Soft skills are invaluable qualities that help us lead effectively and connect with others on a deeper level.

Professor M.S. Rao, Ph.D.—International Leadership Guru, The Father of “Soft Leadership” & 21st-Century Philosopher

Globally, unemployment persists due to a lack of soft skills. Global educational institutions emphasize soft skills to boost employability, and organizations worldwide use them to improve productivity and performance.

Currently, there is inadequate research available on soft skills. There are several myths about soft skills, since it is still an evolving discipline. It is mistaken for people skills, life skills, life management skills, and emotional intelligence, to name a few. Researchers, scholars, and educators find it hard to arrive at a universal definition of soft skills. They find it hard to create a standard curriculum. Additionally, there is an urgent need to explore tools and techniques for measuring soft skills to ensure effective training outcomes. Hence, this discipline calls for intensive research to establish its validity.

This short talk from Simon Sinek explains why these skills are so hard to measure and develop, and why they deserve a real training framework:

What are soft skills?

Skills are usually divided into technical skills and general skills. Some of the general skills that are behavioral fall into the category of soft skills. Hence, soft skills are a collection of skills that are essential to survive and succeed in personal, professional, and social life. They are complementary to hard skills. Hard skills are also known as technical skills or domain skills. Soft skills can be described as the effective presentation of hard skills. Additionally, how you say it is as important as what you say. That means soft skills are equally important along with hard skills. Hard skills can be seen on your resume, while your soft skills can be observed in employment interviews. A judicious blend of hard and soft skills helps one become a successful professional and excel as an effective leader.

Soft versus hard skills

Soft skills are different from hard skills. Hard skills are technical skills and domain skills, while soft skills are non-domain skills. Hard skills are tangible and measurable and quantifiable, while soft skills are intangible and cannot be easily measured and quantified. Hard skills are about what you speak, while soft skills are about how you speak with others. Soft skills are polite and pleasing ways of communicating with others, while hard skills are what you contribute in the workplace. Soft skills complement your hard skills. Precisely, soft skills are the presentation of your hard skills in the workplace. Soft skills are interpersonal skills, while hard skills are job-related skills. If hard skills are infrastructure, soft skills are superstructure. If hard skills are the foundation, soft skills are the cement. A judicious blend of both hard and soft skills is essential to achieve your professional success and fast-track your career.

You can find hard skills on a resume, while you can find soft skills during an employment interview. Hard skills get you an interview, while soft skills help you get your employment. Hence, both hard and soft skills are essential to get a job. After joining a job, soft skills help you survive in the workplace, while hard skills help you prove yourself professionally. Hence, blending both hard and soft skills is imperative in the workplace.

Soft versus hard skills―examples and illustrations

If you call someone physically handicapped, it is known as a hard skill. Instead, if you call it physically challenged, it is known as soft skills. If you instruct smokers, ‘Don’t smoke’ is known as a hard skill. Instead, if you communicate, ‘thanks for not smoking’, it is known as a soft skill. If you talk about the ‘generation gap’, it is known as a hard skill. In contrast, if you call it ‘generational differences’, it is known as soft skills. If you call them ‘slow learners’, it is known as hard skills. In contrast, if you call them ‘differently-abled learners’, it is known as soft skills. If you call ‘problems’ hard skills, it is known as hard skills, whereas if you call them ‘challenges’, it is known as soft skills. If you call ‘weaknesses’, it is known as hard skills; if you call them ‘concerns’, it is known as soft skills. Succinctly, soft skills emphasize how you communicate, while hard skills emphasize what you communicate.

It is easy to measure hard skills, while it is hard to measure soft skills. It is easy to teach hard skills, while it is hard to teach soft skills. Usually, teachers teach hard skills while trainers train soft skills. Since soft skills are behavioral skills, it requires extra effort on the part of trainers to use various tools and techniques, including interaction, role-plays, active participation, and experiential learning, to bring out the desired behavioral changes in the participants.

How to acquire soft skills?

You can acquire soft skills by various means, including observation, reading, training, experience, and practice. Soft skills training equips you with skills, abilities, and knowledge. However, your interaction with others helps you acquire soft skills greatly. Since soft skills are behavioral skills, people must learn through trial and error, using their emotional intelligence and flexibility and adaptability. You must be practical, realistic, and situational to acquire soft skills. Above all, you must learn from your failures to improve your behavior and get along well with others effectively.

You must develop emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills. You must observe and understand people and their behaviors. Travel to unknown destinations to understand people. Talk to them to get along with them. Understand their cultures and behaviors. Traveling teaches tolerance and improves soft skills. When you travel to unknown destinations and communicate in a non-native language, you will be able to improve your soft skills effectively.

