Simon Sinek’s Start With Why Part3: Leaders Need a Following

Start With Why Part3 Book Club With Simon Sinek

Chapter 6 The Emergence of Trust

Let’s say a soldier, why do they trust their life under the order of someone else? Because of the rank? Or something more? And why would someone trust us with their life? I feel it is more of the character of the leader than everything else. Especially when it comes down to survival, a lot of considerations are out of the window.

Similar to General Lori Robinson’s principle of serving those who serve her, You have to be the voice of the people who would follow you (The same theme witnessed in every election – let those who would follow you be heard), bringing issues to higher management and to stand up for them when they were treated unfairly.

Personally for me, how great a leader is, is determined by those following him or her, which brings back to the point of why we would deserve how much they are willing to sacrifice for us? How and what we should do to reach their hearts?

Chapter 7 How A Tipping Point Tips

In this chapter, Simon describes how new product could fail due to a few reasons. “They don’t need it, don’t like it, don’t understand it or fear it.” These can also be translated to how influence may fail in a VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) environment.

Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA) Characteristics, Examples and Approach
Source: Harvard Business Review

No one person can effect a lasting change. For lasting change to occur, we need more “Buy-ins” to have succession. And storytelling is one of the powerful ways to influence or communicate; else myths and legends would have extinct long ago.

The chart below shows Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of innovations where Business truly takes off at the Tipping Point where the Early Majority starts resulting in skyrocketing exponential growth. But before that happens, results would be very low compared to the amount of effort spent as we do not have traction. Thus we need to be rooted and motivated by the Why as desired results (The Whats) won’t be coming as quickly as we hoped.

With successive groups of consumers adopting the new technology (shown in blue), its market share (yellow) will eventually reach the saturation level. The blue curve is broken into sections of adopters.
Source:  Wikipedia Diffusion of innovations

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