Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

"Start With Why" explores this question and offers a comprehensive answer. This book tells the story behind some of the world's most successful brands and best-known leaders, identifying the secret of their success so that we can apply the same approach.

It looks at how companies like Apple have built such a huge and loyal following, and how leaders like Martin Luther King Jr managed to mobilize millions of people to support an ideal. It also looks at why some products flopped, some companies floundered, and some leaders failed.

This book is for anyone who wants to understand the difference between good leadership and great leadership. It's for CEOs, team leaders, entrepreneurs, teachers of all kinds, and anyone who wants to learn how to inspire people or persuade them to rally behind a cause. Its advice is especially relevant to those involved in marketing, branding, or selling a product or service. If you want your message to hit the mark, this book's for you.

Author Simon Sinek is a leading expert in his field. His 2009 TED talk, "How Great Leaders Inspire Action," is the third most-watched TED talk of all time, with more than 40 million views and subtitles in 47 languages. "Start With Why" was published the same year, and became a global bestseller.

He's written a number of other best-selling books, including "Leaders Eat Last." (You'll find a Book Insight of this book on the Mind Tools site.) As well as writing and motivational speaking, Sinek works as an organizational consultant, helping develop better leaders.

So, keep listening to hear how Apple built its cult following, how biology informs our buying decisions, and why inspiration beats manipulation over the long term.

Sinek opens "Start With Why" with three stories from different eras. The first is about Wilbur and Orville Wright, otherwise known as the Wright Brothers – the two men who pioneered aviation and built the first fully practical airplane in the early 1900s.

The second anecdote is from the 1970s, and it's the story of how Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs started a personal computer revolution and built Apple into a global technology giant.

The final story is about civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr, who drew a quarter of a million people to Washington DC to hear his historic "I have a dream" speech in 1963.

In all cases, these leaders defied expectations and smashed assumptions. The Wright Brothers were badly equipped, poorly educated, and short on funds. Their main rival was Samuel Pierpont Langley, a well-connected professor who had a better education, a bigger team, more money, and higher-quality materials. And yet the Wright Brothers got there first.

Wozniak and Jobs did so much more than create a computer company. They turned Apple into a global, iconic brand, revered around the world not just for its computers, but also for its phones, MP3 players, and music store. Apple had the same access to talent and to equipment as its rivals, yet it blew them out of the water.

And Dr King didn't have the internet or social media to spread his message, but he managed to inspire hundreds of thousands of people, of different colors and creeds, to descend on Washington to hear him speak about civil liberties and freedom.

How did they do it? Sinek says they succeeded because they took the opposite approach to most leaders and organizations, so let's take a look at what he means by that.

The author explains his theory using a concept he calls "The Golden Circle." To understand this concept, try imagining three concentric circles. The outer circle is labeled "What," the middle circle "How," and the inner circle "Why."

Most organizations and leaders know what they do, and they can describe this well. They make certain products or offer particular services. How they do it can help differentiate a product or service from rivals. This is important when it comes to sales and marketing. But the most important of the three circles is the inner one: why.

"Why" describes a company's purpose, passion, mission, or core belief. Why does a business exist? What drives a company to continually innovate? Why does a leader get out of bed in the morning? Why should we care?

Most companies and leaders ignore the "Why." Many carmakers, for example, start by telling customers what they do: "Here's our new car," they say. Then they tell potential buyers how they do it or why they're better than the competition. For example: "Our new car has leather seats, offers great mileage, and has attractive financing options." Then they invite us to buy one.

By contrast, truly great leaders and consistently successful companies start with why they do what they do, before moving on to the outer circles.

Let's take Apple as an example. Imagine if Apple marketed its products using the following message: "We make great computers. They're beautifully designed and user-friendly. Wanna buy one?" Apple might sell some computers this way, but it probably wouldn't have thousands of people lining up for hours outside stores to get hold of its latest gadgets.

So how does Apple actually communicate? Its marketing message conveys something like this: "We believe in challenging the status quo with everything we do. We believe in thinking differently. The way we do this is by making beautifully designed products that are simple to use. And we happen to make great computers. Wanna buy one?" Can you hear the difference in language and approach?

Apple stands for something that people can sign up to or get behind – the notion of being different, and of challenging conventional wisdom or usual practice. Most people don't buy what Apple does: they buy why they do it, says Sinek.

In the same way, the Wright Brothers started with "Why." They believed that airplanes could change the world. They had a purpose and they convinced others to support their mission. Those who worked with them willingly gave their blood, sweat and tears.

Samuel Pierpont Langley had a different goal – he wanted to be rich and famous. The people on his team worked for money, not out of passion. And when he lost the race, he didn't try to match or improve on what the Wright Brothers had done. He simply gave up.