Reading soft skills is one aspect, and applying them is another aspect. Attending workshops and training programs helps you understand what soft skills are and how you will be able to acquire them; such programs conduct role-plays to bring out behavioral improvement. Here are some tools and techniques to improve soft skills

• Be self-aware.
• Avoid preconceived notions.
• Keep your body language positive.
• Listen to the speaker carefully.
• Make eye contact with the speaker and reciprocate positively.
• Empathize with the speaker.
• Be flexible.
• Praise people lavishly.
• Make the speaker feel important.
• Accept criticism graciously.
• Interact with different types of personalities who are introverted, extroverted, assertive, submissive, and aggressive.
• Above all, be adaptable.

Since soft skills are behavioral skills, you can acquire soft skills through physical interaction and trial and error. You must take intrapersonal and interpersonal feedback regularly to improve your soft skills. Succinctly, be proactive, be a good listener, improve interpersonal skills, and build relationships to acquire soft skills.

Can soft skills be measured?

It is hard to measure soft skills, but easy to measure hard skills. Research shows that soft skills are harder to teach than hard skills. Additionally, it takes a lot of time and effort to equip oneself with soft skills rather than hard skills. However, matching the objectives of the soft skills training with the feedback received from the participants can help measure soft skills effectively. For instance, every training program has a set of objectives, and the program is rolled out to the participants accordingly. At the end of the training program, the participants are asked whether the training has met their objectives, aspirations, and expectations. Since soft skills training is behavioral, it is hard to measure. However, taking timely feedback at the end of the training session helps greatly achieve the training takeaways.

Meka's five-level model to measure soft skills

Evaluation is essential to understand the effectiveness of any training program. It helps understand how far the training has impacted the participants and improved their behavior and performance. Additionally, it helps assess the strengths and weaknesses of the program and the pulse of the participants to deliver the training program better next time. Here is an innovative Meka’s five-level evaluation model to measure soft skills training:

1. Conduct the training needs analysis to identify the current skills gap in the participants.
2. List out core objectives clearly to deliver the training.
3. Execute the soft-skills training program meticulously as per the objectives.
4. Align deviations or distractions from the training program.
5. Measure the training takeaways from the participants through questionnaires and effective feedback.

Sample questions to measure soft skills training

Consider using the following few questions to measure a soft skills training program:

• Did the soft skills training transfer the knowledge, skills, and abilities to the participants effectively?
• Did the soft skills training improve the attitude and behavior of the participants successfully?
• Is the training worth investing time, money, energy, and resources?
• Are the training outcomes as per the training objectives? If not, identify and address the deviations or distractions.
• List out the three soft skills training takeaways that can improve the attitude, change behavior, and polish the personality.

The concept of soft skills is an evolving domain

Unfortunately, people often take the significance of soft skills lightly. The concept of soft skills is an evolving domain that people must take seriously; people must be educated about them.

Whenever a new discipline surfaces, people resist and mostly don’t respect it because there is no strong research to substantiate its relevance. However, over time, people start accepting and respecting the discipline. For example, many people initially did not take management as a discipline seriously and expressed their reservations. Today, management as a discipline is a reality, now having a sacred and respectable position like many other disciplines in the world. Similarly, soft skills will evolve as a discipline over time as more research is done. To summarize, a proportional mix of hard and soft skills helps me excel as a successful professional and leader. Soft skills provide a competitive edge in this cut-throat world. They are an asset to employees and add immense value to global organizations. To conclude, soft skills are essential for everyone, from janitors to chief executives, to achieve the desired outcomes.

Author Bio

Professor M.S. Rao, Ph.D., is recognized as a prominent 21st-century philosopher and a pioneer of the ‘Soft Leadership’ conceptual framework. He is an internationally acclaimed authority on leadership, with a distinguished 45-year career spanning the military, academia, business, consulting, and thought leadership. He has authored fifty-six books, including the best-selling title, “See the Light in You.” An avid lover of words and quotes, he has published over 300 papers and articles in prestigious international journals, such as Leader to Leader, Thunderbird International Business Review, Strategic HR Review, Development and Learning in Organisations, Industrial and Commercial Training, On the Horizon, and Entrepreneur. He takes on multiple roles as a soldier, entrepreneur, educator, author, explorer, thinker, researcher, mentor, motivator, reformer, traveler, blogger, storyteller, volunteer, activist, futurist, analyst, strategist, and coach. He serves as a C-Suite advisor and a global keynote speaker. His diverse professional background spans military service, academia, training, research, consultancy, and philosophy, giving him a strategic perspective and a long-term vision. Through leadership education and his publications, he mentors a new generation of leaders and inspires individuals worldwide to pursue their life goals, despite various challenges and disabilities. He aspires to develop one million students into global leaders by 2030. He actively participates in peace initiatives, advocates for gender equality (#HeForShe), and fosters global connections among students. He is dedicated to writing books and maintaining blogs on executive education, learning, and leadership. Much of his work is freely available through his four blogs, including this one: http://professormsraovision2030.blogspot.com/. Recognized as a prolific author and an energetic, dynamic, and inspiring leadership speaker, he can be contacted at msrlctrg@yahoo.com.

