The Law of The Picture--people do what people see.
Jul 14, 2020
The first person you learn to lead is you! You earn the right to lead others when they see you lead your own life well.
Follow the leader is a children's game. First a leader or "head of the line" is chosen, then the children all line up behind the leader. The leader then moves around and all the children have to mimic the leader's actions. Any players who fail to follow or do what the leader does are out of the game.
I played that game as a child, but poor eye-hand coordination had me out of the game fairly quickly. As a leader today, eye-hand coordination has nothing to do with the Law of the Picture.
Good leaders need to understand they are creating a visual picture for their followers with their actions. They must be conscious of the fact that they are modeling behavior and that others are going to do for better or for worse. In general, the better the leader's actions, the better their people's. The greatest gift a leader can give is being a good example.
Educators tell us that 89% of learning is visual. Most people need to see a demonstration or example before they understand how to perform a task. This makes sense to me--especially with technology. Even when learning how to use this "user friendly" (really?) Mail Chimp way of sending emails, I had to have someone give me hands on instructions so I could do it. I read the instructions at length and could not figure it out. After I was shown how--it became fairly easy!
Colin Powell once said, "You can issue all the memos and give all the motivational speeches you want, but if the rest of the people in our organization don't see you putting forth your very best effort every single day, they won't either."
This means that the very first person I need to lead is me. The first person that I need to change is me. Sometimes, I just don't enjoy that the buck stops with me. If someone on my team is not performing, I can usually look back to standards I was lax on, didn't enforce, or set a lazy example myself. Ouch
The good news is that I can become the leader that my organization needs. I can continue to hone my leadership skills by growing personally. I can practice the law of awareness by continuing to evaluate the example that I set for others. Do my words match my actions? How is my own performance? Am I willing to do what I ask others to do?
Oh My Goodness, my growth and behavior is the one thing I can fix and can CONTROL...and that makes me happy.
Go and grow!
Jan
Jan McDonald
The John Maxwell Team
To subscribe, click here:
https://jan-mcdonald-llc.
www.johncmaxwellgroup.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/