Limbic Leaders

At times I am concerned that the only publications I read on any sort of regular basis are Triathlon 220 and the Economist. (Let’s not even talk about reading novels). However work has been quiet since the start of the year. This has actually allowed me to get up to date with all my back editions of the Economist, and take the time to discover some other sources of information including the FT plus various podcasts (of varying quality) including Freakonomics, Tim Harford’s Pop Up Economics, Pop Tech Audio and the Guardian’s Business Podcast amongst others. I’ve also downloaded a number of new apps for my iPhone including both the TED and Facebook ones. As much as I try and steer clear of the “self-help” category, and genuinely wish I could follow more of my Dad’s advice of “fewer business books and more of the literary classics”, I couldn’t help but be drawn into Simon Sinek’s “How Great Leaders Inspire Action” TEDcast on my iPhone this morning despite trying to do something else at the same time http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html?utm_expid=166907-15&utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ted.com%2Fsearch%3Fcat%3Dss_all%26q%3Dsimon%2Bsinek. The talk started off in a fairly predictable “let’s think outside the box” type of way, but it got increasingly interesting as the 18 minutes progressed, and it even prompted me to do some more reading about the limbic brain which controls emotion, behaviour and  memory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbic_system) and the diffusion of innovation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations). By the end of it I was thoroughly delighted to have listened to someone who could articulate two things that I know are right, but could never explain as eruditely as Simon does here; namely that people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it; and the fact that there is a clear difference between leaders i.e. people who hold positions of authority, versus people who lead who understand that people follow leaders for themselves, not for the leaders per se. All interesting stuff…now back to the day’s onslaught of emails (surely it shouldn’t have to be this way, or, shouldn’t I be thinking about how I can avoid this being the inevitable outcome that it is… although that, at a minimum, sounds like a different blog post).