People Do What People See
Several years ago, filmmaker Steven Spielberg and actor Tom Hanks produced a series of television shows on HBO called Band of Brothers, based on the book of the same name by historian Stephen Ambrose. The ten episodes chronicled the story of Easy Company, a group of paratroopers from the 101st Airborne who fought during World War II. The men of Easy Company were as tough as soldiers get, and they fought heroically from the invasion of Normandy to the end of the war.
The story of Easy Company is a great study in leadership, for the various sergeants, lieutenants, and captains who commanded the men dis-played many styles of leadership, both good and bad. When the leadership was good, it made the difference, not only in the way the soldiers per-formed but in the outcome of their battles and, ultimately, of the war.
THE WRONG PICTURE
From the very first episode of the television series, the contrasting Leadership styles were on display. Herbert Sobel, Easy Company’s commanding officer during its training, was shown to be a brutal and autocratic leader with a sadistic streak. He drove the men harder than the commander of any other company. He arbitrarily revoked passes and inflicted punishment. But judging from Ambrose’s research, Sobel was even worse than he was depicted in the series.
Sobel drove the men mercilessly, which was fine, since he was preparing them for combat. But he didn’t push himself the same way, being barely capable of passing the physical test required of paratroopers. Nor did he display the high level of competence he demanded from everyone else. Ambrose writes about an incident during training that was representative of Sobel’s leadership:
On one night exercise he [Sobel] decided to teach his men a lesson. He and Sergeant Evans went sneaking through the company position to steal rifles from sleeping men. The mission was successful; by daylight Sobel and Evans had nearly fifty rifles. With great fanfare, Evans called the company together and Sobel began to tell the men what miserable soldiers they were.1
What Sobel didn’t realize was that the men he was berating weren’t his own. He had wandered into the wrong camp and stolen the rifles belonging to Fox Company. Sobel didn’t even realize his mistake until the commander of Fox Company came up with forty-five of his men.
The men who served under Sobel mocked him and undermined him. By the time Easy Company began preparations for the invasion of Normandy, many men were taking bets on which of them would shoot Sobel when they finally got into combat. Fortunately, Sobel was removed from his position as company commander and reassigned before they went into combat.
ANOTHER BAD PICTURE
Another officer’s highly incompetent leadership was depicted in an episode called “The Breaking Point.” It recounted the Battle of the Bulge when the soldiers were preparing to take the town of Foy from the Germans. By then, the men of Easy Company were experienced veterans, and they were facing one of the most difficult times of the war. They suffered from bitter cold and from merciless shelling by German artillery.
During that time, an Easy Company platoon was commanded by Lieutenant Dike, a leader with political connections but no previous com-bat experience. Dike’s method of leadership was to avoid his men, refuse to make a decision, and disappear for long periods of time to “take a walk,” including when he was needed most. Not one of the men respected him. And when Dike was finally required to lead his men into an assault on the town, he failed miserably and was relieved of command.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF PICTURE
Fortunately, most of Easy Company’s leaders were excellent, and one in particular was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and was considered by the men to be “the best combat leader in World War II.”2 That person was Dick Winters. He started out as a platoon leader in Easy Company during their training and was promoted to company commander after Normandy and then to battalion executive officer. He finished his military career with the rank of major.
Time after time, Winters helped his men to perform at the highest level. And he always led from in front, setting the example and taking the risks along with his men. Ambrose describes Winters’s philosophy of leadership simply as “officers go first.”3 Whenever his troops needed to assault an enemy position, Winters was in front leading the charge.
One of the most remarkable incidents demonstrating Winters’s way of leading by example occurred soon after D-Day on the road to Carentan, a town that Easy Company needed to take from the Germans. As the American paratroopers under his command approached the town, they became pinned down by German machine-gun fire. Huddled in ditches on either side of the road, they wouldn’t move forward when ordered to. Yet if they didn’t move, they would eventually be cut to pieces. Winters tried rallying them. He coaxed them. He kicked them. He ran from one ditch to the other as machine-gun bullets flew by. Finally, he jumped into the middle of the road, bullets glancing off the ground near him, and shouted at the men to get moving. Everyone got up and moved forward as one. And they helped to take the town.
