Speaker 1: Think about the way people talk about their jobs. Right,
Speaker 1: I need this job to survive, not really, not really,
Speaker 1: like if you lost your job, death is not the
Speaker 1: obvious outcome. Welcome to the one you feed throughout time.
Speaker 1: Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 1: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is Simon Sink,
Speaker 1: an author best known for popularizing the concept of the
Speaker 1: golden circle. And start with why. His first ted X
Speaker 1: talk on how great leaders inspire action is the third
Speaker 1: most viewed video on ted dot com. His two thousand
Speaker 1: nine book on the same subject. Start with why, how
Speaker 1: great leaders inspire everyone to take action. Dells into what
Speaker 1: he says is a naturally occurring pattern grounded in the
Speaker 1: biology of human decision making that explains why we are
Speaker 1: inspired by some people, leaders, messages, and organizations over others.
Speaker 1: His latest book is called Leaders Eat Last, Why some
Speaker 1: people pull together and others don't. Before we get started,
Speaker 1: if you like what you're hearing on the show week
Speaker 1: to week, but you're having trouble putting all the ideas
Speaker 1: into practice, send an email to Eric at one new
Speaker 1: feed dot net and we can discuss how to make
Speaker 1: real change in your life. Here's the interview. Hi Simon,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I'm happy
Speaker 1: to have you on. You talk a lot in your
Speaker 1: writings about meaning, about purpose, about why we do things,
Speaker 1: and you talk a lot about how communities work together
Speaker 1: to support each other. And so those are some of
Speaker 1: the things we're going to explore. But to start, i'd
Speaker 1: uh we'll start with the parable, like we always do.
Speaker 1: There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, and he looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. That is the definition of leadership um
Speaker 1: that you get the behavior um that your reward and
Speaker 1: the responsibility of a leader is to create an environment
Speaker 1: in which people can feel safe and be at their
Speaker 1: natural best. And so often bad leaders create environments of
Speaker 1: fear and politics and selfishness and paranoia and the and
Speaker 1: that is the that is the culture that prevails, and
Speaker 1: that's the behavior that prevails. Where a good leadership fills
Speaker 1: the environment with love and empathy and caring and patience.
Speaker 1: And what ends up happening is people care much more
Speaker 1: about each other, their jobs, each other, uh the organization
Speaker 1: um and ultimately the organization thrives as a result. In
Speaker 1: your book, leaders Eat Last, one of the things that
Speaker 1: you talk about is the four chemicals that are in
Speaker 1: our body that sort of regulate human emotion. They're responsible
Speaker 1: for a lot of what we do. You talk about endorphin, dopamine, serotonin,
Speaker 1: and oxytocin, and there's a lot of information out there
Speaker 1: about those and how they work. But I've got a
Speaker 1: couple of questions for you that I think are are
Speaker 1: that I'm interested in you. You said that oxytocin, which
Speaker 1: is sort of the bonding chemical, inhibits addiction. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean the release of oxytocin, and it's sort of a
Speaker 1: magical chemical. It's it's Oxytocin is responsible for the feeling
Speaker 1: of friendship and love and trust. Um. And the more
Speaker 1: oxytosin we have in our bodies, not only do we
Speaker 1: actually become more generous people, um um uh, the more
Speaker 1: oxytotin we have in our bodies that actually boosts our
Speaker 1: immune systems. You know, it makes it so. Oxytocin is
Speaker 1: the feeling of happiness and fulfillment. So the happier people
Speaker 1: actually live longer, and happier people have lower rates of
Speaker 1: cancer and diabetes and heart disease and all of these things. Um.
