Why good leaders make you feel safe?

The link of the presentation:

Simon Sinek: Why good leaders make you feel safe | TED Talk

Summarization

A good leader makes the whole working environment safe and people in that environment trust each other. The employees are willing to work harder and devote their effort to achieve their leader’s goals. And they do this because they know that the leader will do the same thing for them.

This system has been embedded into us since several thousand years ago. Think back to the Paleolithic era. There were a lot of dangers — the weather, lack of resources, or a saber-toothed tiger. Therefore, our ancestors had to find a viable system to keep them alive.

Survival system

For survival, some people needed to watch those dangers at night, so some people could sleep in the nighttime then went hunting when the sun rose. They cooperated with each other. Those men who slept at night would not feel anxiety or unsafe while sleeping, because they knew their members would protect them. People who watched the dangers at night did not need to worry about hunger, because their tribe members would share their food after hunting.

In that extreme environment, if we did not have confidence in each other and did not feel secure, then, it was a bad system for survival. So, we naturally love working inside a safe environment. We will have more outputs and feel happier.

The whole condition nowadays is not different from thousands of years ago. We have many dangers, too — an uneven economy, the uncertainty of the stock market, and rapidly developing technology. All of these can wipe us out of business overnight. As a result, we still have the needs of being prepared for the dangers, trusting each other, and feeling content within our teams.

This is the responsibility of leaders. Because only leaders can set the tone inside the groups. Leaders should make their employees feel safe, build the trust level in the group, and treat their workers like their children. This is a leader, who sincerely cares about others.

Building up an environment where all the members can work together and trust each other. Isn’t it the group we all want to work in?

My reflection and thought

I have contemplated the idea of this presentation for a while. Although I have not had experience in leading an official organization so far, I do lead some small groups in the present and in the past.

Therefore, I believe that I may have a little more experience than others; but, I still need to tweak and optimize my leadership style frequently.

My handicap

Every time when the project is finished, I will look back at my leadership style, the process, and the result and ponder areas where I can be further improved. Usually, I would find a lot of them, then do not know how to actually improve those problems I have found.

Let’s take an important project I led before as an example. It was the first time ever for me to lead a team. Even though it was the first trial, the result was quite good. We won an award and beat many other Masters Level students or even Ph.D. students.

However, when I am recalling it now, I will say the reason why I could get that honor and did not encounter big challenges to my leadership is that my professor aided a lot. To be honest, I did not make the whole group efficiently communicate; I did not give enough instructions when my teammates had problems, and I did not successfully persuade others to put themselves in that competition.

There were many more problems. I can easily identify them. But if my goal is to solve them, it is much harder. It is not that easy or intuitive to find or come up with good solutions. So, it has bothered me for a while.

Got lost

Then, I watched this video. It was an idea different from what I thought. I did not think that we can really treat our teammates like our children and at the same time make them finish their tasks efficiently. These ideas are a little contradictory, in my opinion, and it’s not easy to find the balance.

However, I think that the concept which the speaker has proposed is logical. Moreover, the presenter also gave some real-life instances. In my mind, I do not know how they reach the balance, but I must confess that the narrations of the speaker and those instances point out that if we can make the working environment safe and people in the group trust each other, the whole group would have a higher capacity to solve problems or finish tasks.

So, I am confused. The idea sounds like an excellent leadership style; but, it is an idea different from what I believed and I do not understand how to implement that concept, too.

What can I say? I may need to explore deeper leadership styles in the future.

Originally published at https://www.juliansweb.com on October 21, 2020.