Simon Sinek explains why perceived control matters for stress and health, citing the Whitehall studies showing lower-ranking workers suffer worse outcomes when they feel powerless. Leaders who give their teams real agency and trust them to act create healthier, more resilient organizations. General Laurie Robinson's maxim captures it: 'There's nothing you can't break that I can't help fix.'
Chapters
I'm fascinated by the concept of control and throughout this pandemic and even the social unrest.
From some of the social stuff that's happening in our country.
It'S been fascinating to understand how people feel and how control relates as to how they respond. When we feel out of control, it actually increases our stress dramatically. There's been lots of studies on this. There was a great study that was done, I think, in the 70s called the Whitehall studies, where back in the 70s, there was a group of social scientists who wanted to study a phenomenon that they labeled and called Executive Stress syndrome. Right. The belief that if you make your way up the ranks, you feel more stress. Right. And so they wanted to study executive stress, and they did it in Whitehall, which is the halls of government in the uk because they could account for standardized health care, it wouldn't be variances in health care. What they discovered was there is no such thing as Executive Stress syndrome. It was completely made up. And what they discovered is as you make your way up the ranks of an organization, your stress levels actually go down. And the people who suffer the highest stress levels are actually people, some of the lowest levels. And the reason had nothing to do with responsibility. It had nothing to do with number of hours worked. It had to do with feeling in control. That when somebody's more senior in their career, they have a little more control as to the direction of their day, the direction of their career. When you're at the lowest level, somebody's always telling you what to do and somebody's always correcting your behavior. So he's always catching you when you do something wrong. And they find the highest rates of diabetes and some cancers and heart disease actually at the people who felt the least in control. And so giving people control, giving people agency, letting people know that they have say in the course of their career or if they screw something up, to give them an opportunity to try and mend it, or catching people doing things right, which is something we could all do better at, we catch people doing things wrong. You only send an email when something went wrong, but you never send an email when everything went right. It's all about giving people a sense of control and letting them work together and figure things out. And it has a dramatic impact and how people feel about themselves and more important, how they relate to each other. I recently learned that the buttons for crosswalks completely fake. They're just there to give you a perception of control. Same with a button in an elevator. Shut the doors. Well, that one I know in Europe, they work you hit the button and they close. But I think it's funny how much we like. Have you ever had it where you hit the button and the light doesn't go on? This like, panic or you show up, somebody's already standing at the elevator, clearly, lights already, the buttons are ready pressed, the light is on, but you go over and you press the button. I mean, it is funny how we like to sort of exert our control wherever possible, even when rationally we don't need to.
When we trust people, we want to give them agency and empower them. I think the challenge is.
Is what goes first, you know, And I think for anybody in a leadership position, I think one of the things that they fail to appreciate is that trusting is one of the risks a leader has to take. And I've never heard a great leader say, prove to me why I should trust you. Rather, leaders show up and trust, and I hear it. I get pushback all the time. Well, I didn't get to choose my team. You kind of asked me to trust them. Well, you begin to choose your children, you love them out the gate. Leaders take the risk to trust, and it's actually the opposite. It's the team that says, well, prove to us why we should trust you. And it's, the leader has to demonstrate trustworthiness, that the team would trust them. But actually, leaders have to take the risk to trust their teams. And the more they give trust, the more they get trust. The more they give trust, the more they're practicing empowerment. I'm going to let you do that as one great leader that I adore. Her name is General Laurie Robinson. She says to her teams, there's nothing you can't break. There's nothing you can break that I can't help fix. I just love that notion that I'm here to help you, even if you get it wrong.
