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
Leadership is a choice. It's not a rank, it's a choice. I know many people who are at the top of their organization who have authority. We have to do what they say because they have authority over us. But they're not leaders. We wouldn't follow them. They may be at the top of the company but they're not leaders.
Every single organization - or career, for that matter - exists on three levels: WHAT you do, HOW you do it and WHY you do it.
Organizations should say and do the things they ACTUALLY believe.
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.
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.
All organizations start with WHY, but only the great ones keep their WHY clear year after year.
It's always the organizations that are resource constrained that come up with the good ideas to win.
All the great organizations in the world, all have a sense of why that organization does what it does.
Leaders, whatever the size of their organizations, are those willing to put the interests of other people before their own.
We are drawn to leaders and organizations that are good at communicating what they believe. Their ability to make us feel like we belong, to make us feel special, safe and not alone is part of what gives them the ability to inspire us.
When a leader makes the choice to put the safety and lives of the people inside the organization first, to sacrifice their comforts and sacrifice the tangible results, so that the people remain and feel safe and feel like they belong, remarkable things happen.
Any great and inspiring leader or organization that ever existed set out to do something completely unrealistic.
We can not lead an organization, we can run an organization. We can only lead people.
Trust emerges when we have a sense that another person or organization is driven by things other than their own self-gain.