How Do I Apply the Law of Modeling at Work?

Short answer on how to apply the Law of Modeling at work: pick one person who already does one thing better than you do, get close enough to watch their hands, and copy the behavior. Not the personality. Not the career. The behavior.

In June of 1981 I was seventeen years old, three weeks from a high school diploma, working second shift. The time clock hung on a cinder block wall by the back door. There was a man named Ray who punched in two minutes ahead of me every night. Ray never gave me a speech. He hung his coat on the same hook, filled his water jug before the line started, and laid his tools out in the same order every shift so he never had to go looking for anything. I copied all three inside a month. Nobody told me to. He was simply the only man in that building I could see doing it right.

That was the Law of Modeling working on me, and I would not hear its name for another thirty years.

The Law of Modeling is one of John C. Maxwell's 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, and it says this: it is hard to improve when you have no one but yourself to follow. So how do you apply the Law of Modeling at work? You stop hunting for a hero and start hunting for a habit. Find somebody who is already good at the one thing you are bad at, get close enough to see how they actually do it, and copy that one thing. The Law is not asking you to admire a person. It is asking you to watch one.

What the Law of Modeling Actually Says

Maxwell's point is almost rude in how simple it is. If you only follow yourself, you can only ever teach yourself what you already know. You will get more efficient at your current ceiling. You will not raise it.

Watch it play out in any plant. Nobody learns to listen to a bearing from a manual. You stand next to somebody who has heard ten thousand bearings, they tilt their head and say "that one's going," and three months later you hear it too. You did not read your way there. You borrowed twenty years of somebody's ears.

That is the whole trade. A model lets you skip the part where you make every mistake personally. You still have to do the work. You just do not have to invent the work.

And here is the quiet half of the Law that most summaries skip. Maxwell is not only telling you to find a model. He is telling you that you already have them, chosen by accident. The people you sit near, the voices in your ears on the drive home, the two or three coworkers whose opinions you brace for. Those are your current models whether you picked them on purpose or not. Applying the Law of Modeling at work starts with an audit, not a search.

What If Nobody at Work Is Worth Following?

This is the real question, and it comes up every single Wednesday night. People do not say "I cannot find a model." They say some version of "I have looked around my building and I would not trade places with any of them."

I believe you. I have worked in buildings like that, and I can name floors where the loudest man was also the laziest.

But I think the question is usually wrong in one specific way. You are shopping for a whole human being when the Law only asked you for one behavior.

I once worked for a man whose values I would not follow across the parking lot. He was also the best listener I have ever been in a room with. He would let a sentence finish. He would let a silence sit there until somebody filled it with the truth. I did not want his career. I wanted that. So I took that, and I left the rest of him on the floor where I found it.

You are allowed to do that. Taking one skill from somebody is not an endorsement of their life.

Borrow People in Pieces, Not Whole

Here is the exercise I run with clients. It takes ten minutes and a pen.

Write down four things you want to be better at this year. Be specific. Not "communication." Try "running a meeting that ends on time" or "writing an email that does not need three follow ups" or "telling somebody their work is not good enough without wrecking them."

Now, next to each one, write the name of a person you have watched do that thing well. One name. They can be in your building, two buildings over, retired, or your sister in law. They can be somebody who wrote a book, because an author is a model who never cancels on you.

Most people fill in two names fast, stall on the third, and go blank on the fourth. That blank tells you which part of your growth has nobody in it, and that is where you are currently following yourself in circles.

None of those four people need to be your mentor. They do not need to like you. Two of them do not need to know your name. The Law of Modeling asks for proximity and attention, not a relationship agreement.

Five Ways to Apply the Law of Modeling at Work

You can start every one of these before Friday.

1. Pick the behavior before the person. Name the one skill first. Then go find who has it. Doing it the other way around is how you end up following somebody's whole personality and getting none of their skill.
2. Go stand there. Twenty minutes, in person if you can. "Can I sit in the next time you run that review?" Almost nobody says no, because almost nobody is ever asked. Watching beats being told, every time.
3. Ask how, not what. "What should I do" gets you their conclusion. "How did you decide that" gets you their thinking, and the thinking is the part you can reuse next week on a different problem.
4. Copy it badly for two weeks. You will feel like you are wearing somebody else's coat. Do it anyway. Nothing feels like yours until you have done it wrong about nine times. This is the step people skip, and skipping it is why so much good advice dies in a notebook.
5. Tell them. Go back in a month and say "I started doing the thing you do with the tool layout, and it saved me ten minutes a night." You just handed somebody the best day they will have that week, and you turned a one way copy into a real conversation.

