Leaders Eat Last

Leaders Eat Last teaches you where the need for leadership comes from historically, what the consequences of bad leadership are and how you can be a good leader in the modern world.

Think about the last time you made a lot of progress on a fun little side project of yours. Where there was nothing to gain but the joy of doing it.

Were you worried about paying that month’s bills?

Probably not.

The reason you could focus entirely on making progress on something you care about, is because your basic needs were already secured in that particular moment. Had they not, it would’ve been unlikely you could spend 8 hours playing guitar without worrying about them.

Our brain always defaults to safety mode, and the reason is simple: it had to in the past, or we wouldn’t be here.

Today all of our safety problems revolve around money, but our ancestors had tons of safety issues. They had to run away from saber-tooth tigers, hide from enemies, avoid diseases, and oh, hunt and gather their own food and find a place to stay.

Progress only started occurring once they moved around in groups and delegated tasks. When John takes care of collecting berries, and Jason hunts some wild boar, while Jenny finds a nice cave, Joshua can spend all his time crafting a new spear.

That’s why a leaders job is to provide safety to his followers, so they can focus on making progress towards their shared vision. The bigger the circle of safety around the group, the faster the progress.

For example, Google draws a pretty awesome circle of safety around its employees. Free food, ask-any-question meetings and 20% time for your own experiments are a pretty safe environment to be in.

Once you’re not worried about avoiding threats, you can start improving.

Note: For the same reason I’m working my ass off to get to $1,000 in passive income per month 🙂

Let’s say you manage the finances of your company. In that case, your responsibility might be to “allocate the budget in a way that maximizes profits”. But in reality, it’s your job to make sure the money goes to the people that will use it the best. Maybe you want to shut down a division. If so, you’re not only shutting down a part of the company, you’re robbing people of their safety, by firing them from their jobs. This doesn’t mean you should try to save everyone, but you have to be aware that the consequences of your actions as a leader directly impact the lives of people. That’s why empathy is the most important trait of a leader. If you can really put…