Simon Sinek on Leadership Skills | The Shocking Truth You Need NOW!

Hello, Believe Nation! I made the Mentor Me series to try to hang around people who've done a lot more than us, and by spending a little bit more time with them, hopefully some of their, their beliefs, their mindset, their attitude, their habits seep into us to help us become the best version of ourselves. So today we're going to learn from Simon Sinek on motivation. Mentor me, Simon!

Outside in the world is danger at all times for various reasons. In caveman times, that danger may have been, you know, a saber-toothed tiger. It may have been the weather. It may have been a lack of resources. It may have been, who knows, any number of things. Things that with no conscience are trying to kill you. They want to end your life. And so how do we survive? We work together. And together, we come together in our groups, in our companies, in our tribes, to feel like we belong, to be around people who believe what we believe, so that we may feel safe. When we're surrounded by people who have our best interests in mind, and we feel safe, we will organize ourselves and cooperate to face the dangers externally. Don't forget, the outside dangers are a constant. In a modern world, the outside dangers may be your competition that's trying to put you out of business, or at least steal your business. It might be the ebbs and flows of the economy. It might be terrorism. All of these unknowns, all trying to put you out of business, take away your job, take away your livelihood, end it for you. Nothing personal. It's a constant. Inside our organizations, the dangers we face are not a constant. They are a variable. And they are the decisions of leadership as to how safe they make us feel when we go to work. This is the job of of leaders. Aesop said it better than I can. There's an Aesop fable about 4 oxen that stand tail to tail, and whenever the lion tries to eat them, no matter what angle from which he attacks, he will always be met with horns. However, due to infighting and disagreements, they separate and they go and graze in different parts of the field. And one by one, the lion picks them off and kills them all. When we stand together, we can more easily face the dangers outside. When we break up inside our companies, if our leaders don't allow us a space to feel safe inside our own companies, to feel like we belong, then we have to, we're forced to exert our own energy to protect ourselves from each other, and by the way, expose ourselves to greater danger from the outside. If you have to worry about politics, if you have to worry about someone stealing your credit, if you have to worry about your boss not having your back, Think about the energy you invest, not in your business, not in the products you're trying to develop, not in your work, not in how great you're producing, not in your creativity, but in just keeping yourself feeling safe. This is destructive. The responsibility of leadership is two things. One, to determine who gets in and who doesn't get in. This is what it means to start with why. What are our values? What are our beliefs? Who can we allow in? Second thing is to decide how big this is. How big do we make the circle of safety? How big do we make the circle of belonging? Do we keep it around just our C-level executives and call it an inner circle and allow others to try and fend for themselves and maybe try and get into our inner circle? Or do we extend it to the outermost edges of the organization? Great leaders extend the circle of safety, the circle of belonging, out to the outermost edges so the most junior person feels feels safe. I did a little experiment with, um, with a homeless person. Not like on them, it's not like electrodes. With them. Voluntarily helped me. Because the whole idea of giving, right? You've all walked down the street and you've all seen someone begging and you either have or haven't thrown a few pennies in their cup. When you do, you feel good. You bought that feeling. That is a legitimate commercial transaction. You know, commercial transactions are defined as the exchange of consideration. There was an exchange of consideration here. You gave money, you got the feeling of goodwill. You paid for that feeling. If you didn't give money, you either feel nothing or you feel bad. You can't feel good by not giving. All right? You paid for that feeling. So now the question is, how is that person encouraging us to give? The joke is, they act like every corporation in the world. They talk about themselves. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, right? Like they sit there with their little outdoor advertising, little sign, right? And it says, "I'm homeless." I'm hungry, I got 12 kids, I'm a veteran, God bless. They got it all in there, trying to appeal to somebody. The religious vote, the veteran vote, you know, the child sympathizer. Surround yourself with lots of pets, go for that one too, right? All in an attempt to get something from someone. Takers, not givers, right? All about me. Well, what do corporations do? We've added more RAM, we've added more ROM, we've added more speed. This one's number one, we're the biggest, we're the best, we've been around since 1969, we're better than them, we're faster than them, than them, we're more efficient than that one— me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. And so even if we buy their product, guess what? Eh, I don't really feel much. So I did this little experiment. I found a nice homeless lady on the streets of New York who was willing to help out. And I learned that with her sign, which was pretty typical— "I'm homeless, I'm hungry," blah, blah, blah— she makes between $20 and $30 a day for a day's worth of work, 8 to 10 hours of sitting there selling goodwill. 