The Law of the Picture

“The Power of Leadership”

New Law of Leadership #2 – The Law of the Picture

Leadership by example has a powerful impact on followers, people do what people see.

Followers are always watching what you do.  That’s just part of leadership.  But, it’s often easier to teach what’s right than to do what’s right.  Teaching is easy compared to living.  It’s not likely that you can teach something to others that you cannot live yourself.

Last week, we talked about Norman Vincent Peale, who said, “Nothing is more confusing than people who give good advice, but set a bad example.”  John Maxwell says that a related thought is also true, “Nothing is more convincing than people who give good advice and set a good example.  You’ve got to do what I can double reinforcement.  What you say and what you do have to be congruent; they must match up.”

We should work on changing ourselves before trying to improve others.  Leaders monitor the progress of the people they are responsible for; they give direction and hold accountable.  Leaders must be change agents in this way as they work to improve their team.  However, it is a great danger to try to change others without first making changes to ourselves.

The first person I must lead is me.  The first person I should work to change is me.  I cannot set a standard of expectations higher for others than for myself.  To be a credible leader I must work first, longest and hardest on myself.  This is not easy or natural, but it seems little worth doing is, and this is essential for effective leadership of others.

I hope you enjoyed John’s new “Laws” and by serving others and setting a good example for others, you will take your leadership skills to the next level.

“It is up to you to set a standard of behavior.” – Rudy Giuliani, in his book Leadership

Happy Birthday to me!

Shawn
Performance Institute – A Global Leader in Human Capital and Business Development

Russ M. Miller, LLIF – Chairman and CEO

Sunny Hong Zhang – Managing Partner – China

Shawn M. Miller – Managing Partner – USA

P.S.  Your thoughts on our Thoughts are valuable to us and other readers; please post your comments in the Reply box…

Tags: Business Management, Developing People, Leadership, Organizational Leadership

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 8:48 pm and is filed under Business, Career Development, Leadership, Management, Mentorship, Organizational Leadership, Personal Leadership, Sales Management, Supervision. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.