Simon Sinek with Arthur Brooks: Leading with Purpose

hi Simon hi Arthur it's nice to see you and I can't actually see out into this audience because of the lights but I'm sure that they're probably people in those seats yes and they're and they're delighted to see you as well we have a lot to talk about we have plenty of time to hear from our from our guests as well but I want to start right in look I mean it's one of the most amazing things is before I met you for the first time I had seen your TED talk and I looked you up and I saw on your biography that you're an optimist and then I got to meet you for the first time and we were it was actually before we shared the stage it was where were we we were giving free meant yes we met in a it was right after Donald Trump was elected we there was a big conservative look at this is a big right-wing crowd but I I'm an infiltrator so yeah that's why I say yes to old gigs I promote bipartisanship so I say yes to both sides but we I don't know why I was invited but we were there were four speakers at this big Republican off-site with all the congressmen all the Senators all the lobbyists and the speakers on day two where Donald Trump and Mike Pence and the speakers on day one were us yeah that's and and I heard Simon's speak and he is an optimist yet paradoxically the topic of Simon's speech to every Republican in the House and Senate was the malaise in American leadership was it leadership is in crisis that trust is low and Happiness is falling particular when we think about our leaders and and you start when you talk about public trust me to talk about happiness falling you start with culpability at the very top you talk about this crisis leadership so that's where I want to start what is the problem know about politics per se what's the problem of American leadership today Simon so yeah we do have a leadership crisis predominantly because people who hold positions of leadership are not actually leaders they just hold positions of leadership and they just happen to have Authority and I think this has been is not an overnight thing this has been a steady decline a steady moved since probably the 80s and 90s there was a there was a huge shift that happened in the 80s and 90s and we can go back further back to World War two as to how we got there but that's I don't have to go back that far you know there was some there were some new experiments that were happening in the 80s and 90s we're moving from a Wii to a me kind of mentality Gordon Gekko greta's good kind of thing so for example we saw in business the introduction of something called shareholder supremacy where we put the interests of the shareholder ahead of the employees or the customer which was a theory proposed in late 1970s popularized in the 80s and 90s by folks like Jack Welch at GE we saw the introduction of mass layoffs where mass layoffs were used became it became normalized that we would use mass layoffs on an annualized basis to balance the books did not exist in the United States prior to the 1980s popularized in the 80s and 90s and we saw things that happen in government as well and in policy the removal of the Fairness Doctrine for example where left and right opinions had to be given equal time on television the FCC removed that standard so because it could become unbalanced and we saw all of these shifts that happened in these very very prosperous times these boom years of the 80s and 90s of great relative peace it wasn't a Republican or a Democrat thing because we had Reagan and we had Clinton but we saw this the steady move unfortunately we no longer live in those kinds of times boom years we no longer live in a time of relative peace and a lot of the theories that worked well then just don't work anymore in other words we built systems for government and politics and all of that and and for business forget for calm waters only calm waters and you can't judge the quality of a crew by how they perform in calm waters but rather how they perform in rough waters and and so what we have now are people who grew up in those times who are now leading government and business and they're still trying to use leadership of the past to manage the the current day and it just doesn't work and we we can see the effect I don't think that I don't think anybody should be surprised that a man the personality of Donald Trump is the president United States it's just sort of a it's sort of less steady move in that direction we see the same kind of mentality inside businesses where again I mean my pet peeve of mass layoffs where you have CEOs announcing mass layoffs to balance the books to appease an external constituency which to me is madness and quite frankly bad for business this is the great irony this is the great irony we become so short-term focused in business and in politics that were actually making we're doing long-term damage then the next question you're gonna ask me is and you're an optimist hmm well before I get to that you know but yes so we have a leadership crisis the people who are running things are using the wrong are not focused on people they need to focus on people more so you give a that you make a large party living talking to giving people advice yeah leaders advice giving organizations advice on how they can acquire and retain better leadership so we you know I learned this from you Simon that the best way to teach people relatively nuanced concepts is to tell stories about people who are doing it the right or the wrong way so give me two stories give me a story of you don't have to name names a leader who did it wrong yeah and then tell me about a leader who did it right sure we can use names they better be dead no no they're still in power she would do the bad one first yes please so no that's just where my sure so IBM a few years ago missed their quarterly results and the CEO Ginni what's her last name yes Germany Rama D Ginni Rometty in response to the company missing its numbers missing its expectations made a video an internal video that went out to the company but of course it got leaked and basically she berated the salespeople for making for screwing it up right so imagine being a salesperson in IBM that now everybody all your colleagues here you berated by the CEO and she went on to say the problem is is that you not pushing information up the chain of command fast enough so that we can make decisions to make sales quicker which violates every tenet of good leadership you don't push information up you push authority down right now here's the best part IBM had made its numbers 86 quarters in a row and this was the first one they ever missed and she decided that the right thing to do was to berate and criticize and blame her team and by the way since she made that video they've missed every single quarter since okay now let me pause here folks we know I be M and we can be critical of that how many I can't see very well but how many of you have children yeah it's a lot of you how many of you have been a parent like that you know it's your kids got pretty good report cards and did pretty well in school and they came home with a c-minus and you said after you screwed up most of us are no better than Ginni are we but I don't think you went to their school and in front of all of their friends yelled at them about how they can't do anything right if anything if it's done in private if anything yeah but but the point I think the broader point is this and the takeaway is this and you didn't lay off your kids that's right let's say you're through here son you're through you know if you don't get your grades oh yeah that's right I perp locked him out to the curb the so but here's the point and there's a point that I'm gonna bring up and over the next hour again and again is that the lessons that you're gonna learn here are applicable not just to leaders at the highest levels of corporate life or the president United States leadership is a concept that we should be able to apply in all areas of our lives because we are leaders any one of us who has something to share with more than one other other person and any group can can use the principles that Simon talks about as leadership so let's continue to apply these these ideas as we go forward give me a give me a best practice so here's the opposite story and it's one of my favorite stories it's a it's a guy by the name of Bob Chapman you've met Bob was a wonderful guy Bob Chapman runs a multi-billion dollar manufacturing company big machinery and into thousand and eight they were hit very very hard by the recession they lost 30% of their pipeline just dried up and like many companies they could no longer afford their labor pool they didn't have the income to afford their labor pool and like many companies the board got together and said we need to layoff a percentage of our workforce to make to save ten million dollars and Bob refused he and one of the reasons he refuses they don't Bob doesn't believe in head counts he believes in heart counts and it's very hard to reduce a heart count so instead what the company did was they implemented a furlough program where every single employee had to take four weeks of unpaid vacation they could take it any time they wanted to and they didn't have to take it consecutively and the way Bob announced the program easy is he said it's better we should all suffer a little than any of us should have to suffer a lot and morale went up and something happened which is a great sign of great