The answer to why creative people wait until the last minute, according to Dr. John Gray, often comes down to stimulation: when your brain gets used to high stimulation, ordinary pressure stops getting your attention, so the emergency becomes the thing that finally switches focus on. In our 2015 conversation, his answer was not more willpower. It was recovery, a mission bigger than the task and the habit of keeping your word.

I introduced John on the Addicted to Success podcast as the number one New York Times bestselling author of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. That day I wanted to talk about his then-new book, Staying Focused in a Hyper World, because so much of our audience wanted to know how to increase memory and brain performance, and what was holding them back mentally from success.

The relationship expert who found his own procrastination

John told me he had spent his whole life as a marriage counselor and teacher of relationships. Then, about 15 years before our conversation, he said he started having early-stage Parkinson’s, and he shifted his focus toward healing his own brain.

He said the natural approach he found also addressed something he did not know he had: ADHD. For him, that looked like being easily distracted, disorganized and procrastinating. He said many creative, self-expressive people have great ideas and are good at starting things, but not that good at finishing them, and they often wait until the last minute. He had assumed that was just him.

He said that after adding extra nutritional support aimed at helping his brain make dopamine and restore the balance between dopamine and serotonin, his ability to perform increased dramatically. The need to push things to a state of emergency faded. His wife was the one who pointed it out. She told him he had become more relaxed and attentive to her, that he did not get distracted as quickly, and that when she said something, he actually held on to it.

To be clear, this is John’s account of what happened for him, as he told it in 2015. It is not a proven cure, and it is not medical advice. If you are dealing with Parkinson’s or ADHD, talk to a qualified doctor. What I find useful is the pattern he named: the last-minute rush was not a quirk. In his view, it was a signal.

The deadline is a manufactured emergency

John called it high dopamine function. He described dopamine as the brain chemical behind focus, pleasure, energy and motivation, and said high dopamine function means you need high stimulation to get your attention.

Then he pointed straight at the name of our show. He said a lot of successful people are high dopamine function because they always want more success, and there is nothing wrong with that natural desire. The problem is when the brain becomes desensitized to normal stimulation, and what you have in the moment is never enough.

That is where he connected it to procrastination. He said you can get addicted to worrying, to drama, to the story you tell yourself about why you cannot do something, and, in his words, “you can get addicted to procrastination.” Later he said that when the body is not producing enough dopamine, people create drama or an emergency to get it, and some live in a constant state of emergency.

For a creative founder, the deadline you keep pushing up against is not only a scheduling failure. By his explanation, it is the stimulation your brain has learned to wait for. That is close to what I described in the brutal truth about entrepreneurship with ADHD, where the addiction to chaos and last-minute sprints keeps talented founders stuck in the same loop.

Why ordinary work starts to feel flat

John explained it with the pupils of the eye. Walk into a dark room and they get bigger. Walk into bright light and they constrict. He said the brain does something similar: when stimulation runs higher than normal, receptor sites decrease, as if there is too much light. They can come back, he said, but only when you stop chasing high stimulation and give the brain support.

He gave examples from his own life. Presenting to a thousand people is a major dopamine rush. The night before our conversation, he had seen The Book of Mormon with his wife for their 30th anniversary, a show he called one of the greatest on Broadway, the whole audience feeding off the performers. For every up, he said, there is a down, and after the high, ordinary life feels flat.

That landed with me. I told John that so many lights had just gone off in my mind, because I was guilty of it too. With a site called Addicted2Success, I was always chasing the next dopamine hit: reach a milestone, celebrate for a little bit, then ask about the next level, like a video game. I told him even switching my phone off for half a day had become a struggle, because I kept wondering whether an important email had come through.

Unplug one day a week so the brain can come back

John’s most practical behavior advice was simple and uncomfortable: unplug from your phone and computer at least one day a week. He said taking one day off from overstimulation is one of the oldest traditions in the world. Here is what he described for himself:

• His phone set so only his kids’ calls could come through.
• No work and no computer.
• A day of relaxation with his family.
• Meditation, which he said was one of the main ways he unplugged.

