Be a Better Leader | Simon Sinek

The first criterion to being a leader is you have to want to be one because it comes with greater responsibility. It's like being a parent, right? Like having a kid is the fun part. That takes like eight minutes, right?

But raising a child for 18 years plus, that's the hard part. Well, getting the promotion, moving into leadership, that's the easy part. You go out for dinner, you celebrate, you have a glass of wine. But now being the leader is actually the hard work. And unlike your regular job, which you know might be, you know, it has closing hours and maybe you don't work on weekends if you're a leader. Just like being a parent, it's an all the time job. So if you choose to be a leader, if you choose this new lifestyle, you have to become a student. I've never met a great leader who thinks of themselves as an expert. All the great leaders I've ever met think of themselves as students. They read articles, they read books, they watch talks. They're constantly, constantly talking about it. They go out for dinner with friends or colleagues and they talk about leadership. And so you have to be a student of leadership. You have to start your education. So if this is something that you aspire to, then start reading, start watching, start talking.

Well, one thing, make them work together.

Shared incentives is also a part of things. Usually all we do is give individual incentives, which means we're only incentivizing behavior to work individually.

And by the way, incentives don't always have to be financial. It can be just recognition and reward, you know, catch people doing things right. So when you see people helping each other and sharing, call it out publicly, you know, compliment publicly, criticize privately in front of the rest of the team. Give people promotions when there's a behavior that you want to promote, like teaming, but also ask people to solve problems together and thank them together. And if one person comes to you and complains, I'm doing all the work, you say, well, why don't you find out? Maybe they're struggling, maybe they're like, we have to push back.

And also, I think the most important thing is leading by example.

Asking for help. I mean, when the leader acts like they know everything and they have all the answers, then all it's doing is telling everybody else, you better know everything and have all the answers because that's how you're going to get ahead here. And so I think one of the most difficult things for anybody in a leadership position to get comfortable with is saying, I don't know or I need help or can somebody Help me or can you do this with me? I love working, I love teaming with folks on my team. It doesn't matter what the rank structure is. Bring in someone junior, let's work together.

Even if all they're doing is poking holes, you know. Do you think this is good? No, I think it can be better. Okay, let me try again. So I think, I think demonstrating the behavior that we want is a big part of it.

We take accountability away from people and we don't even realize it. So we're actually destroying people's confidence or ability to make decisions because we keep answering their questions or making decisions for them. I had a boss many years ago, one of the best leaders I ever had, Peter Intimaggio. And he wouldn't answer a single question I asked. It drove me absolutely nuts. Hey, Peter, you know, what should I do? Well, what do you think we should do? Well, I think we should do this. He goes, well, you should give that a try then, you know, or he would just ask me questions. He goes, well, have you considered this? I went, no. He goes, well, maybe think about that, you know. But he would never tell me the answer. He'd always tell me the parameters. What he taught me was self reliance. It was the most valuable lesson I probably ever learned. Very often somebody will come and say, should we go with blue or green? I'll go with green. Well, we just answer the question and say, go with the one you think we should go with. What should we do here? Make the decision that you think is the right decision to make and then let them make the decision. When we give people accountability, the amazing thing is they rise to it. But we keep taking the accountability because we keep answering all the questions. So there's a very easy lesson for everyone here is stop replying to all the emails that you're getting while you're away. Right? Like I know what happens, you know, in every break or right now, you know, there's an email that says, you know, should we go with this one or that one? And you're replying and in every break you're going to reply to all your emails and tell people your opinion on what you think they should do versus saying, I'm going away for a few days for this conference so I can learn to be a better leader. Hold down the fort while I'm away. If there's an emergency, figure it out, you know, or only call me if you absolutely do not know the answer. And stop replying to all the emails. And they now have to work. You're giving away responsibility. One of the reasons they don't take responsibility is because they don't give it to them.