The Key to Impactful Leadership | Simon Sinek

(drums beating) - Hey everybody, welcome to the show. This is Dernaline. This is the Dernaline show. I'm so stoked and optimistic that you will have an incredible time listening to this podcast because Simon Sinek is this insatiable optimist. He started the optimism company. Come on. Are you ready to sign up for the optimism company? Yeah, you are. Simon has broken the internet with some of his talks. His TED talk on the concept of why, giving real depth to what you're doing, specifically companies having real vision that goes beyond just the bottom line. It reaches out beyond that and really then creates that powerful aspect of what real companies can do and what real companies can create. He's been a New York Times bestseller, leaders eat last, the infinite game, a bit of optimism in addition, and then a couple books on the concept of why. Check out his TED talk, check out his books. They're incredible. We are here to help other people. Self-help is all over the place. Simon really feels that in order for us to really ignite that connective tissue that gives us real purpose, real positivity, real depth to our being and what we're doing is that is being a leader and reaching out beyond ourselves and in the fabric of helping other people. And I can't agree more. He's a trained ethnographer. He's fascinated by people and organizations that can make the greatest and the longest lasting impact. And that's what we need more than ever. His unconventional and innovative views on business and leadership will ignite something inside of you without a doubt. He's helped people in the government, the ran corporation, US military, you name it, he's been everywhere. This guy is all about vision, purpose, asking questions and igniting different conversations so that we have different outcomes. Enjoy and learn from a different way of thinking about you, your life, and what you're doing. And enjoy this amazing conversation with this amazing guy, Simon Sinek. You are listening to The Daron Olin Show. I am Darren. And it is my life's mission to find and share healthy and sustainable ways of living. In this podcast, I talk to inspiring people and professionals from around the world to uncover ways that we as humans can improve our lifestyles, strengthen our mindsets, and take better care of this beautiful planet we call home. If you're looking for motivation to take the next steps towards a happier, healthier life, then you're in the right place. And I'm stoked that you're here. So let's do this. This is my show The Daron Olin Show. Welcome, man. Super stoked to talk with you. And, man, Simon, you haven't busy. I was trying to prepare for this conversation. It's like there's a thousand and one questions and rabbit holes to go down. But what I really love, just a shout out to the optimism company, just that creation alone. And then the works behind it, I just want to give a clap right now. So thank you very much. Let's just jump into that. So the part of the maturation of your work, and it's pretty clear the mission of helping people rather than almost the overconsumption of self-help. So the framework of your own company, just give me a second on that and how you're looking to move that needle. - Yeah, so there's an entire section in the bookshop called Self Help. But there's no section in the bookshop called Help Others. And I think that's the thing we're missing. Since the 1970s when the self-help industry began, it's done very well for itself. And the question is, it has taught us a skill, but it's also teaching us to be preoccupied with ourselves. And I think as social animals, one of the things we've forgotten is we also need to learn to help each other. And if you look at some of the challenge that plague us today, whether it's disengagement at work or loneliness at home, or struggle to find the job we love, or find the relationship that we love, all of those things, the antidote to all of those things is another human being. And our ability to help somebody else find the thing that they're looking for actually gives us the thing we're looking for. And I'm living proof of that. It's when I learned the value of service, everything that I wanted to feel, everything that I wanted to achieve, started to fall in place, only when I learned to serve others first. - Yeah, that's beautiful. And just unpacking that a little bit, the idea of ethnographer, I'm curious like a step back from that, because 2009 you have this TED talk that blows up, you have the children's talk, it seems like every major talk, you're hitting a pulse point on what people want to hear, need to hear for you in exercising, leaning into this, how did you get to this point? And what was the impetus for you trying to figure some of this out, or why you started leaning into this? - Well, my work is semi-autobiographical, which is I'm dealing with my own challenges and finding solutions to those challenges. And if those solutions work, I share them with my friends. And if it works for them, then I realized there may be something there to share with other people. The reason I started the optimism company was to help others learn the skills of helping others, because I wouldn't be where I am today, but weren't for the help of others. And so when I did start with why, I was going through a period in my life where I had lost my passion for my own work. This is a theme that I think a lot of us have had. And people gave me stupid advice, like do what you love. I'm like, I'm doing the same thing, I don't love it anymore. Find your bliss. - Thank you. What the hell am I supposed to do with that? Like, it's all perfectly true. It's just not very actionable. It's not very practical. It wasn't until a dear friend of mine came to me when I was going through this really dark period of having lost my passion and was too embarrassed to tell people that I didn't wanna wake up and go to work, because superficial everything was fine. It wasn't until a dear friend of mine came to me and said something's different, something's wrong. Did I come clean? And lifting that weight off my shoulders gave me the breath that I could find a solution. And the solution was that I found was this thing called the why. I realized I knew what I did. I knew how I did it, but I couldn't tell you why I was doing it. And I became obsessed with finding my why. And it restored my passion to levels I'd never, ever experienced before. So I did what anybody would do. You share something beautiful with your friends. You read a great book, you see a great movie, you tell your friends, you gotta see this movie. Why did the same thing? I developed this little construction that I called the Golden Circle. Why, how what? That's helped organize our lives and our work quite frankly and our companies. The reason I called the