Scan barcode
A review by turner_of_the_page
Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't by Simon Sinek
3.0
It was fine, but I was expecting it to be more.
“Start with why” by the same author was significantly better and I would recommend it to anyone.
This book becomes a bit repetitive with dubious neuroscience and too many military examples which are really just surface level generalizations “you wouldn’t want to be in a foxhole with someone you don’t trust”.
There is extreme repetition of the author making up examples of behavior and how the author believes they affect the human brain’s processing of endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin.
A little science in a leadership book is fine, but the author crossed into some pretty big claims which I feel were not substantiated, so would have preferred either deeper scientific literature being referenced to explain the mechanisms or simply less authoritative claims.
The book is rife with shoddy statistical writing and claims.
“People who claim to be happy live 35% longer.”
A fine statement cited from a study, but the author presents this as a causal relationship (implying you need these good brain chemicals listed above to live 35% longer), but he does no accounting for correlation.
Someone with cancer or heart disease is likely to report being less happy at the time of the study, while reasonably having a shorter life expectancy.
If you are going to make claims about lifespan and mortality, it seems ridiculous to ignore the two leading causes of death and instead point the reader towards oxytocin levels in the brain from forming social bonds.
This is one example, but there are a dozen. Things like “Social media use up 600% over the last 7 years. Could this be explaining why millennials are so unhappy?”
I can agree with the author that I believe social media contributes to dissatisfaction with one’s own life, but this just feels like he had made the conclusion first and then searched for stats to support it. The 600% over 7 years reference period was something like 2007-2014. The point in history where the new technology of social media went from obscure to ubiquitous.
Imagine if I wrote “Car accident fatalities up 600% in 7 years. This is why young adults are so unhappy.” But the time period for the claim was back in the Model T days where cars went from rare to extremely common.
“Start with why” by the same author was significantly better and I would recommend it to anyone.
This book becomes a bit repetitive with dubious neuroscience and too many military examples which are really just surface level generalizations “you wouldn’t want to be in a foxhole with someone you don’t trust”.
There is extreme repetition of the author making up examples of behavior and how the author believes they affect the human brain’s processing of endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin.
A little science in a leadership book is fine, but the author crossed into some pretty big claims which I feel were not substantiated, so would have preferred either deeper scientific literature being referenced to explain the mechanisms or simply less authoritative claims.
The book is rife with shoddy statistical writing and claims.
“People who claim to be happy live 35% longer.”
A fine statement cited from a study, but the author presents this as a causal relationship (implying you need these good brain chemicals listed above to live 35% longer), but he does no accounting for correlation.
Someone with cancer or heart disease is likely to report being less happy at the time of the study, while reasonably having a shorter life expectancy.
If you are going to make claims about lifespan and mortality, it seems ridiculous to ignore the two leading causes of death and instead point the reader towards oxytocin levels in the brain from forming social bonds.
This is one example, but there are a dozen. Things like “Social media use up 600% over the last 7 years. Could this be explaining why millennials are so unhappy?”
I can agree with the author that I believe social media contributes to dissatisfaction with one’s own life, but this just feels like he had made the conclusion first and then searched for stats to support it. The 600% over 7 years reference period was something like 2007-2014. The point in history where the new technology of social media went from obscure to ubiquitous.
Imagine if I wrote “Car accident fatalities up 600% in 7 years. This is why young adults are so unhappy.” But the time period for the claim was back in the Model T days where cars went from rare to extremely common.