Speaker 1: And one of the other benefits of having lost of
Speaker 1: boxytosin in our bodies. Is it actually inhibits or is
Speaker 1: makes it more resistant to all addiction, which is sort
Speaker 1: of fantastic. In other words, the stronger our relationships, the
Speaker 1: more easy, the more easily we are able to cope
Speaker 1: with a stress. And most addiction is usually sort of
Speaker 1: compensation to help overcome, like alcoholism. Most alcoholics drink for
Speaker 1: either social stress, career stress, or financial stress. So the
Speaker 1: stronger our relationships, the more the more easily we can
Speaker 1: deal with the stresses in our lives, so we don't
Speaker 1: actually become addicted to some of these coping Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we interviewed somebody recently. He wrote a book about the
Speaker 1: War on drugs, But that's not the important part. The
Speaker 1: main thing is he was he was bringing up a
Speaker 1: lot of alternate theories of addiction. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that he that there's a bunch of people that
Speaker 1: are really starting to study and realize these days, is
Speaker 1: that they say that that addiction is often a you know,
Speaker 1: almost simply a lack of bonding. That is, that is
Speaker 1: one of the core symptoms that dislocation. And so when
Speaker 1: you said that oxytocin inhibits it addiction and and that
Speaker 1: you know, oxytocin is what comes from bonding makes us
Speaker 1: more resistance to addiction. Yeah, exactly, yep. And I just
Speaker 1: thought that was interesting. The other thing that you talk
Speaker 1: about that I thought aligned with this as you talk
Speaker 1: a lot about the environment and how important the environment is,
Speaker 1: and there's a series of studies out there, the rat
Speaker 1: park studies again around drug addiction, where there's the old
Speaker 1: story that you have a you know, if you give
Speaker 1: a rat cocaine, it will drink it till it dies, right,
Speaker 1: But the truth is that those were done with rats
Speaker 1: and isolation. When you put rats into sort of a
Speaker 1: rat park, rat heaven where there's lots of other rats,
Speaker 1: where there's bonding, where there's all that stuff, very few
Speaker 1: of them will ever drink and become addicted to that.
Speaker 1: So I just thought it was really interesting the way
Speaker 1: that that sort of dovetails with your thoughts around environment
Speaker 1: and how important that is in connection and bonding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fantastic. I mean, so social animals, you know, we're
Speaker 1: social animals, so we were fund we respond to the
Speaker 1: environments were in and so when you take the people away, um,
Speaker 1: bad things can happen. And so that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1: That's that's fantastic. I hadn't heard that before. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you look it up, it's called rat Park. It's really interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of very different than what we've normally heard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I am. So you say that leadership comes at a cost.
Speaker 1: What is that cost? Lieutenant General George Flynn from the
Speaker 1: United States Marine Corps told me this that the cost
Speaker 1: of leadership is self interest, And basically what that means is,
Speaker 1: like a parent, there's certain personal sacrifices that we have
Speaker 1: to make if we choose to become leaders, which is
Speaker 1: different than choosing to be the boss. You know, leadership
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with rank. I know many people
Speaker 1: who sit at the highest levels of companies or organizations
Speaker 1: who are not leaders. They have authority, and we do
Speaker 1: as they tell us because they have authority over us,
Speaker 1: but we wouldn't follow them. And yet I know many
Speaker 1: people who sit in the middle of organizations that have
Speaker 1: no authority, and yet they're absolutely leaders because they've chosen
Speaker 1: to take care of the person to left of them,
Speaker 1: and they've chosen to take care of the people to
Speaker 1: the right of them. And so leadership is much more
Speaker 1: like parenting, which is it's a lifestyle decision, and it's
Speaker 1: the choice that you are going to consider and take
Speaker 1: care of the life of another human being. It's not
Speaker 1: about being in charge. It's about taking care of those
Speaker 1: in your charge. And instinctively, a parent would feed their
Speaker 1: children before they feed themselves. That's not written in any
Speaker 1: parenting book that you should do that, and nobody tells
Speaker 1: the parents that they should do that. It's their instinct
Speaker 1: that a parent would always be their child before they
Speaker 1: feed themselves. Well, that is the instinct of good leadership
Speaker 1: as well, that a leader would sooner take care of
Speaker 1: their people than they would themselves. Um. And this is
Speaker 1: what what what good leadership is. And this is where
Speaker 1: the sacrifice happens. It's giving up of time, it's giving
Speaker 1: up of energy, it's believing in people, it's taking bets
Speaker 1: some people. It's knowing that everything goes right, you give
Speaker 1: away the credit. And it's knowing that if everything goes wrong,
Speaker 1: you take the responsibility. It's taking care of your people
Speaker 1: so that they can be at their best. That's what
Speaker 1: leadership is. And you say that you you learned a
Speaker 1: lot of this or you studied a lot of this
Speaker 1: within the military, and you saw these unbelievable acts of
Speaker 1: heroicism or sacrifice for others, and you your original thought
Speaker 1: was that, well, maybe these people are just better people.