When he started, he said he was so tired, because he had been running on stimulation, and normal life no longer gave him energy. You feel bored and flat, and you want to turn on something like Game of Thrones. He said he was not against any of it. We just need to balance it with retreat, notice when we are getting addicted to working all the time, and learn to turn it off, including stopping work in the evening when the sun goes down.

Gray’s rule is a blunter version of mindful productivity: focus is only as strong as the recovery behind it. If ordinary work feels dead without a crisis, the flat feeling on your day off may be the comedown after high stimulation, not proof that you need more pressure.

Satisfaction and wanting more

John said high dopamine function shows up differently in different temperaments. The creative type becomes hyper-distracted. The active type is always on the go, impulsive and risk-taking, getting a lot done without always thinking things through. He also described sensitive and compulsive types, and said most of us are a combination.

His warning for entrepreneurs was that as creative people become successful, they can drift into the compulsive pattern, demanding perfection of themselves and feeling it is never good enough. His answer is the line I would put on the wall: the secret of happiness and success is being able to come from a place of satisfaction and wanting more. Both, at the same time.

The bricklayer who was building a cathedral

If emergency is the wrong fuel, John’s answer was mission. He told a story he had heard long ago about medieval brick makers. The first says he is making a brick out of mud and looks bored. The next is making bricks to build a house. Another wants a house and a family. The last looks more alive than any of them, because he is making bricks to support his family and to build a cathedral that will inspire people to lead a better life.

John tied that to the prefrontal cortex, which he described as the part of the brain active when you feel compassion, creativity and optimism. He said under stress, blood flow shifts toward the back of the brain, where you repeat old patterns instead of having a new thought. As he framed it, dopamine says there is a job for me to do, and serotonin says I can do it.

Keep your word, even when you do not have to work

For me, this is the real replacement for last-minute panic. John said the masculine side, which he said both men and women have, comes from keeping your word: making commitments in the moment and following through. That, he said, is what got him up in the morning. He did not have to work, but he had promised to do things, and if he was not fulfilling his mission, he believed his energy would drop.

He warned that people who retire or get very rich can slide because they no longer have to do anything. His fix was to keep making promises when inspired and then follow through. A promise creates pressure you chose. An emergency creates pressure you were waiting for.

What he said about nutrition

I asked John to tie the science to a few practical things listeners could start doing for prefrontal cortex activity and lower stress. Beyond unplugging, he talked through nutrition he said had helped him: vitamin C, grape seed extract, supporting the body’s own glutathione, vitamin D3 and sunshine, a daily bowl of blueberries, and gut health, including homemade probiotic yogurt. He said men and women need a different balance of minerals, and he offered his website as a resource, which I pointed listeners to at the time.

These are his 2015 claims, not current medical guidance, and I am not prescribing them. Talk to a doctor before changing supplements, especially for ADHD or Parkinson’s.

The marriage question I asked him

In that conversation I told John I was getting married the next month, and asked what habits my partner and I could implement for a better marriage. His answer used the same principle. The things you automatically do at the beginning are the things that keep it going. Men get lazy, he said, women get resentful, and each feeds the other. Newness gives you free dopamine early on. Later you have to create it, because the feeling follows the action. And he said women are like the weather: if you resist the upset, it stays. Ask her to help you understand, and do not try to fix it in that moment.

At the end, I told John he had given us an overload of information that we needed to go and unpack, and I pointed listeners to Staying Focused in a Hyper World on Amazon. The idea I keep is this: if you can only finish when it becomes urgent, stop treating the emergency as your engine. Recover from the stimulation, connect the task to the cathedral, and make promises you keep before the panic shows up.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do creative people wait until the last minute, according to John Gray?

John Gray said many creative people have high dopamine function and need high stimulation to focus. Ordinary pressure stops registering, so the last-minute emergency becomes what finally turns their attention on. In his view, the habit is a signal.

What did John Gray mean by high dopamine function?

He used it for people who need high stimulation to pay attention. In his explanation, overstimulation desensitizes the brain, so normal life feels flat and people chase bigger hits, including worry, drama or procrastination, to feel engaged.

How often did John Gray recommend unplugging?

At least one day a week, with no computer and the phone off or limited to a few calls. He also said to stop working in the evening, and admitted his first unplugged days left him tired and bored.

What does John Gray’s cathedral bricklayer story mean?

Several men make bricks from mud, but the one building a cathedral to inspire people is the most alive. Gray used it to show that mission and purpose create lasting motivation in a way a looming deadline cannot.

Did John Gray say nutrition cured his Parkinson’s and ADHD?

In 2015 he said extra nutritional support aimed at dopamine and serotonin balance worked for him, and his focus and procrastination improved. That is his personal account, not a proven cure or medical advice. Speak with a qualified doctor.