8 to 10 hours, she'll make $20 to $30. $30 is considered a good day. I changed her sign, and the new sign made her $40 in 2 hours. And then she left. It's one of the reasons she's homeless, is because she's decided that she only needs $20 to $30 a day to live. If she stayed, she would have made $150. The point is, she made $40 in 2 hours. What did the sign say? The sign said, "If you only give once a month, please think of me next time." It has nothing to do with the taker. It has everything to do with the giver. And what are the objections people give when they don't give? "I can't give to everyone." "How do I know that they really need it?" And so I addressed both those concerns. I know you can't give to everyone, so if you only give once a month, "Listen, my cause is legitimate. I will still be here when you're ready to give." $40, 2 hours. Make it about them, not about you. The fact of the matter is 100% of customers are people, and 100% of clients are people, and 100% of employees are people. I don't care how good your product is, I don't care how good your marketing is, I don't care how good your design is. If you don't understand people, you don't understand business. We are social animals. We are human beings, and our survival depends on our ability to form trusting relationships. Do you ever watch Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel? I was flipping through the channels one night, and Deadliest Catch came on. And on this episode, just random, they were in a huge storm. Now, for those of you who don't know Deadliest Catch, they take these crab fishing boats out in the Bering Sea, which is like terrible. And they put cameras on them, and we watch, right? The reason that's, I guess, significant is because these crab fishermen have, I think, one of the top 5 deadliest jobs in the world. I don't know what the exact number is, but dozens of fishermen die every year doing this. We apparently find that entertaining, which it actually is. So they have cameras only on 5 or 6 of the ships, even though there are many, many, many ships that go out fishing every season. And they don't really come into proximity with each other because the ocean's huge. And they usually sabotage each other and give each other false information because they're all competitors. They're all looking to get the crabs and make sure that they find them and somebody else doesn't. And it's business, right? It's just business. It's OK. We all do the same thing in our own companies. And in this one episode, this big, huge storm was so violent that they had to bring all the pots, which are the big cages that they catch the crabs in, they had to bring all the pots back on the boat and wait out the storm. And just by dumb luck, one of the boats that had cameras on it was in proximity of a boat that didn't have cameras on it. And so they filmed, they had secured all their pots on the deck, and so they started filming the other boat. And they filmed a guy climbing on the outside of the cage securing the pots. And all of a sudden, a huge wave hits the side of the boat, and the guy's not there anymore. And the people on the boat with the cameras start screaming, "Man overboard! Man overboard! Man overboard!" And they turn their boat towards where they think he might be. He's a stranger, they don't know him, they don't know the crew members of the other boat, and yet they react, and they turn towards. Him, and they find him in the drink. And for those of you who don't understand how dangerous this is, if the water is so cold that if you're in the water for, I think that it's a minute or a minute 30, hypothermia will set in and you die. And they come upon him and he's screaming, "Don't let me die. Don't let me die." And they pull him on board, not out of the woods yet. They strip off his clothes because it's wet and cold, and they wrap blankets around him to prevent hypothermia from setting in. And he survives. And it's overwhelming. And the captain comes down, and this is all on— I mean, you can go watch it on TV. The camera comes, the captain comes down, and he hugs this stranger, this young man, his competitor. He hugs this guy as if he's his own son. I lost it. Everybody is crying, and you realize what happened here was a human interaction. And the reason they risk their own lives to help this other person, even though they spend every other day trying to get ahead and sabotage, is because at the end of the day, they're all crab fishermen, and they know something about each other, and they know something about the risk that they all take to do this. And when push comes to shove, they will put themselves out there to help each other for no other reason than they get it. They're one of the same. I will promise you that every single member of that crew that day went home with a feeling of fulfillment. I promise you that every single person on that crew that day felt more good in their hearts and in their jobs than the richest day that they've ever pulled in. My question is, is what are you doing to help the person next to you? Don't you want to wake up and go to work for the only reason that you can do something good for someone else? Wouldn't you want them to do that for you? I was staying at the Four Seasons in Las Vegas, which is a wonderful hotel, and the service there is really great. The reason it's such a great hotel is because of the people who work there. And I had an experience with a young man by the name of Noah. And Noah's a barista in the coffee shop that they have just there in the lobby. And I was buying a cup of coffee, and Noah was charming and funny and engaging. And I think I gave 100% tip. I think my $5 coffee, I think I gave a $5 tip. I mean, this guy was great. I loved talking to him. He was a joy. And I asked him, do you like your job? He said to me, "I love my job," without skipping a beat. And I asked, "What is it that the Four Seasons is doing that you love your job so much?" He says, again, without skipping a beat, he says, "Throughout the day, managers will walk past and ask how I'm doing and if there's anything