7 best quotes from Simon Sinek’s ‘Leaders Eat Last’

Amidst the frenzy of meeting deadlines, conferences and simultaneous projects, we often forget what keeps a team together and motivated in the long-run. Having worked in the fast-paced corporate world in the initial years of his career—Sinek has been through the gamut of toxic workplaces and horrible bosses. In his book, Leaders Eat Last, American author and inspirational speaker, Simon Sinek speaks about the core values and principles that must be integrated within the organisation. Sinek wrote the book nearly eight years ago, and yet, with rapidly changing work environment that lay an emphasis on work-life balance and an elimination of blatant hierarchies, the lessons which are primarily focused on caring for the people of an organisation more than targets, goals and numbers, seem promising even today. We picked out, what we consider to be some of the most important lessons and reminders of our times. 

“Leaders are the ones who run headfirst into the unknown. They rush toward the danger. They put their own interests aside to protect us or to pull us into the future. Leaders would sooner sacrifice what is theirs to save what is ours. And they would never sacrifice what is ours to save what is theirs. This is what it means to be a leader. It means they choose to go first into danger, headfirst toward the unknown. And when we feel sure they will keep us safe, we will march behind them and work tirelessly to see their visions come to life and proudly call ourselves their followers.” 

“And when a leader embraces their responsibility to care for people instead of caring for numbers, then people will follow, solve problems, and see to it that that leader’s vision comes to life the right way, a stable way and not the expedient way.” 

“Those who have an opportunity to work in organisations that treat them like human beings to be protected rather than a resource to be exploited come home at the end of the day with an intense feeling of fulfillment and gratitude. This should be the rule for all of us, not the exception. Returning from work feeling inspired, safe, fulfilled and grateful is a natural human right to which we are all entitled and not a modern luxury that only a few lucky ones are able to find.” 

“If our leaders are to enjoy the trappings of their position in the hierarchy, then we expect them to offer us protection. The problem is, for many of the overpaid leaders, we know that they took the money and perks and didn’t offer protection to their people. In some cases, they even sacrificed their people to protect or boost their own interests. This is what so viscerally offends us. We only accuse them of greed and excess when we feel they have violated the very definition of what it means to be a leader.”

“Being a leader is like being a parent, and the company is like a new family to join. One that will care for us like we are their own . . . in sickness and in health. And if we are successful, our people will take on our company’s name as a sign of the family to which they are loyal.”

“For most of us, we have warmer feelings for the projects we worked on where everything seemed to go wrong. We remember how the group stayed at work until 3:00 am, ate cold pizza and barely made the deadline. Those are the experiences we remember as some of our best days at work. It was not because of the hardship, per se, but because the hardship was shared. It is not the work we remember with fondness, but the camaraderie, how the group came together to get things done. And the reason is, once again, natural. In an effort to get us to help one another during times of struggle, our bodies release oxytocin. In other words, when we share the hardship, we biologically grow closer.” 

“If good people are asked to work in a bad culture, one in which leaders do not relinquish control, then the odds of something bad happening go up. People will be more concerned about following the rules out of fear of getting in trouble or losing their jobs than doing what needs to be done. And when that happens, souls will be lost.”