Why good leaders make you feel safe | Simon Sinek | TED

0:12 There's a man by the name of Captain William Swenson who recently was

0:18 awarded the congressional Medal of Honor for his actions on September 8, 2009.

0:25 On that day, a column of American and Afghan troops were making their way

0:30 through a part of Afghanistan to help protect a group of government officials,

0:37 a group of Afghan government officials,

0:39 who would be meeting with some local village elders.

0:43 The column came under ambush,

0:45 and was surrounded on three sides, and amongst many other things,

0:51 Captain Swenson was recognized for running into live fire

0:55 to rescue the wounded and pull out the dead.

1:00 One of the people he rescued was a sergeant,

1:03 and he and a comrade were making their way to a medevac helicopter.

1:08 And what was remarkable about this day is, by sheer coincidence,

1:12 one of the medevac medics happened to have a GoPro

1:15 camera on his helmet and captured the whole scene on camera.

1:21 It shows Captain Swenson and his comrade bringing this wounded

1:25 soldier who had received a gunshot to the neck.

1:30 They put him in the helicopter,

1:33 and then you see Captain Swenson bend over and give

1:38 him a kiss before he turns around to rescue more.

1:44 I saw this, and I thought to myself, where do people like that come from?

1:50 What is that?

1:51 That is some deep, deep emotion, when you would want to do that.

1:55 There's a love there, and I wanted to know why is it that I

2:00 don't have people that I work with like that?

2:02 You know, in the military, they give medals to people who are willing

2:05 to sacrifice themselves so that others may gain.

2:08 In business, we give bonuses to people who are

2:10 willing to sacrifice others so that we may gain.

2:13 We have it backwards.

2:16 Right?

2:17 So I asked myself, where do people like this come from?

2:18 And my initial conclusion was that they're just better people.

2:22 That's why they're attracted to the military.

2:23 These better people are attracted to this concept of service.

2:27 But that's completely wrong.

2:29 What I learned was that it's the environment,

2:31 and if you get the environment right,

2:34 every single one of us has the capacity to do these remarkable things,

2:37 and more importantly, others have that capacity too.

2:40 I've had the great honor of getting to meet

2:42 some of these, who we would call heroes,

2:45 who have put themselves and put their lives at risk to save others,

2:49 and I asked them, "Why would you do it?

2:51 Why did you do it?" And they all say the same thing:

2:56 "Because they would have done it for me."

2:58 It's this deep sense of trust and cooperation.

3:01 So trust and cooperation are really important here.

3:04 The problem with concepts of trust and cooperation is that they are feelings,

3:08 they are not instructions.

3:09 I can't simply say to you, "Trust me," and you will.

3:12 I can't simply instruct two people to cooperate, and they will.

3:15 It's not how it works.

3:17 It's a feeling.

3:18 So where does that feeling come from?

3:20 If you go back 50,000 years to the Paleolithic era,

3:24 to the early days of Homo sapiens,

3:26 what we find is that the world was filled with danger,

3:30 all of these forces working very, very hard to kill us.

3:34 Nothing personal.

3:36 Whether it was the weather, lack of resources, maybe a saber-toothed tiger,

3:41 all of these things working to reduce our lifespan.

3:45 And so we evolved into social animals,

3:47 where we lived together and worked together in what I call a circle of safety,

3:51 inside the tribe, where we felt like we belonged.

3:54 And when we felt safe amongst our own,

3:57 the natural reaction was trust and cooperation.

4:00 There are inherent benefits to this.

4:01 It means I can fall asleep at night and trust

4:04 that someone from within my tribe will watch for danger.

4:07 If we don't trust each other, if I don't trust you,

4:09 that means you won't watch for danger.

4:11 Bad system of survival.

4:13 The modern day is exactly the same thing.

4:15 The world is filled with danger,

4:17 things that are trying to frustrate our lives or reduce our success,

4:20 reduce our opportunity for success.

4:21 It could be the ups and downs in the economy,

4:24 the uncertainty of the stock market.

4:26 It could be a new technology

4:27 that renders your business model obsolete overnight.

4:30 Or it could be your competition that is sometimes trying to kill you.

4:34 It's sometimes trying to put you out of business,

4:35 but at the very minimum is working hard

4:38 to frustrate your growth and steal your business from you.

4:42 We have no control over these forces.

4:44 These are a constant, and they're not going away.

4:47 The only variable are the conditions inside the organization,

4:52 and that's where leadership matters, because it's the leader that sets the tone.

4:56 When a leader makes the choice to put the safety

5:00 and lives of the people inside the organization first,

5:03 to sacrifice their comforts and sacrifice the tangible results,

5:07 so that the people remain and feel safe and feel like they belong,

5:10 remarkable things happen.

5:13 I was flying on a trip, and I was witness to an incident where

5:19 a passenger attempted to board before their number was called,

5:24 and I watched the gate agent treat this man

5:28 like he had broken the law, like a criminal.

5:31 He was yelled at for attempting to board one group too soon.

5:35 So I said something.

5:36 I said, "Why do you have treat us like cattle?

5:39 Why can't you treat us like human beings?"

5:42 And this is exactly what she said to me.

5:44 She said, "Sir, if I don't follow the rules,

5:47 I could get in trouble or lose my job." All

5:50 she was telling me is that she doesn't feel safe.

5:53 All she was telling me is that she doesn't trust her leaders.

5:59 The reason we like flying Southwest Airlines

6:01 is not because they necessarily hire better people.