that I need." He said, "Not just my manager, any manager." He says, "I feel supported here." He says, quote, "I can be myself." Right? Then, oh, it's magic. And then he says to me, "I also work at Caesar's Palace, and there the managers go around to make sure that we're doing everything right and catch us if we do something wrong." He says, "When I go to work at Caesar's Palace, I keep my head just under the radar because I don't want to get in trouble." He says, "I just want to get through the day and make a paycheck." Right? Same person. The experience that I have at the Four Seasons will be diametrically opposite to the experience that I have at Caesar's Palace, not because of Noah, but because of Noah's leadership. And the joke is, if I were to go talk to the managers over at Caesar's Palace and say, you know, it's you, they'll say, but you don't understand, we cannot get good work out of our people. Look, look, no matter how hard we try and how hard we push them, they just don't. So we either have to replace them or push them harder. No, we respond to the environments we're in. Get the environment right, you get the right behavior. Get the environment wrong, you get the wrong behavior. If that is what is happening, it is because of leadership, not because of the people. Yeah, there was a really famous cartoon back in the '80s, "The beatings will continue until the morale improves." Yeah. Yeah, I always thought that was hilarious because it's so terrifyingly accurate. And astonishingly. Look, I'm embarrassed that I have a career. You know, I talk about things like trust and cooperation. Why is there demand for my work, you know? But the fact that there is, I'll take it as an opportunity. But what's really sort of abominable is that this is not a new idea. Like, there are books galore and speeches galore and articles galore about what leadership is. You know, we all kind of say the same thing from a different angle, so you can pick your flavor, whichever message resonates most with you. And yet people don't do it. What's the hang-up? And so I get this question a lot, which is, what are, you know, what are the— What are the most important characteristics about being a leader? Vision, charisma, you know? I know some spectacular leaders who don't have big Steve Jobsian visions. They're just not visionary, you know? And I know some spectacular leaders who really don't have a lot of charisma. They kind of just shuffle around and you're like, "That's the guy? That's the guy?" Right? And they're spectacular. Blood, sweat, and tears for these people. The one thing I am comfortable saying that all effective leaders must have is courage, because it is hard. It is hard to stand up against outside pressure. It is hard to stand up to an external constituency who's pushing you to do something for their short-term gain, to do the right thing for your people. It is hard. It is thankless. It is lonely. It's sometimes— sometimes you get fired. Sometimes you get in trouble. Sometimes you'll lose your job and the next guy will get all the credit. It's all true. And the courage to do the right thing in the face of overwhelming pressure, only the best leaders have that courage. Only the best leaders. And here's the folly. Courage is not some deep internal fortitude. You don't dig down deep and find the courage, right? It just doesn't exist. Courage is external. Our courage comes from the support we feel from others. In other words, when someone— when you feel that someone has your back, when you know that the day that you admit you can't do it, someone will be there and say, "I got you. You can do this," that's what gives you the courage to do the difficult thing. It's not going off to an ashram by yourself somewhere for 4 weeks and coming back and finding the courage. It's not what happens. It's the relationships that we foster. It's the people around us who love us and care about us and believe in us. And when we have those relationships, we will find the courage to do the right thing. And when you act with courage, that in turn will inspire those in your organization to also act with courage. In other words, it's still an external thing. That's what inspiration is, right? I'm inspired to follow your example. But those relationships that we foster over the course of a lifetime will not only make us into the leaders we need to be and hope we can be, but they'll often save your life. They'll save you from depression, they'll save you from giving up, they'll save you from any matter of, you know, negative feelings about your own capabilities, your own future. When someone just says, "I love you, and I will follow you no matter what." I talk to so many smart, fantastic, ambitious, idealistic, hardworking kids, and they're right out of college, they're in their entry-level jobs, and I'll ask them, "How's it going?" And they'll say, "I think I'm gonna quit." And I'm like, "Why?" They say to me, "I'm not making an impact." I'm like, "You know you've been here 8 months, right?" They treat the sense of fulfillment or even love like it's a scavenger hunt, like it's something you look for. My millennial friends, they've gone through so many jobs. They're either getting fired— I mean, it was mutual— or they're quitting because they're not making an impact or they're not finding the thing they're looking for. They're not feeling fulfilled, as if it's a scavenger hunt. Love, a job you find joy from, is not something you discover. It's not like, "I found love. Here it is." "I found a job I love." That's not how it works. Both of those things require hard work. You are in love because you work very hard every single day of your life to stay in love. You find a job that brings you ultimate joy because you work hard every single day to serve those around you, and you maintain that joy. It's not a discovery. But the problem is this sense of impatience. It's as if an entire generation is standing at the foot