The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek

Author:Simon Sinek
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

How to Train a Leader

Would-be leaders in the U.S. Marine Corps attend a ten-week training and selection process at Officer Candidate School in Quantico, Virginia. Among the many tests administered at OCS is the Leadership Reaction Course. The LRC is a series of twenty mini obstacle courses—problem-solving courses, to be more accurate. Working in groups of four, the Marines are given challenges such as figuring out how to get all their people and matériel across a water hazard (military-speak for a pond) within a set time period using just three planks of different sizes. The Marine Corps uses the LRC to evaluate the leadership qualities of their future officers. They look at things like how well the candidates follow a leader or deal with adversity and how quickly they can understand a situation and prioritize and delegate tasks. The amazing thing is, of all the qualities those future leaders are assessed on, the ability to successfully complete the obstacle is not one of them. There isn’t even a box to check at the bottom of the evaluation form. In other words, the Marine Corps focuses on assessing the inputs, the behaviors, rather than the outcomes. And for good reason. They know that good leaders sometimes suffer mission failure and bad leaders sometimes enjoy mission success. The ability to succeed is not what makes someone a leader. Exhibiting the qualities of leadership is what makes someone an effective leader. Qualities like honesty, integrity, courage, resiliency, perseverance, judgment and decisiveness, as the Marines have learned after years of trial and error, are more likely to engender the kind of trust and cooperation that, over the course of time, increase the likelihood that a team will succeed more often than it fails. A bias for will before resources, trust before performance, increases the probability a team will perform at higher levels over time.

The ability for any organization to build new leaders is very important. Think of an organization like a plant. No matter how strong it is, no matter how tall it grows, if it cannot make new seeds, if it is unable to produce new leaders, then its ability to thrive for generations beyond is nil. One of the primary jobs of any leader is to make new leaders. To help grow the kind of leaders who know how to build organizations equipped for the Infinite Game. However, if the current leaders are more focused on making their plant as big as possible, then, like a weed, it will do whatever it needs to do to grow. Regardless of the impact it has on the garden (or even the long-term prospects of the plant itself).

I know many people who sit at the highest levels of organizations who are not leaders. They may hold rank, and we may do as they tell us because they have authority over us, but that does not mean we trust them or that we would follow them. There are others who may hold no formal rank or authority, but they have taken the risk to care for their people.

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