Start with, and share, the WHY
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Click here to view and download the Discussion Guide to utilize with your Group and/or Team over the next 12 months. The Guide and questions will be updated each month to reflect the TOTM concept.
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“Though someone may choose servant leadership for the results,
the reason we continue to practice the discipline is for the joy of the journey.”
Simon Sinek
Welcome to May’s Tool of the Month where we will be exploring the fifth tenet of our 2022 Developing A Leadership Mindset, Start with and share the WHY. We count it a privilege to share the leadership journey of growth and development with you and are grateful for the chance to join you along the way, it certainly defines our why!
Starting with and sharing the why, is the birthplace of creating an environment where Team Members can be and become the most effective versions of themselves. Sharing the why of everything brings clarity which leads to ownership, accountability, empowerment, and mutual passion and is one of the most overlooked and underutilized practices in organizations. Simon Sinek does a remarkable job in his book, Start with Why of articulating the power of sharing the why.
To paraphrase, Sinek communicates that inspired companies and inspired leaders understand and learn the discipline of sharing the why. Regardless of their size or their industry, inspired leaders think, act, and communicate from the inside out. At the core of each individual (inside a Team Members’ brain) is the key to motivation, and it starts with sharing the why.
Why might leaders struggle with sharing the why? Two possible reasons, 1) as leaders we may lack self-awareness and or 2), we are consciously or unconsciously acting in our own self-interest. Both reasons lead to self-limiting leadership behavior tragically resulting in limiting individuals and the organizations we serve.
A lack of self-awareness can lead to an inability to discern how our behavior is perceived by others, what others may need from us, and or may be negatively impacting others. It is also quite possible extremely or highly self-sufficient leaders may project their level of self-sufficiency, for example, their ability to navigate the unknown or be resourceful by simply ‘figuring things out,’ or project their performance expectations and abilities on others.
Self-interest also creates lids on individual and organizational effectiveness and may result when we simply do not have the time, motivation, energy, willingness, or interest in taking the time to share the why. Taking the time to meet people where they are, provide the degree of clarity an individual needs and ensure the why is understood can be time-consuming, challenging, and frankly may feel exhausting.
As leaders we usually have 100% of the information 100% of the time. Cascading the why throughout an organization is a critical responsibility of a leader. Ensuring the why not only cascades but permeates an organization is key to providing clarity to asked and unasked questions.
Simon Sinek shares in his essay in Servant Leadership in Action, “we can turn healthy cultures into a thriving one filled with trust and cooperation. To maintain a servant leadership culture we must keep caring, serving, trusting, and earning trust.” Servant leaders develop the discipline of listening to others to discern their need for clarity and intentionally choose to invest the time and energy to provide the answers to the why questions. Leading with intense curiosity surfaces struggles, challenges, limitations, and questions others may have that they do not have the ability or will to share themselves.
Before age 10, WHY is the most asked question in your world. When we reach a certain age, we are all too often conditioned to stop asking why aloud and comply in order to be deemed included, effective, and sometimes even wise.
Fundamentally and initially, we ask questions to make sense of the world around us and to provide a perspective on the context in which we live and operate each day. A quick Google search reveals that children ages 4 to 8 ask from 73 to 400 questions each day. Adults average 6 questions per day. Logic would say that as we age and grow, we know more and learn more, therefore we ask less questions. However, reality would challenge logic in that any one individual could not know, experience, or learn all there is to know, experience, or learn in a single lifetime.
Familiar responses to why include, because we have always done it that way, because I told you to, because I am too tired to explain/answer, because I don’t have time to answer, because it’s easier if you just comply! Leaders know that why never goes away, it simply goes underground and rears its unclear head at the most inopportune moments. Humans are also security and stability seeking creatures by nature. We possess a deep-seated desire to create an environment that feels known, comfortable, and safe to varying degrees. The varying degrees to which we seek certainty, comfort, and predictability is as varied as there are individuals, and there are 7.5 billion individuals and climbing on this planet.
Starting with and sharing the why is the sacred and vital link between individual and collective perspective and context. Context is the “box” we each live in, and perspective is the world that surrounds us for the purpose of this analogy. We tend to see things from our box, or corner of the world, and fail to ‘get outside of the box’ to gain perspective on the world in which we live and operate, which can explain the why.
If leaders do not fill the gap between a Team Member’s perspective and context, the gap will be filled by individual experience, filters, and paradigms. Individuals may seek minimal clarity from folks within their immediate sphere however, generally the potentially inaccurate conclusions reached about why may be significantly out of alignment with the real organizational or operational reason why.
A chef at a world-famous restaurant was training a highly qualified and rising culinary arts student. The chef was demonstrating how to prepare a sizeable, extremely expensive and rare cut of beef for a large party requiring several portions of the beef. The chef carefully and exquisitely handled and prepared the beef as the rapt apprentice looked on. With each cut the chef delicately sliced two inches off the end of each portion of the beef before sending to the searing pan. Curious the young student timidly asked the chef, “why slice each end of the beef before adding it to the pan, I’ve never witnessed that technique first-hand?” The chef paused and thought for a moment and replied, “the chef before me taught me this technique.”
Now intensely curious, the chef dialed his mentor and inquired, “why did you slice each end of the beef? I have a young student with me, and I would like to ensure they understand the reason you achieved the level of greatness you achieved, your technique and reputation far exceeds any I have ever known. Why did you slice each end of the beef?” The great mentor paused for a moment to reflect and explained, “in the early days of the restaurant the owner could not afford to purchase the size and variety of pans I needed to do my best work. I simply learned to slice down the cuts of meat to fit the pans we had on hand!”
Always start with and share the why if you have a desire to create environments where people can be and become the most effective versions of themselves and produce the highest quality results! As leaders, I am convinced engaging in the discipline of starting with and sharing the why is the proverbial silver bullet for achieving the highest levels of individual and organizational effectiveness and provides the vital clarity, whether recognized or unrecognized, by individuals needed to grow and develop.
Starting with and sharing the why demonstrates a leader’s ability to live out the hallmarks of the “4 Cs of Leadership” (Caring, Clarity, Communication, and Consistency). Leaders can develop organizational disciplines that provide methods to institutionalize the practice of starting with and sharing the why:
Ensure written documents clearly articulate and define your organization’s why
Ensure the Team Member Experience Path includes clearly defined whys at each of the seven steps in the Experience Path (Recruiting, Hiring, Orientation & Onboarding, Training, Immersion, Performance Development & Coaching, Separation)
Identify organizational and operational functions that address the why from a cultural perspective and an operational perspective
Create and implement mechanisms that repeat and reinforce the why at the Individual, Team, and Organizational level
Organizational why can, and should be, found in values, vision, mission statements, codes of conduct, rules of engagement, customer service promises, and in our organizational model, your “D-N-A.” Starting with and sharing the why should always be aligned with a focus on the greater good and a shared passion for creating an enduring organization that leads to long-term sustainability.
As Simon Sinek says, “Though someone may choose servant leadership for the results, the reason we continue to practice the discipline is for the joy of the journey.” The most useful information in the entire world is just one question away. Start with why. We wish you much joy for your journey as you start with and share the why each step of the way!
-LS
Book Resources:
Start with Why, Leaders Eat Last, Together is Better, and Find Your Why, Simon Sinek
Group Discussion
Guide
Click here to view and download the Discussion Guide to utilize with your Group and/or Team over the next 12 months. The Guide and questions will be updated each month.
Recommended Quarterly Reading
Servant Leadership In Action
edited by Ken Blanchard & Renee Broadwell
2022
Managing From The Inside Out
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