Speaker 1: That's the better people find themselves here, you know, they're
Speaker 1: attracted to this sort of thing. But then you go
Speaker 1: on to say you don't think that's necessarily the case,
Speaker 1: and that some of those qualities can be cultivated. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: that's true. I mean I was. I was spending time
Speaker 1: at the military, And the reason the military is such
Speaker 1: a good example is because the stakes are higher. You know,
Speaker 1: it really is a matter of life and death, and
Speaker 1: so the lessons are just easier to see. But the
Speaker 1: reality is, the way our primitive brains respond to the
Speaker 1: environment we're in is that almost all of our behavior
Speaker 1: is governed by our desire to feel safe. In other words,
Speaker 1: I mean we we actually do think of these things
Speaker 1: instinctively in terms of life and death. Think about the
Speaker 1: way people talk about their jobs, right, I need this
Speaker 1: job to survive, not really not really, Like if you
Speaker 1: lost your job, death is not the obvious outcome, you know,
Speaker 1: um right, Like you'll go live on a couch, You'll
Speaker 1: be humulated, someone will feed you, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: You're like death will not ensue from this layoff. Right.
Speaker 1: But but people say that, how am I going to survive? Right?
Speaker 1: In other words, you can hear even in our language,
Speaker 1: the way our brain is interpreting sort of our environ
Speaker 1: My job is killing me exactly right. That's actually that's
Speaker 1: actually partially true. Um. And so when you actually look
Speaker 1: at life and death stuff and you try to understand leadership,
Speaker 1: that the lessons are just easier to see, even though
Speaker 1: they're pervasive, pervasive everywhere. And so in the military, I
Speaker 1: kept meeting these people who would literally sacrifice their lives
Speaker 1: for people they don't even necessarily like in the business world,
Speaker 1: we don't even like to give up credit for things,
Speaker 1: let alone a life, you know. Um. And so I
Speaker 1: want to understand where where that comes from? Where does
Speaker 1: that drive come from? Um? And I quickly learned that
Speaker 1: it's not the people, it's the environment. That as social animals,
Speaker 1: we always respond to the environments we're in. You can
Speaker 1: take a good person, put them in a bad environment,
Speaker 1: and they're capable of doing bad things. Likewise, you can
Speaker 1: take a person that maybe society has given up on,
Speaker 1: maybe they've even perform bad acts, and you put them
Speaker 1: in a good environment, and they're capable of turning their
Speaker 1: lives around and becoming valuable members of society. And so
Speaker 1: it's the same. It's the same in an organization, it's
Speaker 1: the same in a company. You know, some of the
Speaker 1: some of these um things that were done in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight that produced the financial crisis by these bankers.
Speaker 1: They're not inherently bad people, but the environments in which
Speaker 1: they're asked to work are so caustic that these people
Speaker 1: can perform very bad acts where they can literally ignore
Speaker 1: forget about the law, but just ethics and morality, that
Speaker 1: they can destroy an economy for self gain. That was
Speaker 1: what happened. They ignored all of the responsibility of taking
Speaker 1: care of a nation or an economy so that they
Speaker 1: could get a bigger bonus. Now that's not inherently there.