Golden Circle is if you know the Golden Formula, it's this magical formula that seems to explain everything from leaves to beauty to snowflakes. And so when I realized the broad application of this magical little formula, I'm like, oh my god, I have to call it golden. But I shared it with my friends and my friends started making crazy life changes as well. And it was totally organic. Friends would say, can you come to my apartment and tell my friends about it? So you see the help others industry already happening already back then, which is each of my friends wanted to share it with their friends. And I would show up at someone's apartment in New York City and stand in the living room and tell a couple about this thing called the why and help people find their why for a hundred bucks on the side. And people just kept inviting me and I just kept saying yes. And before I knew it, I had an entirely different career talking about this thing called the why, which was not in the plan and something I embraced wholeheartedly because it brought me unbelievable joy. And it's one of the most common compliments I get, which I'm grateful for, which is people tell me all the time that they use my work to help them tell others what they're trying to say. And again, that I love that. I love the idea of sharing. And I think we're going through a phase in our society right now, where we hoard information and we hoard things because we think it gives us a leg up and we think gives us some sort of proprietary knowledge or advantage, whether an individual over other employees or a company over other companies. And at the end of the day, the more we can share about the things that we've learned, not only do all ships rise and a rising tide, but also it actually makes us more valuable. It makes us more valuable because we're the person who's willing to share. And at the end of the day, it's implementation that's difficult. It's not the idea. So yeah, I'm a great believer that if you find something that has value in your life, please share it with others because it might have value in theirs. - Yeah, beautifully said. I mean, as I was kind of going back through, I had heard a few of your talks and I was going back through and just the breaking down and articulating that thing, the Martin Luther King effect, the Apple example. It's the very clear example that you give of, like it's the what, but everyone's hyper focused on the what or the IP or the best idea. And like you said before in this golden circle idea, the why, and I just want to also thank you right now too, because I've been talking about the why for a very long time, trying to articulate it the best way I can and pass it on. But you've made it very simple and clear in that sense, like, shit, now I'm more efficient at unpacking it and also unpacking it for myself. And then even as I was getting ready to talk, with you. Other projects, other shows, other things that I'm doing. I'm like, oh shit. Like it's giving me material that's deeper and has depth and has meaning. And like you've said several times, you want to outlast. Talk about competition a little bit because my God, we're hyper focused on beating people, on being right, on competition. I'm afraid of it. I need to work hard to like talk about that a little bit. How we can shift that culture. My life and my work has been very much influenced by a philosopher named Dr. James Karst. When the mid 1980s defined these two types of games, finite games and infinite games. Finite game is defined as known players, fixed rules, and it agreed upon objective. Football, baseball. If there's a winner, necessarily, there have to be losers. And there's always a beginning and middle and end to a finite game. Then you have infinite games. Infinite games are defined as known and unknown players, which means you don't necessarily know who all the other players are. And new players can join at any time. The rules are changeable, which means every player can play however they want. And the objective is to perpetuate the game, just staying the game as long as possible. So we're players in infinite games every day of our lives, whether we know it or not. You count win education. You can come in first for the finite amount of time you're at school where we agree upon the time frames, the school year, and the metrics grades. Nobody wins education. Nobody wins learning. Nobody wins healthcare. Nobody wins global politics. Nobody wins business. But when you hear the language of so many people, they talk about being number one, being the best and beating their competition based on what? Based upon what agreed upon objectives, metrics, or time frames. And this is a problem because when we play with a finite mindset in an infinite game, we play to win in a game that has no finish line. There are some very predictable and consistent outcomes. The big ones are the decline of trust, the decline of cooperation, the decline of innovation. And when people become obsessed with beating their competitors in a game where there is actually no winner, there's no winning career. You can get a promotion sure, but there's no winning career. And there's no winning in business. And so beating your competition is actually based on what? Based on revenues, profit, based on what? One year, five years, ten years, the lifespan of the company, like what? It's all nonsense. It's all made up. And so we spend so much time reacting to it. Another player has done rather than focusing on how we can improve. And so one of the things that I've learned is to completely eliminate this idea of having competitors, which is I have no competitors in my space. None. There are other players who do what I do. And some of those players do some of the things that I do better than me. And those players are my worthy rivals. And it is better to respect and study your worthy rivals because their strengths reveal to you your weaknesses. And if you can have your weaknesses revealed to you, that means you can work on your weaknesses. Because ultimately, as individuals or as organizations, we're in a state of constant improvement. That's always trying to do is be better today than we were yesterday. Be better tomorrow than we were today. That's all this game is whether it's your life, your relationships, your business, whatever it is, it's a game of constant improvement. And so to obsess about beating your competition actually takes us away from constant improvement. Because it might make us do something short-term or it might make us do something expedient because it gives us a short-term leg up or use cheaper ingredients or trick somebody or you know, because it can drive revenues. And all that does is weaken our own organization. That's all it does. That's all it does. And so I don't think of competitors at all. I think of worthy rivals. And by the