Simon Sinek — Leadership in five minutes from my perspective
Do you love your wife? Prove it like what’s the metric? Give me the number that helps me know, right? ’cause when you met her you didn’t love. Now you love her. Right, tell me the day. The love happened. It’s an impossible question. But it’s not that it doesn’t exist, it’s that it’s much easier to prove overtime, right? Leadership is the same thing. It’s about transitions. So if you would if you would go to the gym like exercise, right? If you go to the gym and workout and you come back and you look in the mirror, you will see nothing. And if you go to the gym the next day and you come back and you look in the mirror, you will see. Nothing right? So clearly, there are no results that can’t be measured. It must not be effective, so we quit. Right? Or if you believe that this is the right course of action, and you stick with it like in a relationship.
I bought her Flowers and I wish her a happy birthday. And she doesn’t let me. Clearly I’ll give up. That’s not what happens if you. If you believe there’s something there you commit yourself to an act of service, you can make yourself to the regime, the exercise. You can screw it up. You can eat chocolate cake one day. You can skip a day or two. And allows for that. But if you stick with it consistently, I’m not exactly sure what day, but I know you’ll start getting into shape. I know the same with the relationship. It’s not about the events, it’s not about intensity, it’s about consistency. You go to the dentist twice a year. Your teeth will fall out. Brush your teeth every day for two minutes.
What is brushing your day twice a day for two minutes, do nothing. Unless you do it every day twice a day for two minutes, right? It’s the consistency of going to the gym for 9 hours. Does not get you into shape working out every day for 20 minutes gets you into shape. So the problem is we treat leadership with intensity. We have a two day off site. We invite a bunch of speakers. We give everybody certificates for your leader, right? Those things are like going to the dentist. They’re very important, good for reminding us or getting us back on track, learning new lessons, but it’s the daily practice of older, monotonous little boring things like brushing your teeth that matter the most.
She didn’t fall in love with you because you remembered her birthday and bought her Flowers and Valentine’s Day. She fell in love with you. Because when you woke up in the morning, you said good morning to her before you checked your phone. She fell in love with you because when you went to the fridge to get yourself a drink; you got her one without even asking. She fell in love with you because when you had an amazing day at work and she came home and she had a terrible day at work; you didn’t say yeah, but let me tell you about my day. You sat and listened to her awful day and you said nothing about your amazing day. Therefore she fell in love with you. I can’t tell you exactly what day and it was a particular thing you did.It was the accumulation of all of those little things that she woke up one day and this as if she pressed a button. I love him.
Leadership is exactly the same. There’s no invention. There’s nothing I can tell you. You have to do that. Your people will trust you, it just doesn’t work that way. It’s then an accumulation of lots and lots of little things that anyone by themselves is innocuous little pointless by themselves. People will look at little things that are good leadership practices say that won’t work, and you’re absolutely right. But if you do it consistently. And you do it in combination with lots of other little things. Like saying good morning to someone that is looking him in the eye.
My friend George. General in the marine core. He says his test for leadership and I love this. He takes his test. Really, a good leader is if you ask somebody how their day is going, you actually care about the answer. The number of times we walked to a meeting where we went. How are you? Not good? I gotta get to you later. I got home late for a meeting.
If you ask, you were standing there, and you were listening to the answer. It’s those little innocuous things that you do over and over and over and over that people will say I love my job but I like my job. I like my job means yeah; the challenge is great. Well, I like the people. I love it. My job means I don’t want to work anywhere else. I don’t care how much somebody else will pay me. I’m devoted to the people here and I care desperately about the people here as if they were my family. In business, we have colleagues and coworkers in the military.
They have brothers and sisters. That’s how they think of each other. If you really have a strong corporate culture. The people will think of each other. Like brothers and sister Tony leaves like a family, right? No brothers and sisters. Deep love fights but the love doesn’t go away. But, the love doesn’t go away and I’ll fight with my sister but if you threaten my sister, you are going to deal it with me. Sure, we’ll fight internally, will bicker with each other, but nobody is going to hurt each other. And from the outside shows up, you’re looking at a unified front. Brothers and sisters.
Now how do you create brothers and sisters out of strangers? Common beliefs, common values. You know parents. Executives who care about their children’s success, who care to raise their children, teach them skills, discipline them when necessary, help them build their self-confidence so that they can go on and achieve something more than you could have ever imagined achieving for yourself.
That’s leadership.
