The New York Times bestseller by the acclaimed, bestselling author of Start With Why and Together is Better . Now with an expanded chapter and appendix on leading millennials, based on Simon Sinek’s viral video “The Millennial Question” (150+ million views). Imagine a world where almost everyone wakes up inspired to go to work, feels trusted and valued during the day, then returns home feeling fulfilled. This is not a crazy, idealized notion. Today, in many successful organizations, great leaders create environments in which people naturally work together to do remarkable things. In his work with organizations around the world, Simon Sinek noticed that some teams trust each other so deeply that they would literally put their lives on the line for each other. Other teams, no matter what incentives are offered, are doomed to infighting, fragmentation and failure. Why? The answer became clear during a conversation with a Marine Corps general. “Officers eat last” he said. Sinek watched as the most junior Marines ate first while the most senior Marines took their place at the back of the line. What’s symbolic in the chow hall is deadly serious on the Great leaders sacrifice their own comfort–even their own survival–for the good of those in their care. Too many workplaces are driven by cynicism, paranoia, and self-interest. But the best ones foster trust and cooperation because their leaders build what Sinek calls a “Circle of Safety” that separates the security inside the team from the challenges outside. Sinek illustrates his ideas with fascinating true stories that range from the military to big business, from government to investment banking.

Takeaways

Summary

• “Leaders Eat Last” by Simon Sinek is a book that delves into the concept of effective leadership and how it revolves around prioritizing the well-being of team members. Sinek emphasizes that the best leaders create a circle of safety, making sure that their team feels protected and valued, which in turn inspires loyalty, trust, and higher productivity.
• Sinek explores the organic chemistry elements involved in the human brain and their impact on leadership, highlighting four primary chemicals: endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin.
  • Endorphins: These chemicals are natural painkillers that help us push through physical discomfort. They play a role in boosting our mood and masking physical pain, which can be important for leaders who need to push through challenging situations.
  • Dopamine: This neurotransmitter is associated with reward and motivation. It is released when we accomplish a goal, complete a task, or receive praise. Dopamine drives us to achieve more and seek out new challenges, making it an essential element for leaders who need to maintain motivation within their teams.
  • Serotonin: Serotonin is responsible for feelings of pride, status, and social recognition. It plays a significant role in creating bonds and loyalty within teams. When a leader gives praise or recognition to their team members, serotonin is released, strengthening the bond between the leader and the team. This creates a sense of belonging and pride within the group, ultimately fostering trust and loyalty.
  • Oxytocin: Often referred to as the “love hormone,” oxytocin is associated with trust, empathy, and social bonding. It is released during acts of kindness, generosity, or physical touch, and helps create strong interpersonal connections. Leaders who foster a culture of empathy and compassion within their teams promote the release of oxytocin, building trust and cooperation among team members.

    Part 1: Our Need to Feel Safe

• Protection from Above: This section explains that when leaders prioritize their team’s well-being and create a sense of safety, the team feels protected, leading to trust, loyalty, and increased productivity.
• Employees are People Too: Sinek emphasizes that recognizing employees as individuals with unique needs and emotions is crucial for creating a successful and supportive work environment.
• Belonging: This section highlights the importance of fostering a sense of belonging within a team, as this promotes feelings of loyalty and trust, ultimately resulting in a more effective and cohesive group.

  Part 2: Powerful Forces

• The Big C: Sinek introduces the four primary chemicals that influence our emotions and behaviors: endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin, explaining how they play a role in leadership.
• Reality: This section describes the dangers of instant gratification and short-term rewards, emphasizing the importance of focusing on long-term goals and sustainable success.
• Managing the Abstraction: Sinek explores the concept of abstraction, where individuals can become detached from the consequences of their actions, and offers suggestions for leaders to maintain a strong connection to their team and the impact of their decisions.
• “Leaders Eat Last” emphasizes the importance of understanding the organic chemistry elements at play within our brains and using them to foster a positive and supportive work environment. By prioritizing the well-being of their team and creating a circle of safety, leaders can inspire trust, loyalty, and higher productivity.

