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How Great Leaders Inspire Action | Simon Sinek | TED

TED

youtube· 17:57standard

1.Unexplained Successes and Failures

0:00 / 2:00

The speaker introduces a puzzle: why do some organizations and leaders, like Apple, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Wright brothers, achieve extraordinary success that defies conventional assumptions, while others with seemingly better resources fail? This sets the stage for exploring a deeper underlying pattern.

  • Innovation Paradox
  • Apple's Innovation
  • Martin Luther King Jr.'s Leadership
  • Wright Brothers' Achievement

What's inside this course

  1. 0:00

    1. Unexplained Successes and Failures

    The speaker introduces a puzzle: why do some organizations and leaders, like Apple, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Wright brothers, achieve extraordinary success that defies conventional assumptions, while others with seemingly better resources fail? This sets the stage for exploring a deeper underlying pattern.

  2. 2:00

    2. The Golden Circle Discovery

    The speaker reveals a profound discovery made three and a half years prior: all great, inspiring leaders and organizations think, act, and communicate in the exact same way, which is the opposite of everyone else. This pattern is codified into a simple idea called 'The Golden Circle'.

  3. 3:20

    3. Defining Why, How, and What

    The Golden Circle is explained: 'What' refers to what an organization does, 'How' describes how they do it (differentiated value), and 'Why' is their purpose, cause, or belief. Most organizations communicate from the outside-in (What to Why), but inspiring leaders communicate from the inside-out (Why to What).

  4. 5:17

    4. Apple's Communication Strategy

    Using Apple as an example, the speaker illustrates the difference between outside-in and inside-out communication. A typical, uninspiring marketing message focuses on 'What' and 'How', while Apple's actual communication starts with 'Why' (challenging the status quo) and then moves to 'How' and 'What', making it highly inspiring.

  5. 6:43

    5. People Buy Why You Do It

    The core message is emphasized: people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. This explains why consumers are comfortable buying diverse products from Apple, a computer company, but not from competitors like Gateway or Dell, even when those competitors offer similar products.

  6. 8:23

    6. The Goal: Attract Believers

    The speaker clarifies that the goal is not to do business with everyone who needs what you have, but rather with people who believe what you believe. This principle extends to hiring, where employees who share the organization's 'Why' will work with passion and dedication, beyond just a paycheck.

  7. 9:51

    7. Biology of the Golden Circle

    The Golden Circle is not just a marketing concept but is grounded in biology, specifically the human brain. The 'What' corresponds to the neocortex (rational thought), while the 'Why' and 'How' correspond to the limbic brain (feelings, decision-making, behavior). Communicating from the 'Why' directly engages the limbic brain, driving behavior and 'gut decisions'.

  8. 12:28

    8. Why Matters for Loyalty

    If you don't know your 'Why', it's difficult to inspire loyalty from customers or employees. People respond to 'Why' you do what you do. Hiring people who believe in your 'Why' leads to passionate, dedicated work, rather than just working for money.

  9. 13:35

    9. Wright Brothers vs. Langley

    The story of the Wright brothers and Samuel Pierpont Langley illustrates the power of 'Why'. Langley had all the conventional 'recipes for success' (money, talent, connections) but was driven by fame and riches. The Wright brothers, despite lacking resources, were driven by a belief in changing the world, inspiring loyalty and ultimately achieving powered flight.

  10. 17:35

    10. Law of Diffusion of Innovation

    The speaker introduces the Law of Diffusion of Innovation, which categorizes people into innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. To achieve mass-market success, a tipping point of 15-18% market penetration (innovators and early adopters) must be reached.

