Simon Sinek on the importance of the work environment

Central to the hypothesis of my book The 8 Step Guide to Building a Social Workplace is the notion that as human beings we are excellent at adapting to our environment.  Therefore, if you want to see certain behaviours, you wish to create an environment that promotes those behaviours.  Crucial to social business therefore is a work environment that promotes collaboration, innovation and sharing.

In the clip that follows leadership writer Simon Sinek makes a similar claim about the importance of environment for strong leadership.

…if you get the environment right, every one of us has the capacity to do these remarkable things…

In the 8 Step Guide, I talk about how to build such an environment, and how you can use things such as:

• how you reward people
• what you measure
• how decisions are made
• how information flows
• how you organize yourself and the organization
• how tasks are defined
• the physical workspace

and so on.  All of these things influence workplace behaviour, and only when they’re all aligned around being social, will you get social behaviours.  Anyway, it’s a nice talk to see you into the weekend.  I hope you enjoy it.  Let me know in the comments if your own workplace promotes inspiring behaviours.