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
It is only from the people I've had the good fortune to meet that I am learning the lessons to guide me. Baz Luhrmann, director of 'Moulin Rouge,' for example, has a childlike curiosity about the world. He doesn't pretend to know all the answers - quite the opposite, in fact. He asks loads of questions of everyone.
In the 1980s America reacted to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. We supported a war that left a nation torn to pieces. And as the last Soviet tank left the country, so did we.
It's important to slow down, every now and then, for no other reason than to call someone to say 'Hi.' It doesn't have to be a long conversation. Just calling out of the blue does more to let someone know you still care about them than nearly anything else.
If you look at the average age of a company on the Dow Jones index, it's something like 35 years or younger. In other words... success is no indication of longevity.
I never imagined working with CEOs, congressmen or the military, yet I make regular visits to the Pentagon, stop by the Capitol now and then and sit down with leaders of all kinds of companies.
No matter how many or how few people you have reporting to you, you must remember that as you climb higher in the ranks, your words will be taken as commands even if you're just thinking out loud.
Notoriously outspoken, his sentences always punctuated with profanities, General George S. Patton was the epitome of what a leader should be like - or so he thought. Patton believed a leader should look and act tough, so he cultivated his image and his personality to match his philosophy.
Pilots have their names painted just beneath the canopy of their aircraft. This gives the pilot a sense of ownership for his or her jet. What's more, like cars, each aircraft has its own personality, so it's important for a pilot to get to know and love his aircraft.
Offer someone the opportunity to rebuild a company or reinvent an industry as the primary incentive, and it will attract those drawn to the challenge first and the money second.
I like stories of the classic hero, of good versus evil, the ones in which the good guys wear white and the bad guys wear black... and I love a good sword fight.
The single best machine to measure trust is a human being. We haven't figured out a metric that works better than our own sort of, like, 'There's something fishy about you.'
In the military, they give medals for people who are willing to sacrifice themselves so that others may survive. In business, we give bonuses to people who sacrifice others.
We all have the luxury of looking out for ourselves. Leaders also have the honor of looking out for others.
We have no choice, we must all die. How we live, however, is entirely of our choosing.