  Key Actions

• Create a Circle of Safety: Prioritize the well-being of team members by providing them with support, resources, and an environment where they feel safe and valued. The sacrifice for any leader is self-interest. We get to sit at the top because when the danger comes, we are on the front lines.
• Tell people what they need to hear: Leadership comes from telling us not what we want to hear, but rather what we need to hear. To be a true leader, to engender deep trust and loyalty, starts with telling the truth.
• Give Authority to those closest to the information: Centralizing all decision making at the top prevents progress and disengages participation. Clarifying a vision from the top and giving authority to those closest to the daily information is critical.
• Give Time and Energy: Money is an abstraction of tangible resources or human effort. It is a promissory note for future goods or services. Unlike the time and effort that people spend on something, it is what money represents that gives it its value. And as an abstraction, it has no “real” value to our primitive brains, which judge the real value of food and shelter or the behavior of others against the level of protection or safety they can offer us.
• Admit failures: When people trust and share their successes and failures, what they know and what they don’t know, the result is innovation.
• Build Integrity through Disagreement: Integrity is not about being honest when we agree with each other; it is also about being honest when we disagree or, even more important, when we make mistakes or missteps.
• Define a Shared Struggle: Sharing a struggle for limited resources and working with people who are intent on building something out of nothing is a good formula for a small business. All we need are leaders to give us a good reason to commit ourselves to each other.

  Highlights

  PART 1: OUR NEED TO FEEL SAFE

• For most of us, the more recognition we get for our efforts from those in charge, the more successful we think we are.
• the will to succeed and the desire to do things that advance the interests of the organization aren’t just motivated by recognition from above; they are integral to a culture of sacrifice and service, in which protection comes from all levels of the organization.
• exceptional organizations all have cultures in which the leaders provide cover from above and the people on the ground look out for each other.
• the way any organization can achieve this is with empathy.

  2. Employees Are People Too

• When the people have to manage dangers from inside the organization, the organization itself becomes less able to face the dangers from outside.
• Truly human leadership protects an organization from the internal rivalries that can shatter a culture. When we have to protect ourselves from each other, the whole organization suffers.
• no fancy management theories and it is not about hiring dream teams. It is just a matter of biology and anthropology. If certain conditions are met and the people inside an organization feel safe among each other, they will work together to achieve things none of them could have ever achieved alone.
• There was no “one thing” that Chapman did to transform his organization. It was a series of little things that, over time, dramatically affected how his company operates. Lots and lots of little things, some successful, some less so, but all focused on what he understood in his gut needed to happen.
• Leaders of organizations who create a working environment better suited for how we are designed do not sacrifice excellence or performance simply because they put people first. Quite the contrary.
• the ability to grow one’s people to do what needs to be done that creates stable, lasting success.
• Only 20 percent of Americans “love” their jobs.

  3. Belonging

• Intimidation, humiliation, isolation, feeling dumb, feeling useless and rejection are all stresses we try to avoid inside the organization. But the danger inside is controllable and it should be the goal of leadership to set a culture free of danger from each other.
• By creating a Circle of Safety around the people in the organization, leadership reduces the threats people feel inside the group
• The more we trust that the people to the left of us and the people to the right of us have our backs, the better equipped we are to face the constant threats from the outside together.
• With clear standards for entry into the Circle and competent layers of leadership that are able to extend the Circle’s perimeter, the stronger and better equipped the organization becomes
• The whole purpose of maintaining the Circle of Safety is so that we can invest all our time and energy to guard against the dangers outside.
• Leaders want to feel safe too. No matter what place we occupy in the pecking order, every single one of us wants to feel like we are valued by the others in the group.

  4. Yeah, but . . .

• Stress and anxiety at work have less to do with the work we do and more to do with weak management and leadership.
• Misery may love company, but it is the companies that love misery that suffer the most.
• when our bosses completely ignore us, 40 percent of us actively disengage from our work. If our bosses criticize us on a regular basis, 22 percent of us actively disengage. Meaning, even if we’re getting criticized, we are actually more engaged simply because we feel that at least someone is acknowledging that we exist!
• if our bosses recognize just one of our strengths and reward us for doing what we’re good at, only 1 percent of us actively disengage from the work we’re expected to do.
• the higher we climb up the ladder, the more stress we feel and the weaker our feeling of safety.
• executive stress syndrome.
• Simply earning more money or working our way up the ladder is not a prescription for stress reduction. The study was about our sense of control over our work and, indeed, our lives.

