Stepping Up

Chapter 13

Be courageous and kind

To build a great team you need both the courage to be wrong and the kindness to inspire your team.

Feed ‘characteristics of a leader’ into Google and it quickly becomes clear just how many different ideas there are about what constitutes good leadership. Early results will include articles promising ‘7 important traits’, ‘10 impressive characteristics’, even ‘22 qualities that make a great leader’.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Good leaders do indeed show many different skills, qualities and aptitudes. At this stage, however, we want to try and boil it down to two characteristics that we think encapsulate great leadership in today’s world, particularly when it comes to building and nurturing teams. These ...