leadership because in a poorly led organization people will hunker down and protect themselves from each other and from the organization in a well led organization people will take risks and take care of each other organically and that's exactly what happened it wasn't part of the program but those who could afford it more took more time off so that those who could afford it less could take less time off so someone who would take five weeks so that somebody else only had to take three weeks they were just helping that wasn't part of the program that was just them helping each other after a period of time they saved twenty million dollars they got rid of the furlough program and they read they back paid the 401k that they had frozen and you cannot steal their employees don't tell us to knit again the name of the company barry-wehmiller is the name of the company what do they do they make big machines so like when Kimberly Clark needs a machine to make toilet paper they make the Machine and sell it to him Billy Clark extraordinary to think you know in New York City we often fall prey to the illusion that manufacturing is a as a set of dead industries in this country but the percentage of the American economy dedicated to manufacturing is the same today as it was in 1970 the big difference of course is the number of jobs has declined by 7/8 over that period because it has become so much horrible more high-tech yeah you require workers that can that can do a good job and in point of fact this is a really important principle for yeah and for Bob Chapman and others yeah and it's it's and I visited many of his factories over the years and it's kind of inspiring to just walk around you know traditionally what you'll see in manufacture or any organization quite frankly that's poorly led is you'll see the older employees keep information to themselves for fear that if they share it somebody younger and cheaper well they feel like they're susceptible where in Bob's factories the old share everything they've learned with the younger ones because it's it's it's a good way to it's a good way to help each other out it's magical yeah the now if the science is on the side of human centered organizations based on the principle of solidarity which clearly it is I've heard you talk about it a lot you have a lot of evidence to that effect why aren't more people doing this how come we haven't why haven't markets spread this best practice it's a it's such a great question I think there are a couple reasons one is the incentive structures are misaligned most organizations incentivize short-term behavior and let's be clear about something which is I love talking to CEOs and they talk about how they they incentivize performance you cannot incentivize a result you can only incentivize a behavior you can you can want a result but you have to incentivize a behavior to get to that result and so what we do is we incentivize behaviors that actually promote short-termism disloyalty and if not disloyalty then just every man for himself and we do not have incentive structures in most organizations that promote cooperation so one one part is the incentive structures inside organizations and the other part is is we as human beings are actually pretty short-term focused I mean we there's a little chemical in our bodies called dopamine and and we're very very visual animals and we like metrics and we like lists and we like being number one and we like to see what we're after and we actually are inherently short-term Astorga nism and this is one of the reasons you need great leadership with vision that give us a reason to do something with something longer-term in mind otherwise it would just be doggy dog sort of load of the flies let's let's make it a little bit more applied before we move on here I have three teenage kids I'm not here to tell you my problems Simon but how can I apply this as a father so there's a few things I think a families that do things together and have a sense of purpose like actually I have a family why is a big deal that you can have a credo as a family you do things as a family to advance some greater good and understanding that even though our lives are finite life is infinite and you know our first names are finite but our last names are infinite and the question is is what what do you pass on to your kids that they will continue to grow without you I had the opportunity to sit down with Richard Branson and I and I asked him how should we judge you when you die which was probably an awkward question because we're just having dinner it wasn't like an interview session but anyway I figured this is my opportunity I asked him how should we judge you when you die you know what what did you accomplish at virgin that I should that we should look back at you and say he lived a good life and he said do not judge me by anything I did at virgin he said if you want to judge me you judge me by the quality of my children and I think there's something to be said for that which is the kinds of things not that you will leave this world in better shape that then you found it but rather how will you how are you going to prepare your children to leave this world in better shape so let's get to optimism then yeah and let's keep it on just this particular theme one that we can relate to before we go back up to leadership of corporations and leadership of of countries even optimism in our ordinary lives I'm married to an optimist my wife Esther who's from Barcelona is a naturally sunny person and and last year we were doing a parent-teacher conference that was going horribly wrong my middle son it was a great problem a big grades problem he's not living up to his abilities and and it was it was grim and it was stressful it was tennis I realized that sounds rig but you know you some of you have kids you know it's fine and on the way home we were or in an icy silence and I was driving and finally my wife said she broke the silence and she said we need to think about this problem in an entirely different way and I said what do you mean she said at least we know he's not cheating or what if he's a bad cheat so give me a little bit of sunny optimism I mean we look we talked about since the Second World War we've had a tendency towards short termism certainly our public policy incentives through sarbanes-oxley and a lot of other regulations have forced us into a short-term paradigm for public corporations in when we have a two-year cycle and largely gerrymandered districts we I mean it's it's like all the incentives are going the same way yep why are you optimistic man I mean I fundamentally believe in the good of people and and I think that I mean just to use an extreme example war is not sustainable but peace is you know war even if it goes a long time it has to end at some point violence is not a sustainable strategy but peace is a sustainable strategy so I tend to believe that things will tend toward peace eventually and tend tend toward stability and nature abhors a vacuum and seeks balance at all times and so the opportunity is to expedite that process and to take care of the people along the journey so how can you be more now now let's apply that optimism and your leadership paradigm of solidarity of Univ unifying leadership versus divisive leadership to the current political climate tell us what's going wrong today and how we can fix it I mean the you know more about this than I do but from what I can observe as a you know getting to look beneath the veil is the lack of relationships that exist even often within the party but definitely between the parties and we can trace it back to Newt Gingrich and contract for America where when you originally if you got elected to national office you move your family to Washington and you lived in Washington and you may fight with your colleagues of the opposite party on the floor during the day but at night you would be in the stands of the same ballgames and you would go to the same PTA meetings and they were they would socialize they actually knew each other than they were actually friends and at some point being an outsider became a dirt an insider became a dirty word and Gingrich encouraged people not to move their families to Washington but rather commute and so they just don't know each other they come to Washington for three or four days a week and then spend go back home and they don't spend time together socially and so they don't actually know each other and and so why would you have empathy for somebody you don't know there's simply the opposition and we've moved away so it's been explained to me by members of Congress who've been in in who've been there for a while it used to be where they would have come to an agreement with 80 percent and 80 percent agreement behind closed doors and the last 20% was for the cameras and now it's a hundred percent for the cameras and it used to be where both parties they would come up with a deal where both parties would go home to their constituents and say we won we got what we wanted now it's not enough to be able to go back and say we won you also have to prove that the other guy lost and and if you read anything about effective negotiation and William URIs work and you know getting to yes and things like that though yes yes is the only viable solution for progress you know the whole winner and loser thing is just it's it is a formula for stagnation and we've seen exactly what's happened now the Republicans during Obama were the