Every chapter ends with a checkpoint (quiz, flashcards, retell, diagram, or prediction) and the course closes with a final boss-fight. More courses →

Full transcript of “How Great Leaders Inspire Action | Simon Sinek | TED”

— 382 segments
0:16How do you explain when things don't go as we assume?
0:20Or better, how do you explain
0:23when others are able to achieve things that seem to defy all of the assumptions?
0:27For example:
0:29Why is Apple so innovative?
0:31Year after year, after year,
0:33they're more innovative than all their competition.
0:36And yet, they're just a computer company.
0:38They're just like everyone else.
0:40They have the same access to the same talent,
0:42the same agencies,
0:43the same consultants, the same media.
0:45Then why is it that they seem to have something different?
0:50Why is it that Martin Luther King led the Civil Rights Movement?
0:54He wasn't the only man who suffered in pre-civil rights America,
0:58and he certainly wasn't the only great orator of the day.
1:01Why him?
1:02And why is it that the Wright brothers
1:05were able to figure out controlled, powered man flight
1:08when there were certainly other teams
1:10who were better qualified, better funded --
1:13and they didn't achieve powered man flight,
1:16and the Wright brothers beat them to it.
1:18There's something else at play here.
1:21About three and a half years ago, I made a discovery.
1:25And this discovery profoundly changed my view on how I thought the world worked,
1:31and it even profoundly changed the way in which I operate in it.
1:37As it turns out, there's a pattern.
1:40As it turns out, all the great inspiring leaders and organizations in the world,
1:44whether it's Apple or Martin Luther King or the Wright brothers,
1:47they all think, act and communicate the exact same way.
1:51And it's the complete opposite to everyone else.
1:55All I did was codify it,
1:57and it's probably the world's simplest idea.
2:01I call it the golden circle.
2:12Why? How? What?
2:14This little idea explains
2:16why some organizations and some leaders are able to inspire where others aren't.
2:20Let me define the terms really quickly.
2:22Every single person, every single organization on the planet
2:25knows what they do, 100 percent.
2:29Some know how they do it,
2:31whether you call it your differentiated value proposition
2:34or your proprietary process or your USP.
2:36But very, very few people or organizations know why they do what they do.
2:41And by "why" I don't mean "to make a profit."
2:43That's a result. It's always a result.
2:45By "why," I mean: What's your purpose?
2:47What's your cause? What's your belief?
2:50Why does your organization exist?
2:53Why do you get out of bed in the morning?
2:56And why should anyone care?
2:58As a result, the way we think, we act,
3:00the way we communicate is from the outside in, it's obvious.
3:03We go from the clearest thing to the fuzziest thing.
3:06But the inspired leaders and the inspired organizations --
3:09regardless of their size, regardless of their industry --
3:13all think, act and communicate from the inside out.
3:18Let me give you an example.
3:19I use Apple because they're easy to understand and everybody gets it.
3:23If Apple were like everyone else,
3:25a marketing message from them might sound like this:
3:29"We make great computers.
3:31They're beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly.
3:35Want to buy one?"
3:37"Meh."
3:38That's how most of us communicate.
3:40That's how most marketing and sales are done,
3:43that's how we communicate interpersonally.
3:45We say what we do,
3:47we say how we're different or better
3:48and we expect some sort of a behavior,
3:50a purchase, a vote, something like that.
3:52Here's our new law firm:
3:54We have the best lawyers with the biggest clients,
3:56we always perform for our clients.
3:58Here's our new car:
3:59It gets great gas mileage, it has leather seats.
4:02Buy our car.
4:03But it's uninspiring.
4:04Here's how Apple actually communicates.
4:08"Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo.
4:13We believe in thinking differently.
4:17The way we challenge the status quo
4:19is by making our products beautifully designed,
4:21simple to use and user friendly.
4:23We just happen to make great computers.
4:26Want to buy one?"
4:28Totally different, right?
4:29You're ready to buy a computer from me.
4:31I just reversed the order of the information.
4:34What it proves to us is that people don't buy what you do;
4:38people buy why you do it.
4:40This explains why every single person in this room
4:44is perfectly comfortable buying a computer from Apple.
4:47But we're also perfectly comfortable