Speaker 1: It's not inherently the individuals. It's the environment that their
Speaker 1: leaders have created, which is so caustic and so destructive,
Speaker 1: and in well led organizations, the people would actually prioritize
Speaker 1: ethics and morality and taking care of each other ahead
Speaker 1: of absolutely everything. You say that everybody has a right
Speaker 1: to a job that they love, that's not a not
Speaker 1: not supposed to be for the special few. And my
Speaker 1: question for you is is that is that reasonable? Given so,
Speaker 1: I agree with you about everybody should work in an
Speaker 1: environment that is is supportive, or we could we could
Speaker 1: work to bring that about. But what about how do
Speaker 1: you deal with jobs that are are not necessarily inherently fulfilling,
Speaker 1: say an assembly line? Can someone work in the assembly
Speaker 1: line love their job? So so, I absolutely fundamentally believe
Speaker 1: that that fulfillment at work is a right and not
Speaker 1: a privilege, That it's not just for the lucky few
Speaker 1: who say I love my job and the rest of
Speaker 1: us go, oh my god, you're so lucky. Right that,
Speaker 1: just like the vote, just like uh freedom of speech
Speaker 1: that we have a right to enjoy, are working a
Speaker 1: right to be happy and fulfilled by the work that
Speaker 1: we do and for for someone to say yes. But
Speaker 1: only some jobs do that. Like if you're lucky enough
Speaker 1: to work in a theme park that's really fulfilling, but
Speaker 1: or a hospital, But if you work, you know, on
Speaker 1: an assembly line, well, then that that is you're judging
Speaker 1: the happiness comes from from from an act. First of all,
Speaker 1: I know people who work in theme parks or hospitals
Speaker 1: who hate their jobs. And I know people who work
Speaker 1: in assembly lines that love their jobs because it has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the work that we do. It
Speaker 1: has to do with the environment in which we work
Speaker 1: and the people with whom we work. When you ask people,
Speaker 1: why do you love your job? Hundred if not all
Speaker 1: the time, they will say the people, right. And if
Speaker 1: you ask somebody why they hate their job, they may say, oh,
Speaker 1: it's the work, it's the time, it's the stress. But
Speaker 1: the reality is it's the unbelievable bad leadership that they
Speaker 1: that they have, and so they look for other things
Speaker 1: to I'm not getting paid enough for something. You know,
Speaker 1: people who love their jobs may not get paid the most,
Speaker 1: but that's never In other words, if you're saying those
Speaker 1: are the as we hate the job, then those should
Speaker 1: also be the reasons we love the job. Right. If
Speaker 1: you hate the job because in the number of hours
Speaker 1: you work and you're not getting paid enough, that means
Speaker 1: every time somebody says I love my job, it's because
Speaker 1: I barely work any hours and they get overly paid.
Speaker 1: That's not the case. That's not the case. And so
Speaker 1: take a company like Barry Way Miller, which is a
Speaker 1: two billion dollar manufacturing company. Good old fashioned American manufacturing
Speaker 1: where they do just that. They are machinists. They work
Speaker 1: on a factory uh floor, putting together large machines. That's
Speaker 1: what they do. And I've met people there who literally
Speaker 1: come to tears talking about their jobs and how much
Speaker 1: do they love coming to work, and how do they
Speaker 1: feel that the company cares about their well being as
Speaker 1: human beings, and how they care about each other, and
Speaker 1: how they will sacrifice to see that this company advances
Speaker 1: and each other feel safe and does well. It has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the work that we do. It
Speaker 1: has to do with the people we work with and
Speaker 1: the environment in which we work, which is all determined
Speaker 1: by the leadership. And is it how important is the
Speaker 1: company does or what the mission of the company. So
Speaker 1: I'll give you an example. I've you know, I do
Speaker 1: some e commerce consulting from from time to time, and
Speaker 1: I mostly do like my job and everything that I do,
Speaker 1: But I have these moments where I go, well, you know, ultimately,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, I don't really care
Speaker 1: about making sure another package gets out in the mail today,
Speaker 1: you know, if it's a retailer or that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Is that important or can you really find all the
Speaker 1: satisfaction and love you need within the four walls, so
Speaker 1: to speak. So for this, for some organizations that happen
Speaker 1: to be in glamorous businesses, they can get away with
Speaker 1: creating enjoyment from the glamor of the of the job itself. However,
Speaker 1: that runs thin over time, you know, over over the
Speaker 1: course of time, that will run out, and people will
Speaker 1: start to feel that they don't they don't feel successful,
Speaker 1: and they do not feel like they're enjoying it anymore.
Speaker 1: They won't know what it is. And it's because it
Speaker 1: was never a feeling of cause, or it was never
Speaker 1: a feeling of a greater cause that they felt a
Speaker 1: part of. They would just end or the glamor or
Speaker 1: whatever they're doing. But this applies to all organizations. We
Speaker 1: have to have a sense of cause or purpose, you know.
Speaker 1: I call it the why. It's why we do what
Speaker 1: we do, why the organization exists, why we get out
Speaker 1: of bed in the morning, and why anyone should care,
Speaker 1: you know. And no matter what the organization is, there
Speaker 1: has to be a clear sense of why. Even in
Speaker 1: the glamorous organizations, you know, because not everybody is involved
Speaker 1: in the glamour. What about the accountants or the back
Speaker 1: office people or the receptionists, you know, are they not
Speaker 1: and why shouldn't they be fulfilled even though they're not
Speaker 1: directly involved in whatever the glamour is you know? Or
Speaker 1: like engineering companies are terribly guilty of this. They articulate
Speaker 1: their vision in terms of the products they're making and
Speaker 1: how wonderful those products are. Well, what if you're not
Speaker 1: involved in the product development? What if you're not an engineer?