way, worthy rivals can change. I get to pick who they are and I get to pick the reasons that they're my worthy rivals. And I'm in a state of constant improvement thanks to them. And sometimes it's something small and sometimes it's something big. But I'm grateful to all those who do similar things to me because it makes me a better player. Yeah, so important. And I'm listening to you and I'm like, man, I don't know of many companies or many individuals, frankly, that are playing infinitely and most of which are playing, finitely, and we're in lies the right and the wrong and the good and the bad and the politics and this and that. And it stays in that same place. I promise this. I do this. I do this. I promise that like it's just mind-boggling. And I don't want to be flippant in saying this. But is it as easy as saying, if someone's not willing to look at themselves and look at their company objectively? And I know there is an organization, but yet we're a complex organization too. The ego or the preservation of the perceived this is who I am. This is what we do. Blah, blah, blah. Keeps us from that healthy inclusion of other information, the rivals, etc., etc. And maybe does it come down to not having that why and having that bigger just cause? I mean, the simple answer is yes. People come up to me all the time and say, but Simon, you have to stand. We are the best. And we are number one. And I always say the same thing for now, for now, none of this lasts. And that's why constant improvement matters. It was very interesting when COVID struck. In the beginning of COVID, people asked me, no, did this destroy your idea set? And it did the opposite. It reinforced it. When COVID struck, not a single organization on the planet, a total of zero was trying to beat their competitors. Nobody was studying their competitors. Nobody was obsessed with their competitors. Not a single company was worried about beating their competition. Every single one of them was obsessed with staying alive. And it proves that you can run a successful organization without focusing on what somebody else is doing or obsessing with trying to beat them. You can worry about what they're doing to learn from them. And that survival mentality is actually the correct mentality to use in good times or hard times. In hard times, we have to make sure that we will continue to exist. Well, in good times, we have to say to ourselves, we have to make sure we will continue to exist. And that might make some of the choices that we make very different than the ones we'd make when we think that we had the best year ever. Let's distribute all the money to everybody immediately and leave the bank account dry. What about next year? But we're deciding that we want to continue to exist forever. It just makes us a little more cautious. And not in a bad way. I'm a great believer in risk taking. I'm a great believe in innovation. I'm a great believer in breaking things. But when you have stable foundation in the quality of your culture, the will of your people and the resources you have in the bank, you are better equipped to take risk because risk inherently requires failure. That whole idea of innovation is experimentation. And the definition of experimentation is trial and error. You have to fail to succeed. And I think people forget this. The year that Babe Ruth broke the record for home runs is the exact same year that he broke the record for strikeouts. If you want to hit home runs, you got to strike out. That's just how it works. And the question is, are you prepared for the strikeouts? Not just excited about the home runs. You got to swing. I think of a friend of mine who's currently now in the last six years, got the largest alternative to single use plastic on the planet. He has an innovation material science company only six years ago. And he told me several times he's an engineer. And he said, I want to eliminate single use plastic from the planet. And no mechanisms existed to produce alternatives to plastic other than just the mechanisms to produce plastic because it's so good at its job and it's so freaking cheap. But he's set out to do it. And now he's just on a rocket ship. Nine of the top 10 CPG companies on the planet are now signing on because he's created an industry that didn't exist for these kind of things. And the thing that stood out to me that now makes more sense than what you just said. And that is we create an engineering team so that when they fail, they know how to take the notes and take all of the learnings from the failures and then exercise that in the next step. Correct. And they're not failures. They're false because you get back up from a fall failure we'd like to avoid. But falls. And I think where the danger lies in this story of an innovator who's coming up with something that can profoundly improve the quality of our lives is not new. Unfortunately, the story that is also not new is once they succeed, they become very protective of their position. So as you said, nine out of the 10 big CPG companies have signed on. And so he's going to make a ton of money. He's going to become the bill of the ball. And the question is, is now will he become defensive and worry about other people chipping away at his market share. And the reality is, and this is why I love the infinite game, is multiple organizations can be wildly successful selling the same thing at the same time. What does it mean to be number one? Is that important for him that more companies do business with him than anybody else? Or is his priority that more companies switch to plastic alternatives than anything else? And I've seen this pattern before. Well, they abandoned the founding cause because money shows up and money becomes very addictive. And then you start getting investors involved to start demanding, I want more money this year than I got last year. So you better make these decisions so that I get more money. I don't care. Yeah, yeah, your mission's beautiful. I wish him all the success. But the real challenge to his ability to maintain an infinite mindset is not his ability to launch the technology. It's his ability to maintain that infinite mindset once he's successful. That's right. I've been involved in the other companies. I've created some products in the nutrition space where they were kind of first to market. And then the innovation stopped and it was not my control because I was hired by them. And then all of a sudden you see competition comes in and the ethos of how and why it's like they gave me the keys to the castle. Do this and just let me worry about selling it. I'm jumping both sides because I also think individuals because not everyone there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there and there's individuals, but I also think of people work and really hard at companies that they don't