Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t

Sinek opens this part by recounting a series of experiments developed by Yale professor Stanley Milgram that examined ethical dilemmas—but removed the participants’ personal sense of responsibility. Milgram’s hypothesis is as follows:

Were we humans such lemmings that if someone who outranked us, someone in a position of authority, ordered us to do something entirely counter to our moral code, our sense of right and wrong, we would simply obey? Sure it’s possible on a small scale, but on a mass scale (123)?

The “mass scale” in question being the willful obedience of Germans during the Holocaust. Milgram’s experiments sought to understand just how this tragedy happened. His findings led to a central conclusion: The more people became abstractions, dehumanized to the point of representing nothing but ideas, the more likely they were to suffer harm.

In order to counter this tendency to turn people into numbers on a spreadsheet, Sinek argues that those in authority shouldn’t have control over groups of 151 or more (Dunbar’s Number; the 150-person model). When leaders are able to get to know each of their employees personally, they proactively avoid resorting to abstraction. Relationships are a key factor in circumventing harmful decision-making on a mass scale.

Sinek offers five rules for managing abstraction. In Rule 1 (“Keep it Real—Bring People Together”), he argues that there’s no substitute for in-person interaction, even in an age of social media and virtual meetings. In Rule 2 (“Keep It Manageable—Obey Dunbar’s Number”), he elaborates on the 150-person model developed by Oxford professor Robin Dunbar; leading too-large groups minimizes the effectiveness of relationships within said groups. In Rule 3 (“Meet the People You Help”), Sinek highlights the need to understand those affected by work (i.e., employees, consumers) by hearing their personal stories. Without understanding the human cost of our work, we risk losing motivation. In Rule 4 (“Give Them Time, Not Just Money”), Sinek argues that leaders build trust by investing the time and energy necessary. In Rule 5 (“Be Patient—The Rule of Seven Days and Seven Years”), Sinek argues that hasty or unearned trust has its risks—and if trust isn’t built after seven years, it may be time to move on.