  PART 2: POWERFUL FORCES

• endorphins, dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin.
• four primary chemicals in our body that contribute to all our positive feelings
• endorphins and dopamine, work to get us where we need to go as individuals
• serotonin and oxytocin, are there to incentivize us to work together and develop feelings of trust and loyalty

  6. E.D.S.O.

• ENDORPHINS SERVE ONE purpose and one purpose only: to mask physical pain.
• dopamine that makes us a goal-oriented species with a bias for progress
• If you don’t write down your goals,” so the saying goes, “you won’t accomplish them
• If you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is check your phone to read e-mail or scan through your social media before you even get out of bed, you might be an addict
• Accomplishment may be fueled by dopamine. But that feeling of fulfillment, those lasting feelings of happiness and loyalty, all require engagement with others.
• serotonin and oxytocin help us form bonds of trust and friendship so that we will look out for each other
• When we cooperate or look out for others, serotonin and oxytocin reward us with the feelings of security, fulfillment, belonging, trust and camaraderie.
• when someone receives an award, the first people they thank are their parents, or their coach, their boss or God—whoever they felt offered them the support and protection they needed to accomplish what they accomplished. And when others offer us that protection and support, because of serotonin, we feel a sense of accountability to them.
• Those who work hardest to help others succeed will be seen by the group as the leader or the “alpha” of the group. And being the alpha—the strong, supportive one of the group, the one willing to sacrifice time and energy so that others may gain—is a prerequisite for leadership.
• Unlike dopamine, which is about instant gratification, oxytocin is long-lasting.

  7. The Big C

• That feeling that something is wrong is a natural early warning system all social mammals have, including us. It is designed to alert us to threats and heighten our senses to prepare for possible danger.
• employees have a heightened sense of alertness thanks to the cortisol flowing through their veins. The stress they feel will distract them from getting anything else done until they feel that the threat has passed.
• Cortisol is not supposed to stay in our systems; it is supposed to fire off when we sense a threat and then leave when the threat has passed.
• people would prefer to keep to themselves, engage only when necessary, do their work and then go home at the end of the day. There is no sense that anyone would risk themselves or go out of their way to offer protection to another. And because of this, though there is no threat of layoffs and the work stress is low, there is a constant low-grade anxiety. As social animals, we feel stress when we feel unsupported.
• cortisol actually inhibits the release of oxytocin, the chemical responsible for empathy.
• A constant flow of cortisol isn’t just bad for organizations. It can also do serious damage to our health.
• Whereas oxytocin boosts our immune system, cortisol compromises it.
• work-life balance has to do with where we feel safe
• “Firing is an easy option,” Kim says. “Tough love, coaching, even a program to help people find a job somewhere else if they decide our company is not for them are all much more effective, but require much more time and attention from the company.”
• not the nature of the work we do or the number of hours we work that will help us reduce stress and achieve work-life balance; it’s increased amounts of oxytocin and serotonin. Serotonin boosts our self-confidence and inspires us to help those who work for us and make proud those for whom we work. Oxytocin relieves stress, increases our interest in our work and improves our cognitive abilities, making us better able to solve complex problems.
• Those who don’t embrace the values that define the culture may feel the cortisol in their bodies telling them that they don’t belong. Feeling the anxiety of being an outsider in the group, they may decide to leave to find a place in which they are a better fit.

  8. Why We Have Leaders

• As much as we all like the idea of being equal, the fact is we are not and never will be . . . and for good reason.
• we expect the leader, who really is stronger, better fed and oozing with confidence from all the serotonin in their body, to be the first one to rush toward the danger to protect the rest of us.
• “The cost of leadership,” explains Lieutenant General George Flynn of the United States Marine Corps, “is self-interest.”
• willing to make sacrifices for the good of those who chose to follow them.
• The goal for any leader of any organization is to find balance; balance between dopamine and oxytocin

  PART 3: REALITY

• We don’t just trust people to obey the rules, we also trust that they know when to break them.
• The responsibility of a leader is to provide cover from above for their people who are working below. When the people feel that they have the control to do what’s right, even if it sometimes means breaking the rules, then they will more likely do the right thing

  10. Snowmobile in the Desert

• Our intelligence gives us ideas and instructions. But it is our ability to cooperate that actually helps us get those things done.
• it’s the environment in which the people operate that is the problem

  PART 4: HOW WE GOT HERE

• with resources scarce, the generation learned to work together and help each other to make ends meet. Waste and excess just weren’t an option anymore.
• It was defined not by excess and consumerism, but by hardship and service.

  12. The Boomers All Grown Up

• analysts exert too much pressure on managers to meet short-term goals, impeding firms’ investment in long-term innovative projects.” Put simply, the more pressure the leaders of a public company feel to meet the expectations of an outside constituency, the more likely they are to reduce their capacity for better products and services.
• Abundance can be destructive because it abstracts the value of things. The more we have, the less we seem to value what we’ve got.
• We no longer see each other as people; we are now customers, shareholders, employees, avatars, online profiles, screen names, e-mail addresses and expenses to be tracked. The human being really has gone virtual. Now more than ever, we are trying to work and live, be productive and happy, in a world in which we are strangers to those around us.

