How to Be a Role Model — free sample

By Szabolcs Szircsák · Free reading sample

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Preface

I teach people how to stand, move and strike. None of that automatically makes me good at listening when I am hurt.

That is an awkward place to begin a book about being a role model. It is also the only place from which I can honestly write one.

I am a karate instructor and the father of two daughters. Those roles put me in front of people who can hear what I say and watch what I do. They also make it very easy to mistake being responsible for having the right answer. Sometimes I have used an explanation where I needed a question. Sometimes I have called something a principle when hurt pride was doing a fair amount of the talking.

I could remove those moments and present a more impressive version of myself. The resulting book would be easier on my ego. I doubt it would be much use to you.

My past belongs here where it helps us examine a choice. What did I expect? What did the other person actually agree to? When did help become control? What could I have said before disappointment became resentment? Once a story has brought us to those questions, it has done its job. You do not owe me a verdict on every person in my life.

You will find decisions here that you may disagree with. Some remain uncomfortable for me to examine. I am not asking you to accept a practice because I experienced it, or a judgement because I was the instructor in the room. Keep your own judgement switched on. Being willing to question the person speaking is part of what this book asks of you.

Nor do you need to practise karate to recognise these situations. A promise made in a kitchen can carry as much weight as an instruction given in a training hall. A colleague waiting for an answer, a child trying to explain a mistake and a friend hearing you say no all encounter the example you set. Most of that work happens without an audience or a belt to indicate your progress.

I want these pages to be useful at those moments. Sometimes that means a sentence you can borrow. Sometimes it means noticing the sentence you should stop repeating. Sometimes it means admitting that the other person is entitled to an answer you would rather not hear.

Read with a particular relationship in mind. Disagree where you need to. Try something small enough to do on an ordinary day, and pay attention to the person who experiences the result. If an idea sounds wise on the page but becomes an excuse for treating someone badly, question the way you are using it. My name on the cover does not settle the matter.

There is no graduation ceremony at the end of this book. That may be disappointing if you were hoping for another certificate. There is a next conversation, and a chance to handle your part of it more honestly.

That is a worthwhile place to start.

Szabolcs Szircsák

Introduction

Before training, I tie on my black belt. The knot is familiar. The children arriving have more immediate concerns than what it took to earn it. One wants to find a friend. Another is frightened. Someone has enough energy to power the lights. They need me to notice who is in front of me and do my job.

That is a useful correction to any grand idea I might have about being a role model. My past achievements cannot listen to a child. I have to do that myself, today.

My name is Szabolcs Szircsák. You may know me as Szabolcs sensei. I teach karate and have two daughters. I have helped people find confidence, and I have made people less comfortable than I intended. I have kept going through setbacks. I have also mistaken stubbornness for strength, attention for control and being needed for being close to someone.

Those mistakes belong in this book because I was involved in making them. I don't want your sympathy to become the point of the story. I want us to get to the decision that comes afterwards: what will I do differently with the next person who trusts me?

You probably have your own version of that question. You mean to listen, then interrupt. You say yes too quickly and spend the week resenting the promise. You want to be fair, until someone challenges a rule you made. None of this requires a black belt. A kitchen, a workplace or a group chat supplies more than enough practice.

People form expectations from these ordinary encounters. Can they tell you something awkward? Can they rely on your yes? If you get something wrong, will they have to defend their experience before you consider putting it right? Your answers take shape in your behaviour, whether or not you ever wanted to be anyone's example.

This book is about making those answers more trustworthy. We will work with promises, attention, disagreement, help and the difficult business of letting another person choose differently from us. You will find sentences you can adapt, questions that test your first explanation and exercises tied to actual relationships.

The dojo is where we train, the tatami is the training surface, and sensei means teacher. That is the Japanese background you need. No press-ups will be collected at the end.

I tell personal stories and also use imagined situations. I make the difference clear. An invented example can help us test an idea; it cannot establish what happened to a real person. In my own memories, I know my side best. Where I am guessing about someone else's thoughts, you should be able to see that I am guessing.

I will ask you to be equally precise with yourself. What happened? Which part was yours? What can you do next? What would show that something changed? These questions recur because insight needs somewhere to go. Thinking hard about being reliable does not return a missed call.

