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Robert Garten
Accountant, Manager, Controller, Skeptic, Optimist, Below average writer

A few ideas on how to Lead By Example

Your employees don’t work for you, you work for your employees.

If you, as a leader, create a fun and challenging atmosphere, your employees will follow suit, and start doing the same with their peers.

As I’ve noticed this I’ve used it to my advantage, molding my team to the way I want them. It’s “leading by example”, but to get to my result I reverse engineered it. You have to think about the environment you yourself would like to work in, and engage with your employees in that way every day.

I saw it with the prior controller in my position. She was old school. She was here early and worked late, weekends, until 9pm, etc. She is strict and means business. She also has many more years’ of experience, and trained everyone incredibly well. She knew the culture she wanted in her department, and she created it. It wasn’t really a positive one, in my opinion, but it was effective.

I’m seeing change since I’ve been given her department. I can’t work late as I have a newborn at home, so I get to work early. I work hard, get my daily tasks done efficiently and still find time to search for opportunities and provide value. I make it my personal mission every day to be overly optimistic and cheerful. I also make it my mission to share everything I learn with my staff. Then I go home at 4:30 to be with my family.

My staff has slowly started to follow suit. They no longer work until 6pm or 7pm. They seem to smile more and ask more questions and take more initiative. I’m able to empower them with more responsibility, keeping everyone engaged and challenged. So based on this, here’s some ideas on how to develop a positive atmosphere (even in an accounting department):

  1. Always smile. All the time, every day, all day, whenever you talk to anyone. All that smiling is contagious. First, you’ll start to see your staff smile when they come to talk to you, because they know you’ll have a big grin on your face already. And eventually, you’ll start to see your staff smile more themselves. It also breaks down barriers, and encourages questions and discussions.
  2. Be overly optimistic and positive. This idea is not the same as #1. Smiling is on the surface, it’s the first thing people see. But being optimistic and positive will eventually resonate deep down - firstly in yourself, and then in your staff. Having this positive mindset 24/7/365 takes practice, and is probably not all that practical. But if you can keep it going for days, weeks, months at a time you’ll start to see the overall feeling of the office change.
  3. Work the hours you expect to see from your staff. You staff will mimic you, and they are paying attention all the time. If you are taking long lunches, coming in late, leaving early, then they will start doing the same. If you berate them for doing the above, then you will lose them because you become a hypocrite. Work at least the hours you expect your staff to work, and you can more easily set that expectation.
  4. Give them your work. The idea here is to slowly funnel your work down to them, and try to make your job obsolete. Why would you try to make your job obsolete? What I’ve found is that trying to make your own job obsolete should the goal as a manager. All the things I find slightly mundane, they will find new and challenging. It will get them to think in different ways. It will ENGAGE. And you’ll slowly find that you are running out of things to do. What then? Look for opportunities. Improve processes. Learn new things. Start writing blogs :) Do all those thing a good manager should be doing all the time (but don’t write too many blogs at work).
  5. Make decisions with them, not for them. I very rarely walk out and put my foot down on a decision. Instead, I will go challenge and engage the team. I’ll have a big smile on my face, and say something like “we have an opportunity here, let’s figure it out”. It’s corny, but now they expect it. They smile and contribute on solving the issue. Often times this relaxed engagement will give new ideas and collective solutions.

I don’t tell my staff how to act or how to do their jobs. And I certainly don’t tell them what their mindset should be. But I’ve found that, if you create a positive and productive culture around your own habits, your staff will start doing the same. And they won’t even realize it.