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Episode 319 What Makes a Good Leader

On this episode of The Lead Up Podcast, Mike discusses what makes a great leader!

He talks about his 30-plus years of being in leadership roles and how his experience has helped him to create a list of 10 things great leaders must have. He also tells us about what makes a bad leader and the difference between titles and positions.

Here are Mike’s top 10 requirements great leaders need:

  1. Willingness to learn and adapt: If you’re not consistently growing and expanding your knowledge you're holding your team back
  2. Self-awareness: This is the No.1 skill you can develop as a leader. It is the skill you will always circle back to in every scenario.
  3. Self-belief: You need to believe in yourself, believe that you are good at what you do, and believe that you are a great leader so that you can help inspire your teams to also believe in themselves and the work they are doing.
  4. Humility: You must be able to admit that you don’t know it all. You need to think less about yourself (not less of yourself) because as a leader you need to think about the people you are leading and how you’re impacting them.
  5. Have a vision for a better future: The future is coming and it’s important. You need your teams to have a great and clear vision of what the future holds for them.
  6. Improve your communication skills: Communication between you and your teams is the only way anything gets done and gets done right – make sure you know your team and know how to communicate with them most efficiently.
  7. Be a dealer of hope: Enter rooms with your team in a positive manner and always insert hope into the room. Discuss the negative but don’t let yourself or your team get stuck in it.
  8. Have a ‘Never-finished mindset’: Be content with where you are in life and your career but never get complacent.
  9. Always strive for excellence, not perfection: Perfection is unattainable and it always will be. Focus on excellence, focus on tomorrow being 1% better than today, and do that every day.
  10. Be gritty: Leaders need to be persistent, resilient, and gritty. As a leader, you are going to fall down and make mistakes so you must be able to pick yourself and your team back up and go again.