Martin Luther King Jr also stood for a cause that was bigger than any individual. People trekked across America to hear him speak. They supported his civil rights movement because they too believed in equality and freedom, and they wanted the nation's laws to be just and fair.

These real-life examples, involving such famous names and brands, bring Sinek's theory to life. And his Golden Circle concept is simple, powerful and easy to apply.

Let's now look at how biology impacts what we buy, and how we vote.

Sinek argues that the three layers of his Golden Circle correspond to different sections of our brain. The outer layer corresponds to our neocortex, which is responsible for rational and analytical thought and language. When a company explains what it does, our neocortex processes this information. For example, it analyzes the features of a new car or computer and thinks rationally about them. But the neocortex does not drive behavior.

The middle and inner layers of the circle (which represent "How" and "Why") correspond to our limbic brain. This part of the brain is responsible for all our feelings, including trust and loyalty. It also drives our behavior and influences our decision making, but it has no capacity for language.

Our limbic brain is so powerful that it can drive behavior that goes against our rational analysis of a situation. We trust our gut, even if the facts and figures don't stack up. We act because it feels right, or we don't act because it feels wrong, no matter what our logical brain says or how convincing the facts are.

So, companies that start with "Why" succeed because they appeal to our emotions. These companies know they must win over our hearts first, before they win our minds.

We like the way Sinek explains the biology behind our decision making. It makes useful reading for anyone working in branding, marketing, sales, or political campaigning. It's not new information, of course, but it comes in fresh, new packaging.

So it's clear that the best way to win customers or supporters is to start with "Why." Even so, many companies and individuals adopt a different approach, choosing manipulation over inspiration. Let's take a look at this.

Sinek identifies some of the most common forms of manipulation. Companies often drop the price of a product or service, or run a time-sensitive promotion, to increase sales. The Black Friday phenomenon, when retailers slash their prices, is a good example of this.

Fear is another form of manipulation. The government uses fear tactics to shock people to stop smoking, for example, and politicians try to scare voters with predictions of doom and gloom should their opponents win office.

Companies also use peer pressure to persuade people to buy from them. Take the advertisement for chewing gum that states: "Four out of five dentists prefer Trident." Or another product may claim to have more than a million happy customers and counting. As humans, we want to belong and we don't want to miss out, so peer pressure works. Celebrity endorsements are another form of peer pressure, especially if companies are appealing to impressionable teenagers.

Aspirational messages are also widely used in marketing, such as the adverts that promise "six weeks to a healthier you" or "10 steps to a flat stomach." Another manipulative approach is to hype up the novelty value of a product using language like "a new innovation" or "a phone of firsts."

And the fact is, many of us do shop on Black Friday, fall for peer-pressure advertising, or buy the latest innovation. So Sinek agrees that manipulation works. It might even produce healthy sales or a boost in popularity, and if it's not based on lies, then what's the problem?

The downside is, manipulation doesn't build loyalty, trust or long-term relationships. Manipulative marketing can cost a lot of money and it only has short-term gains. It's also stressful, since companies have to keep coming up with new forms of manipulation to stay ahead of the competition.

As leaders, our lives will be less stressful, and we'll save money, if we can inspire people to follow us or buy from us, rather than manipulating them into doing so. This is how we build a loyal customer base over the long term.

We like the way Sinek differentiates between marketing that manipulates and marketing that inspires. Readers can use this information to check their own approach to marketing and make changes if required. As always, the author backs up his ideas with case studies, such as the story of the Motorola novelty phone that sold millions in its first years, but then floundered as competitors came up with new innovations.

As you've heard, "Start With Why" has many strengths, but it also has some weaknesses. It's a book of more than 200 pages built around one single idea, and some readers might prefer to save time and watch the TED talk instead. There's a lot of repetition of concepts, stories and case studies, and the book feels padded in places. For example, the author is evangelical about Apple and mentions the tech giant repeatedly throughout the book, which is tiresome.

Sinek also highlights Southwest Airlines as a company that follows his approach. Like Apple, Southwest Airlines is a darling of business authors and it regularly appears as a case study. This book was written in 2009, so Sinek may have been one of the first authors to focus on these companies. But as examples, they don't wear as well as some of the ideas, and their repetition throughout the book doesn't help.

Sinek could also have included some practical tips for readers on how to identify their own "Whys" or how to market their organization based on the Golden Circle concept. Unlike many business books, there are no chapter summaries or lists of key takeaways in this book.

But overall, "Start With Why" is a useful addition to any prospective or current leader's toolkit, and the simplicity of the concept makes it memorable.

"Start With Why" by Simon Sinek is published by Portfolio Penguin.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.