Speaker 1: You know, so you're not, you don't get to enjoy
Speaker 1: your work, you don't get to be a part of it.
Speaker 1: And so a well articulated why something that's bigger than
Speaker 1: the products we make, bigger than what the company does,
Speaker 1: is always articulated in terms that has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with the product or service of the company sells interesting.
Speaker 1: One of the things that you talk about in a
Speaker 1: great environment is how important listening is. And you have
Speaker 1: a story about um a gentleman who tells a story
Speaker 1: about he uses it as to illustrate listening when him
Speaker 1: and his wife are preparing to have a baby. Could
Speaker 1: you tell us that story? Sure, it's actually the story
Speaker 1: of Bob Chapman. It's he's the ct of Barry way
Speaker 1: Miller the company. I was just telling you about this
Speaker 1: wonderful manufacturing company. UM. Bob tells this wonderful story of UM.
Speaker 1: There he and his wife are getting ready to have
Speaker 1: had their first baby, and and his wife is upstairs,
Speaker 1: you know, decorating the nursery, and she calls down to
Speaker 1: Bob to come and look at the wallpaper that she's chosen.
Speaker 1: And Bob wants to be a good husband, so he
Speaker 1: decides to turn off the TV and go upstairs. And
Speaker 1: he he says, he repeats the question again as he's
Speaker 1: going up the stairs, tell me what you think about
Speaker 1: the wallpaper I've chosen, you know, And she walks, he
Speaker 1: walks into the street and she holds up the wallpaper
Speaker 1: and says, what do you think of the wallpaper I've chosen?
Speaker 1: And Bob says, I don't like it, and she throws
Speaker 1: the wallpaper at him, right because she was never asking
Speaker 1: what do you think of the wallpaper? She was asking
Speaker 1: do you think I'm qualified to be the mother of
Speaker 1: our child? And Bob said no. And what he should
Speaker 1: have done, if he was actually listening as opposed to
Speaker 1: hearing the words that were being said, was understand the
Speaker 1: nervousness and the anxiety of the of what she felt,
Speaker 1: and she wanted to make all the right decisions because
Speaker 1: she doesn't know if she's going to make a good
Speaker 1: mom and she wants everything to be right and she's
Speaker 1: so uneasy. And if he had just leaned forward and
Speaker 1: held her and said I love you and I'm so
Speaker 1: excited that we're having a baby together, you know, that's
Speaker 1: what she needed. That's listening. It's not actually hearing the
Speaker 1: words that were said, but trying to understand the meaning
Speaker 1: of the words that were said. And the next day
Speaker 1: he can say, hey, can we talk about that wallpaper?
Speaker 1: You know, when all the emotion has gone out of it,
Speaker 1: then you can have the rational conversation. And so men,
Speaker 1: men are really bad at this in general. Um where
Speaker 1: we like but that's what you said. I answered your
Speaker 1: question honestly. You know. It's like, yes, but you weren't listening.
Speaker 1: Listening is about empathy. Listening is about is about, you know,
Speaker 1: is trying to understand the position of the person is
Speaker 1: coming from, not the words that they say. And it's
Speaker 1: an incredibly, incredibly valuable skill and it is a skill,
Speaker 1: it is a practicable, learnable skill. Yeah, you say that somewhere.
Speaker 1: That listening is not repeating back what you heard, it's
Speaker 1: trying to understand the motivation for why it was said
Speaker 1: in the first place, exactly which exactly right, which is amazing.
Speaker 1: It's and if you think about it in terms of
Speaker 1: any kind of relationship where it's boss an employee, or
Speaker 1: boyfriend and girlfriend or even just friends, you know, when
Speaker 1: somebody says, you know, stop doing that, you know, we're like, why,
Speaker 1: I've been doing the same thing all the time, why
Speaker 1: are you telling me now? It's well, maybe that's not
Speaker 1: the reason. Maybe it's what you're doing has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with why they're saying it, you know. And so
Speaker 1: the practice of empathy is really foundational to being a leader. So,
Speaker 1: for example, of somebody's struggling at work, you don't walk
Speaker 1: into the office and say, listen, you're numbers of and
Speaker 1: down for the third time this quarter. If you don't
Speaker 1: pick up your numbers, you know, bad things are going
Speaker 1: to happen. You know, Um, do you think you're going
Speaker 1: to get the best out of them with that kind
Speaker 1: of conversation, as opposed to walking into someone's office and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: I've noticed that your numbers are down again? Are you okay?
