Is greed good? While many companies appreciate the value of programs aimed at supporting employee development and workplace satisfaction, they face more pressure from Wall Street, corporate boards and competition than ever. Employees know that efforts to improve satisfaction are perceived as less vital, so they compromise the potential to find a job they love somewhere else in exchange for the stability that is supposedly offered in return. ‘Leaders Eat Last’ by Simon Sinek argues that companies and employees are settling for workplace conditions that sabatoge long-term success for everyone, and would benefit from models where money serves as a commodity to grow people instead of people serving as a commodity to grow money.
Our willingness to equip leaders with fancy perks in exchange for security is not a modern day phenomenon, but is actually deeply seated in our biology as humans. As mammals, our brain chemistry evolved beyond those of our reptilian peers to incentivize symbiotic relationships such as the coach and player or the leader and follower. Without the protection of leaders, people are forced to work alone or in small tribes to protect and advance their own interests. And in so doing, silos form, politics entrench, mistakes are covered up instead of exposed, the spread of information slows and unease soon replaces any sense of cooperation and security. Leaders, Sinek argues, reduce the threats people feel inside the group by creating a circle of safety, which frees them up to focus more time and energy to protect the organization from the constant dangers outside and seize the big opportunities.
Leaders who do not establish a circle of safety for their employees pose negative effects on both long-term company performance and the health and welfare of its people. Those who take steps to protect their own interests at the expense of others send messages to their organizations that it is okay to do the same. According to Sinek, the ethical lapses that led to the financial crisis at places like Goldman Sachs were attributable to this phenomenon. As for the family-minded employees that sacrifice happiness in exchange for stability? A study by two researchers at the Graduate School of Social Work at Boston College found that a child’s sense of well-being is affected less by the long hours their parents put in at work and more by the mood their parents are in when they come home. Children are better off having a parent who works into the night at a job they love than a parent who works shorter hours but comes home unhappy.
So how do we promote better leaders at work and in society? Organizations where leaders advance their own interests over those of the group are common, and those who associate with them may need to question the returns they receive under that social contract. Revolutionary organizations can be based on more essential ideas, or as one CEO puts it “We want our company to be one that our mothers and fathers would be proud of us for building,”. Capitalism works most effectively, the book posits, when it leverages human nature to inspire cooperation, trust and loyalty within a group and bring them toward a common cause.