have the reasons, they don't have the depth, they don't have the why, but they're smart 'cause I'm like the fabric of society is crazy right now. And without that reason, without that why that you're talking about, it's scary to me. - I get this question a lot. You know, I work in a company and my boss doesn't get it, what do I do? Where the company is fine, I mind it and only cares about short-term results, what do I do? I get this question a lot. The answer is that you live with an infinite mindset. Then you show up to work every day and you make sure that your colleagues and coworkers, which includes people up the chain of command and down the chain of command that you can worry about your boss to, their human beings, and you say things like, are you okay? How are you? A friend of mine who's a Marine Corps general, he says his test for leadership. When you ask somebody how they're doing, you actually care about the answer. And every one of us can choose to be the leaders we wish we had. And so you can live with an infinite mindset and operate in an infinite way without being the leader or the founder of the boss. You can be a cognitive machine and you can come to work with a sense of service and cause that you're trying to advance that you can do at work, that you wanna go to work, or you wanna come home at the end of the day with the knowledge that the people with whom you work are going home feeling inspired, safe and fulfilled. And you can contribute to that. And the irony is not only will you enjoy work more but usually the work product improves. And then leadership tends to either leave you alone or say what are you doing? But you're also gaining a skill set and those around you are gaining a skill set. And eventually the tail waggs the dog, which is all those people eventually promote out of your group and they end up infecting the rest of the company. And before you know that terrible leader has moved on, that finite minded leader has moved on. And it's now you're thinking in that way of that service mind and that is infected the whole company. And like I said, the infinite game is about creating organizations that outlast us. And so we can outlast any leader as well if we choose to play with an infinite mindset. - Yeah, just for everyone listening, the infinite game is the book that we're referring to a lot here. And there's so many different little nuance is here that are so powerful. And let's kind of talk about leadership a little bit because I think of that as leading your life, leading your family, also leading your organizations. And you had this one little simple thing like listen, a leader is it anyone who's being followed? In some form or fashion, right? I heard you say that. And it makes all sense. So talk about the difference between being in charge of someone like everyone said, oh, I'm a leader, I'm in charge of all these people, but the nuances of what that actually means. - Yeah, leadership is one of the most misunderstood ideas I think in our lives. Leadership has nothing to do with being in charge. Leadership is about taking care of those in our charge. And the definition of leadership is the awesome responsibility to see those around us rise. So if you're a parent, you wanna see your kids rise. If you're a friend, you wanna see your friends rise. If you're a work in a company, you wanna see your colleagues or subordinates rise, we confuse leadership with hierarchy and rank. And I know many people who sit at the highest levels of organizations who are not leaders. We do as they tell us because they have authority over us, but we don't follow them. The choice to follow is just that as a choice. I'll do as you tell me, but I don't follow you. That is a difference. Many of us have left jobs to follow our boss to a new job. We've done that, that's followership. And so when we say, you know, a leader's anybody who someone who follows you, they've made the choice to follow you. A leader is anyone who, where others have made the choice to follow you. Not because you have authority over them. That's not followership. That's just rank. And the most important thing is leadership does not come with rank. I know many people who are junior companies who've made the choice to look after the person to left them and the person to the right of them. We would follow them anywhere. So every single one of us has the opportunity to be the leader we wish we had, regardless of where we are in the organization. We can choose to lead our families as well. We can choose to lead our friends. We can choose to be there in service. And the great irony of leadership is the best leaders are actually the best followers because they always see themselves in service to something greater. Even the Pope is not the top. He follows something even higher. And that's the point, which is the best leaders, whether it's a vision or an inspiring leader or a cause, they see themselves in service to something even greater than themselves, even if they achieve the highest rank. You know, I get comments from listeners all the time and they say things like, hey, I want to help save the planet. But I just don't know where to start. Here's the thing. Take personal responsibility for your impact on yourself, which also has powerful impact on the environment. That's why I do these fatal convenience all the time. Big changes really does start with small steps. When we do better things for us, it has positive downstream effects as opposed to many of the things that we're doing now that have negative downstream effects. That's why I love companies like Habits of Waste. They want to increase the number of imperfect environmentalists by educating everyone on ways that we can truly make a difference in the steps that we are making. Habits of Waste made goals to get the core of environmental problems using easy and engaging methods that we can easily get behind. They were the geniuses behind cut out cutlery. That led state of California, new law, that helped reduce that single-use plastic. They also were behind eight meals campaign, which challenged mediators to just slow down a bit and set goals of eating eight plant-based meals a week. That's it. That equates to 40% less animal products per week. Because if a family of four ate eight meals every week, it's equivalent of driving a hybrid car free year. To find out more of how you can get involved with campaigns that not only help you, but help the climate and make this Earth just a better place, we can check them out at www.habitsofwaste.org. They offer daily and week challenges for everyone, turn intention into action, and integrate a better, healthier life, and a better, healthier planet. (upbeat music) - I studied car Rogers back in the day, active listening, active caring. Like when you're just sitting across from some of the, they don't actually