Page 62 - Develop your leadership skills- John Adair. -- 2nd ed

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How to turn the core leadership functions into skills ■ 53

Remember that you cannot avoid being an example of some
kind or other, simply because the people who work with you
will always observe what you are and what you do as well as
what you say. ‘A manager will take six months to get to know
his staff,’ goes a Japanese maxim, ‘but they will take only six
days to get to know him.’ Example, in other words, is just you.
But you do have some discretion as to whether it will be a good
or poor example.

Exercise

Look back over your career and see if you can identify two people
who have been astounding examples of good and bad leadership.
List on paper the non-verbal ways in which these examples were
expressed. What, in each case, were the effects on you? Did others
notice their example? What effects did their example have on the
group or organisation?

As a general principle, we notice bad example more than good.
It shouts at us more. It is always a pleasure to see good
example, however, even if others seem impervious to it. It is
always a sign of integrity: that wholeness that binds together
what you say with what you do. A hypocrite – one who
publicly preaches one thing and acts quite differently in private
life – is neither setting an example nor expressing integrity.
‘Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,’ wrote Shakespeare,
‘show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, whilst… him-
self the primrose path of dalliance treads.’ There you have
it.