Leadership isn't about having the biggest title or the corner office. It's about the daily actions your team notices and the trust you build over time. Great leaders leave clear signs that anyone can read, and these signs determine whether people want to follow them or just tolerate them.
1. True Leaders Serve First
Real leadership is about service. Your job as a leader is to support your team's success by providing clarity, coaching them through challenges, and helping solve problems. When you remove obstacles and share your experience, you're not just managing—you're serving.
2. Focus on People Before Tasks
Yes, projects need to get done. But your primary role as a leader is to grow people, not just check boxes on a to-do list. When you invest in developing your team members, you're building a stronger organisation for the long run. Tasks will always be there, but people need your attention to grow.
3. Hire Right Before You Train
Before spending thousands on training programmes, ask yourself: Did we hire someone who actually wants to lead? Do they have the emotional maturity to guide others? The best training in the world can't fix a poor hiring decision. Choose people with leadership potential from the start.
4. Care Like You Mean It
Your team knows when you're faking it. Genuine interest in their careers, goals, and even their lives outside work builds real trust. When people feel truly cared for, their confidence grows, their loyalty deepens, and their motivation soars.
5. Listen with Empathy
Don't just hear words but understand the context, feelings, and truth behind what your team is telling you. Empathetic listening creates psychological safety, which means people will share their real ideas, concerns, and creativity instead of just telling you what they think you want to hear.
6. Be Transparent (No Gatekeeping)
Share information openly with your team. Obviously, some things must stay confidential, but transparency about company direction, challenges, and decisions reduces stress and confusion. When people understand the bigger picture, they make better decisions and feel more connected to the mission.
7. Take the Blame, Share the Credit
When things go wrong, step up and own it completely. When things go right, shine the spotlight on your team. This isn't just good manners, it's smart leadership. People will walk through walls for leaders who protect them when times are tough and celebrate them when times are good.
8. Create Psychological Safety
Can your team speak the truth without fear? Can they ask hard questions? Can they disagree with you without worrying about consequences? When people feel safe, they innovate, take smart risks, and bring their full creativity to work. Fear kills innovation. Safety fuels it.
9. Use People's Strengths
Everyone on your team is good at something. Your job is to figure out what that is and give them opportunities to use those strengths. “Don't force a bird to swim and a fish to fly.” When people work in their zone of genius, everyone wins.
10. Spend Quality Time with Your Team
Leadership takes time, and there's no shortcut. Spend real, focused time learning what energises each person, what challenges they face, and what they value most.
These 10 skills aren't theory
They're the practical, daily behaviours that separate good leaders from great ones. They're about mindset, strategy, and emotional intelligence combined.
The good news? These skills can be learned and developed with the right approach. Whether you're already in a leadership role or preparing for one, building these habits starts with understanding your natural strengths and how to leverage them effectively. When leaders work from their strengths rather than against them, development feels less like fixing weaknesses and more like unleashing potential to thrive in any situation.
Ready to lead with authenticity? The leaders your team actually wants to follow don't try to be someone they're not—they discover what makes them uniquely effective and build from there. Every leader has a different combination of natural talents. The key is knowing yours and using them intentionally.
Take our leadership quiz to discover your unique style: https://www.wildnwise.co/leadership-strengths-quiz
What leadership skill resonates most with you? Which one comes naturally based on your strengths? Understanding these skills and how they connect to who you already are is the foundation for sustainable, authentic leadership that doesn't burn you out. Connect with Gerald Ang, if you like to manage your teams leading with Strengths!
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How Can We Build Leadership Skills & Mindset?
As mentioned in the previous article, “What is Leadership Mindset? Can Good Leaders Really Be Made?”, a leadership mindset is a way of thinking that benefits both executives and people in the organisation.
Here are the methods that can be used to build leadership skills & mindset within the team.
5 Ways to Enhance Team Leadership Skills
- Build Self-leadership: Create opportunities for team members to evaluate themselves through workshops, activities, or questionnaires so that each person can learn and understand their own weaknesses and strengths better.