What Grant Cardone taught me about getting out of scarcity was that making more money and becoming less afraid of losing it are different jobs. In our interview, his first million brought disappointment and fear, while his advice kept returning to investing in your ability, finding stronger collaborators and creating something beyond what you already have.

I asked Grant where he started. Before we got to sales or bigger goals, he talked about his mother telling him to turn off the lights.

By the end, I was telling him about my own tendency to hold on to money, and about offers of millions of dollars for Addicted2Success that I had turned down. That is why I would go back to this conversation. Looking at it now, the question it raises is simple: am I protecting something valuable, or am I letting the fear of losing it decide how big it can become?

Scarcity can survive a bigger bank balance

Grant told me his father died at 52, when Grant was only 10. His mother had a little money left to her, but she did not know how to create an income. He remembered the fear in the house, even though they had somewhere to live, food and a car to get to school.

The instruction to turn off the lights was about more than electricity. In his telling, it carried the possibility that they might not have enough to keep their home.

I called it living out of scarcity. Grant described someone holding on so tightly to what they have that they cannot reach for what is available. His alternative was to invest energy, time, money and resources rather than make conservation the whole purpose of life.

I would not turn that into an argument against saving. Later, he explained how deliberately he built reserves. The distinction I take from it is between keeping resources available for a purpose and keeping them untouched because every possible use feels threatening. Those can look identical in a bank account while producing very different decisions.

The first million did not remove the fear

When I asked what his first million felt like, Grant said it was “kind of disappointing.” The milestone was anticlimactic. Then came another problem: he was scared to lose what he had made.

He said he reached that first million by 30, selling someone else’s product after treatment for drug addiction. He had taken a sales job he hated and decided to become great at it. His account was not about discovering the perfect business before doing uncomfortable work.

He also told me he did not buy a nice watch until he was 40. Producing income, holding reserves and then investing those reserves mattered more to him than immediately displaying the achievement.

That combination is more useful than either extreme on its own. He was not describing spending everything to prove you believe in abundance. But he was also showing me that reaching a number does not automatically undo the fear you brought to it. If the only plan is to feel safe once you have more, the next milestone may simply give you something larger to worry about.

The useful ritual was a return to lifetime goals

I asked about rituals and habits, bringing up Brian Tracy’s point about successful habits. Grant’s answer did not begin with a perfectly controlled morning.

That morning, he said, his children had jumped into bed and they had played hide-and-seek under the sheets. He wanted more sleep, missed the morning meeting and wanted a cappuccino from Starbucks. He was clear that he did not feel like doing it every day or follow an identical daily pattern.

What he did repeat was writing his goals in the morning and again at night. Not the day’s to-do list: what he wanted to accomplish in his lifetime. Later, he added that he also wrote them whenever he was disappointed.

I told him I did not know anyone who did that morning-and-night practice. His explanation made the repetition practical: it moved his attention away from where he had been and back toward where he wanted to go.

Here is what I would take from that. After a disappointment, do not let the setback become the only thing you can describe in detail. Write the destination again, then decide what work would move you toward it. The page is not a guarantee of success. It is a way to stop giving yesterday every available minute of attention.

A stronger collaborator can matter more than a bigger effort

Grant said he had been brought up to rival other people: if someone else won, he had lost. He connected that directly to scarcity. His alternative was to collaborate with successful, ethical people rather than treat their momentum as a threat.

Later, when I asked about his weaknesses, he admitted he did not like being governed or regulated, and that his quickness to walk away could conflict with collaboration.

He also named a specific missed opportunity. He said he had bought and sold $350 million worth of real estate over the previous 20 years. Looking back, he believed bringing in people who had already operated at a bigger level, and giving them a piece of the action, might have made that $3 billion instead.

Those were his figures and his hypothetical in that conversation, not independently verified results or a promise. The useful admission was that working harder alone had limits. He could see a cost to not sharing the opportunity with people who knew how to build something larger.

You can read our Grant Cardone quotes on sales, wealth and the 10X mindset for the punchier version of his thinking. Here, the weakness behind the ambition gave me more to work with: if you insist on being the strongest person involved, you may also be setting the ceiling.

Commitment needs evidence, not just conviction

Grant described concentrating his investments in things he knew rather than spreading money across different investments. When someone asked him what to do with $20,000, his answer was to reinvest in themselves and their business.

I hear that as his preference for building capacity in an area he understands, not a universal instruction to put all your savings into one bet. His confidence in an investment is not evidence that it cannot lose money.

