Book SummaryLeaders Eat Last, by Simon Sinek

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Leaders Eat Last

In Leaders Eat Last, author and inspirational speaker Simon Sinek argues that a leader’s primary responsibility is to prioritize her subordinates’ needs above her own. In business, this usually manifests as a manager prioritizing her employees’ personal needs above immediate profit. Ultimately, this helps the company—and its leader—to be more successful.

(Shortform note: While Sinek categorizes a leader’s needs as separate from her subordinates’ needs—implying that she must prioritize one over the other—some argue that a [leader’s needs include her...

Leaders Eat Last Summary Why You Should Prioritize Your Subordinates’ Needs

According to Sinek, prioritizing your subordinates’ needs is important because doing so creates a “circle of safety” (or, as we’ll call it for clarity, a supportive environment): an environment where employees feel safe and supported by their manager and coworkers. Sinek implies that supporting your subordinates means paying attention to them so you can monitor and fulfill their needs. By prioritizing your subordinates’ needs, you forge what Sinek implies is an empathetic connection with them: You prove that you see them as people, rather than mere assets to increase profits. Thus, your subordinates feel safe because they can trust you to support them and be invested in their success as well as your own.

(Shortform note: Sinek implies that empathy means seeing others as people and that this leads you to invest in those people’s success, but he doesn’t explain why empathy motivates you to do so. Empathy is feeling the impact of a person’s situation as if you were that person. For example, if you’re empathetic toward your subordinate whose grandmother just died, you’ll feel sad and tired...

Leaders Eat Last Summary The Dangers of Not Prioritizing Your Subordinates’ Needs

As discussed, paying attention to and fulfilling your subordinates’ needs creates supportive environments and encourages collaboration and innovation. On the other hand, if you don’t prioritize your subordinates’ needs, Sinek implies that you become a threat to them: You lose your empathy for your subordinates and start seeing them as assets to maximize profits, rather than people. As such, you stop being attentive to or fulfilling their needs, instead only supporting people who maximize profits.

(Shortform note: In The Dichotomy of Leadership, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin agree with Sinek that supporting your subordinates is a vital part of leadership. They argue that leaders should coach any struggling subordinates, providing greater support and attention until the subordinate meets the team’s standards. However, they caution leaders to remember their responsibility to the group as a whole, as well as to individual subordinates. If a subordinate doesn’t improve or meet the team’s standards, they can hurt the...

Leaders Eat Last Summary How to Strengthen Supportive Environments

Now that we’ve explored the importance of supportive environments, we’ll examine a few of Sinek’s strategies you can use to strengthen your company’s supportive environment and encourage trust, collaboration, and innovation.

Strategy #1: Prioritize Long-Term Goals

As discussed, [restricted term] helps you create a supportive environment by forging empathetic connections between you and your subordinates. Sinek believes that you can encourage [restricted term] production in both your employees and yourself by prioritizing long-term goals. For example, instead of focusing on your company’s profits for this year, plan how you’ll impact the market for the next five. This puts your decisions in the context of causing lasting positive change, rather than immediate, temporary success.

Types of Long-term Goals

According to Jerry I. Porras and Jim Collins in Built to Last, there are four kinds of long-term goals:

• Ambition goals, where you focus on meeting a quantitative target (for example, a burger franchise selling 100 million...

Shortform Exercise: Combat Abstraction

According to Sinek, when you don’t have social contact with other people, they become an abstract idea to you, rather than a person. This means you’ll be more likely to act in your own self-interest instead of considering how your actions may affect other people. Thus, combating abstraction is important for maintaining a supportive environment.

Describe an area of your job that involves communicating with people remotely, rather than in person. (For example, you might spend time emailing customers or communicating over the phone with coworkers who are based in different states.) How close do you feel to these individuals, as opposed to the people you interact with in person?