party of no and we're obstructionist and everything the President did was bad but now we've seen a complete flop the Democrats are now the party of no and everything the president does is bad and and it's the same thing it's an it's become obstructionist and I don't want to know what the party is against I wonder what the party's for I cannot tell you except for a policy here or a policy there I cannot tell you what either party stands for and now they're actually voting for legislation that actually violates whatever things they've been talking about for years the deficit being being the thing that I'm referring to but I this is what idle country is lacking we're lacking something we can believe in rather than rail against it's easy to rally people against things but as I said versus peace verses war it is not a sustainable viable strategy for progress or stability but standing for something even even even when times are tough I think is what gets us through through difficult times then that that we have something worth fighting for I've heard you make a point that I think is important and important to share with the audience here tonight which is that there's a principle in business if you actually had as the the moral consensus between you and a negotiating partner that to win is to get 100% the the negotiations would break down immediately and no business would get done it's extraordinary when you talk to with the most hard-headed negotiators and the most successful companies they want the other side to win they they want to leave something on the table they want to leave something on the table because they want to have multiple transactions and they want to have goodwill and because they want to be good people that's how we're wired there's a funny story I I read about a bunch of years ago of a very very successful Chinese entrepreneur he's one of the richest guys in China he's a he's a real estate mogul and he gives he gives 51% of his deals away to his partners always he always give the majority share to all his partners and somebody came to him said why do you give away the majority share and all your deals and he replied because everyone wants to do business with me mm-hmm he's making it up on volume and and certainly we do see that in the business world and yet it's this is a this is a problem that has cropped up in our political world when the moral consensus which I believe looking at the words of the founders of this country this is a country that was built by Gentry for ambitious riffraff we descend from ambitious riffraff it's an extraordinary thing in this audience this is the one thing that we all have in common go back two or three generations it's riffraff and we're proud of it just amazing and it when the consensus is to push opportunity out to the margins of society and that moral consensus collapses then the competition of ideas which is good and healthy disagreements fantastic when it circulates around that moral consensus but when that moral consensus collapses then the competition of ideas leads ideas to hit each other head-on into a holy war of ideologies that fair I think you're right and I think the the whole idea of the gentry looking to build something for the enterprising riffraff I think is actually very interesting because what what those enterprising riffraff are the middle class and the bigger the middle class the better the the nation and when the middle class gets smaller and the margins get more further and further separated that's the recipe for revolution that's what happens in revolution you need to go back to any revolution it's those that have the have-nots looking at the haves going this isn't fair and I'm not talking about you know distribution anything like that I'm just talking about developing policy or fighting and this is about business as well which is how do we create an environment in which all of our people can thrive and be and work to their natural best and feel like they're contributing to something bigger than themselves that that's what I'm talking about it's not okay it's not about giving away money it's not about you know in this country we don't have a problem with people who work hard making lots of money like it doesn't bother anybody the problem we have is that when the people who have the gentry as you call them actually look for ways not to allow other people to join them mm-hmm and keep them at bay rather than then then promote the enterprising riffraff which i think is a lovely lovely image there's a there's a book I highly recommend everybody written by a guy at the Brookings Institution just think tank two doors down from mine which we work with him a lot it's Agana Richard Reeves who's one of the world's leading experts on poverty and he's written a new book about exactly that fortresses that people take and build around themselves and so they do things like promote legacies at Ivy League universities where it's easier to get into an Ivy League university if your parents would well that's insane that's completely undemocratic and it's not right it's his point and I I'm inclined to agree to you I mean I think it's funny how when you go to poor neighborhoods and there's lots of anthropology and sociology there's lots of studies done on this but you go to poor neighborhoods kids play in the front and other parents watch each other's kids right huge amount of cooperation in poor neighborhoods in rich neighborhoods neighbors sue each other because your branches are hanging over my fence you know and that's hilarious to me which is the richer we get the bigger our walls get and the less we actually cooperate unless we have the more cooperative we are visit any slum in India you will see a remarkable cooperative society that's highly highly functional and by the way extremely safe because everybody takes care of everybody mm-hmm and I think there's something to be to be said for cooperation and and and and it's interesting my wife grew up in real poverty in a single-parent household and in Barcelona and she said that one of the great things about growing up is that you could count on the neighbors parents to hit you if you did the wrong thing he talked about this as if it was a really wonderful thing so I suppose we can take this or kind of an extreme like neighborhoods are good like when somebody moves into your neighborhood or in our case into our buildings I think it's good to knock on their door and introduce yourself and say hi I think it's good to knock on the door and say do you have some eggs I can borrow incidentally brené Brown talks about this a lot we don't build trust with people by offering our help we build trust with people by asking for help and so I think there's a lot to be said for knocking in your neighbor and saying can I borrow some sugar you know I like that idea of being neighborly let's uh let's move on to a little bit more life advice you you came to the public attention largely because they start with why and that grew out of a TED talk where you basically coined the phrase for most people who saw at least a 36 million Americans went few more than one out of ten Americans would have seen this talk at this point where you say you have to understand not just the what of your life or the what of your enterprise the one of your business and not even the how but the why and you can and that's the hard question and people go their whole lives avoiding that question so I'm gonna ask you how we should do that but first I want to ask simon Sinek what's your why man my why is to inspire people to do the things that inspire them so that each of us can change our world for the better and I have a crystal-clear vision of the world that I would rather live in than the one we live in now describe it just a bit I imagine a world in which the vast majority of people wake up inspired every morning feel safe when they're at work and feel fulfilled at the end of the day and I will do anything that I can to help not only advance that vision but to offer tools or ideas that help get us there to find the pieces of the puzzle and I'm constantly looking for people who want to who think that they have a piece of the puzzle and want to join up and help build the world and how did you come to that how long did it take you to figure that one out is the reason so a bunch of years ago I had a small business little marketing consultancy and the first few years were great and the fourth year was awful and I realized that I didn't have the skill set to build a business like I was running on force of personality for the first three years and and the there's plenty of that so like a natural energy source that's it's not sustainable and the nuclear it's all it's definitely not scalable yeah and and so my fourth year was very very difficult but I lived under this false assumption that as the president of the company I had to know all the answers and if I didn't I have to pretend that I do and and and so most of my energy went in pretending that I was happier more successful and more in control than I actually felt which really is a terrible use of energy and lying hiding and faking basically everyday and so it was a very close friend of mine came to me and she was worried about me she said I'm worried about you you're not the same and so I came clean and told her how I felt and it was if a huge weight was taken off my shoulders just coming clean and it gave me the mental capacity to now take the energy that I was putting into pretending