Another answer in the same conversation matters here. When I asked about his biggest mistakes, he said he had trusted people’s accounts of what they had accomplished without checking the evidence. He said he had been swindled out of money.

He also regretted staying self-employed too long. Put those admissions beside the all-in language and there is a better takeaway than simply being fearless: build beyond your own labor, but check the people you are building with.

I brought up shiny-object syndrome when we discussed information overload. Grant favored a small number of strong sources over collecting advice everywhere. I would use that to reduce distraction, not to avoid checking a claim. Fewer voices can help you act; unchecked voices can still lead you in the wrong direction.

Useful skills need a market that can reward them

I asked what an ace salesperson should sell if they did not know which industry to enter. Grant pushed back against choosing purely by passion. His answer was to look for something people wanted, with strong margins and a large flow of business.

He pointed to the digital space as an example. In that 2014 conversation, I told him Addicted2Success had been running for three and a half years and had reached 54 million views worldwide. I was talking about the reach available online compared with appearing in front of people one event at a time.

Those were the figures I gave him then, not today’s site statistics. The distinction remains useful without turning the numbers into a forecast: being good at selling and choosing a market that can support your ambition are separate decisions.

I would not hear his answer as a reason to despise your work. I would hear it as a challenge to ask whether enthusiasm is helping you avoid an uncomfortable commercial question. Who wants what you offer, how do you reach them, and is there enough room to build the business you say you want?

Staying reachable keeps the opportunity open

I noted that Grant stayed connected with people, sharing their work and connecting with fans and followers. He said remaining accessible helped him learn about people and stay relevant.

That sits alongside his ambition to be everywhere. Visibility was not only about broadcasting more; he wanted communication to keep flowing back to him. I pointed out that the next person who connected with you might help multiply the business.

At the end, I asked for his top three pieces of advice. Our original 2014 recap of Grant’s three pieces of advice preserves that closing framework:

• Do whatever it takes to accomplish the task, ethically, rather than looking for shortcuts.
• Think 10 times bigger and build a business plan around the larger target.
• Keep working on yourself, staying relevant and connected to the world.

I would keep the business-plan part attached to the bigger goal. Adding a zero is easy. Asking what people, capabilities and distribution the larger business would require is the work.

Thinking bigger does not always mean holding on longer

The most personal part came after those closing tips. I told Grant I had experienced realizations during the interview about scarcity and holding on to money. I had been offered millions for the site and said no because it was my baby.

Other people had told me I should have taken the money. I explained that I was thinking about $10 million, $20 million and $50 million, and that even then I did not know whether I would sell.

Grant did not simply tell me to hold out for more. He suggested there was nothing wrong with taking the chips off the board and banking a win. This was not the only game I could play. I could create something else.

That answer keeps the conversation honest. The man telling me to go bigger was also asking me not to confuse one business with the full extent of my creativity. He was suggesting a possibility, not telling me to accept a particular offer.

For me, that is the distinction worth keeping. Getting out of scarcity is not automatically spending, refusing to sell or chasing a larger number. It is being able to consider the next move without treating what you already own as the last worthwhile thing you will ever create.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did Grant Cardone find his first million disappointing?

Grant told Joel that reaching his first million felt anticlimactic and brought fear of losing it. His account shows the distinction between reaching a financial milestone and changing the habits of worry that can remain after earning more money.

What did Grant Cardone mean by scarcity in this conversation?

Grant described a contracted, protective state in which holding tightly to existing resources prevents pursuing opportunities. He contrasted that with investing time, energy and money, while also explaining that he deliberately built reserves before making his own investments.

What did Grant Cardone write instead of a daily to-do list?

Grant said he wrote what he wanted to accomplish in his lifetime, morning and night, and again when disappointed. The purpose was to redirect attention toward his future rather than stay absorbed in his past or present position.

What did Grant Cardone regret about growing his real estate business?

Grant said he had not brought in enough people who had already accomplished something much bigger and offered them a share. He believed stronger collaborators might have expanded his results without requiring proportionately more of his own effort.

Did Grant Cardone tell Joel never to sell Addicted2Success?

No. After Joel described turning down offers for the site, Grant suggested there was nothing wrong with banking a win and creating something else. He framed another venture as a possibility, not a requirement to accept an offer.

My Simon Sinek interview came back to a practical idea: leading does not mean having every answer; it means knowing what you stand for and looking after people. Simon connected purpose to the value we bring to friends, the weaknesses we need help with, and the trust that makes work and life fulfilling.

Early in our conversation, I noticed Simon’s Skype profile picture and asked about the most daring thing he had done, assuming he flew fast jets. He corrected me: he had flown in one, not flown one.

His answer to the daring question was starting a business.