4:49buying an MP3 player from Apple, or a phone from Apple,
4:52or a DVR from Apple.
4:54As I said before, Apple's just a computer company.
4:57Nothing distinguishes them structurally from any of their competitors.
5:00Their competitors are equally qualified to make all of these products.
5:04In fact, they tried.
5:05A few years ago, Gateway came out with flat-screen TVs.
5:08They're eminently qualified to make flat-screen TVs.
5:11They've been making flat-screen monitors for years.
5:13Nobody bought one.
5:18Dell came out with MP3 players and PDAs,
5:23and they make great quality products,
5:25and they can make perfectly well-designed products --
5:28and nobody bought one.
5:30In fact, talking about it now, we can't even imagine
5:33buying an MP3 player from Dell.
5:34Why would you buy one from a computer company?
5:36But we do it every day.
5:38People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it.
5:40The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have.
5:46The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.
5:51Here's the best part:
5:53None of what I'm telling you is my opinion.
5:55It's all grounded in the tenets of biology.
5:58Not psychology, biology.
6:00If you look at a cross-section of the human brain,
6:03from the top down, the human brain is actually broken
6:06into three major components
6:07that correlate perfectly with the golden circle.
6:10Our newest brain, our Homo sapien brain,
6:13our neocortex,
6:15corresponds with the "what" level.
6:17The neocortex is responsible
6:19for all of our rational and analytical thought and language.
6:23The middle two sections make up our limbic brains,
6:26and our limbic brains are responsible for all of our feelings,
6:29like trust and loyalty.
6:32It's also responsible for all human behavior,
6:34all decision-making,
6:36and it has no capacity for language.
6:39In other words, when we communicate from the outside in,
6:42yes, people can understand vast amounts of complicated information
6:45like features and benefits and facts and figures.
6:48It just doesn't drive behavior.
6:50When we can communicate from the inside out,
6:52we're talking directly to the part of the brain
6:55that controls behavior,
6:56and then we allow people to rationalize it with the tangible things we say and do.
7:00This is where gut decisions come from.
7:03Sometimes you can give somebody all the facts and figures,
7:06and they say, "I know what all the facts and details say,
7:09but it just doesn't feel right."
7:11Why would we use that verb, it doesn't "feel" right?
7:13Because the part of the brain that controls decision-making
7:16doesn't control language.
7:17The best we can muster up is,
7:19"I don't know. It just doesn't feel right."
7:21Or sometimes you say you're leading with your heart or soul.
7:24I hate to break it to you, those aren't other body parts
7:27controlling your behavior.
7:28It's all happening here in your limbic brain,
7:30the part of the brain that controls decision-making and not language.
7:34But if you don't know why you do what you do,
7:36and people respond to why you do what you do,
7:39then how will you ever get people
7:42to vote for you, or buy something from you,
7:44or, more importantly, be loyal
7:46and want to be a part of what it is that you do.
7:49The goal is not just to sell to people who need what you have;
7:52the goal is to sell to people who believe what you believe.
7:55The goal is not just to hire people who need a job;
7:59it's to hire people who believe what you believe.
8:02I always say that, you know,
8:04if you hire people just because they can do a job, they'll work for your money,
8:10but if they believe what you believe,
8:12they'll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.
8:15Nowhere else is there a better example than with the Wright brothers.
8:18Most people don't know about Samuel Pierpont Langley.
8:22And back in the early 20th century,
8:24the pursuit of powered man flight was like the dot com of the day.
8:27Everybody was trying it.
8:29And Samuel Pierpont Langley had, what we assume,
8:32to be the recipe for success.
8:35Even now, you ask people,
8:37"Why did your product or why did your company fail?"
8:39and people always give you the same permutation
8:42of the same three things:
8:43under-capitalized, the wrong people, bad market conditions.
8:46It's always the same three things, so let's explore that.
8:50Samuel Pierpont Langley
8:51was given 50,000 dollars by the War Department
8:54to figure out this flying machine.
8:56Money was no problem.
8:58He held a seat at Harvard
9:00and worked at the Smithsonian and was extremely well-connected;