Find the chapter you need

If people have to chase you, start with chapter 2. If your apology keeps turning into a defence, try chapter 3. For conversations in which nobody feels heard, use chapters 5 and 6. For saying no without turning the relationship into a contest, go to chapters 8 and 16.

If an old experience keeps deciding what you expect from new people, chapters 9 and 10 are your starting point. If helping leaves you resentful, read chapter 12. If someone has left, chapter 13 separates the loss from the responsibilities that remain. If a group cannot function without you, chapter 18 asks what you have actually handed over.

You can also read straight through. The early chapters begin with the behaviour other people can see. The middle chapters examine what makes that behaviour difficult for me. The later chapters take the work into leadership, public life and a thirty-day plan. Each chapter ends with a brief recap, questions and a practical exercise.

Choose one relationship to work on first. You don't need nineteen simultaneous improvement projects. Nobody enjoys living beside a self-appointed inspector who has just read a book about authenticity and now patrols the kitchen with a clipboard.

There will be situations where you do the considerate thing and still disappoint someone. You may need to refuse, leave or accept a loss you cannot repair. We will make room for that too. The aim is to become someone whose choices can be understood and whose responsibility does not disappear when the answer is uncomfortable.

Start with the next encounter. Someone will bring you a question, an unfinished task or a version of events you don't like. That is where the work in these pages becomes real.

1 What People Learn from You

During a training session, a student asked whether I was all right. They had noticed something in the way I looked at them.

I was there to pay attention to my students. One of them had just paid attention to me.

The question stayed with me because these people occupy so much of my life. Their attendance supports my work. Their trust allows me to teach. Over the years, watching them learn has also forced me to discover how I behave when I am tired, disappointed or unable to explain something well.

Yet leading a group can be lonely. Since my divorce, I spend less time with my daughters than I would like. Much of my daily contact revolves around teaching. I can stand in front of a full room and still miss the kind of closeness in which nobody needs me to know the next exercise.

That student noticed something my lesson plan did not contain. It brought me back to a practical question: what am I teaching through the way I am here?

You face that question whenever someone needs to approach you. The child with another question. The colleague who has spotted an error. The friend who disagrees. Before you explain any of your values, your response tells them what it costs to speak.

Setting an example is inconveniently continuous. It happens while you are shopping, washing up or waiting for your computer to finish an update you never asked for. People have to live with your behaviour on those days too. This chapter begins there: with the difference between what you mean to give and what someone actually receives.

Your intentions need to reach the other person

I can love my daughters and still fail to pay attention to them. I can value my students and say something that makes one of them decide not to ask a question next time. Good intentions matter, but they do not tell the whole story of a relationship. I know what I meant to give. The other person can tell me what actually reached them.

We find this easier to accept about a parcel than about ourselves. If the recipient has not received it, we investigate where it got stuck. We do not start insisting how enthusiastically we wrapped it. Yet in relationships that is often exactly what we do. We list our efforts, our sacrifices and our love, then expect the other person to withdraw their account of what happened to them.

Imagine a parent spending an entire afternoon preparing for their child's school trip the next day. They buy everything, pack, read messages and check the departure time. Meanwhile, the child repeatedly tries to say they do not want to go. Each time, the adult replies, 'In a minute, let me just finish this.' By evening, the parent is exhausted and feels they have done everything for their child. The child goes to bed without having managed to explain what they are afraid of.

In this imagined situation, the work was not pointless. The trip may well have needed all that preparation. But something was left out, and the parent will not discover it simply by looking at how hard they worked. They need to pause at the uncomfortable statement that, from the child's point of view, they were not listening. They can ask what the child was trying to say and when. The answer may change how they understand that same afternoon.

You do not have to accept every piece of feedback as a final verdict. It may be inaccurate, angry or one-sided. But if you look only for what is unfair about it, you may also miss the part you could learn from. Understanding and agreeing are separate steps. Taking the first does not commit you to the second.