don't have to say anything other than one question, how are you? And genuinely care. You have a great example of that. I don't know how far back that goes, but I'm sure you have plenty more now, but that Barista that told you that he loved his work because all management felt a part of it. They cared about him. And what the hell happened where all of a sudden, we didn't care about our fellow human. It just seems the most common, sensical thing to do is to have empathy and care about someone in your organization doing something with any sort of meeting. What the hell happened? - This is a simple answer, I think. Well, let me tell the story about the Barista because it's a nice story. So I was on a business trip in Las Vegas and the client very generously put me up with the four seasons and they happened to have a coffee bar in the lobby at the four seasons in Las Vegas. And so one afternoon I went and bought myself a cup of coffee and the Barista working that day was a kid named Noah and Noah was funny and charming and engaging. And I stood there for far too long buying a cup of coffee because I just enjoyed talking to Noah. And as is my nature, I ask Noah, do you like your job? And without skipping a beat, Noah said, I love my job. Now in my line of work, that's significant. Like is rational. I like the work. I like the people. I like the challenge. I like my job. Love is emotional. It's a higher order connection. Like, do you love your wife? I like her a lot. It's not the same thing. And when I asked Noah, do you like your job? And he said, I love my job. My ears perked up. This kid has a higher order connection to his work. So immediately I followed up and said, can you tell me specifically what the four seasons is doing that you would say to me that you love your job? And without skipping a beat, Noah said, throughout the day, managers will walk past me and ask me if there's anything that I need, anything that they can do to help me do my job better. Not just my manager, any manager. And then he said, I also work in another hotel. And there the managers walk past me and catch me when I'm doing something wrong, or they're just trying to drive our performance. He says there, I like to keep my head below the radar. I just want to get through the day and collect my paycheck. Only at the four seasons, he said, do I feel I can be myself? Now this is the exact same human being. And yet our experience of him will be profoundly different, not because of him, but because of the leadership environment in which he works. And we're always so quick to blame the person, but I always say, well, where are they working? This is the exact same human being. And the fact of the matter is that the other hotel, they were way more concerned with performance. And so when you ask your question, why have we given up on empathy and why have we given up on service, it's because our incentive structures at work have been all predominantly based on individual performance. And we've set up structures in our company, is where it's how do you advance yourself, not to how do we advance the organization or how do we advance the team? And so one of the things that we celebrate the greatest generation for and the reason we probably call them the greatest generation is not just that they defeated fascism and Hitler, but it's that they were united in common cause. They came together in remarkable, remarkable ways. And it was that love and camaraderie that we envy and want back. And so I think that over the 80s and 90s, the rise of Jack Welch and GE and sort of short termism, we have done great damage not just to our businesses and our economy, but we've done great damage to our relationships and to each other because we've created incentive structure that actually incentivizes us to be less human. We've seen bleed over outside of business. We see it in politics now. Politicians are now way more preoccupied and this is the left and the right. I don't care. They're all crap. They are now way more preoccupied with winning their own elections or keeping their party in power than they are serving the nation. They all talk about serving the nation, but in reality, we know we're not idiots. Like we're highly attuned social animals, we can tell the difference. And we see it. Our founding fathers never intended for professional politicians. The intention was you leave the farm, you leave your law firm, you come serve your country for a few years and then you go back to your farm and you go back to your law firm, whatever it is. But we now have professional politicians that have been in office for 30 years. We now have a professional class of politician. That was never the intention. The idea was service, not self preservation, because like anyone who's been in a job for 30 years, you're deathly afraid of not having that job anymore. And when you're deathly afraid of not having that job anymore, you'll do anything to keep it. I had a very uncomfortable conversation with the congressman a bunch of years back, uncomfortable for them, not for me. We're in a closed-door session. It was just me and them. No aids, no staff, there's no nothing. And I said, you know what your problem is? Is how I started the conversation. I said, you guys are so preoccupied with winning your elections that you won't sacrifice your job for this country. I said, I know people who wear a uniform who would sacrifice their lives for this nation, and you won't even sacrifice your job for this nation. And I said, and besides, if you did lose your election, you're going to become some lobbyist and make more money than you've ever dreamed of. So whether you lose your election or win your election, what exactly are you losing? You'll either have power, you'll have money, take your pick. And then I think that's largely the problem, which is true service. For those who choose to lead us, it comes with a social contract. And this, by the way, is not me just spouting idealism. This is deeply, deeply grounded in our anthropology and our biology. Because there's an anthropological reason we have leaders. It's not just an accident. If you go back to the origins of humankind, for thousands and thousands of years, tens of thousands of years, we lived in populations that were never larger than about 150 people. That's how big a tribe generally was. And it's called Dunbar's number. And either we cannot maintain more than about 150 close relationships. That's historical. And that's still true to this day. And for good reason, we don't have enough time to have that many relationships. And we can't remember everybody. That's why it's about 150. Some journalists did some experiment when the internet started to show up on Facebook. And they went through all of their 800 Facebook friends. And the question is, do you know who everybody is? And the A, they didn't