Make standards visible in how you lead yourself and the team.
People commit most readily to a leader they have seen do the work. When they believe you understand it, know what it costs, and hold yourself to what you ask of them, they back your plans and give your requests their best effort. That belief is credibility, and it is built in the work they see you do: the share you take of a difficult project, the quality of what you hand in, and how well you can explain the work when someone senior asks about it.
That record of doing the work matters more as AI changes what leaders produce. A polished plan or a sharp set of recommendations can now be drafted in an afternoon, so the page itself says less about the person presenting it. Colleagues, senior leaders, and clients increasingly weigh a proposal by whether that person has done the work behind it and can answer the questions it raises.
Leading by example is a leader's contribution to the work, aimed at the hurdle standing between the team and the result. The strongest leaders operate as well as set strategy. They step into the part of the work where the team is stuck, help clear it, show how it was done, and hand it back. Each contribution is sized to the obstacle and ends once the team can carry the work on its own, so the team keeps ownership and gets better at it, and the strategy is shaped by someone who knows what executing it takes. It is possible at any level, since how you work is visible to the people around you every day, well before your role or title changes.
Share the Hardest Part of What You Ask
Every request a leader makes carries a cost for the people asked to meet it: a later night before a deadline, a harder client call, a new process that takes more effort before it saves any. Teams accept those costs readily from a leader who carries a share of them. When you take on part of what you ask, the people you lead can see you understand what it takes.
Choose where to contribute by looking at the hurdle in the team's way. It might be a stakeholder who has to be won over, a new practice no one has tried yet, or a client conversation that needs more seniority than the team has. Those are the moments where a leader's experience, relationships, or authority make the most difference, and where your contribution leaves the team better equipped for the next one. Each contribution tells the team the request is worth your own time, which is the clearest case you can make that it is worth theirs.
Throughout my career, I have made a point of never asking my team to do anything I would not do myself. When we rolled out a new program for working with sales on communications tailored to each account, its success depended on winning over every account's relationship owner. Those relationships belonged to the leaders who reported to me, and some owners were rightly protective of their accounts and executives. Because those conversations had to go well, I led them myself and brought my reports with me. It gave them the support they needed, and it let me make clear to each owner that my report was the person I trusted to deliver on what we promised. Those conversations were a critical step in putting the program into practice, and they brought our teams closer together.
“Every request you make of your team is also a statement about your own work.”
Meet the Standard Before You Set It
Teams take their working standard from the leader's own work. A leader who asks for tighter proposals and sends loosely written ones has set two standards, and the team will follow the one it sees. The standard you meet in your own work is the one people emulate.
This applies to every new expectation you introduce. When you ask for a new way of working, go first, and let your own work be the first held to it. Meeting a standard first also tests it. If an expectation is hard to meet in your own work, you learn that before the team does, and you can adjust it while it is still new.
Account teams pushed back when we introduced new CRM and data management practices. Recording contacts and meetings in the system looked to them like laborious administrative work with little value. To show the effort was reasonable and the value was real, I did the work on their behalf to get them started and showed them how as I went. It helped improve engagement, pipeline, and sales, and sharing those results across accounts got every team proficient faster. I did the same in two organizations, and each time it set a standard I could meet myself and would share responsibility for over the long term.
Know the Work Well Enough to Explain It
Credibility is tested in the questions people ask, whether they come from a senior leader, a client, or a team being asked to adopt something new. When a result comes in below plan, a leader who knows the work can explain what happened, what the team has tried, and what comes next, in the meeting and without checking with anyone first. That answer earns the leader more freedom to decide how to respond.
Knowing the work at that level is a choice about where you spend your time. It means reading the drafts behind the summaries, joining some of the team's working sessions, and knowing which assumptions the plan depends on most, while the people who own the work keep running it.
AI is raising the value of this knowledge. When a polished recommendation can be produced in minutes, the leader who can explain the reasoning behind it, and where it might fall short, is the one senior leaders and clients rely on.
I led the development of a pursuit marketing program, and once it launched, I worked on the first few pursuits alongside the central pursuit team. Seeing how that team worked with account teams let me refine the program as we went. Together we built getting-started materials and processes that moved teams forward quickly, and I trained the pursuit team to explain them to account teams, so we could cover more accounts at speed. Until enough teams were up and running, I remained their main source of advice and help.
Build the Skills That Complement Your Expertise
Expertise earns the most credibility when the people around you can see how it connects to their work. In sales, understanding the economics of a deal lets you agree terms in the room. Presenters who can also shape the data behind a story make their case harder to dispute. Each complementary skill shows the people you work with that you have taken the trouble to understand their part of the business.
Early in my career, a mentor gave me advice I have followed since: choose the skills you develop by how well they complement the ones you already have. As a marketing leader, I taught myself business finance and how the stock market judges companies, so I could hold my own in strategy and performance discussions with CEOs, group CEOs, and CFOs. Connecting marketing and sales to financial results let me advise on using them as a growth engine for the business as well as for its brand, an approach that was new to the organization.
Let Your Work Speak for You
The strongest credibility is the kind other people describe on your behalf. When your work is consistently strong, colleagues explain what you bring before you need to, and senior leaders know what to expect when your name comes up for a larger assignment.
Confidence and humility work together here. Speak plainly about what you know, ask questions about what you are still learning, and let the quality of your work make the case for your judgment. Leaders who work this way find people more willing to follow them, because following them has rarely been a risk.
Your record counts most when you are new to a role, a team, or an organization. People arrive knowing your title, and they form their view of you from the first few pieces of work they see. When I take on a new role, my first priority is meeting the leaders I will work with to learn what is working, what is not, and where their most pressing problems are. Fixing what can be fixed quickly shows I understand their business and act on what I hear, and mapping out the longer-term problems gives us a shared view of what comes next. Those early conversations also build the rapport and approachability that the rest of our work together depends on.
Back Every Request With Your Own Work
Every request you make of your team is also a statement about your own work. Before you make the next one, decide which part of it most needs you.
About John Fildes
I grow the top line by connecting marketing to business strategy. By leveraging powerful positioning, content marketing, and client insights, I help organizations drive qualitative and quantitative results at scale.
I've built an amazing network of incredibly talented people over the years. What I've appreciated most is those who have invested in me, mentored me, and helped me become the talented professional I am today. I pay it forward by doing the same for other high performing professionals and entrepreneurs.
Learn More: Growth Leader | Business Builder | Leadership Multiplier
All views are my own and not those of my current or prior employers.
