You know when you hear something more than once in a few days you really should check in it, well that’s just happened to me. On Thursday at the Academy of Chief Executives Mark Fritz was talking to us About the Power of Ownership in Leading Across Distances and Cultures and during his amazing seminar he told us we should check out a TED video by Simon Sinek on Leadership. Then I find out my friend Jezz Moore, from Moon Cow, has tweeted the same thing. Synchronicity working or what, but given I’ve been hit with with twice in as many days I felt compelled to watch the video. You can see it here at:
http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html
What inspired me most about this video was the fact that we all need to begin with our WHY. For the last few years I’ve been told by many mentors and coaches that WHY is the most important thing. When you are clear on your WHY then all subsequent actions like HOW and WHEN will fall into place. Personally, I’ve been struggling to find my WHY – although day by day it becomes clearer. One of my coaches has told me that reason for my inaction is that WHY is not strong enough. One thing that I have observed is that many of the great teachers and successful business people in this world have really strong WHY’s, in many cases driven from a state of despair due to financial ruin or serious health concerns. I find it kind of sad that it takes a serious personal experience for people to become clear on what their WHY is. Surely we don’t need to all reach these depths of despair to be successful.?
What Simon Sinek so clearly articulates in this video is the Golden Circle that starts at the centre with WHY, then contains another concentric circle with HOW and finally a concentric circle with WHAT.
Sinek suggests that really successful organisations and people (such as Apple) start with their WHY. They inspire others to do business with them because they have the same beliefs. Apple do not pitch their advertising based on WHAT they do but rather WHY they do it. This is why they can sell computers, phones and music and no-one doubts the authenticity of the company. Compare this to Dell who like many other companies focus their advertising strategy of the WHAT. Dell make computers and now we are so embedded with the fact that this there is core competency that we can’t conceive of purchasing same a phone or and MP3 player from them.
Furthermore Sinek goes on to explain that purchasing decisions are based on biology not psychology and that the WHAT appeals to the neo-cortex of the brain which controls rational thought whereas the WHY and HOW align with the limbic system The limbic system is concerned with trust and loyalty and decision-making that drives behaviour. So by appealing to a consumers WHY you instantly put them in a place where the buying decision can be influenced by the limbic brain.
So how does this lead onto today’s lesson from the horses. It is just that when a horses meets you he is asking three things:
- who are you
- what do you want; and
- how do you operate.
In this way he is concerned with what is happening in our limbic brain. A horse is also always looking to us to determine our ability to lead. Are we trustworthy and reliable? From this state of why the horse can quickly make that decision on how best to interact with us. Maybe this is why horses are so good as Teachers. They make sure we stay out of our thinking, rational neo-cortex brain and force us to be congruent with who we really are. They challenge our WHY and who we think we are. Invariably in coaching sessions clients have AHA experiences as they realise who they thought they were and how they are acting are incompatible. Horses challenge our WHY are therefore our integrity and congruence and since they are non-judgemental they just feed back what they experience. It can be an eye-opening experience for most people.
So for today spend some time considering what is your WHY. Why are you on this earth and what is your purpose in life. If you need some help here some great resources that I have found really helpful are The Passion Test by Chris and Janet Attwood and Success DNA Detector which can be found on http://www.authorityformula.com/
I’d love to hear your comments below on what your WHY is.
Julia Felton (aka The Business Wrangler) is the founder of Business HorsePower. Business leaders, entrepreneurs and executives hire her to accelerate their business performance by harnessing the energy of their people to work more collaboratively together. By aligning purpose with actions the team achieves exponential results as everyone starts pulling in the same direction.
Julia believes that business is a force for good and through designing purpose-driven businesses that leverage the laws of nature, and the herd, you can create businesses founded on the principles of connection, collaboration and community that make a significant impact in the world.
