Simon Sinek says the best leaders put people first, practice empathy, and build trust. Command-and-control works in combat when trust already exists, but most organizations thrive when leaders stay low-profile and let work happen quietly. He talks to Marines at Quantico about how officers behave under extreme stress.
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There's no one way to lead. There are some foundational principles. We put people first, we have empathy, we practice human skills. Those are universal. But our personalities are allowed to show up. But styles need to adapt for situations. So, like, I've met so many leaders who are like these sort of command and control leaders. They've watched too many movies, is probably, you know, they make movies about bad leaders, by the way. Right. Because bad leaders are really exciting. You know, they come in and they scream and shout at everybody and nobody knows what to do until they get there. Right, right. And they come in and save the day. Right. That's actually terrible leadership, but really makes for great movies. Good leadership. Like, they've never made a movie about Marshall or Bradley. You know, when you have great LED organizations, right. You know, you walk into the office and you're like, hey, is the boss here today? And they're like, maybe. We don't know, we haven't seen them. You know, everything just gets done pretty quiet. People just help each other. You know, it's better. Not very exciting. Right. However, that said, you know, in times of extreme stress, that can't work. The whole like, hey, I'd like to get your opinion and how are you feeling today? In times of extreme stress, it doesn't work. And so that command and control mentality does need to be able to turn on and turn off rarely. Yeah. So I was talking to some Marines, Marine. I visited Quantico where the Marine Corps selects its officers. Ocs. Any Marines in the audience? Any Marines? There's one. Oh, there we go.
So, and we were talking about it, which is, despite what you see on the TV from the military and Marine Corps, they're not screaming and yelling at everybody all the time and telling them what to do. It's just not how it is. There's a lot of feedback, There's a lot of, what do you think? There's a lot of leaders getting input from other people because more information and perspectives, you get benefits, your decision making ability. You know, nobody expects you to have all the answers. It's ridiculous. So getting points of view and perspective is really important. But in combat, in times of extreme stress, where the trust has already been built because you can't just show up and expect everybody to trust you. That's not how it works. In good times, you build the trust. Yeah. And then in extreme stress, you can turn that command and control on and everybody trusts that you're giving them orders and that are probably in everybody's best interest. And when that's gone, you turn it off. And so a good leader knows how to adapt for the situations and personalities that they work with. They don't expect their people to adapt to them.
