Set the Example to Create Accountability
People set examples for others for many reasons. Sometimes you're being a good parent, or perhaps a good boss or other form of leader. But there is an additional benefit to setting positive examples for others: it creates accountability for you, and gives another reason to hold yourself to a high example.
Setting the Example
Even if you're not a leader of any kind formally, someone is watching you in some way. People around you see what you do and hear what you say. At all times, you are either a positive or negative example to others. It is entirely up to you, every day, every moment, which one you represent to everyone you come into contact with.
Obviously you can't succeed in spending all of your time constantly trying to set examples in every conceivable way. We all make mistakes. But that shouldn't stop you from being the best possible example to those around you with each of your choices, each and every day.
It's not feasible to do this all at once in every area, especially not if you're climbing out of bad habits. If you are starting at the bottom, then you yourself need support. And there's no shame in that. But even if you're just starting to reach for the bottom run of the ladder, someone sees you doing it, and that might be inspiration they need to do the same. Stories abound of people who have quit lifelong addictions or changed deeply ingrained bad habits as a result of witnessing someone else make the choice they thought they never could.
Having that kind of impact on others, great or small, is a powerful thing. This goes double for people that you actually directly lead in any capacity, as they are SUPPOSED to be looking to as the model for how to behave. All of which leads me to the reason we're discussing today: this creates accountability between you and the people around you.
The Accountability
When you set a positive example for others, you create a connection between you and that person. They have an expectation, however small, that you will continue to do so. Regardless of whether or not you agree to or are even aware of this, it does happen.
These expectations are significantly higher and more justified if you are in a formal or even informal leadership or authority (and really you shouldn't have one without the other anyway) position in relation to those people. By agreeing to be in that role with those people, you are also agreeing to set a positive example for them at all times.
The common theme here is that, intentional or not, your choices have an impact outside of yourself. Making poor, unhealthy, choices sets a bad example to those around you, and encourages them to do the same. Conversely, consistently making positive and healthy choices encourages them to at the every least question why they are not doing similar things for themselves.
Once you fully internalize this realization, you realize that nothing you say or do is solely about you. No choice you make exists in a vacuum. This can and should put pressure on you to always make better, wiser, stronger decisions. To not slack off, to not accept the minimum, and to never shirk.
It is a widely accepted fact that successful people care about and consciously pursue the improvement of not only themselves, but those around them. So allow this to be another motivation to be your best self every day. Consciously take on that mentality. Be accountable to not only yourself, but everyone around you every day, and don't let them down.