Welcome to Viktor's Weekly!

This is where we will explore topics on how to be a better leader. All done through the lens of my experiences from working in, running and investing in startups.

Do What I Do

As leaders, we often find ourselves frustrated when our teams don’t follow instructions. We’ve laid out the steps in the process clearly, so why is it so hard for people to follow them?

The reason is more simple than you think. People naturally take their cues from those in authority. If we’re not walking the walk ourselves, our messaging rings hollow - making our teams tune out or rebel. Worse, it breeds a culture of misalignment. By saying one thing and doing another you signal that it’s ok to prioritise your own perceived shortcuts over established protocols.

At best, this “Do as I say, not as I do” mindset spawns inefficiencies and redundancies. At worst, it opens the door to costly errors, compliance issues, and a fundamental distrust in leadership. The harsh reality is that people are far more likely to follow our actions than our words alone.

By contrast, embodying the behaviours and processes we want to instill, leaders earn legitimacy and ensure consistency across the board. Our teams can’t help but fall in line when they see leadership’s unwavering commitment to the same high standards.

A Story of Documentation

I have personally struggled with this very issue. Especially when it comes to documentation. Tickets, SOPs, you name it – I’ve been guilty of sloppy or incomplete documentation in the past. It wasn’t until I my team at Baby Journey to build a collection of internal documentation that the penny finally dropped. As I reviewed their work, I could see my own bad habits staring back at me. It was a wake-up call that I needed to look in the mirror and hold myself to the same standards I expected of them.

To fix this miss-alignment, I sat down and wrote three new documents, following the best practices I had been preaching but not practicing. It was painful, but necessary. These documents became my reference points when providing feedback, allowing me to say, “Do as I do, not just as I say.” It also made my instructions more tangible.

This approach worked well until one team member raised the bar even higher with exceptional documentation – at which point, I gladly handed over the mantle of setting the standards to them.

Wrap Up

Leadership is about walking the talk, not just talking the walk. If we want our teams to embrace certain behaviors or follow specific processes, we must lead by example. It’s a simple truth, but one that’s easy to lose sight of in the hustle and bustle of our roles.

So how can we as leaders ensure we’re practicing what we preach? One highly effective tactic is to go through new initiatives ourselves before rolling them out to our teams. Before introducing a new process or set of expectations, experience it as an individual contributor would. Fill out the forms, follow the checklists, walk through every step of the protocol. Take notes on areas of confusion, bottlenecks, or opportunities for improvement.

Then, when you present the process to your team, you can speak from firsthand experience. You’ll have more empathy for the real-world applications. And you can immediately provide examples of how you’ve already modeled the desired behavior.

This tactic eliminates the “Do as I say, not as I do” disconnect. Your actions become even more powerful than your words. You’re showing your team, “I’ve walked this path. I understand the challenges. Now, let’s take this journey together.”