know who everybody was. Or if they reached out to everybody, the people didn't necessarily know who they were. The number where you all kind of knew each other netted out about 150. So we cannot maintain more than about 150 close relationships, right? And again, that is historically based because we lived in these tribes that are about 150 big. We didn't start farming until about 10 or 12,000 years ago. That's when we could maintain bigger populations. Anyway, I digress. If we're living in these populations of about 150 in a tribe, there are some very practical considerations, which is we have to cooperate because otherwise we're going to die. These are the Savu-2 Tiger some things. And in these all-steer times, somebody brings food back to the tribe. We're all hungry and we all rush in to eat. Now, if you're lucky enough to be built like a football player, you can shove your way to the front of the line. But if you're the artist of the family, you're going to get an elbow in the face. This is a very bad system for cooperation. Because if you punch me in the face this afternoon, the odds are I'm not going to wake you and alert you to danger tonight. Bad system. So we evolved into hierarchical animals, where we're constantly assessing and judging each other on who we are based on the social hierarchies and social picking orders. And it's different for different populations. If you're a scientist, how many papers have you published? If you're an athlete, it's how many medals have you won. We're constantly assessing and judging each other. And if you're in an organization, there's a formal hierarchy that tells us who's above us and who's below us. If I'm a peon and you're an executive vice president, I'll hold the door open for you. And that's the point. I'm assessing and judging who's alpha, who's above us on the social hierarchy. And when we assess that someone is alpha, we evolve to voluntarily step back and allow our alphas to eat first. So our alphas get first choice of meat and first choice of meat. And though I may not get to eat first, I'm guaranteed to get food and I don't get an elbow in the face. Good system. And this persists this day. There's not a single one of us that is morally offended to giving our alphas preferential treatment. Absolutely none. I can prove it. Not a single person is morally outraged that somebody more senior than you in the company makes their highest salary. No one is outraged by that. We may think they're an idiot, but the fact that they have a slightly bigger office than us or a better parking space outrages, no one. However, we do not give our alphas these perks for free. And there are perks. Remember, if I'm senior and I left my jacket in the other room, someone will get my jacket for me. If I'm junior and I left my jacket in the other room, I get my own jacket. Like that's how it works. There are definitely perks that include money and prestige that come with being alpha, which is why we all want the promotion. We all want to move up in the social hierarchy because it comes with huge benefits. But those benefits do not come for free. There's a deep, deep seated social contract that when danger threatens the tribe, it's the person who's actually stronger, actually smarter, actually better fed, actually better taken care of, that will rush towards the danger to protect us. That's why we gave you first choice of mate because we want to keep your jeans in the gene pool. We're not idiots. We don't get those perks away for free. And when that deep seated social contract is violated, that's when we have moral outrage. We are not morally outraged by a leader of a company making more money than us. We are morally outraged when the company misses its numbers. Its arbitrary numbers that that leader would soon as sacrifice their people than sacrifice their bonus that they would announce layoffs to meet the arbitrary projections rather than give up their bonus. That's where the moral outrage comes from. And quite frankly, we should have moral outrage to politicians or business people that would soon as sacrifice our interests so they can preserve their benefits. Because that is absolutely the violation of what it means to be a leader. You can absolutely enjoy the perks that are given to you. I'm not saying you have to live like a pauper. You can absolutely enjoy the perks, but those perks come at a cost. And that cost is sometimes self-interest and self-sacrifice. And that is the true definition of leaders, the leaders that we love, other ones that are willing to do that. I think of very few people that fit in that category that are running significant companies. I'm astonished that, and I agree with you, like I understand, I can get my head around, I can intuit, I can feel, I can understand that social hierarchy, course. And then when that violation happens in front of our face, the collapse of this and bail out of Sally May, all of that stuff, and it goes on and on and on every day. And this person does that and that person does it. And it's happening more and more all the time. And in some apathetic way, we're just kind of accepting it. But at the same time, I don't know about you. There's a bubbling. There's a boiling point. There is a line in the sand for a lot of people. And I think the last few years certainly has poured, I'll call it, nitrous oxide on the flame. My concern is that there is moral outrage because we've been living in a society, and this is not a new thing. This has been going on since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Since the Soviet Union collapsed, we've seen a tremendous rise in finite minded thinking selfish behaviors. Jack Welch, who I've devoted my entire career to undo everything that that man did, the former CEO of GE, who popularized mass layoffs, who popularized shareholder supremacy, who popularized rank and yank and all these stupid ideas that don't actually benefit the companies or their employees or their customers over the long term. I'd have done tremendous damage to our economy, by the way, which I'm resisting the urge to digress, that we have been raised in this way of doing business to the point where we are. There is tremendous moral outrage. And unfortunately, there are politicians on both sides of the aisle that are leveraging our moral outrage for their self-benefit, which I find ironic and further disgusting. And again, I blame both sides. I see it happening on both sides, which is the attempt to leverage moral outrage, quite rightfully place moral outrage from years and years and years of good, hardworking people sort of being forced to pay the price so that some small group of people can protect their perks. And that moral outrage has been bubbling up. We see it in populous movements on the left and the right. And like I said, the sad part is because there is no effective