- Build Trust through intelligent task delegation and challenging goal-setting: This stimulates the team to want to develop and work to their full potential. Give autonomy in work without micromanaging, but provide support when the team needs it. This method helps everyone on the team have ownership of their work and feel more comfortable working.
- Create an open communication culture: Create opportunities for the team to talk, exchange ideas, and give feedback to each other, and actually use the feedback received to improve work processes or management.
- Create Vision: Help the team see the big picture by setting clear goals and expectations, so they have a broader perspective and don't just focus solely on completing tasks.
- Recognise Progress: This could be in the form of praise or small rewards so that team members know that the work they do is meaningful and contributes to moving the organisation forward.
4 Common Leadership Mind Traps
Being aware of these common "mind traps" is the first step to overcoming them.
- "I'm not good enough." This trap prevents people from taking initiative, making decisions, and getting things done. It's paralysing because it puts you in a passive position, waiting for someone else to make the first move rather than stepping up for yourself.
- "I'm not smart enough." One of the most prevalent traps among leaders today is the fear of looking stupid or being wrong. This leads to playing it safe, avoiding risks and keeping opinions to yourself. The result? Decisions based on what others think rather than on your own judgment and expertise.
- "I'm not strong enough." Leaders who fall into this trap become afraid to challenge the status quo, anticipating pushback from others who are comfortable with how things have always been done. They worry they can't handle the emotional discomfort or fear of being labelled as "pushy" or "difficult."
- "Failure makes me/us look bad." The fear of failure reflecting poorly on ourselves can prevent us from the uncomfortable but valuable task of understanding what went wrong and why. Rather than seeing failure as a learning opportunity, many people choose to move on quickly, missing the chance for growth.
Moving Forward
If your team feels stuck or if you're carrying too much on your shoulders, it's a sign that your leadership approach needs to evolve. The good news? You don't need a fancy title to start thinking like a senior leader. You just need to focus on cultivating your authentic strengths.
It's time to step up and lead like you, but better.
Ready to identify your leadership strengths and blind spots? Take our leadership quiz to discover your unique style: https://www.wildnwise.co/leadership-strengths-quiz
What is a Leadership Mindset? Can Good Leaders Really Be Made?
"Leaders aren't born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work" - Vince Lombardi
Broadly, a leadership mindset refers to the way of thinking necessary to be a good leader. For someone to become a good leader, they need to be more than just competent at their work; they must also possess well-rounded thinking and skills.
Why Leadership Mindset Matters
Leadership mindset isn't just important for executives or team leaders. ‘It's something that benefits team members as well. ’
As a leader, a leadership mindset enables you to see your team's weaknesses, strengths, and potential. It allows you to delegate work intelligently, match people to the right tasks, and guide your team toward their goals.
As a team member, a leadership mindset helps you work to your full capacity, understand team dynamics, and motivates you to develop and improve yourself.
Building a leadership mindset within your team isn't about making everyone compete to be a leader. It's about empowering every team member, which elevates performance and strengthens teamwork.
Characteristics of Leadership Mindset
Having a leadership mindset means possessing a set of skills and working methods that not only drive the organisation forward but also value and inspire team members.
The key characteristics of leadership:
1. Self-Awareness
A leadership mindset isn't just about leading team members. It's about understanding your own weaknesses and strengths to perform your leadership role at its best. We can think of self-awareness as looking in a mirror and evaluating yourself in various areas, such as planning, communication, or collaboration with others.
2. Visionary Perspective
A good leader creates a clear vision for the team and helps motivate the team to achieve goals together. Having vision doesn't just mean moving the team forward, which also includes being aware of and prepared to handle problems or changes that may arise.
However, having vision should go hand in hand with solution-oriented problem-solving that focuses on finding effective solutions rather than dwelling on problems.
3. Trust
Trust is a crucial characteristic of a leadership mindset because good leaders create opportunities for team members to work at full capacity. That is, believing in the potential of and trusting team members. When you, as a leader, have trust in your team members and are ready to support them when they need it, team members will also trust you as their leader.