of a mountain. They know exactly what they want. They can see the summit. What they can't see is the mountain, this large immovable object. That doesn't mean you have to do your time. That's not what I'm talking about. Take a helicopter, climb, I don't care. But there's still a mountain. Life, career fulfillment, relationships are journeys. The problem is this entire generation has an institutionalized sense of impatience. And do they have the patience to go on the journey to maintain love, to feel fulfilled, or do they just quit and on to the next, dump and on to the next, ghost and on to the next? And by the way, ghosting means the lack of skill to have a confrontation. You date somebody for 6 months, 8 months, And then just stop replying. Just delete them from everything. Now, for the person who's doing the ghosting, oh, that's certainly easier than a confrontation. But the person on the receiving end of the ghosting, it's like there's a death. They're suddenly shunned. There's panic. They call out, they're worried. They call out, they're worried. They think it's you, they think it's them. Do you have any idea the destruction that we reap on people by ghosting them. And then because there's the lack of social skills to call out and ask for help, they internalize and it makes them feel awful to the point, at the worst they will kill themselves, slightly one level down they'll get depressed, but the lowest level that we can hope for is they will go through life, and I'm not talking about ghosting, I'm talking an entire generation, that if we don't fix this, will go through life where everything's just fine. My friendships are fine, my work is fine, you know, same old, same old. Nothing's ever amazing. And the scavenger hunt continues. We're taking a generation that has lower self-esteem, we're taking a generation that has a lack of coping mechanisms to deal with stress, we're dealing with a generation that wants all those things fixed immediately, and we're placing them in work environments that values money more than people. Do you know that most of the business philosophies, most of the business theories that we embrace and see as standard today are not standard? They're theories left over from the '80s and '90s. The concept of shareholder supremacy was a theory proposed in the late 1970s. It was popularized in the '80s and '90s. The concept of using mass layoffs to balance the books did not exist in the United States prior to the 1980s. It did not exist. It became popular in the '80s and '90s. The '80s and '90s were boom years. Anyone could make money. Relative peace, a kinder, gentler Cold War. And so all of the business theories that were put forth were very, very selfish and all about enriching ourselves. And they worked for those times. But these times are different. These are not peaceful times. These are not boom years. This is— there's globalization and the internet which has now made everything vastly more complicated, and those theories do not work anymore. Worse, they're having side effects. It's really bad. Because what we do is we destroy corporate cultures. The idea of using mass layoffs— can you imagine sending someone home and saying, "I'm sorry, I can no longer provide for our family because the company missed its arbitrary projections this year. That's what we're doing. That's like a coach prioritizing the needs of the fans over the needs of the players, hoping to build a great team. It doesn't work. We dismantled things like the Glass-Steagall Act. Glass-Steagall was passed after the Great Depression to prevent another Great Depression from happening. It was dismantled in the '80s and the '90s in the name of profit. Okay? Do you know how many stock market crashes we had between the Great Depression and the dismantling of Glass-Steagall? The answer is zero. And since they dismantled Glass-Steagall, we had '87, the dot-com crash, 2008. We've had 3 stock market crashes because we've removed the safety mechanisms that prevent stock market crashes from happening, all in the name of of individual advancement and profit. And these are the corporate cultures we've built. Corporate cultures that value numbers over people. And they are not standard business practices. They are new, and they are broken, and they are dangerous, and we're asking a young, wonderful, ambitious, amazing generation that needs us to work in these environments. Whether we like it or not, we have to take responsibility for the bad hand that you've been dealt. It is up to the companies to create an environment in which you can build your self-confidence. It is up to the companies to create an environment in which you can learn coping mechanisms and learn how to build strong, close relationships with people with whom you work, that you will eventually love and sacrifice to see that they gain. It is in these environments that we will learn the patience and the hard work that it takes to find fulfillment in our lives, to find a sense of purpose, a sense of joy. Yes, it's all fine and good that my generation and older generations say to you things like, "Well, you're the future leaders." We're the leaders now. We're the ones in control of the corporate environments now. And we're making your lives worse. I don't want you to jump from job to job to job to job. You will never find what you're looking for. It's not a scavenger hunt. I don't want you to go from relationship to relationship to relationship. What I want you to do is stand up and demand that the places in which you work lead you properly. Nobody wants to wake up in the morning and be managed. We want to wake up in the morning and be led, and we have a total leadership crisis in America. Politics is just the mirror reflection. We get the politicians we deserve. We're the divided ones. We're the selfish ones. We're the broken ones. We're the ones who would sooner sacrifice somebody else so that we may gain. It's us. And until we're willing