Leaders Eat Last – Simon Sinek

(March 27, 2014) “We must all start today to do little things for the good of others one day at a time. Let us all be the leaders we wish we had.”

I loved his previous book “Start with Why” and would recommend reading that book before this one. His TED Talks on both books are inspiring.

Simon Sinek’s view of leadership very much mirrors my own. People with the title don’t always have the ability, and people with leadership abilities don’t necessarily have any title at all. Think about Gandhi and MLK Jr. – leaders without titles. Leadership is plural and organizations have leaders that emerge at every level – whether informally or through training and promotion.

Leadership is centered around how we view our responsibility to other people. “Leadership is always a commitment to human beings.” I agree with that. He goes on to to say “All we need are leaders to give us a good reason to commit ourselves to each other.” That concept is evident in the military and on sports teams, but it’s equally true in other organizations as well. 

Sinek speaks to the benefit of struggle and the downside of abundance in a way the resonates with me completely. This concept particularly rang true about when we give “. . . people a challenge that outsizes their resources, but not their intellect. The people will give everything they’ve got to solve the problem. But if the resources are vastly greater than the problem before us, then the abundance works against us. Though it may take small steps to make a big leap, it is the vision of the big leap, and not the action of the small steps that inspires us. And only after we have committed ourselves to that vision can we look back at our lives and say to ourselves that the work we did mattered.” I highly recommend this book. It is full of truths spoken in a very memorable way about the nature of good leadership.