4. Effective Communication
One skill of a good leader is effective communication. We know well that communication is the heart of smooth operations. Effective organisational communication isn't about holding frequent meetings. It's about creating an open space for everyone on the team to have opportunities to talk, update, and exchange ideas. Good organisational communication happens when leaders understand its importance and care about building a strong communication culture.
5. Leading by Example
Another important characteristic of a leadership mindset is understanding your role as a leader to your team members. Leaders set standards that directly impact their followers.
For example, if a leader doesn't care about being on time for meetings, team members might question why they should be on time. Therefore, leading by example is an essential leadership skill.
Leaders must be not just 'good at work,' but fundamentally 'good with people.'
The journey to developing a robust leadership mindset starts with understanding where you are today.
Curious about your leadership style? Take the quiz to discover your leadership strengths: https://www.wildnwise.co/leadership-strengths-quiz
Why Your 40s Demand a Breakthrough, Not a Breakdown
For many driven leaders, the 40s don't bring the stability they expected. Instead, they bring a relentless squeeze from every direction, what we call the Midlife Squeeze. It's a silent crisis that happens when escalating responsibilities collide with your shrinking personal bandwidth. Ironically, it hits hardest at the very moment corporate high-achievers are supposed to be at their peak.
Ray Dalio captured this perfectly when he called it the most destructive crisis, because the pressure forces a stark choice: "You either break, or break through."
If you're fighting a war on multiple fronts—caring for ageing parents while funding your kids' college education, chasing peak performance metrics while trying to stay healthy, keeping up with the latest longevity trends while barely keeping yourself together—you're living the Midlife Squeeze.
Here's how to fight back against burnout:
1. Practice Transcendental Meditation (20 minutes, twice daily)
The mechanics are simple:
- Sit comfortably and close your eyes
- Repeat a word or mantra softly in your mind (silently, not aloud)
- Do this for 20 minutes in the morning and evening
- The key? Don't force yourself to clear your mind; let it happen naturally
One executive described it as "hitting the reset button on my brain. Everything became clearer."
2. Master the 80/20 Revolution
Morning Clarity (5 minutes)
Start each day by asking yourself:
- What's the 20% of effort that will yield 80% of the results?
- What's the one thing that, if left undone today, will cause the most damage?
- Which tasks drain my energy but offer little value?
The Ruthless Cut
Divide all your tasks into three categories:
- Must Do Myself (10%)
- Delegate (30%)
- Kill It (60%)
Here's the truth: most people fear cutting tasks because they think it makes them look lazy. But ruthless prioritisation is actually the definition of focus. As Hunn Wai shared on the Wild & Wise Podcast about applying the 80/20 rule, sometimes doing less makes you more proactive, not less.
Energy Audit
Ask yourself honestly:
- Who gives me energy? See them more often.
- Who drains my life force? Reduce contact.
- What activities recharge me? Do them more.
- What activities exhaust me? Find a way to stop them.
3. Build a Life-Saving Feedback Loop
Create regular check-ins with yourself:
- Weekly (Every Sunday): What did I achieve? What went wrong? What did I learn?
- Monthly (Every 30 Days): Am I still moving toward my main goals? What needs adjusting? How's my overall progress?
- Quarterly (Every 3 Months): Is my life heading in the right direction fundamentally? Does anything need a major change? Do I need to reinvent something?
The Midlife Squeeze is the hardest period, but it also holds the most potential. Especially when you leverage your innate talents. Tools like CliftonStrengths can help you identify your unique personal operating system across 34 themes. When you lead with your natural strengths, overwhelming tasks become manageable challenges. You find efficiency, resilience, and energy.
Here's what's at stake:
If you manage this period well, the next decade will be your Golden Years; you'll have experience, energy, and wisdom working in harmony.
If you don't, you risk staying stuck in the same exhausting cycle for another 20 to 30 years.
The choice is yours: Break or Breakthrough?