and put it into finding a solution and the solution that I happened to find was this naturally occurring pattern based on the biology of human decision-making that every single one of us knows what we do some of us know how we do it but very few of us can clearly articulate why we do what we do hmm and I don't mean to make money I mean why do you get out of bed in the morning and why should anyone care and I could answer the question what I did and I could also tell you how but I couldn't tell you why and I became obsessed with that question and I sought advice from others and I came up with a harebrained way of putting it together and work with someone and I was able to put words to my why that helped me understand all the times in my lives were in my life where I was most joyous just to inspire people to do things that inspire them and I became obsessed with this idea it's all I ever talked about somebody said what are you up to these days I talked about this thing and people just kept inviting me to talk about it the way it started was I would help my friends find their why they would invite me to help their friends I used to do it for a hundred bucks on the side I used to go to people's apartments in Manhattan and stand in their living room and talk about the why to their friends that's how it started and people just kept inviting me and I just kept saying yes it was totally organic and continues to be organic it continues to be an organic a journey so it became a comes in something that was deeply passionate and remain passionate for before we get to I mean just in its it's it's not so organic that you all have to stumble upon it I'm gonna get Simon to give us a little bit of a few ideas on how to do that here in a second but it's interesting because when I first read about your story it reminded you know I had this I had this kind of Epiphany this experience when or why well I was playing in the I was I was remember the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and and it was a great job I was playing the best music ever written every night and my favorite composer still is is Johann Sebastian Bach the greatest maybe the greatest composers were over left I mean unbelievably potent yeah what do you mean and the he was he it's like come on man anyway so there's a he wrote more than a heap uh blushed more than a thousand pieces in his 65 years something you know all different different combinations of instruments so choral works and orchestra works and chamber music and and keyboard works at unbelievably prolific it he also had by the way 20 kids which is prolific unbelievably prolific and and and but but here's what caught my attention about it when I was still in the music business when I was in my late 20s I was trained it was casting about it how what do I do the rest of my life I thought maybe there was more and I read this biography of Bach by a minor biographer who's been lost to posterity but but he asked Bach the why question it's weird because you know people always that this is a very successful group of people here people always ask you what do you do they never ask you why you do it what would you say before you leave here tonight we're gonna have instructions I hope on how you answer that question but this biographer asked Bach why do you hare Bach why do you write music here's what he said the aim and final end of all music is nothing less than the glorification of God in the enjoyment of man and I thought I want to say that about my it was like a knife to the heart because I couldn't when I was a musician and so I went in search of something where I could give box answer if your secular don't be don't be confused by this he's saying that the purpose of work should be sanctified service to others that you're your ordinary work your toil the ultimate goal should be to serve other people I know you got a pit around in your electric bill I got it but if the purpose if the why is not to serve others you're doing the wrong thing this is from Bach who died in 1750 this is not some new fan Gold you know upper-class deal from America and that's what sent me in search of it's weird I became an economist so I could answer like bok-bok made me leave music so what's what so what's your why my why is to use the power of ideas to serve other people and help them to lead richer more valuable more meaningful life and that's why we get along maybe this is it it's a match made in heaven but all wise all wise are in service to other people you know we usually write them in the infinitive to blank you know they're in service and when people say to get or to have or to you know when they and when they put I in in the front it's not a job to you to your point the job comes there is a job to be done there why without you know the job is the how the the vision without execution is vaccination you know wow man I think it's Henry for but which is true it's not one or the other it's one and the other you know just having Y and no means to it's not a hippie commune you know it's like there is there are things to be done and there's good work to be done and people human beings take satisfaction in building things I'm seeing what we built you know so the work that we're talking about here Simon is that it took thought and effort you know both you and me to come up with the articulation of the why that truly was in service of other people and it is the reason we get along now almost everybody I meet who's casting about yeah almost everybody I meet who's unhappy about the way they're living their lives is in search of their why yeah I find so so give us the hack sure give us the the steps how we can how our friends here if they are in fact casting about yeah can write their own wife I tell you a quick aside so I wrote start with why came out in 2009 and you know I made the case for the existence of this thing called the why and for years people said you told us you made the case with why be you didn't tell us how to do it so eight years later we wrote find your why mmm you know took eight years this just came out by the way I came but but I'll give you the hack to your answer your question so go to the go to your best friends the people you love and who love you do not do this with spouses do not do this with your boyfriends or girlfriends or those or siblings those relationships are too close but go to your best friends the people who if they called you at 3 o'clock in the morning you would definitely take the call and and you know that they would take yours and you ask them the simple question why are we friends and they're gonna look at you like it crazy you know because what you're asking me to do is verbalize something it exists in the nonverbal part of the brain the limbic brain and they're gonna go I don't know of course they know they just can't put it into words right it's a feeling and the irony of finding your why's you actually don't ask the question why cuz the question why is an emotional question and it elicits emotional responses we need a rational response right so it's like with your kids why are you home late shut up dad versus what were you doing that you're home late you'll get a nap you'll get an answer so that's when you convert you say to your friends come on what is it about me that I know that you would be there for me no matter what and they're gonna start describing you with great frustration I don't know you're funny I trust you and you have to play devil's advocate you can't let you can't help them and you can't let anybody else help them and you say good that's the definition of a friend what specifically is about me that I know you'd be there for me no matter what and again they'll you frustratingly you know frustrated answer your question oh why and again continue to describe you I don't recommend any of this in the first date no and and and again you'll say that's the definition of a best friend and eventually they'll give up and eventually they'll stop trying to describe you and they'll start describing themselves and they'll say I don't know all I know is is that I can just sit in the room with you and I don't even have to talk to you and I can feel and spot and I feel inspired that's what my friends told me and I got goose bumps getting them now I got goose bumps when they said that to me right so if you have an emotional response to the way your friends describe your value in their life that's your why you'll get goosebumps your well up so you'll have some sort of emotional response and basically if you do this with multiple friends you'll find that they'll say similar if not the exact same thing because you're why is the value you offer to the world it is unchangeable it is there's only one your entire life it is the value offer to the world is the reason your friends love you it's the reason your colleagues respect you and it is the gap you fill in the lives of your friends which is why not everybody likes you and why you don't like everybody because there has to be some sort of connecting and it is a really magical experience to do that with a friend hmm that's the hack that's the hack and that's a lot of work it's actually the least amount of work compared to the other ways huh yes indeed just casting about not knowing of course is is tricky and it's it's easier not to do it that's the easiest it's an extraordinary thing I've heard you talk about this as well that when you don't know your why what happens to you what happens to your identity and and