Leadership is Like Parenting | Simon Sinek

A Marine, a US Marine told me the first criterion for being a leader is you have to want to be one.

And if you look at the way the Marines select their leaders, select their officers, it's different than with their enlisted corps. So if you enlist in the Marine Corps, you go to Parris island in the east or you go to San Diego in the west to boot camp and they will make you into a Marine. That's what it says we make Marines. And if you change your mind.

You'Re going to be in the Marine Corps whether you like it or not. There is no changing your mind. Once you sign on the dotted line, you're in, in the officer Corps, it's different. If you want to be an officer in the Marine Corps, you go to OCS in Quantico, Virginia and it's a 10 week training and you only have to stay in the first four weeks for the next six weeks. You can drop out at any time for any reason.

And the reason is because if you don't want to be a leader, they don't want you. They give you the choice.

Leadership to me is like being a parent. Everybody has the capacity to be a parent. Doesn't mean everybody wants to be a parent and everybody should be a parent.

Leadership is the same.

Everybody has the capacity, doesn't mean everybody.

Wants it and doesn't mean everybody should.

It comes at great personal sacrifice. It means you have to constantly worry about other people. Like being a parent. You have to love them whether you chose them or not, you know your team and there are skills to being a parent. And everyone who's ever had a child starts reading books when they find out that they're pregnant for the first time. You know, they start asking their friends, they start asking their parents for advice.

And it's constant, you know, whether the.

Kid'S struggling at school or struggling at home or having a good time.

It's all the, you know, it's like.

I hate hanging out with my sister and my brother in law when they're with their other friends who have families.

Because all they talk about is kids.

Well, leadership's the same. Leadership's the same. The great leaders that I know are all students of leadership.

They're obsessed, they're constantly talking about it, they're reading books about it, they're watching talks about it, they're reading articles about.

It, they get together, it's the topic of conversation.

And so if you want to learn the skill set, number one, you have to want to do it.

And B, you're gonna have to do some work. Yeah. I mean, it takes effort.