Speaker 1: Is everything all right? And it's that expression of empathy
Speaker 1: that when somebody says to you, I'm struggling, and instead
Speaker 1: of saying, well, let me fix it for you, you say, coming,
Speaker 1: what's going on in your life? Because it's not the
Speaker 1: problem that's it's not it's not the thing that they're
Speaker 1: struggling with. That's necessarily the problem. That may just be
Speaker 1: the symptom. And so a good leader wants to get
Speaker 1: to the root and understand the motivations of the human
Speaker 1: being and and and and serve them in that way. Um.
Speaker 1: I say it all the time. Good leadership really is
Speaker 1: the same as good parents. So a couple of questions,
Speaker 1: A little bit more about you in your life? What
Speaker 1: do you think is the lesson that is taking you
Speaker 1: the longest to learn? I can tell you that a
Speaker 1: lesson I learned very suddenly that it came as a
Speaker 1: as a hard pill to swallow, um, which was that
Speaker 1: I don't have to know all the answers, and if
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't have to pretend that I do. UM.
Speaker 1: That one that one took them getting used to, especially
Speaker 1: in this modern day and age, you know, where being
Speaker 1: smart and standing out is what we feel right or
Speaker 1: wrong is the means to success. And it's just not.
Speaker 1: One of the problems with pretending that you know all
Speaker 1: the answers and not admitting out lad that you don't
Speaker 1: is that people don't help you because they think you know.
Speaker 1: So when they say to you, do you understand, you
Speaker 1: go yep, and they go okay, did and they leave
Speaker 1: you alone even though you don't understand. And it's not
Speaker 1: because they don't want to help you, it's because you
Speaker 1: told them that you understood. And so to say I
Speaker 1: don't understand you know, Um, he's really hard. Um. We
Speaker 1: don't want to be humiliated, um. Or we don't want
Speaker 1: offend somebody. I I was. I'll tell you a quick
Speaker 1: funny story where I was. I took this little challenge,
Speaker 1: which is to tell the truth for forty eight hours.
Speaker 1: It sounds silly, but it's amazing how much we lie.
Speaker 1: It's an important social convention. It's an important social convention,
Speaker 1: you know. So for example, if someone gives you a
Speaker 1: birthday president, it's the ugliest sweater you've ever seen in
Speaker 1: your life, and they say, what do you think You're
Speaker 1: not gonna say? It's the ugliest thing I've seen in
Speaker 1: my life. You're gonna say, oh my god, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. I love it, you know, because we don't
Speaker 1: want to hurt their feelings. Right. In other words, we're lying, right.
Speaker 1: So it's an important social convention. In other words, we're
Speaker 1: good at it, and we're good at it to to
Speaker 1: mask our humiliation or avoid humiliation, and we're good at
Speaker 1: it to appease someone and and look after them. But
Speaker 1: it can backfire on us most of the time, especially when,
Speaker 1: as I said before, if we don't understand something or
Speaker 1: we don't know what we're doing, we're good at pretending
Speaker 1: that we do. And so I took this challenge to
Speaker 1: tell the truth for forty eight hours, no little white lines, nothing,
Speaker 1: which is much harder than you think, and just sheer
Speaker 1: coincidence over that. Within that forty eight hour period, I
Speaker 1: had a meeting with the head speech writer of the
Speaker 1: cent A majority leader. And here I am sitting in
Speaker 1: the capital in this beautiful room and these vaulted ceilings
Speaker 1: and these frescoes, and she comes out and sits with me,
Speaker 1: and the first question she asks me is how much
Speaker 1: research have you done on the senator right now? On
Speaker 1: any other day, I would have said a little, right,
Speaker 1: because I want to avoid humiliation, right. But the reality
Speaker 1: was I hadn't done anything, and so I sort of
Speaker 1: like took a deep breath because I took this oath
Speaker 1: that I wasn't going to tell a lie for forty
Speaker 1: eight hours. And I said none, and she said, okay,
Speaker 1: let me tell you what you need to know. Then,
Speaker 1: in other words, she wasn't testing me. She was finding
Speaker 1: out what my baseline was. And if I had lied
Speaker 1: just to mask my humiliation or to compensate and to
Speaker 1: avoid humiliation, she wouldn't have told me everything because you
Speaker 1: would have assumed because I told her that I knew stuff.
