Leaders Eat Last Book Summary - Leaders Eat Last Book explained in key points

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Leaders Eat Last summary

Name: Leaders Eat Last
Rating: 4.3 (584 reviews)
Author: Simon Sinek

Simon Sinek

Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t

4.3 (584 ratings)

19 mins

Table of Contents

Leaders Eat Last
summarized in 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? Learn what defines true leadership.

Why is our society set up the way it is today? A society where some people seem to have lots of power to do what they want and others seem to have no self-determination at all? Where, exactly, do these hierarchies come from?

Leaders Eat Last examines these questions by contrasting our modern societies – including their many technological advances and complex systems that can lead us to disarray – with the kinds of societies we would have lived in thousands of years ago.

In doing so, we find that this division into “leaders” and “followers” is merely a natural consequence of our biology, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that all leaders are good. So what is it that makes a leader worth following?

Find out the answer to this question and more by reading these blinks. Furthermore, these blinks will show you

why hotel employees sacrificed their lives for their guests,
why giving your employees free reign over company resources might actually be the responsible thing to do,
that, given the right conditions, even you might electrocute someone,
that you’re probably an addict without even knowing it and
how to be a true leader.

Our need for hierarchy and leadership is rooted in our biology.

Have you ever wondered how societies were divided into leaders and followers? The answer is actually quite simple: biology.

It all comes down to hormones, which evolved over eons to help us survive by controlling our emotions and moderating our behavior, and which affect us just as much today as they did tens of thousands of years ago.

The hormone dopamine rewards us with happy excitement whenever we complete a task, such as finding something we’ve been searching for or reaching our weight-loss goals. In addition, serotonin and oxytocin affect our social lives by helping us form relationships with other people.

And then there are endorphins, which disguise exhaustion and pain as physical pleasure. Endorphins are the reason why we leave the gym aglow after a hard day of training and just can’t wait to go back for more. Ten thousand years ago, endorphins would have helped a village’s hunters continue the hunt and bring back meat to their hungry families despite their physical exhaustion. Today, they inspire professional athletes, such as runners, to achieve their peak performance.

In addition to helping us survive, hormone-driven behavior is also responsible for creating the basic template for social hierarchy.

In hunter-gatherer societies, for example, a rush of endorphins allowed hunters to push for miles and miles in order to secure meat for the community, which in turn earned them the privileges of higher status. Weaker individuals, who for one reason or another couldn’t participate in the hunt, had to accept less prestigious roles, such as gathering fruits.

This distinction between the “strong” and the “weak” was the first step on the path towards social hierarchy. Yet, while certainly being responsible for these class distinctions, hormones also add cohesion to these hierarchical structures by giving the weaker individuals a serotonin- or oxytocin-based warm feeling towards one another as well as the leader, rather than destructive stings of jealousy.

A feeling of safety is our main engine of progress and must be ensured by the group and its leader.

When it comes to survival, living in a group offers many perks, the most important of which being that we don’t have to face threats alone.

This provides us with a feeling of safety that allows us to concentrate on making progress rather than avoiding threats. In prehistoric times, we found danger around every corner: we had to protect ourselves from predators, other people and diseases, while simultaneously trying to secure food and shelter.

Today, the leader decides a company’s culture and values, and thus their employees’ mentality.

When we imagine a CEO, we often picture someone who seals the deals and sends profits through the roof. However, successfully running a company has as much to do with creating the culture as it does with managing finances.

This is because a company is more than merely the sum of its buildings, investors and workforce. It also embodies a culture that dictates how employees approach various problems, treat customers, and prioritize values. And because leaders, such as CEOs, determine how the company is run, they also craft its culture.

Our responsibility comes from our proximity to and empathy for others, without which we can cause great harm.

Being in a leadership role doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a force of good. When the bond between the leaders and the team is somehow severed, the consequences can be horrific.

In essence, this is because responsibility is actually about caring for other people; when we’re removed from the people for whom we are responsible, we’re less cautious about the damage we cause.

Bad leadership has contributed to modern-day selfishness and the dehumanization of others.

As we’ve already seen, being part of a group offers us a feeling of safety and opportunity for progress. Conversely, feeling alone and threatened makes us selfish and causes us to dehumanize others.

We see this easily when we examine the baby boomers, or the generation born after World War II. Having grown up spoiled by a thriving economy and outnumbering their parents’ generation, they became more selfish than their parents. In addition, the natural instinct for the younger generation to oppose the values of the previous one made the baby boomers more self-centered and critical of authority than their parents, who had survived the war by pulling together.

Modern society has become addicted to better and faster performance.

What do you think of when you hear the word “addiction”? Probably things like alcohol or drugs. It may surprise you, but you can also be addicted to performance.

This addiction is intimately tied to our biology. Whereas the release of dopamine was once linked directly to our survival, nowadays it’s tied to our job performance, rewarding us when we achieve better and faster performance. Many companies looking to increase their production welcome this, all too easily forgetting the stability provided by long-term goals.

Integrity and the ability to bond with others are essential for leadership.

What do you think of when you imagine a good leader? You probably think about their specific skills and expertise that help them excel at what they do. In actuality, it all comes down to integrity and the ability to bond with others.

We need to be able to trust our leaders, which means they must have integrity. We all know that leaders are only human, and we therefore don’t expect them to be perfect. What we do expect, however, is that they’re honest and forthcoming about their mistakes and take responsibility for them.

Being a leader means putting others ahead of yourself in order to fulfill a vision.

When you head to the voting booth to vote for your country’s next leader, what are some of the things you consider? What sort of personal qualities do you look for? What makes them a leader and not a “regular person”?

Essentially, a leader forges a vision for the future that the entire group feels inspired to fulfill. Although every group member has individual goals, the group as a whole needs purpose in order to remain cohesive, and that purpose comes from the leader’s vision.

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What is Leaders Eat Last about?

Leaders Eat Last explores the influence that neurochemicals have on the way people feel and consequently act, and examines the discrepancies between how our bodies were designed to function and how they function today. Ultimately, we need true leaders to direct us back on the right path.

Best quote from Leaders Eat Last

Trust is not formed through a screen, it is formed across a table.

—Simon Sinek

Who should read Leaders Eat Last?

Any leader, CEO or manager of a business or organization
Anyone interested in how biological evolution affects our behavior today
Anyone interested in leadership techniques

About the Author

Simon Sinek is a British author who focuses on questions about leadership. In addition to Leaders Eat Last, he has also authored the best-selling book Start With Why.

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