something in my own journey, and it ends up becoming interesting to my friends, and then it ends up becoming interesting to others, and then I write a book about it. And so these days I'm

interested in the outside world. You know. My first book was very much about the individual and how the individual inspires those around them and attracts those to them, you know, whether that individual as a person or a company. My second book is really about, Okay, now that you've got the people, what do you do with them? How do you how do you how do teams rally, how do teams come together? How do people take care of each other?

And so now I'm sort of interested in sort of Okay, now you've got all the people, but you know, we don't work in vacuums. There is there is a doggydog world out there of competition and and other companies and other organizations and people trying to steal your lunch. And so how do we interact with each other, not internally but externally. How does that work? You know? Why is it that sometimes cooperation works? How does competition work? When

is it healthy? When is it unhealthy? You know, and it may or may not end up being a book. I don't know, but I'm I'm really interested in that. I'm really interested, like, what does it mean to have an enemy? What does it mean to have an ally?

Where does revenge come from? You know? These are external things, and uh, I'm I'm really learning a lot about them because even in my own journey, I have we have our team and we follow the circle of safety, but now we also have to engage with the outside world, both friends and foes alike. You know though, Um, we're fumbling our way through it, and I'm paying attention as we fumble. Um, So who knows. Maybe to lend up as a book, maybe we won't, but I'm certainly learning

a lot about it. Great. Well, that's what I I love to ask people what it is they're they're thinking about or they're interested in, because that's usually it's what drives them. I find it. I find it great to hear. So, um, thank you so much Simon for taking the time. This

has been a great talk. People can find You want to tell people where they can find you, Yeah, I mean all the usual places Twitter, Facebook, and our website is start with y dot com w h Y. Where there's lots of resources and videos and free downloads and stuff like that to help people inspire those around them. Great, and we'll have links to all that stuff in our show notes. So thank you so much, Simon for taking the time, Thanks for having me appreciate it. Okay, take

care bye. You can learn more about Simon Sinek and this podcast at one new feed dot net slash Simon