Simon Sinek Top Leadership & Psychology Skills

[Applause] middle management is the hardest job in any organization um uh because when you're junior your only job is really to do your job that's it and you get trained how to do your job i mean you all have to be licensed and go to school and learn how to do the job of being an accountant and if you're really good at it um you eventually you get promoted and you eventually get promoted to position where you're now responsible for the people who do the job you used to do but the problem is they don't

give us any training how to do that you know and senior people are thinking about entirely different things they're thinking about the firm thinking about strategy and the problem is so you have this middle group that's in this sort of weird mix where they're not they're they have to be strategic but not majority strategic and they they have to be tactical but they're not majority tactical and they have to translate what's going up here to down there and down here to up here and and most things break in the middle because i'll meet firms where

the leadership's amazing and they're visionary and they care about people and they want to do the right thing and then i go down to the front line and they're like yeah this place is the worst and so i'm like what happened between here and there and it's the middle most things break in the middle and so i think there are two there are two there are two factors one is we don't train people how to lead right so as i said before when you were junior we have to know what to do we just do

our jobs we'd be good at it and as we become leaders in this middle management we're now transitioning to this job we're now responsible for the people um who do the job we used to do but nobody is teaching us listening nobody's teaching us communication skills nobody's teaching us effective confrontation nobody's teaching us how to give and repeat receive feedback nobody's actually teaching us leadership so this is why we get managers and not leaders and like you would never ask somebody to do anything in accounting without showing them how to do it ever bad idea

right so why on earth do we think that we can just promote someone to a leadership position and expect that they know what to do without showing them how to do it so that's problem number one is is that is the the total vacuum in some cases or or just really minimal amounts of leadership training and it needs to be robust the other problem that i come across very often is i get some really wonderful self-taught leaders in middle management they're reading books they're going to conferences themselves they're watching ted talks i mean they're students

of leadership they have mentors i mean they're really making a go of it and they complain that the the senior management all they care about is is the quarterly earnings and so the problem we have there is they're trying so hard to do the right thing but management really doesn't care so that's the opposite right um and in those cases i i generally recommend that they the the right thing to do i mean quitting is always an option but that's not the not necessarily the best option or the first option but uh i always recommend

to be the leader you wish you had which is i get the question it is one of the if not the most common question i get which is what do i do when i'm trying to do the right thing and and my boss or my boss's boss or my boss's boss's boss um just don't get it you know all they care about is money before people and and the answer is you can't control what you can't control so worry about the people around you worry about the people to the sides of you the level below

you even the level above you and you be the leader you wish you had and what you start to find in those pockets is these magical little diamonds in the rough appear we we worked with a large a large technology company and we worked with a group uh where that's exactly what we did we we developed this whole leadership thing just for this this little group in the middle and yes they started to do better and their numbers went better and the group expanded and blah blah blah all the things you'd expect to happen but

one thing we didn't expect is that the phone started ringing off the hook from other people in the firm asking can i get a job in your group because when the people who worked in this group would go for lunch with their friends who works in other groups you know how's work today amazing different stories different stories and all of a sudden words spread across this 80 000 person company and this is only a group of 150 people words spread across this 80 000 person company that everybody was trying to get into this group just

because it was they wanted to work in it because you had good i was writing leaders eat last i got to the point where i couldn't do it it was it was too difficult i i couldn't i couldn't organize all the information it was just too complicated i i couldn't do it and i'd been trying for months i've probably missed multiple deadlines and i was sitting at my computer and i decided that i had to give up i couldn't do it and so i got up and went for a walk and i was literally planning

my exit um i was going through the steps i was going through the checklist of quitting i knew that i have to give my advance back to the publisher because technically i'm in breach um i knew that i would be humiliated but i was preparing myself for it and that i would get over it i was also rationalizing that it was okay to quit i told myself there are thousands ten thousand books published every single year no one will miss this one book and i literally went through the steps to prepare myself for what i

had to do to quit i'm not sure why i did this but i called a friend of mine who at the time was in the air force special forces and i don't even think i said hello when he picked up the phone i simply asked the question what do you do when you can't complete the mission and as is his habit he just started telling me a story he was a helicopter pilot and they had a mission in afghanistan that was um a suicide mission all the intelligence showed that the air defenses were just too

great and none of them were going to come out alive and it wasn't going to be one of those kill hitler missions where we're all gonna die but we'll kill hitler this is like we're all gonna die and the mission will also fail and he was preparing his helicopter for this mission um and his wingmen turned him and said what do we do we've got wives we've got kids do we refuse to go what do we do and my friend turned him and i said this is what we signed up for we go he asked

me he said is this book more or less powerful than start with why i said the research has impacted me greater it's more powerful he says all right i'm going to tell you a funny story before i met you i'd become disillusioned with the air force and i was gonna quit and i found this kooky little book called start with why and it completely re-inspired me and i decided to stay and i'm a better leader now than i than i was before because of that book and if you're saying that this book is more powerful