That is the Law of Modeling at work. It is not a program. It is five minutes of attention, repeated.

Somebody Is Already Modeling You

Now the part I do not enjoy writing.

The Law of Modeling runs in both directions, and you do not get to pick which end you are on. Whoever is newest in your area has already decided what normal looks like, and they decided it by watching you. Not by listening to you. By watching you.

They know whether you actually read the procedure or just initial it. They know if you go quiet when the boss is wrong. They know you say safety first and then skip the lockout because you are in a hurry and it is almost break.

I spent years being the kind of manager who answered every question himself, fast, standing up, because it felt like helping. What I was actually modeling was "the smart thing to do here is wait for Jay." I taught a whole crew to stop thinking in front of me and I was proud of how quick I was while I did it.

So add one line to the ten minute exercise above. Write down the one habit of yours you would not want the newest person in your area to copy. Then fix that one, this week, before you go looking for anybody to follow. That is the Law of Modeling charging you interest.

What the Law of Modeling Costs You

Let me be honest about the price, because the advice is cheap and the price is not.

First, it costs pride. You have to say out loud, at least to yourself, that somebody else does this better than you do. At twenty three that is annoying. At sixty three, with a book out and a few certificates on the wall, it is worse. There is no age where this gets comfortable.

Second, it costs a story. A lot of us are quietly proud of being self taught. I was. "Nobody showed me, I figured it out" is a good line at a party and an expensive way to live. Every year you spend following only yourself is a year somebody already paid for and you refused the receipt.

Third, it costs time you were going to spend looking busy. Twenty minutes of standing and watching produces nothing you can put in a report. It just quietly makes the next two years better.

Common Questions About the Law of Modeling

What does the Law of Modeling mean in simple terms?

It means you cannot get much better than the best thing you have already seen. Maxwell states it as "it is hard to improve when you have no one but yourself to follow." If the only example in front of you is you, your growth is capped at your own current habits, and you will mostly get faster at doing what you already do.

Is the Law of Modeling just a fancy word for mentorship?

No, and this is where people get stuck. Mentorship is a relationship, with two people who both agreed to it. Modeling is one sided and needs no permission. You can model somebody who has no idea you exist. Every mentor is a model. Most of your models will never be your mentors, and that is fine.

How do I apply the Law of Modeling if I work alone or remote?

Same law, different room. Pick the behavior, then go find the recording. Watch how somebody you respect runs a call and steal the first ninety seconds of it. Read the person who writes the way you want to write and copy their structure on your next three emails. Books and recorded talks are models with unlimited availability. The only thing you lose working alone is the chance to watch somebody's hands in real time, so get yourself one standing call a month with a person who is two steps ahead of you.

How many people should I be following at once?

Three or four, each for one thing. One person for everything is how you end up imitating instead of growing, and imitation hits a wall the first time your situation stops matching theirs. Maxwell's own list of what makes a good model includes availability and proven experience, and almost nobody scores high on every skill you need. Spread it out.

Reflection Questions

1. Who are your current models, the ones you did not choose on purpose? Are they pulling you up, holding you level, or pulling you down?
2. Name the one skill you most want this year. Who already has it, and when did you last watch them use it?
3. Which of your four growth areas has no name next to it? What has that blank already cost you?
4. What habit of yours is the newest person in your area copying right now?
5. What is the story you tell about having figured it out alone, and what has that story been charging you?

The Bottom Line

Do one thing this week. Pick one skill, name one person who has it, and ask for twenty minutes of watching. Not advice. Watching. Then copy one small piece of what you see and do it badly until it is yours.

Ray never knew he taught me anything. He filled his water jug before the line started and I noticed. Forty five years later I still lay my tools out in order, and that one habit has probably given me back a few months of my life.

So here is my question back to you. If somebody on your crew copied exactly what you did this week, not what you said, would they be better off on Friday than they were on Monday?

This ties back to The Law of Modeling — one of John C. Maxwell's 15 Laws of Growth.