and and I've heard you say that your identity is defined by others there's a couple things that can happen if you don't know your why one is you can suffer malaise at worse or worse depression and we become very focused on the stuff so am i working at a name Bread Company am i making the most money I met a guy recently it was it was a the husband of a friend of my sister's who was having a hard time he'd been laid off and he was a having a hard time and sort of called in a favor and asked me if I would help him and I I went through my process of asking times where he found joy and what basically what I learned was since he graduated college every single job he took he took for the money whoever whoever offered him more money was the job he took and never made a decision based on the people he'd work with the company he worked for the culture those things never factored every job you took was who paid him more money and now he's in his mid-40s and is literally depressed and lacks focus and and it and this is what happens it builds up which is yes he made more money in the short term than all his friends and now he's jobless compared to the people who as they take jobs and this is so this is advice that you know we tell our kids when they grad at school get a job but we we rarely say get a job you love and and we don't tell them what to look for when they go into a company you know recruiters will always ask so what are you looking for and somebody will say X salary with these kinds of benefits in this kind of vacation versus I'm looking for a mentor I'm looking for a place that will help me grow I'm looking to work at a place where I can be myself you know these are things to look for and those are the jobs we should be taking early in our careers and you absolutely will not make make more money than your friends in the short term you will have more joy on the journey and you will find yourself in in midlife in incredible love with your with your work and your life and hard work is not a problem so I think we confuse stress and passion because if you look when you're passionate for something well let's start the other way if you're stressed about something if you're if you have a high stress you work long hours you miss your family it's you toil you don't know with stress well what's passion you work long hours you miss your family you know the difference is the difference is is something I want to be a part of and something I don't want to be a part of that's the only difference the stress or passion is simply the result of whether this fits into something greater in my life but if you don't know why you showed up in the first place you're only gonna have stress mmm you can work doubly as hard and have passion you can be traveling all around the world miss your you can still miss your family you can still hate that side of it but you will love what you're doing and I think that too many of us miss out on that where we choose I'm interviewing a kid a long time ago who I this is when I worked in a when I had a job when I worked in the ad business and I I worked on a rinky-dink account under the radar because I chose the job based on who I'd be working for who's one of the best leaders I've ever had best bosses I've ever had to this day Peter into Maggio and I said to you want to work for us and he says no I said why not he goes well I want to work on Kodak you know IBM whatever name brands American Express I'm like but all the heavy lifting is done there don't want to come build some things like no no I and it was now in this LinkedIn Instagram world where and I've talked to some young people about this which is being able to put something on linkedin that sounds good to everybody else is actually more important to some than actually doing something that sounds terrible to everybody else but it brings you personal joy like appearances that become a little too important and these are life decisions hmm these are life decisions your fake life is more important than your a life is more important than your real life which of course is greatly exacerbated by all social media human beings are like that all the time right it's worse with social media right now everyone's actually watching and you can actually count the number of people that watched yeah we're noting by the way that notwithstanding the fact that Sam and I are both on social media there is a tremendous amount of research that is emerging showing that social media is a net public bath that the more time you spend on social media the less happy you will be precisely speaking to Simon's point that you will be pursuing your fake life and crowding out your real life your choice yeah I mean there's good data on this people who spend more time on Facebook suffer high rates of depression than people who spend less time on Facebook there's nothing wrong with social media it's about balance right there's nothing wrong with cell phones about it's about balance like alcohol like a glass of alcohol a day is good for you a glass of wine for you day is good for you that doesn't mean a bottle of wine today is better for you you know balanced gambling is fun gambling your kids you know college education not a good idea I'm just writing all this down yeah so so it's there's nothing wrong with those things but I think the problem is for too many of us the balance has become lost exactly right for for good and bad reasons exactly right so I've got one more quick question that i'ma turn over the audience so the reason I mentioned that is because as I asked the last question I want you to get your your questions ready and we're gonna have people with microphones are gonna run around and I'm gonna try to see you and I'm gonna call on you but but the last question is this we've been talking about start with Y and we've been tangentially talking about leaders eat last because there are a lot of themes that we've touched on from that book to also out here I think and I really recommend that highly what's your new book and why are you writing it oh it's exciting I actually know I say is exciting so I'm a little different meaning he's excited because I this is why I'm a little different and I'm a little different than a lot of authors which is either I wrote start with why I thought was done I never thought I'd write one book and after I wrote one book I thought I was done I used to joke that I was a one-trick pony but it was a good trick and I I feel no urge to write books unless I have something to write about and when I feel that I have something to write about it's usually because I'm trying to solve a problem for myself or someone else in my travels and readings I stumble upon something that I think has is interesting I build upon that it kind of clicks and somebody says can you come and tell us about this people invite me to talk about it and then invariably I have dinner with my publisher and he says yeah we should publish that and that's usually what happens and I stumbled upon this idea that I've fallen in love with here's how I start the book 1968 Vietnam the North Vietnamese launched a surprise attack against American forces it's called the Tet Offensive Tet is the Vietnamese equivalent of Christmas and like the Christmas armistice in World War one there was a tradition in Vietnam where there was no fighting on Tet this has been for decades no fighting on 10th but on this Tet in 1968 they decided to violate that tradition and surprise the Americans they threw 85,000 troops at about a hundred and fifty targets across the entire country that day here's the amazing thing the United States repelled every single attack and at the end of about the major fighting had ceased after about a week way went on for about a month but the major fighting ceased after about a week and after that week the United States had lost fewer than a thousand troops so a few hundred troops North Vietnam lost thirty five thousand of the 85,000 troops and if you look at the Vietnam War as a whole over ten years America lost fifty eight thousand troops North Vietnam lost three million right and if America actually won nearly if not every single battle we fought so explain to me how you win every battle and decimate your enemy and lose the war right so what it shows us is that the idea of winning and losing is not entirely object objective or clear to many there are if you have at least one competitor you have a game and there are two types of games there are finite games and there are infinite games now finite games defined as known players fixed rules and an agreed upon objective football we all agree by the rules we all agree whether has more points at the end of the game as the winner the game ends we go home then you have an infinite game an infinite game is defined as known and known unknown players the rules are changeable and the objective is to perpetuate the game to keep the game and play to stay in the game when you pit a finite player versus a finite player the system is stable football is stable when you pit an infinite player versus an infinite player the system is also stable the Cold War was stable because we could not have a winner or a loser and we both play to stay in the game until one of the players runs out of the will or the resources to play and they drop out of the game but the game continues without without you with you or without you problems arise when you pit a finite player versus an infinite player because finite players are playing to win and infinite