Too many leaders fall into the trap of being all talk instead of showing what matters.
They stand at the front of the room and rattle off company values, give lectures on discipline, or tell their team how important it is to work hard, stay focused, and commit to the process — while failing to meet their own set expectations.
These leaders are forgetting one crucial aspect of credibility: No one is listening to your words if your actions don’t back them up.
Think about it. How do you actually build confidence in yourself? It doesn’t come from positive affirmations or motivational speeches but from keeping promises to yourself.
If you tell yourself you’re going to wake up early, hit the gym, avoid sugar, or make your bed and then you actually do it, your confidence grows. You’ve proven to yourself that your words have value, and so you trust yourself more, which creates discipline.
But when you break those promises, your confidence slips. Every time you say one thing and do another, you chip away at your own self-trust.
That’s the same dynamic that plays out with your team. Leadership starts with leading yourself.
If you can’t honor your own commitments, how can you expect anyone else to trust you to lead them?
People are always watching. Your team members see what time you show up. They see how you handle setbacks. They notice if you cut corners. They’re learning more from what you do than from what you say.
There’s an old saying: Things are caught, not taught.
Imagine an obese doctor telling patients to lose weight, a broke financial advisor teaching clients how to build wealth, or a leader preaching core values they don’t personally live by.
The message is meaningless if the messenger doesn’t embody it.
It doesn’t matter if the advice is good because who says it matters as much as what’s being said. People won’t buy in because they don’t just hear the words. They see the source.
If you’re living your values, people trust you. They want to model you. They’ll believe what you say because they’ve seen you do it. If you’re not, it doesn’t matter how many motivational speeches you give, how many posters you hang up with your “core values,” or how many times you remind your team to step up. They won’t listen.
This isn’t just theory. It’s proven.
Recently, my five-year-old daughter asked to go work out in our home gym. Why? Because she sees us work out every day. She wanted to do it because it’s what she sees modeled in her home. The same goes for eating. She sees us eating vegetables, grilled chicken, and drinking sparkling water, and she wants to eat vegetables and drink sparkling water — not because we preached it and not because we told her it’s good for her, but because she saw it lived out.
That’s the power of example.
Your team works the same way. If you want them to embody discipline, resilience, or commitment, you need to start by living it yourself. You need to show up consistently, honor your commitments, and be the example they want to follow.
Leadership isn’t about standing on a pedestal and telling people what to do. It’s about showing them what doing looks like.
Words can inspire, but only actions build trust. So stop preaching and start leading.