leader right now. We don't have a Martin Luther King right now. We don't have a leader of the movement that is putting it into words that helps us understand what our moral outrage is and how we can fix it. All we know is that we're angry. That's all we know. It's very hard for us to understand why we're angry. And so a skilled politician on either side of the aisle who's able to channel our moral outrage against the other side, not for their cause, not for that's leadership to fight for something but against that our moral outrage is channeled against someone or something. We live in a nation right now, where both parties accuse the other of treason and being traitors. Are you kidding me? We all love our country. We disagree on how the country should run. We should disagree on how to advance the country. But we're now at the point where we accuse each other of being traitors, just because we have a different political opinion. What is happening to us? I think we need to start holding our politicians accountable for misusing our moral outrage. And we have to start looking internally and saying, Oh my God, I'm a part of the problem. I'm the one who refuses to talk to my uncle at Thanksgiving. I'm the one who when somebody has a different political opinion, I get angry and start yelling or throwing things and screaming at the television. I am part of this problem. You raised the point at the very beginning, like how hard it is to look inside and say, Oh my God, that's me. And I think the solution in this nation doesn't come from demanding that the other side fix it. It comes from us looking internally saying, I fix it. I will lead. That's what it means to lead. I will go first. Leadership doesn't mean you have the highest rank. It means you took the risk to go first. It doesn't matter who goes first. What matters is whoever goes first is the leader. And to say to ourselves, to our families, to our friends, we are part of the problem until we can learn to listen, we can learn to understand, we can learn that someone else should feel seen or heard or understood we will never fix the problem. But again, we have moral outrage at that. I shouldn't be for me to listen to them. They should listen to me. Well, good luck with that because that's not going to accomplish anything because no one's going to listen. And so leadership is the very, very, very hard work of stepping into discomfort, of taking the lead, of doing the thing that has to be done that no one else is doing and taking accountability and responsibility that I am part of this because I am part of this fabric of this society, which means that my opinions and the way I talk to my friends, the way I talk to my children are part of this. And the moral outrage at another group, let's reserve that for our real enemies who exist outside our borders. But the moral outrage at each other, oh man, there's no place for it. We'll rip each other to shreds. Both sides are accusing each other of destroying the democracy. And the irony is it's because the both sides accuse each other of destroying the democracy that our democracy is being destroyed. And it's so much of that if you change, if you do this, we're good, or the country's good, or I'm good, if you didn't do that, I would be better. It's that whole thing of that lack of allowing the world to mirror to you. Where are you, a tyrant? Where are you separated? Where are you judging? All of that's, if that's the hard work, Simon? Like that's hard work for people. It is very hard work. And then it goes right back to the beginning of why I started the optimism company, which is an organization dedicated to teaching and fostering the skills of leadership. Why? Because I want people to learn the skills of service, of taking care of each other. I want to build the help others industry. That's why I founded the company. Because we lack those skills and we lack the courage to say, shit, I'm a part of the problem. It's much easier to say you're the problem. It's really hard to say, I'm the problem, or at least I'm a part of it. And we can't help but do that without adding a butt statement like, I'm a part of the problem, but so are you. No, no, no, no, no, but no, but I'm a part of the problem done. By the way, if you're married and in a long-term relationship, good luck with always accusing your partner of being the problem. And good luck saying, but when you take responsibility, you've got to take some responsibility and you got to learn to grow inside the relationship as an individual if you want the relationship to thrive. Well, we are in a relationship with each other in society. That's what a society is. And it's either a polite society or it's an aggressive society. And I would rather live with people that I profoundly disagree with but can have a conversation with them than people that I profoundly or mildly disagree with that we can't listen to each other at all. I have a close friend who we have very, very different political opinions, diametrically opposed. And we didn't know this about each other when we first met. We learned about this in the relationship. And at one point, we were talking about some subject. And I know I thought it, but I think I actually said, how can you be so stupid? And she stopped and said, you just called your friend stupid. And I realized, what have I done? I am judging. I have replaced my curiosity with judgment. And what I need to do is replace my judgment with curiosity. And I took a step back and said, you're right. And instead of telling her that she was wrong and giving her the list of arguments as to why she was wrong, so I could prove her wrong or I could be right. Instead I learned to listen and I learned to ask questions and I learned to be curious about her points of view and why she has those points of view. And the more I listen, I could always find something that we go greed on always. And as soon as I was able to find the thing that we agreed on, she became more open to my point of view. And I'm very, very proud of our friendship. And so is she because we are living proof that you can be literally polar opposites of a political spectrum and have love for the other person. And I have deep love for her. And I know that she be there for me no matter what because there are things that matter more than my political opinions and there are things that matter more than her political opinions, which is, is she a good friend? Does she share my values? Will she be there for me when I really need it? Will I be there for her when she really needs it? And the answer to all of those is yes, a resounding yes. Like, this is not impossible. It just requires hard work and a lot of discomfort. The thing that is obvious in your saying that the values of that friendship, the values of that person, like going through all of that stuff. Number one, you're