More than thirty-five years later, Floyd Talbert, a sergeant at the time, wrote to Winters to comment about the incident: “I’ll never forget seeing you in the middle of that road. You were my total inspiration. All my boys felt the same way.”4 In 2006, Winters summed up his approach to leadership, saying, “I may not have been the best combat commander, but I always strove to be. My men depended on me to care-fully analyze every tactical situation, to maximize the resources that I had at my disposal, to think under pressure, and then to lead them by personal example.”5
When Ambrose was asked what allowed Easy Company to distinguish itself during the war, to “rise above” its peers, Ambrose was clear in his response: “They weren’t all that much better than other paratroopers, or the Rangers, or the Marines. They were one of many elite units in the war. But what made them special, even among those who were already self-selected and special, was their Leadership . . . The great COs, platoon leaders, and sergeants—not all elite units had such luck in their leaders, and that’s the difference.”6 Why did that make such a difference? Because people do what people see. That is the Law of the Picture. When the leaders show the way with the right actions, their followers copy them and succeed.
Great leaders always seem to embody two seemingly disparate qualities. They are both highly visionary and highly practical.
MAKING THE PICTURE COME ALIVE
Great leaders always seem to embody two seemingly disparate qualities. They are both highly visionary and highly practical. Their vision enables them to see beyond the immediate. They can envision what’s coming and what must be done. Leaders possess an understanding of how:
Mission provides purpose—answering the question, Why?
Vision provides a picture—answering the question, What ?
Strategy provides a plan—answering the question, How?
As author Hans Finzel observed, “Leaders are paid to be dreamers. The higher you go in leadership, the more your work is about the future.”
At the same time, leaders are practical enough to know that vision with-out action achieves nothing. They make themselves responsible for helping their followers to take action. That can be difficult because followers often cannot envision the future as the leader does. They can’t picture what’s best for the team. They lose track of the big picture. Why? Because vision has a tendency to leak.
The leader’s effective modeling of the vision makes the picture come alive!
Leaders are stewards of the vision. So what should they do to bridge the vision gap between them and their followers? The temptation for many leaders is to merely communicate about the vision. Don’t get me wrong: communication is certainly important. Good leaders must communicate the vision clearly, creatively, and continually. The leader’s effective communication of the vision makes the picture clear. But that is not enough. The leader must also live the vision. The leader’s effective modeling of the vision makes the picture come alive!
Good leaders are always conscious of the fact that they are setting the example and others are going to do what they do, for better or worse. In general, the better the leaders’ actions, the better their people’s.
That’s not to say that leaders have all the answers. Anyone who has led anything knows that. The leaders who make the greatest impact are often those who lead well in the midst of uncertainty. Andy Stanley, an excellent leader and communicator, has addressed this issue. A few years ago at the Catalyst conference for leaders, he said,
Uncertainty is not an indication of poor leadership. Rather it indicates a need for leadership. The nature of leadership demands that there always be an element of uncertainty. The temptation is to think, If I were a good leader, I would know exactly what to do. Increased responsibility means dealing with more and more intangibles and therefore more complex uncertainty. Leaders can afford to be uncertain, but we cannot afford to be unclear. People will not follow fuzzy leadership.
When times are tough, uncertainty is high, and chaos threatens to over-whelm everyone, followers need a clear picture from their leaders the most. That’s when they need a leader who embraces the Law of the Picture. The living picture they see in their leader produces energy, passion, and motivation to keep going.
MODELING INSIGHTS FOR LEADERS
If you desire to be the best leader you can become, you must not neglect the Law of the Picture. As you strive to improve as an example to your fol-lowers, remember these things:
1. FOLLOWERS ARE ALWAYS WATCHING WHAT YOU DO
If you are a parent, you have probably already realized that your children are always watching what you do. Say anything you want, but your children learn more from what they see than from anywhere else. As parents, Margaret and I realized this early. No matter what we taught our children, they insisted on behaving like us. How frustrating. Legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden quotes a poem that explains it perfectly:
No written word
nor spoken plea
Can teach our youth
what they should be
Nor all the books
on all the shelves
It’s what the teachers
are themselves.7
Just as children watch their parents and emulate their behavior, so do employees watching their bosses. If the bosses come in late, then employees feel that they can, too. If the bosses cut corners, employees cut corners. People do what people see.
Followers may doubt what their leaders say, but they usually believe what they do.
Followers may doubt what their leaders say, but they usually believe what they do. And they imitate it. Former U.S. Army general and secretary of state Colin Powell observed, “You can issue all the memos and give all the motivational speeches you want, but if the rest of the people in your organization don’t see you put-ting forth your very best effort every single day, they won’t either.”
Whitley David asserted, “A good supervisor is a catalyst, not a drill sergeant. He creates an atmosphere where intelligent people are willing to fol-low him. He doesn’t command; he convinces.” Nothing is more convincing than living out what you say you believe.
2. IT’S EASIER TO TEACH WHAT’S RIGHT THAN TO DO WHAT’S RIGHT
Writer Mark Twain quipped, “To do what is right is wonderful. To teach what is right is even more wonderful—and much easier.” Isn’t that the truth? It’s always easier to teach what’s right than it is to do it. That’s one of the reasons why many parents (and bosses) say, “Do as I say, not as I do.”
