Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

Charisma has nothing to do with energy; it comes from a clarity of WHY. It comes from absolute conviction in an ideal bigger than oneself. Energy, in contrast, comes from a good night’s sleep or lots of caffeine. Energy can excite. But only charisma can inspire. Charisma commands loyalty. Energy does not.

Leaders don’t have all the great ideas; they provide support for those who want to contribute. Leaders achieve very little by themselves; they inspire people to come together for the good of the group. Leaders never start with what needs to be done. Leaders start with WHY we need to do things. Leaders inspire action.

If those outside the megaphone share your WHY and if you are able to clearly communicate that belief in everything you say and do, trust emerges and value is perceived. When that happens, loyal buyers will always rationalize the premium they pay or the inconvenience they suffer to get that feeling. To them, the sacrifice of time or money is worth it. They will try to explain that their feeling of value comes from quality or features or some other easy-to-point-to element, but it doesn’t. Those are external factors and the feeling they get comes completely from inside them. When people can point to a company and clearly articulate what the company believes and use words unrelated to price, quality, service and features, that is proof the company has successfully navigated the split. When people describe the value they perceive with visceral, excited words like “love,” that is a sure sign that a clear sense of WHY exists

In the course of building a business or a career, we become more confident in WHAT we do. We become greater experts in HOW to do it. With each achievement, the tangible measurements of success and the feeling of progress increase. Life is good. However, for most of us, somewhere in the journey we forget WHY we set out on the journey in the first place. Somewhere in the course of all those achievements an inevitable split happens. This is true for individuals and organizations alike.

Honoré believes that people should not spend all their time at work, but rather they should work to spend more of their time with their families.

Every employee at Honoré Construction is required to clock in in the morning and clock out in the evening. But there’s a catch. They must clock in between 8:00–8:30 a.m. and out by 5:00–5:30 P.M. Stay any later and they are taken out of a bonus pool. Because employees know they have to leave by 5:30 p.m., wasted time has dropped to a minimum. Productivity is high and turnover is low. Consider how much you get done the day before you go on vacation. Now imagine every day is like that

Success comes when we wake up every day in that never-ending pursuit of WHY we do WHAT we do. Our achievements, WHAT we do, serve as the milestones to indicate we are on the right path. It is not an either/or—we need both.

People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it, and Apple says and does only the things they believe. If WHAT you do doesn’t prove what you believe, then no one will know what your WHY is and you’ll be forced to compete on price, service, quality, features and benefits; the stuff of commodities.

Regardless of WHAT we do in our lives, our WHY—our driving purpose, cause or belief—never changes. If our Golden Circle is in balance, WHAT we do is simply the tangible way we find to breathe life into that cause.

Herb Kelleher, the visionary behind Southwest Airlines, understood this better than most. He recognized that to get the best out his employees he needed to create an environment in which they felt like the company cared about them. He knew that they would naturally excel if they felt the work they did made a difference. When a journalist asked Kelleher who comes first to him, his shareholders or his employees, his response was heresy at the time (and to a large degree still is). “Well, that’s easy,” he said, “employees come first and if employees are treated right, they treat the outside world right, the outside world uses the company’s product again, and that makes the shareholders happy. That really is the way that it works and it’s not a conundrum at all.”

Great leadership is not about flexing and intimidation; great leaders, as General Robinson proves, lead with WHY. They embody a sense of purpose that inspires those around them