players are playing to keep playing and this was the mistake the Americans made in Vietnam America was fighting to beat the North Vietnamese and the North Vietnamese were fighting for their lives very different set of strategic choices right America didn't lose the Vietnam War they dropped out because they ran out of the will or the resource to continue to play I mean now if you look at our lives you look at the world you look at business there is no such thing as winning business right business is an infinite game the game of business has existed long before every single company on the planet and it will outlast every single company on the planet but if you listen to the language of most businesses they don't know the game they're in they talk about being number one they talk about beating their competition they talk about being the best based on what metrics revenue profit market share square footage number of employees based on what time frames a quarter a year five years 10 years 50 years I haven't agreed to your standards anybody can declare themselves number one if you get to choose your own metrics and you get to choose your own timeframes in other words there's no such thing as being number one there's only ahead and behind that's all there is and so that means that most companies are playing business like north like america played the vietnam war you will eventually run out of the will of the resources to play which means bankruptcy or merger and acquisition and you will fall out of the game and the game will continue with you without you and this became really clear to me with a personal experience i had i spoke at an education summit for microsoft and i spoke in an education summit for apple at the microsoft summit 70 or 80 percent of the executives spent 70 to 80 percent of their powerpoints talking about how to beat Apple at the Apple summit a hundred percent of the executives spent a hundred percent of their time talking about how to help teachers teach and how to help students learn one was obsessed with their cause the other was obsessed with beating their competition guess which one was in quagmire mmm right so at the end of my talk at Microsoft they gave me a gift they gave me the new Zune when it was a thing this is their answer to the iPod and this little piece of technology was spectacular it was beautifully designed it worked flawlessly the user interface was incredible it was amazing so at the end of my talk with Apple I'm sharing a taxi with a very senior Apple executive and I decided to stir the pot so I couldn't help myself and I turned to my say you know I spoke at Microsoft and they gave me the new Zune it is so much better than your iPod touch and he looked at me and he said I have no doubt and the conversation was over because the infinite player understands sometimes your product is better and sometimes their product is better and sometimes you're ahead and sometimes you're behind the goal is not to beat your competition the goal is to have last your competition okay now give it to me before we turn over the audience turn that into life advice for every person sitting in here but he's not every person in here is actually running a car absolutely every single person in this audience has to deserves to live a happier life starting tonight so what does it mean to live an infinite life our lives are finite clearly but life is infinite and if you play by the finite rules in your life you're playing a game of accumulation how to be number one how to get the most money how to get the most power right whatever your metric is and if you have more money and more power than everybody else when you die you don't Wyn life it's just over right but if you play by the infinite rules the question is how do you outlive yourself right how do you live a life that others are better because you were in their life how do you live a life that when you're gone they will say I am Who I am or this is how it is because of that person's contribution we have forgotten millions and billions of people who have died over the course of humanity but we remember people like Martin Luther King Mahatma Ghandi Mother Teresa because they contributed to something bigger than themselves they do not live in infamy but they live as sort of a reminder to us of what we can do for others now that's big and macro and service to mankind but we can live those lives in micro fashion as well we all have a mentor or a grandparent somebody that is for him in our lives that we think back with fondness that we may put a picture of them I have a picture of my grandfather in my bedroom he had a profound impact on me he lived an infinite life for me right so how do you make choices on a daily basis that you will literally outlive your own life that's what it means to live an infinite life I'm turning it over to you now we have 15 minutes left and I want to hear what's on your mind we have microphones and we have hands in the air and those are both really good things so right here I see a hand waving which is emphatic and good so please that we're gonna wait we're gonna Mike's gonna come back to you please stand up and and tell us your name and and what's on your mind hi my name is Aaron Hall I saw your TED talk six years ago when I owned boarded a Tesla I've been teaching AP government in civics for 20 years as well and not if but when you talk to my high school civics classes what are you going to tell them about civic engagement and making the country a better place for them and their grandkids do you know all these studies about inner-city schools that teach civics absolutely yeah you know for those who don't know and you you know the statistics better than I do but basically kids who learn civics outperform kids who don't learn civic like profoundly and are happier people and under civics teaches us our responsibility to to our society that paying taxes is not a thing to avoid paying taxes is a social responsibility that goes to the and the thing we're voting for is how the world our taxes be properly spent things like that and I think that I'm a huge fan of that because what we're doing is teaching in schools cooperation and responsibility to community which I think few if any other subjects actually teach it's the accumulation of grades or you know I read a thing on on the interwebs today that was really fun he's like so glad I learned about parallelograms instead of taxes because it'll help me during pala parallelogram season but civics is practical that was written by my son Carla right by the way so III think that we don't do enough in schools to teach kids cooperation and group projects and shared grades and share and and and what it means to help the person next to you and and I think there are all kinds of ways we can do it anything schools are becoming like parents are partially to blame there have been some schools that have attempted to ban cellphones in the schools and it's the parents who complained and the parents who prevented the schools from passing those rules because in case there's an emergency more like I have to text my kid until what time I'm picking him up you know because there's an emergency you call the office they get the kid out of school and the old system works fine just saying so you're free sometime in April or May if I get my book written on time yes yeah which is to say no the all right we've got one yeah it's it's we're gonna come here and then we're gonna go to the back so we go to this side and and he half stood up which gives him special there we go and you got a mic in your hand yes sir he brought up Josh here I too was shown the Golden Circle video I think six years ago so thank you for your welcome changing my life thanks for being a part of it I recently saw your video about Millennials and instant gratification and how do you balance a difference between instant gratification and ambition I think our generation has access to more information and more opportunities we're always looking for what's next and what's been yeah and you know progress our career yeah is it such a bad thing to want more sooner yeah there's nothing wrong with ambition as long as it doesn't come at the expense of others right you're allowed to work to advance yourself but you can't stab people to do it and the irony about ambition is if we put ourselves out there to help other as others help us if you volunteer to offer somebody support they'll be there for you the number of people who over the course of years will say you helped me years ago now I'm gonna help you back and you're far more likely to advance with loyal people around you in other words ambition works better for human beings when we actually are more cooperative I think the difference is when we when we have ambition there's there's something that we're trying to strive towards it's a marathon right whereas instant gratification is I just want to run a mile I don't care in which direction and you keep you know you keep hitting all of these milestones like that guy who kept making more money every job he took he made more money take more money but in in service of nothing that's not think that's actually ambition I think ambition is the desire to advance something bigger than yourself and that that's I think healthy ambition I think unhealthy ambition is I want to be rich and I want to be famous but it'll come at great expense to you and those around you if I can translate this and just into I think Simon's speak ambition should be