One of my earliest challenges as a leader was to raise my living to the level of my teaching. I can still remember the day that I decided that I would not teach anything I did not try to live out. That was a tough decision, but as a young leader, I was learning to embrace the Law of the Picture. Author Norman Vincent Peale stated, “Nothing is more confusing than people who give good advice but set a bad example.” I would say a related thought is also true: nothing is more convincing than people who give good advice and set a good example.
Recently, I received calls on the same day from two reporters—one from the Chicago Tribune and the other from USA Today—about teaching ethics in the business arena. Both asked similar questions. They wanted to know if ethics could be taught. My answer was yes.
“But many of the companies that teach ethics classes had ethics problems,” one reporter pushed back.
“That’s because ethics can be instilled in others only if it is taught and modeled for them,” I replied. Too many leaders are like bad travel agents. They send people places they have never been. Instead, they should be more like tour guides, taking people places they have gone and sharing the wisdom of their own experiences.
“Leaders tell but never teach until they practice what they preach.”
—FEATHERSTONE
John Wooden used to say to his players, “Show me what you can do; don’t tell me what you can do.” I believe followers have the same attitude toward their leaders. They want to see their leaders in action, doing their best, showing the way, and setting the example. Featherstone remarked, “Leaders tell but never teach until they practice what they preach.” That is the Law of the Picture.
3.WE SHOULD WORK ON CHANGING OURSELVES BEFORE TRYING TO IMPROVE OTHERS
Leaders are responsible for the performance of their people. The buck stops with them. They accordingly monitor their people’s progress, give them direction, and hold them accountable. And to improve the performance of the team, leaders must act as change agents. However, a great danger to good leadership is the temptation to try to change others without first making changes to yourself.
As a leader, the first person I need to lead is me. The first person that I should try to change is me. My standards of excellence should be higher for myself than those I set for others. To remain a credible leader, I must always work first, hardest, and longest on changing myself. This is neither easy nor natural, but it is essential. In all honesty, I am a lot like Lucy in the Peanuts comic strip who tells Charlie Brown that she wants to change the world. When an overwhelmed Charlie Brown asks where she would start, her response is, “I would start with you, Charlie Brown. I would start with you.”
Not long ago, I was teaching on the idea of the 360-degree leader. That is, a leader exerts his influence not just down with those he leads but also up with his boss and across with his colleagues. During a Q&A session, an attendee asked, “Which is the most difficult—leading up, across, or down?”
“None of the above,” I answered quickly. “Leading myself is the toughest.”
To lead any way other than by example, we send a fuzzy picture of Leadership to others. If we work on improving ourselves first and make that our primary mission, then others are more likely to follow.
4. THE MOST VALUABLE GIFT A LEADER CAN GIVE IS BEING A GOOD EXAMPLE
A survey conducted by Opinion Research Corporation for Ajilon Finance asked American workers to select the one trait that was most important for a person to lead them. Here are the results:
| RANK | CHARACTERISTIC | PERCENTAGE |
| 1 | Leading by example | 26% |
| 2 | Strong ethics or morals | 19% |
| 3 | Knowledge of the business | 17% |
| 4 | Fairness | 14% |
| 5 | Overall intelligence and competence | 13% |
| 6 | Recognition of employees | 10%8 |
More than anything else, employees want leaders whose beliefs and actions line up. They want good models who lead from the front.
Leadership is more caught than taught. How does one “catch” Leadership? By watching good leaders in action! The majority of leaders emerge because of the impact made on them by established leaders who modeled leadership and mentored them.
When I think about my leadership journey, I feel that I have been fortunate to have had excellent leadership models from whom I have “caught” various aspects of leadership:
I caught perseverance by watching my father face and overcome adversity.
I caught intensity by observing Bill Hybels’s passionate leadership.
I caught encouragement by looking at how Ken Blanchard valued people.
I caught vision by seeing Bill Bright make his vision become reality.
I continue to learn from good models, and I strive to set the right example for the people who follow me—my children and grandchildren, the employees in my companies, and the people who attend my conferences and read my books. Living what I teach is the most important thing I do as a leader. As Nobel Peace Prize–winner Albert Schweitzer observed, “Example is leadership.”
FOLLOWING THEIR LEADER’S EXAMPLE
A story that illustrates the Law of the Picture is that of King David of ancient Israel. Just about everyone has heard the story of David and Goliath. When the armies of the Philistines faced off against King Saul and the people of Israel, Goliath, a large, powerful professional warrior, laid out a challenge. He said he’d fight Israel’s greatest champion in a winner-take-all battle. And who stepped forward to accept the challenge? Not Saul, the mighty king, or any of his seasoned veterans. It was David, a lowly shepherd boy, who stood to face him. Using a sling, he hurled a rock at Goliath and knocked him out. Then he cut Goliath’s head off with the warrior’s own sword.
