Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t

Sinek opens this part by telling the story of an air traffic controller who avoided a catastrophic crash by breaking protocol. Sinek’s story highlights how people place trust in others all the time, often more than we put trust in rules as certain people know how and when to break rules for the greater good. No instruction manual or technology can guide the qualitative experience of our daily lives, but the right people can. Having the right people in our lives generates mutual trust—and having the right leaders can greatly improve the quality of our workplaces.

Human beings have the ability to establish deep, trusting relationships, but are often set up to fail, stuck in conditions (work-related or otherwise) that “encourage us to look out for ourselves first and be suspicious of others” (96). Sinek likens this dynamic to a snowmobile in the sand: The machine technically operates, but it won’t work at full capacity. People find themselves in an endless loop of mechanisms to manage their disappointment—when our ability to thrive lies with others.