I chose to use the book Leaders Eat Last because this book gave me a different way to think about the corporate world.  We all grow up wanting to be in a certain career and then work towards that goal by going to college.  After many years of education, we find ourselves at the “bottom” of the totem pole once again in corporate hierarchy. This is what we all assume we have to look forward to.

 

But what if we all could truly be passionate about what we were working towards and walked away from our jobs at the end of the day feeling fulfilled?

This is what leadership in the corporate world should encourage.  Instead of establishing a sense of power, it is important that we look more towards empowerment.  Sinek did a wonderful job touching on how crucial this is for every employee to feel truly happy in his or her career. 

 

I loved the example from a Marine Corps general that Sinek used in this book.  To pull the title of the book and the content together he used the quote from the general, “Officers eat last.”  After going into a description of what this meant, I saw that this general valued his position but not so much that he wasn’t going to take care of his “team”. 

 

You see, when we enter the work force whether it is the military or in my case, education, those you work with are still considered your “team”.  If a principal were to be selfish with his/her position, it would cause the teachers to suffer and not gain the fulfillment from their job that they would have.  In the general’s case, it wasn’t about him but about those on his team.  He couldn’t win a battle alone and he knew that.  Because he was placed in such a leadership position, he gained the responsibility to take care of those lower than him, not use his position against them. 

 

Overall, Sinek really pulled together the idea of teamwork in leadership.  In this course we have discussed how important it is to involve those on your committee or team when you are a leader because you cant do it alone.  I feel like the author really put the concepts we have been learning about in a new and interesting perspective.