That exchange tells you something about the conversation that followed. We talked about leadership, but also the messy parts behind the books and speeches: writing that did not obey a daily word count, ideas tested in friends’ apartments, and the pressure to know answers you do not actually have.

I had seen his Golden Circle TED talk. What I wanted to understand was the person behind the ideas. Here is what I would take from what he told me: you can be clear about your purpose without pretending you are complete.

Purpose is something you bring to people

I asked Simon whether we could have multiple Whys. His answer was no. In his framework, each person has one Why, shaped by their upbringing, challenges and opportunities, and fully formed by roughly 18 to 20. Our careers and lives then give us opportunities to live in focus or out of focus with it.

I would not turn that age range into a scientific deadline. He was explaining his view of purpose, not telling someone approaching 40 that they had missed their chance. The useful question is whether your choices reflect who you are.

When I asked about historical leaders, he named Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi as people whose efforts served a higher purpose, cause or belief. But the method he offered for exploring your own Why was much more intimate. It involved a friend who would answer your call at three in the morning.

You can read plenty of Simon Sinek quotes on purpose and leadership. In this conversation, he gave me something to try beyond admiring a sentence: ask someone who knows you what your presence actually gives them.

A close friend can help you hear your Why

Simon described a free exercise with your closest friends. He said it worked less well with spouses or siblings. The point was not to collect compliments. It was to get past familiar descriptions and hear the difference you make in another person’s life.

• Ask a close friend, “Why are we friends?” Expect them to struggle to explain it.
• Shift to “What is it about me?” Simon emphasized moving from why to what.
• When they offer general qualities such as trustworthy or smart, ask again what it is about you specifically.
• Let them find the words. Do not supply the answer or have someone else help them.
• Listen for the shift from describing you to describing themselves and what happens when you are around.

Simon recalled a friend saying they could sit in the same room with him, without even talking, and feel inspired. He said he got goosebumps. For him, the friend’s description and his emotional response pointed toward the value he brought to their life.

What I like about this is that it interrupts the temptation to invent an impressive mission statement. You are listening for something already happening between you and another person. I would use the conversation as a starting point for reflection, not turn an emotional reaction into a test you must pass.

He also separated a vision from a goal. A vision, he explained, describes a world that does not yet exist. If it is easily reachable, it is a goal. That distinction leaves room for practical targets without confusing the next milestone with the larger world you want to help create.

The people he admired practiced care

When I asked who inspired him, Simon talked about friends, family, and the men and women in uniform he had spent time with. Their willingness to make sacrifices for one another led him to investigate where that culture came from. He connected that inquiry to Leaders Eat Last.

He also named Bob Chapman as a people-focused leader and Lieutenant General George Flynn from the Marine Corps as someone who understood servant leadership. These were not just impressive names to him. He described people he wanted to be like.

Later, I asked the difference between someone in charge and a leader. He separated formal authority from the human choice to care. Some people at the top have authority without inspiring anyone to follow. Others with no formal rank lead because they look after the people to their left and right.

“Leadership is a choice,” he told me.

His warning was that moving up does not earn you the right to do less. Choosing to lead means doing more, with greater sacrifice of time and energy. I would bring that back to an ordinary decision: who needs your help today, even if helping them is not the most convenient use of your time?

You do not need to perform certainty

Simon called himself a student of leadership, not an expert. He described his books as imperfect pieces of an ongoing journey. Learning something after a book was finished could be frustrating, but the learning continued.

That matters because he later identified needing to know all the answers as a hurdle for leaders. You can feel expected to know, and then start pretending when you do not. His alternative was to surround yourself with wonderful people, protect them and empower them.

The shift he described was from doing the work yourself to inspiring others to do it. To me, that is more useful than a performance of confidence. If everyone has to wait for your answer, the talent you hired is left waiting too.

I would carry his speaking advice into that same situation. He disliked the posture of “you should” and preferred language such as “we could.” That does not mean refusing to make a decision. It means sharing an idea without acting as though everyone else is beneath you.

His writing process was not a productivity formula

I asked how Simon wrote his books: did he schedule time each day, or did the ideas come together at the last minute? He did not give me a polished routine. He described long stretches of guilt and self-loathing interrupted by inspiration, and said he was not disciplined in the nine-to-five or 2,500-words-a-day sense.

This was an account of his own difficult creative process, not a recommendation to feel terrible until good work arrives. His process involved talking, discussion, pacing and wondering, followed by connections that sent him into writing.

When I asked for advice to writers, he stressed sharing ideas out loud. Someone saying they did not understand forced him to explain again. Sometimes that revealed he did not understand the idea himself and needed to learn more.

