Simon Sinek

I was a proselytizer.

I was spreading a gospel of a new way of seeing the world and seeing business.

I consider myself a messenger.

And the fact that the message has taken hold is the greatest thing in the world.

Yeah, no, I mean, the fundamentals are the same.

The sad thing for me is we're living in pretty leaderless times.

You know, there used to be many inspiring leaders in the world.

You know, whether you agree or disagree with their politics is secondary, but nobody can argue that, you know, Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Margaret Thatcher, Václav Havel, these folks were powerful and inspiring voices, and many of their lives overlapped.

Like Valencia, like all of these movement leaders...

No one can argue that they definitely viewed themselves as being a part of something bigger than themselves.

And whether I look in politics or business, that's precious few these days.

To be honest with you, the loss of the Pope, you know, Pope Francis was pretty remarkable, whether you're Catholic or not a Catholic, pretty inspiring guy who definitely saw himself not as somebody trying to accumulate power.

He saw himself as

You didn't need the pump and the circumstance.

And if you go back to sort of Jim Collins' work, sort of the old classic level five leader stuff, humility ranks real high in what it takes to be one of these great inspiring leaders.

And I don't fault the people, because clearly, you know, people are people, whatever generation we're in.

I think it's the times we live in and the incentive structures around us, but we've over-indexed on rugged individualism.

We've over-indexed on sort of heroizing CEOs.

Like, they did it.

I'm like, no, they didn't.