The TED Talk that Made Me a Better Tech Leader and a Better Man
How Simon Sinek’s golden circle video, at the right time, ignited a deep change that improved my life
This story is about a simple talk that was able to align all the elements that I needed to move my abilities to the next step: how the golden circle helped me become a better tech leader.
The time I discovered “the Golden Circle”
My company’s product was (and still is) VERY innovative, much ahead of the market and while this sounds cool, it brings a huge challenge to the company: how do you make the prospects understand the product, to buy it? As many engineering-focused startups, we were lacking skill and experience in marketing and the very limited community in our country made talent search very difficult. We were hiring people from big companies, accepting consultancies from “marketing-gurus” and things like that… I think it was in late 2010 and someone cited Simon Sinek’s talk at an internal “sharing session”, a meeting we held to share ideas and findings that might be useful to our colleagues.
Here is the original talk, worth every single one of the 18 minutes of your life that it will take to watch it:
That video unsettled me for days. I believe that what Simon told is true because I had the proof that starting from the “what” was not working. But don’t be fooled by my example regarding our product sales, I planned to apply this concept to ANY action you want people to take.
“Why” is never about making money
As Simon tells in his presentation, the “why” are not about an operational result, they are about a belief, a vision, an improvement for the community you are part of (including but not limited to your company).
I find it hard to find my purpose for anything I do, but I feel it’s a good way to spend my time and it greatly improves my life. You should give it a try.
Starting from “why” to hire
Why would someone want to work with you? What are you trying to achieve in this world? What’s the purpose? Once you start asking these questions to yourself, especially if you are an entrepreneur, there’s no going back. This is what led to defining the company manifesto, the way we completely redesigned our job openings description and why we completely changed our interview questions.
To test this approach I changed for a few months the way I conducted interviews. I was the one doing the last face-to-face interview step for all the tech roles and I started spending half of that time, at the beginning of the “interview”, to share the person our company vision, our mission, our ideas about how to reach our goals. I then left the rest of the time for him to ask questions and share his opinions, if he wanted to. That’s it. That was how I spend my precious time in the interview and how I made the last decision about hiring a candidate.
I’ve never failed after I started doing that. Openly sharing your views, your ideas and your goals instead of talking about how to achieve them or how the product is made put me in a position where I could always evaluate the decision of an employee to leaver based on its “culture fit”. His skills were never a problem unless he lacked the motivation to improve them.
Start from “why” to lead your team
I’ve started looking for the reasons why we were pursuing specific goals and find a way to summarize them, to be able to share them, to convey the message to everyone in the organization.
It wasn’t easy and it was something someone was not ready to do, at the time, creating a bit of friction in the management team. It was a struggle to improve and it was, in my opinion, necessary to grow.
I started stating the “why” as the first item in EVERY meeting, presentation, task or ticket that I created. I provided templates to my colleagues to help them do the same, all templates started with the request of stating the higher motive the people would need to know to do any action she/he was going to request.
It took me months to make this become a natural thing but it completely changed my relationship with my colleagues and my role within the company: my team members that were trusting me because of my behavior and my competence started trusting me for the inspiration I gave them, they saw that my highest priority was to be able to give them the reason to reach an objective and the trust to do so the way they wanted.
Those templates are still in use today, almost 10 years later.
The power of asking other people “why”
It takes time and humility to get used to asking yourself “why” every single time. For example, every time I write an email I ask myself why the person should read it, which benefit I’m giving them, is it worth their time?
But something even more powerful is asking other people to describe their motivation, their purpose, their beliefs. I’ve found great results in asking people to provide my the reasons why I should do something when they didn’t tell me in advance. Yes, I have to be careful about the way I ask it, being respectful of the other person’s intelligence and sensibility but even when they don’t know the answer (happens quite often) I can see that the question I made starts digging into their brain. They won’t settle down until they know the answer and they will start asking it themselves… it’s a powerful habit that improves the lives of everyone you are connected to.
The journey towards my “why”
Discovering my beliefs and if/how I am working towards their direction is an unsettling experience. It helped me realize what was not making me happy with my life and helped me give a reason to stay outside my comfort zone.
It also made me a better person and I’m grateful to all the people that thanked me for how I inspired them because that is the fuel that keeps me working on this path. A path without compromises and full of obstacles, but I’m glad I’m walking this way. I would never turn back.
