TED Talk Tuesday: How Great Leaders Inspire Action

Why did leaders like Martin Luther King, the Wright Brothers or Steve Jobs experience such great success when so many others had access to similar resources and conditions?

About three and a half years ago, management theorist Simon Sinek made a discovery. This discovery would profoundly change his view on how the world worked and the way in which he operates in it. As it turns out, there’s a pattern—all great and inspiring leaders and organizations in the world act and communicate in the exact same way. And it’s the complete opposite of everyone else. Sinek claims it’s the world’s simplest idea—he calls it the golden circle, and it’s made up of the “Why,” How” and “What.” Just about everyone knows what they do. Some know how they do it. But very few people or organizations know why they do it.

“What’s your purpose? What’s your cause? What’s your belief? Why does your organization exist? Why do you get out of bed in the morning? And why should anyone care? As a result, the way we think, we act, the way we communicate is from the outside in, it’s obvious,” said Sinek in his TED Talk, How Great Leaders Inspire Action.” “We go from the clearest thing to the fuzziest thing. But the inspired leaders and the inspired organizations—regardless of their size, regardless of their industry—all think, act and communicate from the inside out.”

Sinek points to Apple as an example. If the company were like everyone else, a marketing message from them might sound like this: “We make great computers. They’re beautifully designed and user-friendly. Want to buy one?” Based on that underwhelming pitch, most of our responses would simply be: “Meh.” Most marketing and sales are done this way. We say what we do, we say how we’re different and we expect some sort of a behavior to follow.

But here’s how Apple actually communicates: “Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed and user-friendly. We just happen to make computers. Want to buy one?”

It’s totally different, and it probably makes you want to buy a computer. All they did was reverse the order of the information. And, ultimately, what it proves is that people don’t buy what you do; people buy why you do it.