exercising the medicine that you're also preaching in terms of what we need to do. And that is every time very difficult to stop and own that stuff. But I agree with you like through that, the richness of life and connection in this vulnerability and connection deepens. So hats off. And I'm glad that you're doing that because you're seeing the value to be able to exercise the optimism company and all of these things because I'm in anyway I can help. I love this subject matter. I've had to pull back on the values, getting all messed up with the politics and the rights and the wrongs and all of those things. And I too have a handful of friends that I just realized and discovered that have completely different views. And we're still friends. That's the thing. Like, I don't want to have a friendship where I have to walk an egg shells or avoid landmines. That I think is false, which is you maintain these friendships. So as long as you don't go into like, you can come over to my house, as long as you don't go into that half of the house. Like that's not a warm and welcoming home. And I would rather have a friendship where we learn to navigate those things and we learn to listen to each other and hear each other. And we can still come out of the other side, disagreeing, but we don't lose respect. I would rather that we learn, like I said, replace judgment with curiosity to find out where that comes from. Like, how do they erase where it comes from? Like, what it means then let them empty their buckets, learn these three phrases, go on, tell me more what else. And that's part of the trick to good listening. And you're not waiting for your turn to speak. You're genuinely trying to understand. And you don't have to agree, but you do have to hold space. And the ability to learn that magical skill, it makes those friendships even deeper because you recognize that we can disagree. And yet we can still talk about those disagreements and still have deep love for each other and still hug each other at the end of the day. It's very, very difficult to say to ourselves, I suck at this. I'm part of the problem. That level of accountability is really hard. And that's part of it, which is nobody wants to admit that level of vulnerability that we're part of the problem. It's much easier to accuse the other side of being a part of the problem. And sometimes those people are our friends. I read it statistically the day that the majority of the America doesn't want to date somebody who voted for the other political candidate that they voted for. And I was like, that's where we are right now. I don't even want to talk. I don't even want to go to date with you. I don't only want to date with you if you voted for something different, someone different. Now, the odds are that if somebody voted for something different, if they're deeply, deeply ingrained in that ideology, you probably won't have the foundation for relationship. But we don't actually know why people vote. Not everybody who votes for one candidate versus another is a deep ideal log. Sometimes they just voting for party because they're lazy or sometimes they just don't like the other candidate more than they'll, you know, we vote for the lesser two evil sometimes, or sometimes they're just fed up with something or sometimes it's a protest vote. Like we don't know why people. That's what we have to go find out. But I was just really saddened by the fact that I won't even go on a date with someone that we voted, like at least go on the date. It doesn't matter. And that's where we are. And I like I said, I think we as individuals in this nation have a lot of work to do. And I'm optimistic, by the way, I'm optimistic. People like me shouldn't have a career. Like it's embarrassing that I have a career. I talk about trust and cooperation. There should be no demand for my work. But the fact that people want to watch my video as I read my books or come take a class at the optimism company, the fact that that is happening is proof that people are looking for these skills. They're hungry for these ideas. And that makes me really optimistic that people are interested in our work. That means we're hungry for it. The fact that there's demand makes me very, very optimistic. What are you the most optimistic about right now? I'm optimistic. We will be the Phoenix from the ashes that we will emerge. And I think we're in for a few more years of pain. I don't think it's going to turn around quickly. I think we're relatively leaderless in our nation. Where are the Martin Luther kings? Where are the Vox lock Havals? Where are the lecphalenses? Where are they? Where are the great Orators? Where are the ones capable of not just rallying, but inspiring people to come together? Remember Martin Luther King, 25% of the audience who showed up on that day in front of the Lincoln Memorial, 25% of the audience was white. You have to remember that there was unification. It was Republicans, Democrats who came together for some rights. We have to remember that it's not just the ability to rally people, it's the ability to unify people that makes great nations. And if you look at the presidents who had outsized impact, you know, Ronald Reagan enjoyed cross party support more than a lot of presidents. JFK similarly. What we need is not somebody who's exquisite at rallying a base of which both sides of the parties are picking their leaders for best at rallying a base. But I'm interested in leaders who are great at inviting the others in and telling those who believe with us, we have work to do. And I am optimistic we will get there. But I think we have a few years of pain ahead of us. Simon, dude, come on man. Keep swinging brother. I appreciate it. And keep the optimism high. And I love your work and keep picking it apart so that we can fully understand and have more of the tools. I just really grateful for you. And I'm more optimistic than ever. Stay connected dude. Let me know what's going on and love to support in any way that I can't. Thanks, Darren. I really appreciate it. Thanks for giving me a forum to share my ideas. Take care of yourself and take care of each other. Thanks, brother. Thanks for tuning into this episode of The Dernoline Show. I hope you took something valuable away from this conversation that will help improve your life in some way. If you'd like to learn more about my incredible guest, you can find all of their information in the show notes on my website. If you enjoyed this episode or even you didn't like it, please rate this podcast. The team and I value your feedback so we can continue to give you the most value possible. We want you to get the most out of every podcast. So please rate, subscribe, share anything you feel called to do. I truly appreciate it and I love and value your support. So thank you and I'll meet you in the next episode.