9:03he knew all the big minds of the day.
9:05He hired the best minds money could find
9:09and the market conditions were fantastic.
9:11The New York Times followed him around everywhere,
9:14and everyone was rooting for Langley.
9:16Then how come we've never heard of Samuel Pierpont Langley?
9:20A few hundred miles away in Dayton, Ohio,
9:23Orville and Wilbur Wright,
9:24they had none of what we consider to be the recipe for success.
9:28They had no money;
9:30they paid for their dream with the proceeds from their bicycle shop.
9:34Not a single person on the Wright brothers' team
9:36had a college education,
9:37not even Orville or Wilbur.
9:39And The New York Times followed them around nowhere.
9:42The difference was,
9:44Orville and Wilbur were driven by a cause, by a purpose, by a belief.
9:48They believed that if they could figure out this flying machine,
9:52it'll change the course of the world.
9:56Samuel Pierpont Langley was different.
9:58He wanted to be rich, and he wanted to be famous.
10:00He was in pursuit of the result.
10:02He was in pursuit of the riches.
10:04And lo and behold, look what happened.
10:06The people who believed in the Wright brothers' dream
10:10worked with them with blood and sweat and tears.
10:12The others just worked for the paycheck.
10:14They tell stories of how every time the Wright brothers went out,
10:17they would have to take five sets of parts,
10:20because that's how many times they would crash before supper.
10:24And, eventually, on December 17th, 1903,
10:28the Wright brothers took flight,
10:30and no one was there to even experience it.
10:32We found out about it a few days later.
10:36And further proof that Langley was motivated by the wrong thing:
10:40the day the Wright brothers took flight,
10:42he quit.
10:43He could have said,
10:45"That's an amazing discovery, guys,
10:47and I will improve upon your technology," but he didn't.
10:50He wasn't first, he didn't get rich, he didn't get famous, so he quit.
10:55People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it.
10:57If you talk about what you believe,
10:59you will attract those who believe what you believe.
11:02But why is it important to attract those who believe what you believe?
11:08Something called the law of diffusion of innovation,
11:10if you don't know the law, you know the terminology.
11:13The first 2.5% of our population are our innovators.
11:17The next 13.5% of our population are our early adopters.
11:23The next 34% are your early majority,
11:24your late majority and your laggards.
11:28The only reason these people buy touch-tone phones
11:30is because you can't buy rotary phones anymore.
11:33(Laughter)
11:34We all sit at various places at various times on this scale,
11:37but what the law of diffusion of innovation tells us
11:40is that if you want mass-market success or mass-market acceptance of an idea,
11:45you cannot have it until you achieve this tipping point
11:49between 15 and 18 percent market penetration,
11:52and then the system tips.
11:55I love asking businesses, "What's your conversion on new business?"
11:59They love to tell you, "It's about 10 percent," proudly.
12:01Well, you can trip over 10% of the customers.
12:03We all have about 10% who just "get it."
12:05That's how we describe them, right?
12:07That's like that gut feeling, "Oh, they just get it."
12:10The problem is: How do you find the ones that get it
12:12before doing business versus the ones who don't get it?
12:15So it's this here, this little gap that you have to close,
12:18as Jeffrey Moore calls it, "Crossing the Chasm" --
12:21because, you see, the early majority will not try something
12:24until someone else has tried it first.
12:28And these guys, the innovators and the early adopters,
12:31they're comfortable making those gut decisions.
12:33They're more comfortable making those intuitive decisions
12:36that are driven by what they believe about the world
12:40and not just what product is available.
12:42These are the people who stood in line for six hours
12:45to buy an iPhone when they first came out,
12:47when you could have bought one off the shelf the next week.
12:50These are the people who spent 40,000 dollars
12:52on flat-screen TVs when they first came out,
12:55even though the technology was substandard.
12:58And, by the way, they didn't do it because the technology was so great;
13:02they did it for themselves.
13:04It's because they wanted to be first.
13:06People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it
13:09and what you do simply proves what you believe.
13:12In fact, people will do the things that prove what they believe.
13:16The reason that person bought the iPhone in the first six hours,