  PART 5: THE ABSTRACT CHALLENGE

• the physical separation between us and those on the receiving end of our decisions can have a dramatic impact on lives . . . the lives of people who cannot be seen or heard. The more abstract people become, the more capable we are of doing them harm.

  14. Modern Abstraction

• when we cannot see the impact of our decisions, when the lives of people become an abstraction, 65 percent of us have the capacity to kill someone.
• Our (or indeed a company’s) sense of right or wrong, despite the letter of the law, matters on a social level. This is the very foundation of civil society.
• many of us work out of sight of the people our decisions affect. That means we are working at a significant disadvantage if we have any desire to do the right thing (which is different from doing what’s legal).

  15. Managing the Abstraction

• just as money can’t buy love, the Internet can’t buy deep, trusting relationships. What makes a statement like that somewhat tricky or controversial is that the relationships we form online feel real.
• Relationships can certainly start online, but they only become real when we meet face-to-face.
• We like to actually be around people who are like us. It makes us feel like we belong. It is also the reason a video conference can never replace a business trip. Trust is not formed through a screen, it is formed across a table.
• Gore concluded that to maintain the sense of camaraderie and teamwork he felt was essential for the factory to run smoothly, it should have only about 150 people. That was the magic number.
• Today the still privately held company has sales of $3.2 billion per year and employs more than 10,000 people around the world, and it still attempts to organize its plants and offices into working groups of about 150 people.
• Professor Dunbar figured out that people simply cannot maintain more than about 150 close relationships.
• As social animals, it is imperative for us to see the actual, tangible impact of our time and effort for our work to have meaning and for us to be motivated to do it even better.
• we are naturally cooperative animals that are biologically more inspired and motivated when we know we are helping others.
• Money is an abstraction of tangible resources or human effort. It is a promissory note for future goods or services. Unlike the time and effort that people spend on something, it is what money represents that gives it its value. And as an abstraction, it has no “real” value to our primitive brains, which judge the real value of food and shelter or the behavior of others against the level of protection or safety they can offer us.
• it’s not just time. The energy we give also matters.
• a company can’t buy the loyalty of their employees with salaries and bonuses. What produces loyalty, that irrational willingness to commit to the organization even when offered more money elsewhere, is the feeling that the leaders of the company would be willing, when it matters, to sacrifice their time and energy to help us.
• I have no data to say exactly how long it takes to feel like we trust someone. I know it takes more than seven days and I know it takes fewer than seven years. I know it is quicker for some and slower for others. No one knows exactly how long it takes, but it takes patience.

  16. Imbalance

• Whenever a group moves from subsistence to surplus, and ruling classes, those with the greatest surplus work hardest to mold society to meet their expectations. The question is, are they using their surplus to affect change that is good for society or for themselves?
• “Destructive Abundance” is what I call the result of this imbalance. It is what happens when selfish pursuits are out of balance with selfless pursuits.

  PART 6: DESTRUCTIVE ABUNDANCE

• In strong corporate cultures, employees will form similar attachments. They will identify with the company in a very personal way.
• In a weak culture, we veer away from doing “the right thing” in favor of doing “the thing that’s right for me.”
• When cultural standards shift from character, values or beliefs to performance, numbers and other impersonal dopamine-driven measurements, our behavior-driving chemicals fall out of balance and our will to trust and cooperate dilutes.
• Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing.
• “At Citi,” Stewart says, “the feeling was ‘I don’t want anybody to know as much as I do because then I am expendable.’”
• Even an industry that is less collaborative by the nature of its product or service can benefit from sharing. Huge improvements can happen just by getting a fresh set of eyes on the work. Hearing one person’s solution to a problem can inform someone else how to solve a problem of their own. Isn’t this the idea of learning—to pass on our knowledge to others?
• when people trust and share their successes and failures, what they know and what they don’t know, the result is innovation.

  18. Leadership Lesson 2: So Goes the Leader, so Goes the Culture

• All that control focused at the top can lead to only one outcome: eventual collapse.
• The more energy is transferred from the top of the organization to those who are actually doing the job, those who know more about what’s going on on a daily basis, the more powerful the organization and the more powerful the leader.

  19. Leadership Lesson 3: Integrity Matters

• When we suspect the leaders of a company are saying things to make themselves or the company look better than they are or to avoid humiliation or accountability, our trust in them falters.
• Leadership comes from telling us not what we want to hear, but rather what we need to hear. To be a true leader, to engender deep trust and loyalty, starts with telling the truth.
• The most common display of a lack of integrity in the business world is when a leader of an organization says what others want to hear and not the truth.
• Integrity is not about being honest when we agree with each other; it is also about being honest when we disagree or, even more important, when we make mistakes or missteps.
• Building trust requires nothing more than telling the truth.
• how you do anything is how you do everything.

