As a leader, everything you do is seen by others and has an impact on them. You have influence, even when are not deliberately influencing. This means that the way you behave at work is important. You can change outcomes for good or bad without even meaning to.
Businesses will succeed or fail on the quality of their leadership. Good leaders understand the impact that they have on others, and use this to drive results, set goals, manage performance and reward success. They understand that to be successful, they must behave as they want their staff to behave.
Understand this, and you’ll understand that as a leader, you have the power to create great trust and positivity in those around you. You also have the power to do the opposite.
Seeing your own leadership from the outside
We have developed the Leadership Magnification Effect© tool to help leaders see their behaviour as others do. This is the Leadership Magnification Effect or LME©.
The LME© allows us to look in detail at how leaders in an organisation behave, and analyse the effect that behaviour has on those around them.
How does it work?
We’ll often use the Leadership Magnification Effect© to look at things that seem small and irrelevant, but that can have a significant impact.
For example, who do you go to lunch with? If you regularly go to lunch with the same two or three people in the team, you may see this just as having lunch with friends. Others may see it as favouritism.
Or, perhaps you are often late to meetings. You may see this as unimportant, but others may use it to justify their own poor punctuality.
In this way, leadership behaviours drive the behaviour of others.
What does it mean?
It’s important to recognise whether you have any behaviours that are being adopted by those around you. It’s also important to recognise when your behaviour has a positive influence.
If you can say to others, ‘do as I do’, rather than ‘do as I say’, you will gain authority. You’ll be seen as someone who acts with transparency and is trustworthy. Others’ confidence in you will increase, and both you, and your business will become more successful.