to serve your why as opposed to serve your how and to serve your what which are inherently gestures and futility I never lead to anything that's satisfying it raises an interesting question about language which is we have too many words in the English language that have that have multiple meanings and so the words actually cause problems right like my favorite one now is when when companies somewhat fail fast fail fast failure is good they say we can see you it's lovely Oh fail that serves people here yeah and and the problem with that is is the word failure is too big it's like cancer right you can have liver cancer or you can have a melanoma and the doctor will tell you it can't one has a 99% chance of curing the other one you're it's a death sentence but the doctor tells you you have cancer that's the problem it's the same word and so failure is bad we don't want to fail but falling is good fall fast and get back up right and I think ambition is the other one it's it's a it's a word that is too many things and we need to to sort of probably come up with a second word to bifurcate so we can call one ambition whether that one's the healthier and unhealthy one we can call the other one commitment to one's why they're the same thing right in the back in the back of very back row there's a two-for-one here if that's okay because she's standing right next to me I know she's going to sorry so I have a question about so much of your why I think from what I understand falls under the umbrella of helping others and helping other people find their passions and they're wise but I know that I've been thinking about this a lot especially living in New York and especially when it's really goddamn cold outside and there's people outside you know asking for money and this and that where do you draw the line between helping one person or a few people and like trying to save the world ah such a great question yeah so service to your why and service to a cause is not charity right and I have no problem saying no to things that don't help advance my cause because you can't help everyone right and even mother Teresa gonna get myself in trouble in some of her letters that they discovered after she died started saying to herself she first of all she wasn't happy it turns out and she started questioning like this unbridled service to others like what does it all mean right and what a why does is it provides focus that you give to things that actually make you feel like you contributed to something for the most part right to something something that actually matters to you as opposed to everything and the good news is there's enough variety and the wise that hopefully everything gets taken care of you don't have to be responsible for everything but lots of people can be responsible for everything and so the opportunities to stay stay focused and you do the things that you believe are helping advance advance that thing so for me like for example we're talking about you're talking about helping it people on the street of course it's nice to do that now and then but I to give my money in places that sort of advance sort of my vision and that makes me feel like I'm working to something bigger than myself but yeah be not be under no illusion it doesn't mean giving to everything to everyone all the time if anything it's teaching men how to fish and those opportunities Street homelessness is a particularly difficult question that people who study this subject that they're wrapped around the axle on this as well it's very important to keep in mind that that there are unintended secondary consequences to acting charitably in certain cases and street homelessness is one of those cases and so thinking about the ethics of that thinking through exactly how you can help people the most as opposed to simply getting somebody off your back is an important distinction as well did I ever tell you the experiment I did on the homeless oh no you did an experiment on the homeless yeah but you know is really good so I wanted to make the point that all selling was the same whether you're Microsoft or whether you're homeless right which is you're selling something and you want to market to people to give to you to buy from you right so the homeless are selling goodwill right if you walk past somebody homeless and you give them a dollar you feel good if you give them nothing you feel nothing or you feel bad you pay for that feeling of goodwill right there's a there's a transaction which means they're marketing the sale of goodwill the problem is their marketing is the same as companies it's all about me me me me me like bigger memory more screen you know bigger screen more this more that it's all about the product that's what they do I'm homeless I'm hungry I got six kids I'm a veteran like it's all on there right hoping to appeal to someone to give to them but it's all about them so I wanted to prove that if you make it about the buyer if you make it about something else that it's actually more effective so I found somebody who was homeless and I found out that she makes between twenty to thirty dollars a day of selling goodwill and her work days eight to ten hours of sitting on the street with her little sign and her sign was typical I'm homeless I'm hungry and and $30 is a very good day for her right so I asked her if I could change her sign and with the new sign that I gave her she made $40 in two hours and then she left because she's made the decision in her life that she only needs $20 a day I should say on the zoo live and tell me what you see sign said this is a wife hat too by the way a sign said if you only give once a month please think of me next time because what I did was I wouldn't ask people why I don't give I didn't ask people why they do give and I heard two predominant answers I can't give to everyone and how do I know they're legitimate so I answered both the questions if you only give once a month I know you kind of give to everyone I'll be please think of me next time I'm legit and it worked and so when I see homeless people now I buy him a pen and a piece of cardboard and give them a better sign by the way there's one thing that you can do as well which is pretty interesting which is said if you don't want to pass somebody by and say and give nothing ask a homeless person for something and ask yourself why do I need this person how do I need this person and maybe you ask that person for a piece of advice maybe directions life advice something's on my mind what would you do maybe you ask that person for a prayer on your behalf but in so doing what have you done you've given that person dignity and ultimately this is what we all need and this is what every single one of us deserves because we're all equal and we're all possessing and should be cognizant of our the radical equality of our human dignity and that's one way that you can bring something that's as valuable or more so I've always been impressed by the people who just stop and hang out and talk to that that somebody who's homeless they just sit and talk to them there's no actually transaction they just have been talking make it's it's its dignity mmm I'm not looking down upon you I'm gonna actually sit down next to you and just have a chat with you yeah next time something's wrong in your life ask a homeless person for vice incredible you actually might get good advice so okay we've gone to a tangent and we might be here for an hour talking about philanthropy and street homelessness but let's move on to the next let's move on to this side in the front okay I said I'm gonna talk to him looking at you right here okay and we've got a mic coming to you see this was charitable by the way because he gave his question away he was hoping for a twofer I knew I was hoping for hi so you spoke earlier about this idealized world that you would hope to see but what I'm curious about is the things that you would say are keeping that idealized world from being realized that's funny I've actually it's a hard question for me because I'm so focused on the things that are working you know I like to joke that it's embarrassing that I have a career because I talk about trust and cooperation there should be no demand for my work but the fact that there is demand for my work means that people are asking about these things and curious about these things and want these things which is a good thing I think the things that are holding us back are the things that are referred to before I think incentive structures inside organizations incentivize behavior that is bad for us like it's actually bad for our health and it's bad for the health of organizations I think that the the excessive pressures from outside forces I think are bad for us the lack of cause the lack of the lack of vision you know vision is not a ten year plan to reach some financial metric that's not a vision you know the number of companies that keep telling me vision 2020 is this number of vision and I think there's just a I think it's what Arthur said it before we it's it's a leadership crisis we need more leaders like just go back 20 or 30 years right and it put your it doesn't matter what your politics were but just you you had Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and lek Valencia and VATS Locke Havel and Mikhail Gorbachev and whether you agree with them or disagree with them they stood for things and they rallied people across aisles and they made us feel good and inspired and they were willing to