  20. Leadership Lesson 4: Friends Matter

• All leaders, in order to truly lead, need to walk the halls and spend time with the people they serve, “eyeball leadership,” as the Marines call it.
• There is something about getting together out of context that makes us more open to getting to know someone
• serene environments where the two warring parties can go for a walk together.
• Cooperation doesn’t mean agreement, it means working together to advance the greater good, to serve those who rely on our protection, not to rack up wins to serve the party or ourselves.
• Without retreats or formal engagements, all that is required is for a few progress-minded members in one party to personally reach out to a few progress-minded members of the other party to meet for a drink or a bite to eat with no agenda.
• some will get along and some won’t. But in time, cooperation will happen.

  21. Leadership Lesson 5: Lead the People, Not the Numbers

• “Teams led by a directive leader initially outperform those led by an empowering leader. However, despite lower early performance, teams led by an empowering leader experience higher performance improvement over time because of higher levels of team-learning, coordination, empowerment and mental model development.”
• There’s a growing body of evidence that the companies that are most successful at maximizing shareholder value over time are those that aim toward goals other than maximizing shareholder value
• Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first. Only when a critical mass of employees feel like their leaders are working to help defend them from dangers outside can the company then invite customers into the circle too.
• It is the leaders of companies that see profit as fuel for their cultures that will outlast their dopamine-addicted, cortisol-soaked competitors.

  PART 7: A SOCIETY OF ADDICTS

• All managers of metrics have an opportunity to become leaders of people.
• Leadership is about taking responsibility for lives and not numbers.
• corporate cultures where incentive programs create environments ripe for a new kind of dopamine-driven addiction. We are addicted to performance.
• there is little positive reinforcement when it comes to behaviors and actions critical to maintaining the Circle of Safety.

  23. At Any Expense

• healthy organizations, as in a healthy society, the drive to win should not precede the desire to take care of the very people we claim to serve.

  24. The Abstract Generation

• THIS BE THE VERSE

  They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself.

• What we perceive as entitlement is, in fact, impatience. An impatience driven by two things: First is a gross misunderstanding that things like success, money or happiness, come instantly. Even though our messages and books arrive the same day we want them, our careers and fulfillment do not.
• The second element is more unsettling. It is a result of a horrible short circuit to their internal reward systems.
• Generation Y thinks that, because they have grown up with all these technologies, they are better at multitasking. I would venture to argue they are not better at multitasking. What they are better at is being distracted
• This “see it and get it” generation has an awareness of where they are standing and they know where they want to get to; what they can’t seem to understand is the journey, the very time-consuming journey.
• The Me Generation, addicted to performance, dismantled the controls that protect us from corporate abuses and stock market crashes. A Distracted Generation, living in a world of abstraction, thinks it has ADHD but more likely has a dopamine-fueled addiction to social media and cell phones.

  PART 8: BECOMING A LEADER

• it is service that is the key to breaking our dopamine addictions in our organizations
• service to the real, living, knowable human beings with whom we work every day.
• Oxytocin is so powerful that the bonds of trust and love we form not only help us beat or ward off addiction, they actually help us live longer
• Ask anyone who has made it through any sort of setback—depression, loneliness, failure, getting fired, a death in the family, the loss of a relationship, addiction, legal conflict, victimization by crime, anything—how they made it through. In nearly 100 percent of the cases, they will say something to the effect that “I could not have done it without the support of———”

  26. Shared Struggle

• It is not the work we remember with fondness, but the camaraderie, how the group came together to get things done.
• If our species thrives when we are forced to work together to manage through hardship, then what we need to do is redefine hardship for our modern age of abundance. We need to learn how to readapt. To understand how to operate as we were designed within these complicating conditions. To the relief of many readers, we do not need to give up our abundance and live a monk’s life to do this. Our challenge is that our visions of the future are confined to our means. We need to reframe our visions to outsize the resources we have to realize them.
• Sharing a struggle for limited resources and working with people who are intent on building something out of nothing is a good formula for a small business.
• Leaders of successful organizations, if they wish to innovate or command loyalty and love from their people, must reframe the struggles their companies face not in absolute terms but in terms relative to their success.
• All we need are leaders to give us a good reason to commit ourselves to each other.

  27. We Need More Leaders

• Leadership is not a license to do less; it is a responsibility to do more
• Leadership, true leadership, is not the bastion of those who sit at the top. It is the responsibility of anyone who belongs to the group.