Speaker 1: So I said none, that she told me everything I
Speaker 1: needed to know. Now, it doesn't always go that way.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you do get humiliations, you know. But the point
Speaker 1: is that there's huge advantages in telling the truth when
Speaker 1: we understand or don't understand something, when we feel strong
Speaker 1: or weak in a situation, because the more honest we are,
Speaker 1: it means that people will come to our aid if
Speaker 1: we fear that by expressing or demonstrating that we're weak
Speaker 1: or we don't understand, we falsely believe that that will
Speaker 1: affect our compensation, our promotion or or and all of
Speaker 1: that stuff. But the reality is it makes us unbelievably
Speaker 1: trustworthy because when we express that vulnerability, when we expressed
Speaker 1: that we don't know that that animal brain inside us,
Speaker 1: that primitive animal brain inside us that judges all behavior
Speaker 1: and words in terms of life and death, will evaluate
Speaker 1: us and say, this person is an honest broker, that
Speaker 1: if everything were to go wrong and some bad things
Speaker 1: were to happen, even if they would make this person
Speaker 1: look foolish, they will actually tell me the truth. I'm
Speaker 1: going to stay close to this person. That's all happening subconsciously.
Speaker 1: Whereas if everything is always going perfectly and no one
Speaker 1: nothing's ever wrong, and everything is always dandy, we start
Speaker 1: to actually not trust somebody. If this is why we
Speaker 1: don't trust politicians. Politicians tell us everything we want to
Speaker 1: hear and everything we agree with, but the reason we
Speaker 1: don't trust them is because we know that they don't
Speaker 1: agree with everything they're saying. We know that it's sort
Speaker 1: of we can feel it, and so we keep a
Speaker 1: safe distance because our primitive human brains are primoved animal
Speaker 1: brains are saying, you can't trust that person. Stay away.
Speaker 1: So there's an immense value in being willing to be
Speaker 1: humiliated by admitting I don't know something because it will
Speaker 1: actually pay dividends in building trust and cooperation. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: has certainly been my experience, is taking that risk to
Speaker 1: say I don't know or to to be open does
Speaker 1: seem to really build a level of trust with the
Speaker 1: people around you. And it's only hard the first few times,
Speaker 1: you know, like any like riding a bicycle, you're only
Speaker 1: rickety the first few times you write it, and you
Speaker 1: kind of get better at it, and then you just
Speaker 1: jump on a bike and you go and it's not
Speaker 1: really a big deal. And so the first few times
Speaker 1: that you get humiliated, it really is pretty awful. I mean,
Speaker 1: let's I'm not gonna lie, it's it's it really is awful,
Speaker 1: you know. And and and there may be repercussions, you know,
Speaker 1: somebody might think you're an idiot. You know, it's like,
Speaker 1: but you get used to that pretty quickly and it
Speaker 1: becomes really easy. So when something like you know, I
Speaker 1: thank goodness I learned this because now if something I
Speaker 1: don't understand, I'm the first one be like I don't
Speaker 1: have no clue, what's going on, you know, and I'm
Speaker 1: really quick to say it, and it is a huge
Speaker 1: advantage because it means other people come and help me.
Speaker 1: And it gets back to that environment. The better the environment,
Speaker 1: the more likely you are to do that, and the
Speaker 1: more likely you are to do that, the better the
Speaker 1: environment is going to be. I mean sort of it.
Speaker 1: And it inspires other people to be honest as well.
Speaker 1: And it's fine, it's inspires on it. So when I
Speaker 1: asked somebody, do you understand, they're much more likely to
Speaker 1: say no to me, knowing that I would say, though,
Speaker 1: honesty breeds honesty, and fallacy brings. Fallacy breeds fallacy, right
Speaker 1: line breeds lying. So the last and I'll ask you
Speaker 1: is you've You've written, You've written two books. You it
Speaker 1: seems your method is you you come up with something
Speaker 1: that you're interested in, you go out, you study it,
Speaker 1: and you come up with some theories and write a book.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, not really what your next book is going
Speaker 1: to be, but what is a question you're asking yourself
Speaker 1: these days? What is a question that intrigues you? So? UM,
Speaker 1: my work as some autobiographical you know, Um, it's all
Speaker 1: basically my journey and so My first book, start with Why,
Speaker 1: was about my loss of passion. How I was doing
Speaker 1: a job and I lost I's a out of love,
Speaker 1: you know. I wasn't enjoying it anymore. And people gave
Speaker 1: me stupid advice like do what you love, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm doing the same thing and I don't love it anymore.
