What were your goals? What challenge s did you overcome? How did you do it? Who did you look up to? It can be anyone, from family members to historical figures.

Who made you who you were during that time? How did they influence your being? What values did they reinforce or help you develop? Are you still carrying on their influence?

If so, how? We tend to be satisfied with the first answer, but the most meaningful things take more time to come up. Give yourself a few days. Start taking notes, but then go on and do something else, sleep over it, take your mind of it.

Your brain will keep processing this reflection unconsciously, making your answers deeper and more meaningful. How to be a role model to others?

Know what made you who you are now, know your journey and where you want to go. I am not talking about what you think about who you are, but the brutal reality of the good, the bad and the ugly.

Find support to build that awareness by asking people whom you know will tell you things as they are, not what you want to hear, and by listening to them.

Be compassionate with yourself. It means aligning your behaviours and your words to your core values. Self-reflection is an amazing way to check where you are with yourself. It fuels self-awareness as it raises potential conflicts and emotions you need to explore.

Why is it important to you? What do you bring to the table? There are many examples of this in Jobs' life. More accurately, identify the competencies that you need in your workforce and empower your employees to try new things while continuing to develop their strengths.

If you are looking to grow from within the company and assume a leadership position, surround yourself with key members and most of all, learn from them. If you are already in a leadership position at a small to mid-sized company, connect with Mentor Works by signing up for their Canadian government funding weekly e-newsletter.

Ryan Weaver has a BA in economics, an MSc in management, and several published works including two books. Skip to content. Career Advice Career Development People Management.

Follow Captain Kirk. Search Career Advice. By Monster Contributor. By Ryan Weaver Marketing Analyst "No matter what your organization does, it helps to never stop learning. Never Stop Learning Like Captain James T. Learn to Forge Working Relationships like Nelson Mandela Learning to forgive, and maintaining a good relationship with your employees and or in this case, colleagues, is important in the business world.

Be Resilient like the Caped Crusader Batman Batman, like so many other super heroes does not succeed without being able to first overcome defeat. Become a Storyteller like Shakespeare Believe it or not, there are several articles and courses that teach modern leadership through Shakespearean literature.

Once we have categorised, we link to other stored information about that category; how similar they are to us, what characterises them, whether these characteristics are positive or negative. These stored characteristic and category links are built up over time through socialisation and culture.

Essentially what we are doing in using a role modelling strategy is creating an in-group with desirable behaviours which we want others to copy. The better those behaviours are seen and obvious the easier it is for others to identify with them.

So in theory if people identify with the in-group leaders and are aware of what they are doing because they want to be part of a valued group, they will adopt similar behaviours. But there is another factor to consider.

Her studies show that people tend to have one of two sets of beliefs that create their mindset about work, learning and their own abilities. Employees with this mindset believe their performance is a result of their talents. Dweck has found that people with a fixed mindset see role models as a threat.

They are suggesting ways of working that may not match their natural abilities or talents. These employees are less likely to learn from role models and leaders who hold this mind-set are less likely to be willing or able to unbundle how they have been successful.

In contrast, people who have a growth mind-set believe that talent, abilities and intellect can be developed. For these people it is not about intelligence and talents; even if they have those traits in abundance, they are the start point rather than the end point.

Mistakes are part of learning; deficiencies are part of being human and indicate you need to work harder; they find out what they can do to learn, who they can learn from and where the testing opportunities are.

So there is more to consider than just wheeling out your leadership team. But knowing what someone does and successfully adopting that capability is quite a big leap. We have a Success Profile methodology for identifying what the most successful do and how they do it.

For example, our work creating Success Profiles across many organisations, in countries all around the world has found that the difference in the success of the most successful is not what or even how they do it but why they do it; the purpose they bring to the role and the beliefs that they hold.

It is very difficult for others to observe role models and guess what drives the behaviour. Knowing how someone behaves is not enough. You have to also understand why they behave that way.

People have to believe in what they are doing. This is the true challenge for leadership development. Work by Matt Lieberman at UCLA has focused on the role of mirror neurons verses the area known as the default system or how we adopt a Theory of Mind or metalizing.

This is the area of the brain where we think about ourselves and which largely overlaps with the areas activated when we think about and try to predict the actions of others.

This is essentially what we are asking people to do in role modelling. Essentially the brain has two systems for understanding others; mirror neurons and the default system or sometimes called the mentalizing system.

To have two systems is a bit of a puzzle as the brain is a very efficient organ and duplicating a function takes up a lot of brain power and energy. Mirror neurons are quite a new finding and scientists are still learning exactly how they work. Current knowledge indicates mirror neurons are active when we perform a goal directed action and when we see someone else performing the action.

When we observe a role model for example there are different interpretations:. So for example if a senior leader is suggesting a sustainability plan these different aspects might be:.

To look at how the role models act. However, as we observed above there is more to success and authentic behaviour than how. The experiment looked at understanding the different brain regions involved in what someone is doing verses why they are doing it verses how they are doing it.

He asked people to look at video clips and having established how someone was doing the action, asked them to determine either why the activity was happening or what was happening and observed the activity in the brain. He found that the mirror neuron system is active in some answers and the default system in others.

What largely activated the mirror neuron system on the right side of the brain. Lieberman believes this aids the ability to see actions rather than just movement. Why is answered by the default system, the area which thinks about ourselves and others.

It is essentially the system for understanding motivation. This is important as it helps us to understand what we can do to be useful to others which in turn helps us pass on ideas, culture etc.

I would suggest that this is the area we need people to be activating in order to understand a role model. The default system is quick to switch on — Lieberman suggests within a few seconds if we are not focused on cognitive tasks.

But to the extent that the default regions are active, the cognitive, analytical regions switch off and versa visa. This suggests that these two modes of thinking compete with each other. When these are lacking the default system does not come on line or does not come on line efficiently.

So leaders who spend a lot of time in rational cognitive thinking may be out of the habit of switching on the default system or at least tuning into it when it is switched on. We all know leaders who take little time or make little effort to understand themselves or others.

This research implies that for a leadership development strategy that includes a dependence on role modelling, work needs to be done to understand not just the what and the how but also the why. To do that the role models need to be able to describe their purpose and beliefs not just behaviours.

eBook EUR Softcover Book EUR Hardcover Book EUR Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout Purchases are for personal use only Learn about institutional subscriptions. Preview Unable to display preview. References A. Google Scholar Catalyst and Opportunity Now, Breaking the Barriers: Women in Senior Management in the UK London: Business in the Community, Google Scholar DDI and CIPD, Leadership forecast survey London, Google Scholar A.

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Let's look at a few day-to-day examples below:. Being a good role model benefits both you and the people who work with you. Good role models are widely respected, and they often find themselves in leadership positions.

People naturally look up to them, seek to do their best for them, and copy their behaviors. To be a good role model, focus on developing the following six personal qualities:. As you engage with your team members and offer yourself as a role model, try to do the following:.

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