The Benefits of Being a Leader Are Real. But Are There Costs? With Simon Sinek | Big Think

The Benefits of Being a Leader Are Real. But Are There Costs?

Watch the newest video from Big Think

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why did we, Homo sapiens, survive into modernity while others died out over time? According to Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why, the answer lies with evolution. Starting with our first tribal collectives, humans evolved acute collaboration and community skills. That sort of organization keeps us alive. But there's a catch...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SIMON SINEK:

Simon O. Sinek is an author best known for popularizing the concept of "the golden circle" and to "Start With Why," described by TED as "a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?"'. He joined the RAND Corporation in 2010 as an adjunct staff member, where he advises on matters of military innovation and planning. His first TEDx Talk on "How Great Leaders Inspire Action" is the 3rd most viewed video on TED.com. His 2009 book on the same subject, Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (2009) delves into what he says is a naturally occurring pattern, grounded in the biology of human decision-making, that explains why we are inspired by some people, leaders, messages and organizations over others.

He has commented for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Houston Chronicle, FastCompany, CMO Magazine, NPR, and BusinessWeek, and is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post, BrandWeek, and IncBizNet.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

Simon Sinek: The reason we have leaders goes back to 50,000 years. When Homo sapiens step foot on this planet, there were other hominid species that existed, but we survived and they died off. And one of the reasons is because we work together. And for 40,000 of the 50,000 years we've been on this planet, we lived in populations that were never bigger than about 150 people. That all changed when we started farming 10,000 years ago. But there's still an inherent problem with living in a population that's about 150 people. We're all hungry. What if somebody brings food back to the tribe and dumps it on the ground? We all rush in to eat. And if you're lucky enough to be built like a football player, you can shove your way to the front of the line. If you're the artist of the family, you get an elbow in the face. This is a bad system because the odds are that if you punch me in the face this afternoon, I'm probably not going to wake you and alert you to danger tonight. Bad system. And so we evolved into hierarchical animals.

We are constantly assessing and judging each other all the time. Who's alpha to us? Who's more dominant in the pecking order? Sometimes it's informal, but very often it's formal like in an organization. We know what the rank structure is. People have titles that inform us who's more senior and who's more junior. And when someone is more senior, we defer to them. So going back to those cavemen times when we assess that someone is alpha to us, we voluntarily step back and allow our alphas us to eat first. So our alphas get first choice of meat and first choice of mate. And though I may not get to eat first, I will be guaranteed to eat and I won't get an elbow in the face. Good system. Nothing has changed in our modern day.

In other words, we're used to deferring to and giving special treatment to those who are higher in the pecking order. However, none of those perks come for free. You see the group is not stupid. We don't give all those advantages to our leaders for nothing. There's an expectation. There's an expectation that if danger threatens the tribe that the leader, the one who's better fed and more confident, who's stronger, will rush towards the danger to protect us. That's why we gave them first choice of mate because they might die first and we want to keep their genes in the gene pool. We're not stupid. And so what makes us loyal and love and respect our leaders is when we know that they uphold that deal. When we have visceral contempt for some of our leaders, like we have this visceral contempt for some of the banking CEOs and their disproportionate salaries and bonus structures, it's because we know that they allowed their people to be sacrificed so they could keep their bonuses and salaries. Or worse, they chose to sacrifice their people to protect their bonuses and salaries.....

To read the transcript, please go to