6:04 It's because they don't fear their leaders.

6:07 You see, if the conditions are wrong, we are forced to expend our own time

6:11 and energy to protect ourselves from each other,

6:14 and that inherently weakens the organization.

6:17 When we feel safe inside the organization,

6:19 we will naturally combine our talents and our strengths and work

6:23 tirelessly to face the dangers outside and seize the opportunities.

6:28 The closest analogy I can give to what a great leader is,

6:31 is like being a parent.

6:33 If you think about what being a great parent is, what do you want?

6:35 What makes a great parent?

6:36 We want to give our child opportunities,

6:37 education, discipline them when necessary,

6:40 all so that they can grow up and achieve more than we could for ourselves.

6:45 Great leaders want exactly the same thing.

6:46 They want to provide their people opportunity,

6:48 education, discipline when necessary, build their self-confidence,

6:51 give them the opportunity to try and fail,

6:53 all so that they could achieve more than we could ever imagine for ourselves.

6:59 Charlie Kim, who's the CEO of a company called

7:02 Next Jump in New York City, a tech company,

7:05 he makes the point that if you had hard times in your family,

7:09 would you ever consider laying off one of your children?

7:12 We would never do it.

7:13 Then why do we consider laying off people inside our organization?

7:17 Charlie implemented a policy of lifetime employment.

7:21 If you get a job at Next Jump, you cannot get fired for performance issues.

7:27 In fact, if you have issues, they will coach you and they will give you support,

7:32 just like we would with one of our children

7:33 who happens to come home with a C from school.

7:36 It's the complete opposite.

7:37 This is the reason so many people have such a visceral hatred, anger,

7:43 at some of these banking CEOs

7:44 with their disproportionate salaries and bonus structures.

7:47 It's not the numbers.

7:49 It's that they have violated the very definition of leadership.

7:52 They have violated this deep-seated social contract.

7:55 We know that they allowed their people to be

7:57 sacrificed so they could protect their own interests,

7:59 or worse, they sacrificed their people to protect their own interests.

8:04 This is what so offends us, not the numbers.

8:07 Would anybody be offended if we gave a $150 million bonus to Gandhi?

8:11 How about a $250 million bonus to Mother Teresa?

8:14 Do we have an issue with that?

8:16 None at all.

8:16 None at all.

8:18 Great leaders would never sacrifice the people to save the numbers.

8:21 They would sooner sacrifice the numbers to save the people.

8:26 Bob Chapman, who runs a large

8:29 manufacturing company in the Midwest called Barry-Wehmiller,

8:33 in 2008 was hit very hard by the recession,

8:38 and they lost 30 percent of their orders overnight.

8:42 Now in a large manufacturing company, this is a big deal,

8:45 and they could no longer afford their labor pool.

8:48 They needed to save 10 million dollars, so,

8:50 like so many companies today, the board got together and discussed layoffs.

8:55 And Bob refused.

8:56 You see, Bob doesn't believe in head counts.

9:01 Bob believes in heart counts,

9:04 and it's much more difficult to simply reduce the heart count.

9:08 And so they came up with a furlough program.

9:11 Every employee, from secretary to CEO,

9:13 was required to take four weeks of unpaid vacation.

9:17 They could take it any time they wanted,

9:19 and they did not have to take it consecutively.

9:22 But it was how Bob announced the program that mattered so much.

9:25 He said, it's better that we should all suffer a little than

9:28 any of us should have to suffer a lot, and morale went up.

9:34 They saved 20 million dollars, and most importantly, as would be expected,

9:39 when the people feel safe and protected by the leadership in the organization,

9:42 the natural reaction is to trust and cooperate.

9:45 And quite spontaneously, nobody expected,

9:47 people started trading with each other.

9:49 Those who could afford it more would trade with those who could afford it less.

9:53 People would take five weeks so that somebody else only had to take three.

9:59 Leadership is a choice.

10:00 It is not a rank.

10:01 I know many people at the seniormost

10:03 levels of organizations who are absolutely not leaders.

10:06 They are authorities,

10:07 and we do what they say because they have authority over us,

10:12 but we would not follow them.

10:13 And I know many people who are at the bottoms

10:16 of organizations who have no authority and they are absolutely leaders,

10:20 and this is because they have chosen to look

10:22 after the person to the left of them,

10:23 and they have chosen to look after the person to the right of them.

10:27 This is what a leader is.

10:31 I heard a story of some Marines who were out in theater,

10:39 and as is the Marine custom, the officer ate last, and he let his men eat first,

10:47 and when they were done, there was no food left for him.

10:53 And when they went back out in the field,

10:55 his men brought him some of their food so that he may eat,

11:00 because that's what happens.

11:02 We call them leaders because they go first.

11:05 We call them leaders because they take the risk before anybody else does.

11:08 We call them leaders because they will choose to sacrifice so

11:11 that their people may be safe and protected and so their people may gain,

11:16 and when we do, the natural response is that our people will sacrifice for us.

11:23 They will give us their blood and sweat and tears

11:25 to see that their leader's vision comes to life,

11:29 and when we ask them, "Why would you do that?

11:31 Why would you give your blood and sweat and tears

11:34 for that person?" they all say the same thing:

11:38 "Because they would have done it for me." And isn't

11:42 that the organization we would all like to work in?

11:45 Thank you very much.

11:48 Thank you.

11:50 (Applause) Thank you.

11:53 (Applause)