Speaker 1: Follow your passion? How do I do that? You know?
Speaker 1: It's stupid advice. And so my first book was about
Speaker 1: what I went through to try and rEFInd my passion,
Speaker 1: and it ended up becoming this thing called the Golden
Speaker 1: Circle and the Why. And then the second book, leaders
Speaker 1: Ead Last, was about my struggle to understand who I
Speaker 1: could trust. And I was simultaneously spending time with folks
Speaker 1: in the military who I saw the way that they
Speaker 1: trusted each other and even the way I trusted them,
Speaker 1: and they treated me differently than I got treated in
Speaker 1: the private sector. And because I wanted to just be
Speaker 1: around people like that more often, and I wanted my
Speaker 1: friends to be around people like that when they went
Speaker 1: to work. UM, I wanted to just try and understand it.
Speaker 1: It never none of my work ever starts by I'm
Speaker 1: going to write a book. It never starts that way.
Speaker 1: I try and learn something in my own journey, and
Speaker 1: it ends up becoming interesting to my friends, and then
Speaker 1: it ends up becoming interesting to others, and then I
Speaker 1: write a book about it. And so these days I'm
Speaker 1: interested in the outside world. You know. My first book
Speaker 1: was very much about the individual and how the individual
Speaker 1: inspires those around them and attracts those to them, you know,
Speaker 1: whether that individual as a person or a company. My
Speaker 1: second book is really about, Okay, now that you've got
Speaker 1: the people, what do you do with them? How do
Speaker 1: you how do you how do teams rally, how do
Speaker 1: teams come together? How do people take care of each other?
Speaker 1: And so now I'm sort of interested in sort of Okay,
Speaker 1: now you've got all the people, but you know, we
Speaker 1: don't work in vacuums. There is there is a doggydog
Speaker 1: world out there of competition and and other companies and
Speaker 1: other organizations and people trying to steal your lunch. And
Speaker 1: so how do we interact with each other, not internally
Speaker 1: but externally. How does that work? You know? Why is
Speaker 1: it that sometimes cooperation works? How does competition work? When
Speaker 1: is it healthy? When is it unhealthy? You know, and
Speaker 1: it may or may not end up being a book.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I'm I'm really interested in that.
Speaker 1: I'm really interested, like, what does it mean to have
Speaker 1: an enemy? What does it mean to have an ally?
Speaker 1: Where does revenge come from? You know? These are external things,
Speaker 1: and uh, I'm I'm really learning a lot about them
Speaker 1: because even in my own journey, I have we have
Speaker 1: our team and we follow the circle of safety, but
Speaker 1: now we also have to engage with the outside world,
Speaker 1: both friends and foes alike. You know though, Um, we're
Speaker 1: fumbling our way through it, and I'm paying attention as
Speaker 1: we fumble. Um, So who knows. Maybe to lend up
Speaker 1: as a book, maybe we won't, but I'm certainly learning
Speaker 1: a lot about it. Great. Well, that's what I I
Speaker 1: love to ask people what it is they're they're thinking
Speaker 1: about or they're interested in, because that's usually it's what
Speaker 1: drives them. I find it. I find it great to hear. So, um,
Speaker 1: thank you so much Simon for taking the time. This
Speaker 1: has been a great talk. People can find You want
Speaker 1: to tell people where they can find you, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean all the usual places Twitter, Facebook, and our website
Speaker 1: is start with y dot com w h Y. Where
Speaker 1: there's lots of resources and videos and free downloads and
Speaker 1: stuff like that to help people inspire those around them. Great,
Speaker 1: and we'll have links to all that stuff in our
Speaker 1: show notes. So thank you so much, Simon for taking
Speaker 1: the time, Thanks for having me appreciate it. Okay, take
Speaker 1: care bye. You can learn more about Simon Sinek and
Speaker 1: this podcast at one new feed dot net slash Simon