In his talk, Sinek, a leadership expert, asks why the modern workplace doesn’t look more like the military. The answer, he says, boils down to a difference in management strategy — in the military, leaders put their subordinates first.
“When a leader makes the choice to put the safety and lives of the people inside the organization first,” he says, “to sacrifice their comforts and sacrifice the tangible results, so that the people remain and feel safe and feel like they belong, remarkable things happen.”
Sinek argues that the key elements of any successful organization are trust and cooperation. That way, employees spend less time competing with each other and more time collaborating to protect themselves from the potential danger outside. It’s the leader’s responsibility to create a culture like this, starting by putting the organization’s interests above their own.