When two important values clash

Honesty, loyalty, kindness and consistency sit comfortably together on paper. Less comfortably on a Thursday afternoon. A friend asks for an honest opinion about a plan they are excited about, and you see a serious flaw. A colleague is struggling with personal difficulties while everyone else regularly does their work for them. You have promised a family outing when someone elsewhere genuinely needs you.

'Always be a good person' is not enough for these situations. The question is precisely what goodness means here. If you merely reassure your friend, you may preserve a pleasant moment but fail to help them notice an important obstacle. If you unload every objection, you may be right yet leave no room for a useful conversation. How you choose says at least as much about you as the value you invoke.

First, establish what would actually have consequences. Is this simply a difference in taste, or does part of the plan genuinely fail to work? Is your friend asking for an opinion, or sharing something they have just achieved? Can you show specifically what your concern rests on? Honesty does not require you to say everything immediately and indiscriminately. But do not hide something important behind a desire to spare someone's feelings.

One possible response is: 'I'm glad you've started, and there's something here I think would be worth another look.' This makes room for their excitement and your observation. You can then discuss the specific point. Your friend remains free to choose differently. Your responsibility is to explain what you actually know clearly and respectfully; theirs is to decide what to do with it.

Even the most carefully considered decision may leave a loss behind. If an urgent situation means cancelling your plans together, the other person's disappointment is still valid. You do not have to prove that because your decision was right, they can no longer feel sad. You can explain the reason, acknowledge the consequence and discuss what can be put right. Being trustworthy also means resisting the temptation to rewrite events afterwards as a story in which nobody was hurt.

The cost of your decisions in other people's lives

One question can interrupt a great deal of self-justification: who has to adjust their life to what I consider important? It is easy to feel generous when someone else does the work your generosity requires. You offer the family home for a whole weekend, then leave the shopping and cleaning to someone else. You take on a new task at work, but your colleagues have to deal with the deadlines you miss on your existing tasks. Your intention may have been helpful. You still need to examine how you distributed the burden.

If you want to set an example worth following, look beyond the things you proudly take on. Ask whether the people involved agreed to their share. Extra work discussed together is very different from being handed a cleaning job after someone else has made the decision. The former can be cooperation. The latter can easily become generosity made possible by somebody else's labour.

This applies to smaller allowances too. When you make an exception to a rule, consider who it affects. There may be a good reason for it. Someone living with an illness or just starting out may need different support. Fairness does not always mean identical treatment. But the difference needs an understandable reason; it should not depend simply on who is closest to you. Someone who cannot see the reason may experience favouritism where you intended fairness.

Of course, you do not have to expose someone else's private circumstances to explain a decision. Say enough for people to understand how things work together. There is room for both discretion and accountability. If your answer to everything is 'Trust me', you leave other people to do all the work of maintaining that trust.

When your opinion changes

Sometimes we take consistency to mean saying the same thing in ten years' time as we say today. That would be a strange demand to make of someone who wants to learn. As you discover more about a method, notice its consequences or hear from the people affected, you may have good reason to reconsider your position. Explaining that change can itself strengthen your credibility.

Consider an imagined workplace rule you once supported. You hoped it would speed things up, but over time it turns out to cause unnecessary delays. If you keep defending it simply because it was your idea, you are protecting your own authority at the expense of the shared task. If you quietly remove it, people may not understand why they had to follow it until now. It is clearer to say what you expected, what actually happened and what you are changing as a result.

The equivalent at home can matter too. You once allowed or prohibited something because you believed it was right. Now you have new information, or your child is older. You do not have to pretend that today's decision has always been your position. Explain why it has changed and clarify what applies from now on.

Of course, occasional convenience is not the same as growth. If you reconsider a principle only when it becomes uncomfortable for you, people around you have reason to feel uncertain. Ask yourself: would I accept this argument from someone else? Is there new experience that genuinely justifies the change, or do I simply want an exception for myself?

Nor do the consequences of your earlier decision disappear because you think differently now. If it caused difficulties for others, you can acknowledge that too. The revised rule addresses the future; the effects of the past need separate attention. There may be more integrity in this than in playing someone who is always right, even though their definition of 'right' occasionally changes rather dramatically.