than the first one then we need this book he said this is what you signed up for you have no choice clearly his mission was scrapped at the last minute the underlying message of this is what you signed up for you have no choice wasn't a mean message the underlying message was and i will be here with you the underlying message was no matter what you can call me at any time i've got your back and that's the important part i turned around went back to my desk and finished writing that book not that night

i mean it took me months but but i never thought of quitting ever again as soon as i knew that someone was there someone had my someone had my back there's too much debate about what's the difference between vision and mission right there's no standardized definitions of these things some people have one of them some people have both of them nobody is sure which one goes first uh and i'm not willing to step into that debate i think it's silly um and so i i i believe in the just cause which is this affirmative statement

of a future state that does not yet exist that i will commit my business to help build right you can call it vision if you want but i like the term just cause because it holds a higher standard it's a cause so just that i would be willing to sacrifice for it sacrifice could mean um turning down a client that's free money it could because they don't believe what i believe sacrifice could mean spending time away from my family it could mean taking business trips it could mean turning down a job somewhere else that could

pay me more money because i want to do this i believe in this and if any of you have vision statements for your businesses if you have a just cause a cause so just that your people would sacrifice for it i have a test it's a very simple test of three things that if you can pass all these three things you have a vision you have a just cause worthy of gay playing in the infinite game right so i'll run through them quickly and i'll explain them your vision your just cause must be resilient it

must be inclusive and it must be service oriented okay so resilient means that your vision your just cause can withstand cultural political or technological change right which means when i hear people say to be the best technology well that's not going to sustain through technological change think about how many businesses went like this simply because the internet was invented right so it has to your cause has to be written in terms that is durable that is is resilient through technological political and uh and and cultural change that's number one number two it has to be

inclusive which means it's the very words that you choose are an invitation to those who believe what you believe whether they're internal or external right they're an invitation to anyone who wants to contribute to what you believe so for example if you talk about um to build the best travel website let's just say right um that means the only people who would want to volunteer to be a part of it are people who build travel websites or people who build websites that means if you're an accountant if you're somebody in back office if you're somewhere

in the support you've literally made me feel like a second-class citizen in my own company right so it has to be written in terms that anybody no matter what job they play feels like they could contribute directly to that clause so it has to be inclusive and the the third one is my favorite one is it has to be service oriented in all relationships there's always a benefactor and a contributor a contributor and a benefactor so if i go to my boss for advice career advice i expect that her advice to me will be will

benefit me right i want to be the benefactor of that contribution if they're giving me advice if she only gives me advice that benefits her career right well that means the primary benefit of her advice was her not me so service orientation means that the primary benefit goes to those other than the contributor so if you're the leader that means the primary benef benefit of leadership has to go to those other than the leader themselves you cannot make decisions to enrich yourself you have to make decisions to help those uh that you lead now you

absolutely can make money you can absolutely have ambition those things are fine but not as the primary benefit right a salesperson cannot make a sale simply to drive their own bonus they have to make the sale to help the person get what they're trying to buy the primary benefit if you're an investor the primary benefit of your investment the primary benefit of your investment has to go to someone other than yourself i.e the company you're investing in and if you're the company the primary benefit of one of your companies sells the primary benefit has to

go to those other than the contributor which is yourself means it has to go to the customer it has to go to the client so your your vision statement needs to pass all those first of all uh there's a you have to know what the definition of introversion extroversion are right socially awkward is not i know socially awkward extroverts right it's not if you're uncomfortable it's not social awkwardness that's not introversion i like in terms of it's susan kane's definition it's it's about energy which is um an introvert loses energy from social interaction an extrovert

gains energy from social interaction so an introvert wakes up in the morning with five coins every social interaction they spend a coin at the end they are depleted an extrovert wakes up with no coins every social interaction they get a coin and by the end they feel rich like going to a party they give them energy go versus going to a party sucks your energy so then i'm an introvert right so i'm a big introvert right and um what i have learned is it's i have a big personality but i'm still an introvert so what

i've learned is that it doesn't matter which one you are the question is how do you leverage what you got right and so i go to parties with an extrovert right because that way they can do all the talking and i can just stand there and just eat the cheese that is fantastic by the way you can always spot me you can always tell you you go to a party with me and you will see me standing in corners or or or lingering by the when there's a barbecue i'm always the chef because then i

don't have to talk to anybody right but but if you notice i've learned to leverage what i have so it makes me a much better public speaker to be an introvert because i don't like holding court it freaks me out but i like talking to individuals so you'll notice when i speak i talk to you and then i talk to you and then i talk to you and i give everybody a whole idea or a whole thought which actually what i learned helps me actually connect with an audience much better but it's because i'm an

introvert so if you're an introvert of course you can be a leader it has nothing to do some of the best leaders have you ever heard of jim senegal most people haven't because he's awkward and shy he's a phenomenal leader he's the founder and pharmacy of costco right like there's phenomenal leaders richard branson introvert he's really awkward right um uh like these are phenomenal phenomenal leaders who are all introverts right but the one thing they all have to have in common whether you're extroverted introvert is undying belief in your cause right it's the and the

charisma is not how much energy you have the charisma is how much you're willing to devote to that