to do the hard work of repairing the world around us, our country, our politics, our businesses will not fix. So there's a wonderful story about listening. The problem when people say you need to be a better listener is we are human beings and we need to communicate, and communication is two ways, listening and speaking. So, but everybody's like, you gotta be a better listener. I'm like, but here's the best understanding I have of that. So Nelson Mandela is universally regarded as a great leader, which is important because, you know, different people are viewed differently in different nations. But Nelson Mandela, universally regarded as a great leader, right? He was actually the son of a tribal chief, and he was asked in an interview once, "how did you learn to be a great leader?" And he tells the story of how he would go to tribal meetings with his father, and he remembers two things: they always sat in a circle, and his father was always the last to speak. And in terms of leadership and listening, I think the idea of "be a better listener" is actually half the advice. I think the advice is practice being the last to speak. You see this all the time in meetings where everybody will sit around a room, the senior guy will be like, "All right, here's the problem, here's what I think we should do, but I'm really interested in what your thoughts are. Let's go around the room." It's too late! You've influenced the room. You've created the framework. And people bend and mold, as opposed to saying, "Here's the problem. I'm interested in what you have to say," without saying anything. And not even— and having this— and this takes practice— not even giving a hint whether you agree or disagree. If anything, you ask questions to learn more. You get the benefit of hearing everybody's opinion. Everybody gets to feel heard, and then you get to render your opinion. Dopamine is the feeling that you found something you're looking for, or that you accomplished something you set out to accomplish. So you know that feeling you get when you cross something off your to-do list? That's dopamine. Feels awesome. You know when you have a goal to hit and you achieve that goal, you're like, "Yes!" You feel like you've won something, right? That's dopamine. The whole purpose of dopamine is to make sure that we get stuff done, right? The historical reason for dopamine: we would never eat if we only waited until we got hungry because there's no guarantee that we would find food. Food. So dopamine exists to help us go looking for food. We get dopamine when we eat, which is one of the reasons we like eating. And so when you see something that reminds you of something that feels good, we want to do the behavior that helps us get that feeling, right? So let's say you're out there going for a walk and you see an apple tree in the distance. You get a small hit of dopamine, and then what it does is it focuses us on our goals, and now we start walking towards the apple tree. And as the apple tree starts to get a little Bigger. We feel like we're making progress. You get another little shot of dopamine and another little shot of dopamine until you get to the tree and you're like, yes, okay. This is why we're told you must write down your goals. Your goals must be tangible. There's a biological reason for that. We're very, very visually oriented animals. You have to be able to see the goal for it to biologically stay focused, right? If you don't write down your goals, if you can't see your goals, it's very hard to get motivated, to get inspired. For example, think about corporate visions, right? A corporate vision has to be something we can see, right? That's why it's called a vision. You can see it, right? To be the biggest, most respected, to be the fastest growing are not visions. They're nothing, right? What does that even look like? Respected by whom? Your mother? Yourself? Your friends? Your shareholders? Who knows? What's the metric? Dunno. It's amorphous. Doesn't motivate us. Just like I can't tell you, you will get a bonus if you achieve more. You're going to ask me, how much more? I'm going to say, more. Doesn't work. You need a tangible goal. You need a tangible goal, right? Here's a great vision. Martin Luther King. I have a dream that one day little black children and little white children will play on the playground together and hold hands together. We can imagine that. We can set our sights on that. And every time we achieve a goal and achieve a metric and achieve a milestone that makes us feel like we're making progress to the vision we can see, we keep going and going and going until we achieve something remarkable. You have to be able to see it. Dopamine. Like I said, dopamine is the feeling you get when you set out to find something you're looking for as well. Talked about the to-do list. I came home from a trip just a couple days ago, and I had a bunch of errands to run, and I wrote down a little list of things I had to do, and off I went, right? And as I was walking past, I think it was the dry cleaners, I don't remember, I was walking past something, I remembered, oh, I have to do that, and I hadn't written it down on my to-do list, so I went in and finished what I needed to do, and then when I came out, I then wrote it on my to-do list and then crossed it out. 