Why ‘People-First’, not ‘Me-First’, Leadership Wins

Written by Holtby Turner

Donald Trump’s leadership style baffles me. Politics well aside, his approach to management and organisation lags millennia behind the ‘people-first’ leadership style I heard Simon Sinek speak about last November. After shooting to fame in 2009 with his ‘Start with Why’ TED Talk – which to date has 27 million+ views on YouTube – he wrote the now international best-seller, Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. He is the Canadian behind ‘people-first’ business thinking.

I personally find the endless stream of management books hitting the shelves a bit much. But Sinek’s refreshingly unconventional. Likeable even. No surprise that executives from Disney, KPMG, jetBlue, Pfizer and even the UN have had him in to consult their management teams. So I decided to go to his breakfast seminar with the HowTo Academy to see if the hype translated into anything meaningful for real estate.

I concluded Simon Sinek’s ‘People First’ management thinking is exactly what we need in real estate leadership. Like every senior manager, I’ve pondered whose needs should come first when leading. “How can an organisation come first when it’s people who make the organisation? You can’t have one without the other … ” Sinek argues.

As the room pondered this point, I thought back to our recent report The Changing Face of Loyalty. Our research showed that demonstrable empathy from leaders and managers is what creates sustainable employee happiness, and earns loyalty.

Giving before taking wins. The best organisations invest in their people because, as Sinek drives home, human relationships really, really matter. “Business is the most personal thing in the world – it’s centred around people, by people – otherwise there’s no purpose or reason to deliver a service.” A thousand heads animatedly nodded at this point, and the auditorium was transfixed.

“People-first managers need to lead by putting people first. You do that by exercising empathy and care, regularly” he said. The best leaders aren’t the ones who are followed because they are feared, but those we trust enough to turn to for guidance and help, so they can go about doing a better job.

Sinek reminded me of Murphy Group’s 10 Point Plan, created by CEO Steve Hollingshead. “It’s reciprocal” Hollingshead revealed in our loyalty report, “if people invest their career in Murphy, we’ll invest in them long term.”

The key seems to start small. Empathy is a muscle that needs exercise. By trying to think about others more often than we think about ourselves, we actively practice ‘people first’ management. It means, as Sinek quite rightly explained, putting other people first as managers. As he closed on that simple yet poignant point, I realised why he’s so popular – it’s a kind of common sense good, that’s good for business.

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