sacrifice and more importantly they were that they inspired other people to be willing to sacrifice name like a couple people you know you politics that actually inspire us to want to sacrifice for cause greater than ourselves sure Oprah's great but she's not a politician yeah no she's not apologizing yet and give me someone young right not people in look like Warren Buffett yeah he's gonna die in a decade he's not give me somebody young who's gonna inspire us look at the time folks yeah so no he's a great example there's a lot of great examples but they're old and we need who's rallying us you know where are we showing up and we're showing up to causes but there's nobody who's out there pioneering that cause who's who's giving a face to the cause so my complaint is we need more leaders everywhere and you don't have to run a company or run for office you know leadership can come at any level it has nothing to do with rank it's the choice to look after the person to the left of you and the choice to look after the person to the right of you and commit to seeing that those around you succeed and we need more of that everyone in this room has a responsibility to be the leader you wish you had and that's the thing that's getting in the way that's why companies need to teach leadership they don't you get a job somewhere when you're really junior and they give you tons of training how to do your job and they promote you and they give you no training on how to lead others no wonder we have no leaders who taught us nobody teaches us hmm or coming up here to the front on the left to give shorter answers we got a mic coming to you right now my name is Joni I'm thinking about your comment or your wife's comment at least we know he he's not cheating there statistics data shows us the 70% of students are cheating now parents are cheating they're writing their papers they're editing their papers so much for that parents are saying we we finished our applications we did this we did that this issue of integrity I think which cuts through the why yeah how do you apply the golden to issues so for example if you're running an organization or I run a school and I see integrity as a driving issue yeah that impacts everything that this school is doing and the leaders are not yeah facing this how do you apply this to issues yeah you want to take a crack well I want to hear what you have to say but I think it's actually worth pointing out that every single one of us can be more honest give me more every single one of us shades the truth all the time and there are lots of reasons to do it one of these to protect ourselves from harm one of the reasons that we do it is to get ahead and what it's just to say to protect your reputation and sometimes is to protect other's feelings those are like kind of the three canonical reasons for shading the truth right there's a lot of research on lying actually and lying is common and is becoming more common and particularly among young people that we find the interesting and the alarming thing as they tend to justify lying as if they were protecting others when in point of fact they are protecting themselves so well here's what I recommended to all of us we're talking about cheating but thinking about any dishonesty thinking about something where you're bending the rules when you've done that why did you do that and be honest with yourself even before you're honest with others never shade the truth to protect yourself and now here's the gist goal go an hour without doing it and then go a whole day without doing it and you're gonna pay a cost by the way you're gonna pay a cost when somebody asks you a difficult question and you don't want to give the answer and you pretend that you're protecting somebody's feelings but you're actually trying to protect yourself and your own reputation but the dividends are huge with respect to your own integrity because the smart person who is more integrated is happier is more joyful has clearer vision Simon Simon what do you think of my answer so it's more about integrity it goes to finite an infinite right which is which is I'm playing by finite rules my kid has to get into this school my kid has to get this job my kid has to get this my kid has to get that and I'll do whatever it takes to get them there and that's their playing by a plank they're living life and manage worse they're managing their kids lives based on the finite rules and the problem is there is no winning exactly and and that we have this twisted concept in how we're managing our lives and helping our kids in terms of wins and losses the short term it's the short term and and and we said it's pervasive it's been building and building since the 80s and 90s is pervasive to the point now it's affecting parenting exactly so so so so bye so if somebody learns leadership at work right and I did we I'm actually not a business guy but but like during the Great Depression the unemployment rate was 25% during the last recession it was 9 or 10 right good stable unemployment is 4 4 so what I hear is even when 25 percent I don't have jobs 75 percent do so if you want to get two people get them at work and it's too hard to go to everybody's home and say let's learn leadership but if I can get companies to teach leadership lots of people who work in companies are parents and you learn skills like conflict resolution you weren't you learn things like effective communication you learn things like effective confrontation these are all skills that are parenting skills so the belief is that if we build leaders in the most efficient way possible which is at work they become better parents that's the belief we're not teaching leadership at all there's a book that just came out called the end of loyalty where companies are no longer loyal to people and people are no longer loyal to companies everything is about short term short term short term and unfortunately that mentality now pervades parenting so we have to do the hard work we've probably lost a generation but we have to do the hard work of going back to what - to be a parent which doesn't mean necessarily helping your kid get the job at any expense or get into the school at any cost we've run out of our formal time but she's gonna be outside is actually yeah because your babysitter is has to leave we go a little but we can't tell you what we're gonna do we're going to retire to the festival but I want to do one thing before we do I want to sum up I want to sum up three big lessons that we've learned here from talking to Simon okay number one lesson number one is the secret to leadership I mean there's a lot of it there's a lot of detail in here but this is the one thing for you to remember about leadership is solidarity with others the one thing for you to remember is to be a good leader is to be somebody who loves others and shows your love when you lead if you lead not necessarily with empathy but with compassion to do what people actually need to be honest to have integrity and most importantly to remember that you are them and they are you that's the principle of solidarity based leadership and that's lesson number one do you know Laurie Robinson general organs I had to do I met her oh she's the best so there's a four-star general in the United States Air Force who's the first female ever to be a combatant commander she's in charge of NORTHCOM she was just on the cover of Time magazine a few a few months ago she's amazing Laurie refers to all of those in her command she always has since she was she was younger refers to all of those in her command as my kids regardless of their age always refers to my kids she in other words she has that deep love of those and who are who she has authority over but she always refers them as my kids it's been a magical thing hmm lesson number two Simon's not soft he thinks fighting is good and he thinks competition is good the problem is fighting against things raging against the world fighting against someone else fighting against some other organizations some other party some other company fighting is good when you're fighting for things you're fighting for people you're fighting for causes so fight fight like crazy but fight for people fight against things lesson number three is your why and this is your money back guarantee on being a happier person by tomorrow if you do the work what's your why have you done your homework have you thought about your product today or your purpose have you thought about the value that you're offering to the rest of the world and have you put it into words can you say it in ten words or less about what your Y is if you can't that's pretty normal but you need to answer that question and that's going to take the time to ask others to consider it in the silence of your room to go to sleep for the next seven nights thinking about it but here's the goal before we get to February first know what it is know what your Y is and make sure the people that you love and the people that you lead they know your Y as well that will give you purpose and it will give other people more meaning and joy and happiness and fulfillment in their lives which ultimately is the Y that we all should share ladies and gentlemens simon Sinek [Applause]

Channel: 92nd Street Y

Views: 8,483

Rating: 4.9455781 out of 5

Keywords: 92Y, 92nd Street Y, arthur brooks, simon sinek, politics, TED, TED talks, leadership, CEO, business

Id: aXfgIYMrJ7c

Length: 75min 50sec (4550 seconds)

Published: Mon May 13 2019