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BOOK REVIEW
LEADERS EAT LAST BY SIMON SENEK

Book Details
1. Some of the details are:-
a. Paperback: 349 pages
b. Publisher: Portfolio / Penguin
c. Year of 1st Publication: 2104
d. Revised Publication: 2017 (Incl Revised Chap 24)
e. Language: English
f. Parts: 8
g. Chapters: 27

About The Author.

2. Simon Oliver Sinek is a British-American author, motivational
speaker and organizational consultant. Sinek began his career at the New York
ad agencies Euro RSCG. He later launched his own business, Sinek Partners.
Sinek has written five books. Start With Why, his first book, was published in
October 2009. His second book, titled Leaders Eat Last, appeared on the
bestseller lists of the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. The book
also received a nomination for the 2014 Goodreads Choice Award. As a
motivational speaker, Sinek has given talks at The UN Global Compact Leaders’
Summit, and at the TED conference. Sinek is also an instructor of strategic
communications at Columbia University, and is an adjunct staff member of
the RAND Corporation.

Introduction
3. Leaders Eat Last starts by saying that today’s training are not about
developing leaders but training managers instead. And that goes hand in hand
with a short term mentality that disregards long term viability and people. Leaders
Eat Last wants to change that paradigm.
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Review of Contents
4. In Leaders Eat Last, Sinek attempts to answer two fundamental
questions: one, why we should follow a specific leader, and two, why our
current world is divided into groups of leaders and followers. He concludes that
any leader is only as powerful as the team around them. It is not the leader who
is strong rather it is the team that makes the leader appear strong. To reach this
conclusion, Sinek considers why we have leaders and the differences between
good and bad leaders.
5. Sinek is concerned that modern management and development training is
shortsighted and limited. The programs available to aspiring leaders teach them
how to be administrative managers, not nurturing leaders who inspire their staff,
encouraging them to achieve great things. While leaders enjoy many benefits,
those benefits come with responsibilities, and current training doesn’t place
enough emphasis on them.
6. In Leaders Eat Last, Sinek notes that true leaders are in short supply. Too
many individuals focus on short-term achievements and crunching numbers.
With such a shortage of real leaders and visionaries for employees to rally
behind, Sinek suggests that more of us become our own leaders. We should
become, so to speak, the leaders we have never had.

Key Factor to Lead

7. Our ability to lead, according to Sinek, depends on a key factor i.e. our
ability to comprehend the impact that leaders have on everyone, from the most
senior to the most junior of staff members. Just as pioneering leaders can have a
positive, nurturing effect on their employees, deadly leaders create ineffective,
inefficient businesses where no one is happy and employee turnover is high.
Staff happiness levels, their achievements, and their engagement are direct
reflections of a leader’s ability to lead.

Three Main Conclusions

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8. Sinek draws three main conclusions: first, effective leaders make

employees feel safe, second, a leader’s responsibilities are more important than
the advantages, and finally, modern managers rely on the wrong things to
measure success. Sinek examines each of these ideas in turn before providing
readers with takeaways and tips for improving their own leadership abilities.

First Conclusion - Make Employees Feel Safe

9. Leaders, firstly, are there to protect their employees. They bolster morale,
treat every employee as important, and encourage the team to work together.
Sinek uses the example of the military to illustrate his point—soldiers sacrifice
their lives and fight for each other because they feel united by a strong, stable
leader. An army under a tyrannical leader is far less effective, because such
leaders don’t see the value in their individual soldiers. Soldiers don’t want to risk
their lives for a detached leader.
10. Sinek’s conclusion, then, is that employees work harder for managers and
leaders who put their people first. Employees who feel valued will, in turn, value
their jobs. Staff turnover is far lower than in companies where employees feel no
more significant than numbers. True leaders don’t expect employees to work well
for them if they don’t give them a reason for respect. In the best companies,
employees and leaders collectively work toward the same shared vision.

Second Conclusion – Importance of Responsibilities Vis-à-vis Advantages

11. The second point Sinek makes is that leaders’ responsibilities outweigh
their privileges. Though it is easy enough to stand up and call oneself a leader, it
is far more difficult to lead with integrity and empathy. Empathy, Sinek suggests,
is the most important trait a leader can possess. Although leaders must
sometimes make hard decisions, such as culling a department, the best leaders
understand the effect this will have on these employees. Being a good leader is
not easy, and it’s not supposed to be.
12. Empathy is critical because employees respond to leaders who care about
them individually. Employees are more likely to follow an empathetic leader than
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a detached, distant leader who treats employees as nameless statistics. The

most effective companies, such as Google, encourage leaders to get to know
their personnel and form relationships built on trust and mutual respect.

Third Conclusion - Modern Managers Value Wrong Things

13. Finally, Sinek believes that ineffective leaders value the wrong things in
their employees. Technology makes it easy for managers to monitor their staff
and assess behavior such as productivity and output. This drives employees to
focus on short-term, measurable goals that they can “tick off” on a spreadsheet
or a task list. Effective leaders encourage their employees to push themselves
and think outside of the box; those results often can’t be measured.

Summing-up
14. Leaders Eat Last reminds aspiring leaders that employees can make or
break their company. A motivated workforce will do all it can to implement a
leader’s vision, whereas a stressed and unhappy workforce is unproductive and
dysfunctional. I believe that all leaders can take something useful from this
book to build a happier, more stable workforce.