We all identify with a story like that because we like to cheer for the under-dog. But many people don’t know the rest of the story. David grew up to be a warrior and eventually became king. Along the way, he raised up a group of warriors who were called his “mighty men.” No fewer than five of them also became giant killers, just like their leader. The example set by David taught his followers how to become great warriors and even giant killers.
LEADERSHIP IN THE FACE OF TERROR
Leadership by example always has a powerful impact on followers. One of the leaders I admire is Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City. During his career, first as an attorney working for the U.S. government and then later as an elected official, Giuliani led by example. He says in his book Leadership that he is very aware that what he does sets the tone for those who follow him.9 “You cannot ask those who work for you to do something you’re unwilling to do yourself,” he states. “It is up to you to set a standard of behavior.”10
Central to Giuliani’s philosophy of leadership is the idea of accountability. Giuliani writes,
More than anyone else, leaders should welcome being held accountable. Nothing builds confidence in a leader more than a willingness to take responsibility for what happens during his watch. One might add that nothing builds a stronger case for holding employees to a high standard than a boss who holds himself to even higher ones. This is true in any organization.11
Accountability was the basis of one of Giuliani’s regular practices: the morning meeting he convened with his top staff every day at eight o’clock. He had done it since 1981. It put him and his people on the same page every day. They had to give him answers—and he was forced to make quick decisions. Nobody could hide. Everyone was accountable.
Many people acknowledged Giuliani’s ability as a mayor. Under his watch, crime in the city fell dramatically, New York returned to its former glory as a tourist destination, taxes decreased, and business thrived. But the event that really revealed Giuliani’s leadership ability was, of course, 9/11. When the unthinkable occurred and the city was in chaos, the mayor was on the front lines, leading, keeping in close contact with state and federal leaders, and directing the various phases of city government.
And when the worst part of the crisis was behind them, Giuliani was also leading by example. Not only was he an advocate of his city, opening the theaters, encouraging people to live their lives as close to normal as possible, and asking visitors to come to New York—but he also grieved with those who had lost loved ones. He estimates that in the wake of the terrorist attacks, there were six to twenty funerals every day. He made sure to attend at least six every day and to be sure that a representative from city government was in attendance at every service.
Giuliani’s example of leadership, strength, and resilience inspired the nation. In many ways, people all over the Unites States learned how to con-duct themselves in a post-9/11 world by watching Rudolph Giuliani’s modeling. He was not going to let terrorists determine the way he would live. And that’s what good leaders always do: they set the example.
Giuliani sums up his leadership this way:
All my life, I have been thinking about how to be a leader—whether it was when I was running the Corruption Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York, then the Narcotics Unit, or turning around a bankrupt Kentucky coal company after being appointed as receiver, or watching Ronald Reagan, Judge MacMahon, and others. I realized later that much of what I was doing in studying these people so closely was preparing. Unconsciously, I was learning how to run things.12
In other words, he has simply done what he had seen his leaders do throughout his career. He has practiced the Law of the Picture.
Applying
THE LAW OF THE PICTURE
To Your Life
1. If you are already practicing the Law of Process, then you are currently working to sharpen your skills to increase your leadership ability. (If you’re not, get started!) But there is more to leadership than just technical skills. Character is also vital to leadership, and that is communicated through the Law of the Picture. The primary example you set for your followers comes in the area of character, and that is the area you need to address first before trying to change others.
Give yourself a character audit. First, make a list of your core values, such as integrity, hard work, honesty, and so on. Then, think about your actions of the last month. What incidents, if any, stand out as inconsistent with those values? List as many things as you can recall. Don’t dismiss any-thing too quickly, and don’t rationalize any of them. These items will show you where you need to work on yourself. Work on changing not only your actions but also your attitude.
2. Ask a trusted colleague or friend to watch you for an extended period of time (at least a week) to compare what you teach with how you conduct yourself. Ask him or her to record any inconsistencies. Then plan to meet at the end of the observation period to review the results. At that meeting, you may ask questions for clarification, but you are not allowed to defend yourself. Plan to change either your actions or your philosophy to make them consistent with one another.
3. What are the three to five things you wish your people did better than they currently do now? List them. Now, grade your performance for each. (You may want to ask someone else to grade you as well to make sure your perception of yourself is accurate.) If your self-scores are low, then you need to change your behavior. If your scores are high, then you need to make your example more visible to your people. Adjust accordingly.