Pulse June 2015 | Page 27

“Leadership is a practice, not an event. Simply making one big decision, even if it's the right decision, doesn't make you a leader.” P: In your book, you mentioned the “Circle of Safety.” What exactly is this? S: What a leader does is create the “Circle of Safety.” We are tribal animals and the company is merely the modern-day tribe. So when danger threatens the organization, do we feel that the people with whom we work with have our backs? In an organization where people feel the need to send a “cover your ass” email, it means they fear each other. It means they’re taking precautions against their own leadership. The reason we love flying Southwest Airlines is not because they have some magical ability to hire the best people, but rather the people who work at Southwest don’t fear each other. They don’t fear their leaders. The result? They look after us. There’s no magical formula to creating great customer service or culture. It’s when we feel safe from our leaders that we will naturally trust and cooperate, invest our energies to seize the opportunities and protect the entire organization from the dangers outside. P: How do you determine who to allow into the “Circle of Safety?” S: We are social animals and respond to the environments we’re in. You can take good people and put them in a bad environment, and they’re capable of bad things. You can take people whom society has given up on and put them in a good environment, and they’re capable of amazing things. The leader sets the tone. The thing to do—and this is what I covered in my first book Start with Why—is to know what you stand for. You have to know what your purpose, cause and beliefs are. Hire people who believe what you believe and who live your values. When we fill the company with people like that and then offer them the opportunity to thrive and grow, they will naturally come together. P: What’s the first step to becoming a leader? S: Leadership is a practice, not an event. Simply making one Companies Creating a “Circle of Safety” Aside from companies like The Container Store and Southwest Airlines that exemplify good leadership, who else is creating a “Circle of Safety” for their employees? nextjump A New York-based company that provides corporate perks to businesses, nextjump’s core philosophy is “changing the world by changing the workplace culture.” “nextjump has a ‘Lifetime Employment Policy.’ No one can ever get fired there for having performance issues. If you have performance issues, they’ll coach you. It’s an amazing thing,” says Sinek. Barry-Wehmiller Companies, Inc. In 2008 at the peak of the global recession, Missouri-based manufacturing company Barry-Wehmiller lost one-third of its business orders almost overnight. This caused a huge financial stress on the company and they considered laying off employees. But CEO Bob Chapman refused to resort to layoffs. Instead, the company implemented a furlough program wherein every employee—from secretary to CEO—had to take four weeks of unpaid vacation. “It was the way Bob announced the program that was so important. He said, ‘It’s better we should all suffer a little than any of us should have to suffer a lot.’ And morale went up,” Sinek says.“The company needed to save US$10 mill