There is a lot to leadership and to be a great leader, you’ll need to wear many hats. In the full e-book, we broke down exactly what it means to be a good leader from start to finish so that you were able to grasp the big picture and understand what separates them from the pack.

But now it’s time to put those tips into practice. This checklist will lay it all out for you…

Know Your Why

Most important for any leader is PASSION.

This means you need to know WHY your business does what it does and

you need a vision. This will:

• Make you instantly more inspiring and charismatic – passion is infectious.

• Make others listen and want to be a part of what you’re doing.

• Set the tone for everyone else – leaders set the mood for any team.

• Help you to make better decisions for your organization’s long-term goals

• Give you a clear outcome you are aiming to accomplish.

• Help you to make more courageous decisions.

This is explained well by Simon Sinek who explains the Golden Circle.

Here, he explains that businesses have three layers:

• What.

• How.

• Why.

Great leaders focus on why and not ‘what’.

If you don’t know what drives you then ask the five whys: ask yourself why you do what you do five times until you get to the route motivation.

How to Build Your Team

Guess what else you need to do to be a good leader? Learn to spot that passion in others. Try to identify potential employees/team members who also feel passionately about what you do and who want to be there as much as you do. This will make all the difference to their energy and their enthusiasm in the office.

There are other tips for selecting a team:

• Make sure they will fit the vibe of the office and the culture

• Try to hire a diverse range of people who will all be able to bring different skills and personalities to the table

• Make sure they are skilled in what they do

• Learn to put together the right people to get the very most out of them

More Roles of a Good Manager

A good manager is not just someone with lots of passion. There are other requirements for the job too. These include…

• Communication.

  • Good leaders should be able to communicate precisely what they want from their team.

  • Good leaders should also understand the importance of telling their team members why they should do what they should do – this gives them the freedom to make decisions and to work independently.

• Knowledge.

  • You should have a good broad knowledge of your business, which will allow you to take care of the bigger picture.

  • That said, you also need to be wise enough to delegate and not micromanage.

• Courage

  • Leaders need to be willing to take risks and make decisions

• Responsibility

  • More importantly, they need to be responsible for those decisions. This gives the team the confidence to work without interruption.

• Foresight

  • This comes with vision but it is important to be able to recognize where things are going so that you can avoid problems and help to avoid potential crises and to help the business to thrive rather than just survive!

  • This means looking for opportunities but also things that could go wrong. It means building resilience and using financial modeling!

• Calm

  • Finally, a leader should be calm. You are the emotional barometer for your entire team - if you are panicked, they all will be too!

How to Motivate Your Team

Also highly important is that you be able to give your team your passion so

that they will be motivated and productive as well.

• One of the best ways to do this is to give them agency and responsibility – make your team members feel as though they are in charge of their own projects and give them the freedom to work as they wish in those areas.

• This is incredibly important because it will help your staff to feel pride in what they’re doing, which in turn will make them much more intrinsically motivated!