The same person in different roles

As an instructor, I lead the session. Sometimes I have to stop a movement or decide on the next exercise. As a father, my daughters need a different kind of closeness from me. Not every uncertainty at home calls for a command. My belt rank does not exert much authority over the washing-up either.

Differences between roles are not hypocrisy. You speak differently to a young child, a friend and a professional partner because you have different things to do together. What matters is continuity in basic respect. Do you ask one person to do something that you ridicule behind another person's back? Do you explain things patiently only to people who might later be useful to you? Does someone else's time still matter when nobody is watching?

'This is who I am' can sometimes hide these questions. You may genuinely be quick-tempered and still be responsible for how you handle your temper. Describing your nature does not excuse your behaviour. If you expect your family to study your mood and work out when it is safe to speak to you, they are doing part of the work you need to take on.

Honesty here might be a brief, clear sentence: 'I've had a difficult day. I'd like a few minutes to collect myself, and then we can talk.' Your child does not need to know all your adult troubles to understand what is happening. Showing vulnerability remains responsible when you do not ask your child, in return, to reassure you that you are a good enough parent.

Being prepared is also part of the example you set. A friendly atmosphere cannot replace knowledge, and knowledge does not make respect unnecessary. Someone who entrusts you with a task needs both. Sometimes the professionally honest answer is that you cannot be certain just now, but you will find out. That takes no extraordinary humility. It simply requires you to put what the other person needs ahead of the appearance of your own infallibility.

Your everyday self

Recurring patterns, however, deserve attention. If you hear the same thing repeatedly from different people, it amounts to more than one misunderstood afternoon. If different rules apply to you in every important situation, the exceptions gradually become a system. Change begins with noticing this. You do not have to rebuild your entire personality at once. Find one place where your behaviour repeatedly departs from what you want to stand for.

When you cannot give everyone what they want

Imagine that a relative needs help on the evening you promised to spend with your child. You cannot be in both places. Whatever you choose, somebody will be disappointed. This is a useful test because there is no arrangement in which you get to look generous to everyone.

First establish the actual need. Does the relative need you specifically, immediately, or do they need a task completed? Can another person help? Is the evening with your child easily moved, or has it already been moved twice? These details should change the decision. A general belief that family comes first cannot choose between two people in the same family.

Suppose the urgent need really does require you. Tell your child plainly what is changing and let the disappointment exist. You can arrange another evening, but don't offer it as proof that nothing has been lost. Then keep the replacement plan. Reliability includes what you do after a justified exception, not just how persuasively you justify it.

Suppose instead that you keep your original commitment. Explain the limit to your relative and offer only help you can actually provide. The uncomfortable part is tolerating the possibility that they still think you should have chosen differently. Your responsibility is to consider the people affected and own the choice. You cannot require both of them to approve before you act.

What to take away

Your intentions matter, but the people around you learn what to expect from you primarily through your behaviour. Look at the effect as well as the good intention.

Being credible does not require a flawless performance. Credibility can also grow when you recognise a gap between your values and your actions and actually put something right.

One observable change in a single relationship says more about the example you set than a grand description of your character. Your next encounter may already give you a chance to try.

Ask yourself

Which value matters to me but is not yet very evident to the people close to me?

What might the other person have seen in our last difficult situation, regardless of what I wanted to show?

What small change would they notice in me even if I did not announce it beforehand?

Try this

Choose one relationship and one observable commitment within it. Do not write that you will be a better father, partner or colleague. Choose instead to listen to a whole question before responding, communicate a change in good time, or avoid speaking dismissively about someone who is absent. Recall a recent situation and describe it as someone present might have seen it. Then identify the one point at which you could act differently next time.

In a week's time, the useful question is not whether you have succeeded in becoming a role model. Look at what happened in that one situation. Has it become easier to ask you a question, make plans with you or be honest around you? The other person may still be cautious. You may not have got everything right either. Even so, your work has become more specific. You have something real to bring to the next encounter.

Continue with the complete book

19 chapters, practical exercises and a thirty-day programme. EPUB and browser-readable HTML included. Instant download after successful payment.

Copyright © 2026 Szabolcs Szircsák. Translation, editorial adaptation and cover illustration created with AI assistance. No independent human English-language review.