'Cause I wanted the dopamine. Feels good. Dopamine comes with a warning. Dopamine is highly, highly, highly addictive. Here are some other things that release dopamine: alcohol, nicotine, gambling, your cell phone. Oh, you think I'm joking. OK, we've all been told that, you know, if you wake up in the morning and you crave a drink, you might be an alcoholic. Well, if you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is check your phone before you even get out of bed, you might be an addict. If you walk from room to room in your own apartment holding your telephone, You might be an addict. When you're driving in your car and you get a text and your phone goes beep. We hate email, true, we love the beep, the buzz, the ding, oh. Right? You'll be there in 10 minutes and yet you have to look at it right now. You might be an addict. And even if you read it and it says, are you free for dinner next Thursday? And you have to reply immediately, you can't wait, 10 minutes, you might be an addict. And for all you Gen Ys out there who like to think that you're better at multitasking because you grew up with the technology, then why do you keep crashing your cars when you're texting? You're not better at multitasking. You're better at getting distracted. In fact, if you look at the statistics, ADD and ADHD have— diagnoses of ADD and ADHD have risen 66% in the past 10 years. ADD and ADHD is a frontal lobe disorder, right? Are you telling me out of nowhere, 66% of our youth has a frontal lobe problem? Where did that come from? No, it's a misdiagnosis, right? What are the symptoms of a dopamine addiction to technology? Distractibility, inability to get things done, easily distracted, you know, shortness of attention. It's all the same thing. So we misdiagnose things. It's this. It's the addictive quality of dopamine. We can also get addicted to performance in our companies when all they do is give us numbers to hit, numbers to hit, numbers to hit, and a bonus you get, and a bonus you get, and a bonus you get. All they're doing is feeding us with dopamine, and we can't help ourselves. All we do is want more, more, more. It's no surprise that the banks destroyed the economy, because one of the things we know about dopamine addicts is they will do anything to get another hit, sometimes at the sacrifice of their own resources and their relationships. Ask any alcoholic, gambling addict, or drug addict. Ask, ask them how their relationships are doing and if they've squandered any of their resources. It's an addiction. Dopamine is dangerous if it is unbalanced. It is hugely helpful when in a comfortable and balanced system, but when unbalanced, it's dangerous and it's destructive. The metrics are fine, they're just not in the short term and they're just not fixed in time. So for example, Do you love your wife? Yes. Right? Prove it. Like, what's the metric? Give me the number that helps me know, right? 'Cause when you met her, you didn't love her, right? Now you love her, right? Tell me the day the love happened. It's an impossible question, right? But it's not that it doesn't exist, it's that it's much easier to prove over time, right? So leadership is the same thing. It's about transitions. So if you were to go to the gym, right, it's like exercise, right? If you go to the gym and you work out and you come back and you look in the mirror, you will see nothing. And if you go to the gym the next day and you come back and you look in the mirror, you will see nothing, right? So clearly there's no results, can't be measured, it must not be effective. So we quit, right? Or if you fundamentally believe that this is the right course of action and you stick with it, like in a relationship, I bought her flowers and I wished her happy birthday and she doesn't love me, clearly I'll give up. You know, that's not what happens. If you believe there's something there, you commit yourself to an act of service. You commit yourself to the regime, the exercise. You can screw it up, you can eat chocolate cake one day, Skip a day or two, you know, it allows for that. But if you stick with it consistently, I'm not exactly sure what day, but I know you'll start getting into shape. I know it. And the same with the relationship. It's not about the events. It's not about intensity. It's about consistency, right? You go to the dentist twice a year, your teeth will fall out. You have to brush your teeth every day for 2 minutes. What does brushing your teeth twice a day for 2 minutes do? Nothing. Unless you do it every day, twice a day, for 2 minutes. Right? It's the consistency. Going to the gym for 9 hours does not get you into shape. Working out every day for 20 minutes gets you into shape. So the problem is we treat leadership with intensity. We have a 2-day offsite, we invite a bunch of speakers, we give everybody a certificate. You're a leader! Right? Those things are like going to the dentist. They're very important, they're good for reminding us or getting us back on track, learning new lessons, but it's the daily practice of all the monotonous little boring things like brushing your teeth that matter the most. She didn't fall in love with you because you remembered her birthday and bought her flowers on Valentine's Day. She fell in love with you because when you woke up in the morning, you said good morning to her before you checked your phone. She fell in love with you because when you went to the fridge to get yourself a drink, you got her one without even asking. She fell in love with you because when you had an amazing day at work and she came home and she had a terrible day at work, you didn't say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but let me tell you about my day." You sat and listened to her awful day, and you didn't say a thing about your amazing day. This is why she fell in love with you. I can't tell you exactly what day, and it was no particular thing you did. It was the accumulation of all of those little things that she woke up one day, and it's as if she pressed a button. And she goes, "I love him." Right? Leadership is exactly the same. There's no event. There's no thing I can tell you you have to do that your people will trust you. It just doesn't work that way. It's an accumulation of lots and lots of little things that anyone by themselves is innocuous and useless. Literally pointless by themselves. People will look at little things that are good leadership practices and say, "That won't work." And you're absolutely right. But if you do it consistently, and you do it in combination with lots of other