Leaders Eat Last - Because Leaders Sacrifice First
Leaders Eat Last — Because Leaders Sacrifice First
Reflections inspired by Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last (Sinek, S. (2017). Leaders eat last. Portfolio Penguin.) and reflections from an old Sergeant Major.
If you’ve never sacrificed for your team, you’re not leading them — you’re managing them.
In his book Leaders Eat Last, Sinek reflects that our prehistoric ancestors survived because someone in the tribe stood at the cave mouth while others slept (Sinek 2017).
Someone watched the fire.
Someone scanned the tall grass for danger.
Long before leadership became a competency model, it was a biological contract: the leader absorbs the risk so the people can breathe.
The tribe didn’t need an HR policy.
They watched who stepped forward when the shadows moved
Who stepped back when the hunters carried in the food.
That principle didn’t fade.
It marched straight into our modern organizations — and it was alive and well in every regiment, unit, and school I ever served with over 23 years.
In 2006, I was the Company Sergeant Major in a major military exercise conducted in a Canadian city — one of the largest in years.
Meals were miscounted at the support base.
We were receiving half of what we needed.
Three days of scarcity, followed by the same message:
“Sorry, we’ll fix the count in the next shipment.”
We never deviated from our ethos.
The privates ate.
The corporals ate.
The sergeants ate.
And my Company Commander and I?
Coleslaw sandwiches.
Breakfast, lunch, supper.
Three straight days.
After choking down a coleslaw sandwich for breakfast on Day Three, I walked to HQ and said: “Colonel, I’m going to sort this out. I’ll be gone for the day.”
He nodded once — the kind of nod shared between leaders who understand what it takes to get a job done.
I fixed the issue (as if there was any doubt).
But the real lesson wasn’t logistics. It was this:
❗ Leadership isn’t a buzzword found on LinkedIn.
❗ It’s going hungry so your people can eat.
❗ It’s working late so your team walks into calm, not chaos.
✅ A leader goes last in the meal line.
✅ A leader goes first into danger.
✅ A leader is first in, last out, when the crisis hits.
✅ A leader shows courage so the team is inspired find their own.
This is the time-tested ethos of thousands of years of warriors — and the societies they protected.
When a team sees sacrifice — real sacrifice — something ancient stirs in them: confidence, courage, commitment.
👉 What This Means Today 👈
If you’re a manager and lunch is brought in?
You eat last — FULL STOP.
Because your team needs to know you’d give up your sandwich long before you’d give up on them.
And when crisis hits?
You don’t hide behind metrics.
You step in first — with calmness, clarity, confidence, and competence.
Because that’s the deal.
That’s the standard.
🐺 That’s the Wolf at the mouth of the cave making sure the pack sees the dawn of tomorrow.
