Beyond Logic: Why Feelings Matter in Decisions | Simon Sinek

Human beings are emotionally driven animals. We are not rational as much as people like to think we are. We're not. Even if you're an engineer, you're. We're still emotional, you know, we make decisions out of fear and ego and ambition and insecurity and all these things.

And the part of the brain that controls our emotions is called the limbic brain. But that part of the brain doesn't control language. It also controls all human behavior, by the way. So it controls our emotions and behavior, but it doesn't control language, which is why it's difficult to put our emotions into words. We often use analogies and metaphors. It's like this. It's like I'm on a train and there's no end to the track, you know?

It's also why we sometimes struggle to explain our decisions. I don't know, it just felt right, right. I just trusted my gut. Oh, I should have trusted my gut, right. Well, there's no part of your stomach that makes decisions. It's. It's this limbic brain. The neocortex is our rational part of our brain that's responsible for rational analytical thinking and language, but it's not responsible for behavior. And so when you make a rational case for why, it actually doesn't work because it's rational. When you make an emotional case for why, that's when you create human connection. And the easier way to understand that is that the why has nothing to do with the job. The job is the rational part, the job is the tactical part. The job is the thing that we can look at and count metrics, but that's not the essence of human connection, right? So by saying family first and then mission, because mission is the job. The flying is the job. The war fighting is the job. But it's something higher. It's the deep bond that is what creates where the why exists. So you're 100% right. And it can be ideological and it can be family, it can be human, it can be anything. But it has to live on a level higher than the job. And I see this mistake done a lot of times by a lot of leaders is they attempt to explain the why with a rational explanation or just a rearticulation of the job. So our why is to build the best quality product of the highest quality value. Like, nope, that's not it. You know, our why is to fly planes better than, nope, that's not it. Right. The why is take. Take care of the person to the left of you and to the right of you. And if we do that, we'll fly planes better than anybody else. I mean, it's that kind of thing. And people who resonate with that cause will find themselves drawn to that organization.