little things, like saying good morning to someone, looking them in the eye. My friend George, who's a 3-star general in the Marine Corps, he says his test for leadership, and I love this, he goes, his test for a good leader is if you ask somebody how their day is going, you actually care about the answer. The number of times we're walking to a meeting, we're rushing, we go, how are you? Not good, I gotta get to you later, I'm late for a meeting. If you ask the question, you are standing there and you are listening to the answer. It's those little innocuous things that you do over and over and over and over that people will say, "I love my job." Not, "I like my job." "I like my job" means, "Yeah, the challenge is great, they pay me well, I like the people." "I love my job" means, "I don't want to work anywhere else. I don't care how much somebody else is willing to pay me. I'm devoted to the people I love the people here, and I care desperately about the people here as if they were my family. In business, we have colleagues and coworkers. In the military, they have brothers and sisters. That's how they think of each other, right? If you really have a strong corporate culture, the people will think of each other like brothers and sisters. Don't really, it's like a family, right? No, brothers and sisters, deep love, Fight, but the love doesn't go away. Bicker, the love doesn't go away. And I'll fight with my sister, but if you threaten my sister, you're going to have to deal with me. We'll fight internally. We'll bicker with each other. But nobody's going to hurt each other. And if anything from the outside shows up, you're looking at a unified front. Brothers and sisters. Now, how do you create brothers and sisters out of strangers? Common beliefs? Common values? You know, parents, in other words, executives who care about their children's success, who care to raise their children, teach them skills, discipline them when necessary, help them build their self-confidence so that they can go on and achieve something more than you could have ever imagined achieving for yourself. That's leadership. An absolute love and devotion for the people who've committed their lives to this enterprise. The goal of putting something out there If you say what you believe and you do what you believe, you will attract people who believe what you believe. If you go to one of your friends and you say to one of your friends, "How would you like me to dress so that you'll like me better?" "How would you want me to address you? How do you want me to speak so that you'll like me more?" Right? Your friends are going to look at you and be like, "What are you talking about?" You're like, "Come on, come on, come on. What should I wear?" so that you'll find me more appealing? And how would you like me to speak to you so that you'll like me more? And your friends are going to tell you, "Just be yourself. That's why I like you. I don't care. Just be yourself." Now think about what we do in industry. What do we do? We do market research, and we go up and we ask the customers, "What kind of things, what style should we speak to you? How should we decorate ourselves? What kind of things are you drawn to so that we can do those things so you'll like us more?" It's just as ridiculous. It's just as ridiculous. Organizations should say and do the things they actually believe, and they will attract people who believe what they believe. Or they can choose to lie, and at the slightest hint that they might be lying, cynicism sets in, and people start saying, "I'm not sure I can trust these guys because there's not a lot of consistency in all the things they say and do, which means they can't have a very strong belief set, or they're lying to to me, and we call them inauthentic. The entire process of asking other people who we should be is inauthentic. That's hilarious to me. All these positioning studies we do are inherent. We're going to do a study to find out from people so we can be more authentic. That's hilarious. Say and do what you actually believe, and the symbols you put out there, the things you say and the things you do, those red hats are ways that people can find you. What you have the ability to do, as designers, is create those symbols and allow people to use those things to say something about who they are. Work for companies, work for clients, work for people who you believe what they believe. Show up and feel a part of something bigger than yourself. And your part is to put what they believe into— pictures and words and symbols and graphics so that other people can use those things to say something about who they are. People put Harley-Davidson logos on their body to say something about who they are. Corporate logo. Ain't no Procter Gamble tattooed on anybody's arm. Because Harley means something. They stand for something. People put that tattoo on there not to tell you that they own a motorcycle. They put that tattoo there to tell you something about themselves. You ever see anybody with a Mac laptop put a sticker over that beautiful shining apple? Ain't never gonna happen. Then how will you know who I am? You ever see anybody with a PC break out the Windex to clean out their computer? Mac people? Ha, ha. Have you ever seen a dirty Mac? Doesn't exist. Does not exist. Why? Because it's who I am. These are symbols we use. The companies that are crystal clear in what they believe, and they're disciplined in how they do it, and they're consistent in what they do, and everything they say and everything they do serves as a symbol of the set of values and beliefs. We use those symbols to say something about who we are. We surround ourselves with the people and the products and the brands that say something about who we are. And when we can find the people who believe what we believe, we're weirdly drawn to them. Because our very survival depends on it. We need it. And so the more you can give of yourself, the