Simon Sinek argues that modern organizations overvalue individual performance metrics and short-term (finite) mindsets, which undermines culture and teamwork. He defines great culture as how people feel at work (not perks), criticizes reward structures that treat employees as numbers, and contrasts a demoralizing punitive feedback approach with an empathetic leadership response (asking “Are you okay? I’m worried about you”).
For the past 30, 40 years, we've over indexed on individualism and the finite mindset. Almost all the reward structures inside our companies reward only individual performance. And yet we have to work together in teams. We're not very good at team reward. We also overindexed on a finite mindset, which I'm sure we'll touch upon in a moment, basically the short term.
And in so doing we've, over the course of years we've taken our eye off the ball of the importance of culture and the importance of leadership and the importance of people. Yes, a lot of leaders give it lip service and talk about it, but you know, great culture is not giving away free food. Greek culture is how people feel when they come to work. And you know what we do. There's a lot of evidence that, for example, the amount of time that people spend on a job is getting shorter and shorter. And we've heard that levied against entire generations. You know, millennials, they just don't stick around. Well, I would argue that that's nothing to do with the generation. It has to do with the generation before it that's leading them. You know, it's nothing to do with young generations at all. It's just if you give people an environment where they feel seen, where they feel heard, where they feel understood, where they feel recognized as a human being, they'll want to stay there for decades. But when we treat people like numbers, or when we expect people only and judge people only only by their ability to hit an arbitrary number by an arbitrary date, that weighs on someone, and I'll give you a real life example of what that looks like and then answer the converse.
Here's a fairly typical scenario. Somebody in a leadership position walks into one of their team members offices, for example, and says, your numbers are down for the third quarter in a row. We've had this conversation before. You better get your numbers up in the fourth quarter, otherwise I don't know what's going to happen. That's kind of normal. It's kind of a familiar scenario. Whether we've given that talk or been on the receiving end of it. What do you think that does for the person on the receiving end of it? That is demoralizing. You've instilled fear in them. Now let's add a little empathy, because that's what was missing from that answer is empathy. Seeing that person as a human being. You walk in their office and you say, you know, your numbers are down for the third quarter in a row. We've had this conversation before. Are you okay? I'm worried about you. What's going on? And that's what's missing, which is we need a lot more good leadership, which includes things like how to give and receive feedback, listening skills, empathy. All of these. We've just forgotten to teach leaders how to lead.