13:21stood in line for six hours,
13:23was because of what they believed about the world,
13:26and how they wanted everybody to see them:
13:28they were first.
13:29People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it.
13:31So let me give you a famous example,
13:33a famous failure and a famous success of the law of diffusion of innovation.
13:38First, the famous failure.
13:39It's a commercial example.
13:41As we said before, the recipe for success
13:44is money and the right people and the right market conditions.
13:47You should have success then.
13:49Look at TiVo.
13:50From the time TiVo came out about eight or nine years ago
13:53to this current day,
13:54they are the single highest-quality product on the market,
13:58hands down, there is no dispute.
14:01They were extremely well-funded.
14:03Market conditions were fantastic.
14:04I mean, we use TiVo as verb.
14:06I TiVo stuff on my piece-of-junk Time Warner DVR all the time.
14:10(Laughter)
14:12But TiVo's a commercial failure.
14:14They've never made money.
14:16And when they went IPO,
14:18their stock was at about 30 or 40 dollars
14:20and then plummeted, and it's never traded above 10.
14:23In fact, I don't think it's even traded above six,
14:25except for a couple of little spikes.
14:27Because you see, when TiVo launched their product,
14:30they told us all what they had.
14:32They said, "We have a product that pauses live TV,
14:36skips commercials, rewinds live TV and memorizes your viewing habits
14:40without you even asking."
14:43And the cynical majority said,
14:45"We don't believe you.
14:47We don't need it. We don't like it.
14:50You're scaring us."
14:52What if they had said,
14:53"If you're the kind of person who likes to have total control
14:58over every aspect of your life,
15:01boy, do we have a product for you.
15:04It pauses live TV, skips commercials,
15:06memorizes your viewing habits, etc., etc."
15:09People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it,
15:12and what you do simply serves as the proof of what you believe.
15:16Now let me give you a successful example of the law of diffusion of innovation.
15:21In the summer of 1963,
15:24250,000 people showed up on the mall in Washington
15:28to hear Dr. King speak.
15:31They sent out no invitations,
15:34and there was no website to check the date.
15:37How do you do that?
15:39Well, Dr. King wasn't the only man in America
15:41who was a great orator.
15:44He wasn't the only man in America who suffered
15:46in a pre-civil rights America.
15:48In fact, some of his ideas were bad.
15:50But he had a gift.
15:52He didn't go around telling people what needed to change in America.
15:56He went around and told people what he believed.
15:58"I believe, I believe, I believe," he told people.
16:01And people who believed what he believed
16:04took his cause, and they made it their own, and they told people.
16:07And some of those people created structures
16:09to get the word out to even more people.
16:12And lo and behold, 250,000 people showed up
16:15on the right day at the right time to hear him speak.
16:20How many of them showed up for him?
16:25Zero.
16:26They showed up for themselves.
16:28It's what they believed about America
16:31that got them to travel in a bus for eight hours
16:33to stand in the sun in Washington in the middle of August.
16:36It's what they believed, and it wasn't about black versus white:
16:3925% of the audience was white.
16:43Dr. King believed that there are two types of laws in this world:
16:46those that are made by a higher authority and those that are made by men.
16:50And not until all the laws that are made by men
16:53are consistent with the laws made by the higher authority
16:56will we live in a just world.
16:58It just so happened that the Civil Rights Movement
17:00was the perfect thing to help him bring his cause to life.
17:04We followed, not for him, but for ourselves.
17:07By the way, he gave the "I have a dream" speech,
17:10not the "I have a plan" speech.
17:12(Laughter)
17:15Listen to politicians now, with their comprehensive 12-point plans.
17:18They're not inspiring anybody.
17:20Because there are leaders and there are those who lead.
17:23Leaders hold a position of power or authority,
17:27but those who lead inspire us.
17:32Whether they're individuals or organizations,
17:34we follow those who lead, not because we have to,
17:37but because we want to.
17:40We follow those who lead, not for them, but for ourselves.
17:46And it's those who start with "why"
17:48that have the ability to inspire those around them
17:53or find others who inspire them.
17:56Thank you very much.
17:58(Applause)