Excerpt
from “Start with Why:
How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action” by Simon Sinek
|
CHAPTER ONE
ASSUME YOU KNOW
On a cold January day, a
forty-three-year-old man was sworn in as the chief executive of his country.
By his side stood his predecessor, a famous general who, fifteen years
earlier, had commanded his nation’s armed forces in a war that resulted in
the defeat of Germany. The young leader was raised in the Roman Catholic
faith. He spent the next five hours watching parades in his honor and stayed
up celebrating until three o’clock in the morning.
You know who I’m describing, right? |
Some of
you would have guessed ‘John F. Kennedy’. Without the timeline specified,
it could as well have been ‘Adolf Hitler’…..
Key
leadership tenets I would like to amplify:
We all make
assumptions in our day-to-day life (and that’s a good thing !!!). The
assumptions we make are driven by our experiences we gained during various
learnings/interactions/events from our past.
- We would be grossly amiss to believe rigidly that our assumptions are always correct.
- That brings us to a key aspect of leadership, HUMILITY. Humility is the ability to accept one’s weaknesses publicly. “I DIDN’T KNOW THAT” is a wonderful phrase, next only to “THANK YOU”.
- TRUST is the only concrete binding force between living beings. And, FALLIBILITY is the basic tenet for building trust. Anyone who believes they are “infallible” will never be trusted, period…