He acknowledged the fear that somebody might steal an idea. But keeping everything private removed the opportunity to discover whether it was good, resonant, or even possible to explain. Execution was hard, he pointed out; hearing an idea did not mean somebody would carry it through.

That is the part I would use. Before protecting an idea from every possible listener, explain it to someone willing to tell you where they got lost. Confusion can be useful feedback, not an insult to your intelligence.

Structure helped him organize the mess

Simon told me that organizing the concepts in Leaders Eat Last was so difficult that he used Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey as an organizing principle. He said the first section was labeled “The Force,” while making clear that label was not in the table of contents.

I responded as though he was describing inspiration. He corrected that too: it was the organizing principle. The structure.

That small correction is worth keeping. Finding what you want to say and finding a way to arrange it are different problems. A useful structure does not have to be where your idea came from. It can simply help you make the idea understandable.

He also acknowledged that a book about human behavior would be imperfect. The logic and research still had to work, but there would be things left out. At some point, you had to stop. That is not permission to be careless; it is a reminder that completeness can become an impossible condition for finishing.

He started sharing before he had a stage

Simon said his speaking began in friends’ apartments. They invited him to share his ideas with their friends. Someone would suggest another person to speak to, and he kept saying yes. He also described drawing on napkins in meetings as he explained his ideas.

He was not describing a memorized presentation. He told me he used no PowerPoint, thought out loud and loved longer Q&A sessions because questions gave him an opportunity to think, not simply repeat himself.

In our exchange, I mentioned how a question could spark an idea you carried outside the session. He agreed. That is a very different ambition from delivering a flawless speech nobody can interrupt.

For someone waiting to become a speaker, my takeaway is not to copy his exact method. It is to stop making a large audience the entry requirement. Start with people willing to listen. Notice where they understand you, where they drift, and what their questions make you reconsider.

Weaknesses are a reason to build relationships

When I asked about weaknesses, Simon did not pretend to have removed his. He said he could be more organized and had someone helping him keep things in order. He believed in building strengths and hiring or partnering around weaknesses.

He also described being easily distracted. That could frustrate him and others when something needed finishing. Yet the same tendency sometimes led him toward discoveries he would otherwise have missed. Strengths and weaknesses, he said, were contextual.

I told him I related to distraction too. But I would not use that exchange to dress every unfinished task up as creativity. He acknowledged both the cost and the upside. The practical question is what support allows the upside without making everyone else absorb the cost.

His answer about fear brought relationships into the conversation again. He worried about letting down people who had risked their reputations for him, put his name forward, or believed in him. He wanted their faith in him to have been worthwhile.

Success did not make him self-made

When I asked for the crucial elements of his success, Simon said, “My success is entirely due to the generosity of other people.”

He followed it with the description of himself as “the same idiot that I was seven years ago.” The difference, he said, was people finding something interesting and offering help. Readers and viewers had shared his work with people they thought would appreciate it, including people he would never meet.

Our original Addicted2Success podcast interview with Simon preserves that answer. I told him it was a rare answer to hear. It refuses the neat story in which one person deserves every bit of the credit.

At the end, I asked what happiness meant to him. He talked about fulfillment, his life and work having value to people around him, feeling safe, and trust moving both ways in his friendships. Being trusted with something vulnerable was an honor; trusting someone else to keep it safe mattered too.

That is where I would leave this conversation. Ask the friend a better question. Share the idea before it is perfect. Admit where you need help. Look after the person beside you. Knowing your Why does not make you finished. It gives you something to practice with other people.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did Simon Sinek tell Joel Brown about leadership?

Simon distinguished formal authority from the choice to care for people nearby. He told Joel that leadership requires more work and sacrifice as responsibility grows, and that leaders do not need every answer if they support and empower capable people.

How does Simon Sinek’s friendship exercise help you find your Why?

Ask a close friend why you are friends, then ask what specifically it is about you. Simon suggested listening until they describe your effect on them, rather than general qualities, and noticing the emotional response their answer creates in you.

Did Simon Sinek follow a daily writing word count?

Not in the process he described to Joel. Simon said he did not follow a nine-to-five schedule or a 2,500-word daily target. He talked through ideas, struggled with the creative process, and wrote intensely when connections and inspiration arrived.

How did Simon Sinek begin public speaking?

Simon told Joel that friends invited him to their apartments to share ideas. More invitations followed. He described explaining ideas in small groups and on napkins, using audience feedback and questions to develop his understanding rather than memorizing talks.

What did happiness mean to Simon Sinek in this interview?

Simon described happiness through fulfillment, safety and relationships. He wanted his life and work to have value for people around him. Trust mattered in both directions: protecting what friends shared with him and trusting them with his own vulnerability.