more you can give of what you believe, the more you can discipline— with discipline— say and do the things you actually believe, strange things start to happen. What you'll find is that the better you are at communicating your why, people will want to work for you regardless of the opportunity that you afford them. Like, they want to be a part of it. Yeah. We do a little thing which we've been doing for years and years and years called a give and take. Whenever there's any kind of relationship, whether it's an outside partnership or even somebody who joins our team, we do something called a give and take where we want somebody to be selfish and selfless within the relationship. So not give and get, but give and take. So we'll ask them, what is it that you have to give to us that you have that you think that we need, right? And they'll tell us. And then we'll say, "Great. What is it that you selfishly want from us?" And we want them to tell us what they can get from us in return. I believe in that so much. And when those things match, you have a balanced relationship. So for example, I've had it with people, you know, they'll tell me what they have to offer and that's awesome because that's what I want, and then they'll say what they want to take and they go, "Oh, I want to work with smart people." I'm like, "Plenty of smart people. What is it you want to take from me?" They're like, "Oh, I want to help build something." Wonderful, do that anywhere. What do you want to take selfishly from me that you can get nowhere else? And if they can't answer the question, I won't engage in a relationship. And the reason is because in time, the relationship is unbalanced. They're going to be giving, but they're not taking, and I don't even know how to give them what they want. Then they'll complain they're not making enough money because it's not balanced. That's right.

You speak to businesses and companies and leadership teams and employees and stuff, uh, without mentioning names. I don't want to put you on the spot, but have you gone and talked to a company that's been in trouble and then spoken to their team and then checked in on them after you've spoken to their leadership team? And what did that look like? Did you notice a noticeable change? Did they come to you and tell you that this has helped our organization out and our culture is much improved because of it?

You mean, does my shit work? I mean, sure. Here's the problem with my stuff. You gotta do it. And I am not anybody's, like, you know, mom or dad. I'm not gonna do it for you. And I have a very laissez-faire approach of it. I once had a client, this is a bunch of years ago. That said, "What guarantee do I have that your stuff will work?" To which my answer was, "None." Like, I'm giving you a tool. You can— it's like a hammer. You can use it broadly or narrowly. You can build a table, you can build a house. It's the same tool. You can use it for marketing, you can use it to completely revitalize your entire culture. And even though I'm going to sell you the most beautiful hammer, I'm not going to guarantee the structural integrity of the house. Right? It's your business. You want to ignore all my stuff? Ignore it. I don't care. It's your— and if your business collapses, you know what happens to me? Nothing. Like, I don't mean to be cold about it. Like, of course I want the people I work with to do well, but it's not mine. It's theirs. And I take no emotional responsibility for the decisions they make. So yes, there are many people that I've had the pleasure of working with, some who worked for dysfunctional organizations, that went on the a hard journey of completely changing the way they lead and completely revitalizing their culture, and it has great success. It's not because of me, it's because of them, right? At the same time, there are many people who came in like, "What an amazing speech," and did nothing. You know, "Thanks, that was great," you know? And I don't— of course it's gonna fail, you know? So I think that we have too much, especially in the consulting world the design world, everybody's so paternalistic about it. And designers are famous for this, right? They get so personally offended when the client chooses the wrong thing. "Oh, they're such idiots! Don't they know we're trying to help them?" Or who cares? Like, it's their frickin' business, right? That's what you find. I've had that. Instead of arguing with somebody for them to make the right choice, 'Cause we genuinely want to help them. What I have found is if you push the accountability down to them, 'cause when we argue, we're taking accountability. This is better, this will help you. We're taking responsibility, accountability. But if we say, look, we've been doing this a bunch of years, we know more about design than you do. I'm telling you for every reason that I can outline for you why this will help you more. But if you don't want to do it, That's fine, it's your business, do what you want. The minute you switch the accountability and put it all on them, amazingly, they're much more open to your opinion because now they're responsible.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I'd love to know, what do you think of the video? What did you learn from this? Are you more motivated now than you were before? I'd love to know your thoughts. Please leave it in the comments below and I'm gonna join in the discussion. I also want to give a quick shout out to Tamara Weeks. Tamara, thank you so much for picking up 10 copies of my book and then doing that amazing YouTube unboxing video. I really, really, really appreciate you and your support. It means a lot to me.

Can you see it? Look, look, look, look, look! Your One Word: The Powerful Secret to Creating a Business and Life That Matters. Evan Carmichael.

So thank you guys again for watching.

I believe believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is.

Much love.

I'll see you soon.