I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about this phrase: leadership by example.

Leadership by example is in fact something that happens with or without your knowledge. When you are a leader in somebody’s life, it is a natural process that your follower will grow and grow to become more and more like you.

They unconsciously learn the way you speak, your actions, even your nuances!

This is a very important principle you must understand and grasp hold of. This means that every little thing that you do or say makes an impact on the people you are leading; they unconsciously pick them up and adopt it as their own.

If you have a bad habit of being late for all your meetings, your followers will unconsciously think that it is okay to be late, and you’ll begin to see them coming late for meetings.

On the other hand, if you’re a leader who watches the time closely and is always on time on his meetings, you’ll find that you’re grooming a group of people that are excellent and on time for meetings and appointments.

Three points about leadership by example

1. You have to act the way you want your team to act.
To expect certain behaviour from your team, you have to first act out the behaviour consistently first before you have the right to speak and preach about it.

You shouldn’t be going around preaching about being on time if you’re constantly late for your own meetings, and worse still, meetings with your team!

If you do that, you immediately lose all respect from your team because you’ll be deemed a hypocrite: You speak in one way and act in another.

And that is not somewhere you want to go; you’ll want to be careful about chastising or speaking with your followers about their negative behaviours; you’ll want to look at yourself in the mirror first and check if you’re ‘clean’.

2. You set the unspoken standard by your example.
By your example, you set an unspoken standard about what is appropriate and what isn’t. You cannot be possibly speaking with your team all the time, but it is through observation that your followers learn about what is acceptable and what isn’t.

Is it acceptable to dress casually to work? If you do dress casually, you give permission to your team to do so.

Is it acceptable to express your thoughts and feelings to each other? They’re looking at you.

Leadership by example runs deeper than this; there are so many more things that people actually unconsciously observe and learn through you.

Having this thought in mind, it is good that you examine your own behaviour and understand that whether you like it or not, you’re leading by example.

It might be a bad example or a good example, but as a leader in their lives, you’ll teach them not just through your words but through your life.

3. Bring your team up by living on a higher standard
It is often said that an organization grows only if the people within the organization grow.

It is the same for you. Now that you understand the principle of leadership by example, you’ll understand that you can only bring your team up to a higher standard if you yourself commit to a higher standard of living.

By committing yourself to live with greater discipline, greater drive, you’ll find that your followers will unconsciously follow and adopt your way of living. They’ll also strive to follow you in those areas.

And as an organization, you’ll begin to see growth, be it in numbers, in sales, in influence because you made that first step to commit yourself.

Lin Yihan is the founder of http://www.leadership-with-you.com , a website that seeks to groom and teach people how to become leaders in this generation that make a difference in our world.

He is also the President of University-YMCA at Singapore Management University, a student-run volunteer organization that has a mission to raise up servant leaders who will impact the local and international community. It currently has several local community programs, overseas trips to countries like Cambodia and Vietnam, as well as a Social Enterprise arm that raises funds for its community work.

Source: http://www.callcentercafe.com/2009/03/14/learning-to-lead-by-example/