As a leader, people are always anxious to figure out who you really are.
It’s understandable. A leader’s primary commodity is trust. People follow leaders they trust. Violate that trust, and people stop following you.
Many leaders talk a good game. And that’s understandable.
Yet habits and actions reveal more about any leader than words. And that’s what people study. As the old saying goes, “actions speak louder than words.” And that’s exceptionally true in leadership.
So what actions are people looking at? What are they really studying to see whether you are a good leader to follow?
In my experience, there are at least five things that reveal who you really are as a leader. It’s also easy to overlook these five things, or to convince yourself that what you say will compensate for what you do if what you do falls short.
Yet nothing a leader says eventually outweighs what a leader does. Your actions—not your words—create your leadership and your legacy.
So what should you be watching as a leader?
1. Whether you deliver on your promises
You never need to open your mouth for your team to determine whether they can trust you.
Trust, after all, is confidence.
The best way to establish confidence as a leader is to do what you said you’re going to do when you said you’re going to do it.
The challenge, of course, is that’s much harder to do than it seems.
Be careful about what you promise.
Be even more careful about how you deliver. It is far better to under-promise and over-deliver than it is to offer assurances that mean nothing.
And if you mess up, own up. People respect that.
And then do everything in your power not to repeat the same mistake again.
2. Whether you truly value your family or their family
I was talking to a leader the other week who was trying to figure out how much time to take off when there was so much to do at his rapidly growing church.
As we discussed this, it occurred to me that how he valued his family would signal whether he wanted his staff to value their families.
Most team members want a senior leader to go home at night to see his family.
The late night, early morning and all weekend emails actually discourage your staff. So do the seven day work weeks.
Even if you tell your staff “you take time off, I need to work,” they rarely feel secure in taking that time off.
Unfortunately, it took me years to learn that my working longer hours communicates to the team that it’s never safe for them to take time off.
How you value your family signals to your team whether you value their families.
