Feel Safe and Flourish : A video with Simon Sinek

You have good friends at work, and though some tasks are tedious, you usually look forward to coming there.
Your colleagues support you; and you do your best to support them.
Most often you solve problems together, and your team leader clearly shows that she appreciate you and your efforts.
She sees you as a person, encourages you to develop and she focuses on common results.

Unfortunately, you belong to  the lucky ones.  According to a survey some years ago, merely 13% of workers world-wide are engaged in their jobs. In East Asia the figure was down to 6 %.

For aid workers, the main problem is not lack of engagement, but lack of support. According to a survey done by the Guardian, 79% of the respondent aid workers had experienced mental health issues. 66 % stated a lack of support from their employers as the main factor behind their ill-health. 

 I will share with you a video: A presentation by Simon Sinek.

He is the most inspiring person I have come across in a long time. Furthermore, he confirms what I do believe in: It is all about leadership. Not management, or people with authority, but true leaders. People who exercise leadership that enables a good work environment where trust and cooperation can flourish.

A condition for that is leaders who care about their employees and make you feel safe. That is the case regardless of the industry or country you work in.

Because if you do not feel safe you spend most of your focus and energy on protecting yourself. Little is left for doing good work, and your brain is put on survival modus with zero space for creativity and improvement.

If you focus on protecting yourself, so do others. It becomes impossible to create trust and cooperation. With the absence of trust, comes the absence of good results. Because none of us are able to become up with better results on our own than a group can do together. No matter how brilliant you are.

As Simon Sinek says in his book “Start With Why”:

You can’t have a good product without people who like coming to work.

I warmly recommend other videos with Simon Sinek, but also the books he has written. His focus is on U.S. businesses, but his message holds true whatever your profession is or wherever you work. Unlikely some other “motivation gurus”, he is sincere and honest with a profound knowledge of the subject he talks and writes about. In other words: trustworthy.