“To be a leader, you have to make people want to follow you,
and nobody wants to follow someone who doesn’t know where he is going.”
-Joe Namath
The Law of Replication: People do what they see. We attract who we are, not who we want. Only secure leaders give power and security to others. People want to follow those who take them on a journey, rather than just point the way. You can’t add value to others if you don’t have it yourself to give. Model results you want and people will grow.
The Law of Attraction?
There has been a movement for the past two decades based on a book called, “The Secret.” The book says that you will attract what you want by just concentrating on that and the “universe” will give it to you. Many people have read and followed the teachings of the book only to be disappointed in their results. Why? Because just thinking about what we want doesn’t make it happen. Life doesn’t work that way. We must be actively involved and have realistic goals to succeed in any endeavor. Just wanting a change doesn’t bring it about.
You can desire the best employees, the best customers, the best clients, but you will naturally attract people like yourself. At a conference, a man came to me during a break to tell me about a problem he had with employees who were not very friendly to his customers. They were short, curt and almost rude to people when they came into his business. He was actually losing customers by their attitudes. He had read “The Law of Attraction” and was disappointed that he hadn’t attracted better staff.
He told me that he had been in the position of office manager about a year. Prior to that he worked comfortably in a back room where he could run figures and work on the computer, without interference or contact with people. When he was promoted after the previous manager left, he kept the same practice of working in the back in the manager’s office. He came in each morning through a back door and only came out of his office once or twice daily to get coffee or hand off orders to an assistant.
He seemed surprised that his front line staff on the team weren’t being nice and outgoing to his customers. He wanted me to change their behavior for him, because his insistence wasn’t having any effect on their actions.
His employees saw him neglecting and often ignoring him, regardless of what he told them he wanted them to do. What he had unwittingly done was model his behavior for everyone, rather than the behavior he wanted.
People will do what they see.
I’ve learned in various jobs that the leader’s behavior is always replicated by the followers. We often want to hire people who will do what we won’t do for ourselves. The result is that we get who we already are; not who we want.
If you tell me you want to hire hard-working employees, my first question is... | 
