Equally important as following the common positive characteristics of good leaders, is avoiding commonly sighted negative characteristics.

10 Things to Avoid as a Successful Leader

1. Not Listening: Listening is important to building a loyal and faithful team. Everyone needs to be part of the process and the bigger picture.
2. Dismissing ideas other than your own: Don’t make employees feel like they are pitching to you, encourage them to brainstorm alongside you. Understand their potential and give credit where it is due.
3. Accepting Experience over potential: Note that some of your best talents will come from passionate individuals. Take advantage of their enthusiasm and their fresh outlook on the industry.
4. Ego: Release your ego and focus on becoming an inspirational figure. Look out for your team because if you are without their full support, you will get nowhere.
5. Overworking: Set an example for your team and learn how to take a break. Make sure your mind isn’t always focused on one thing -work. It could cause a negative atmosphere and your team may also think they have to follow suit and work all hours.
6. Lack of empathy: Leaders must do their best to remove obstacles so a team can prosper.
7. Under-prioritising leadership development: Create a growth plan for your team and encourage them to become leaders within their departments. Give them a personal goal and build their enthusiasm.
8. Being too conservative: Have faith in yourself and your team. Missing opportunities could be a detriment to your organisation. Create excitement by using your gut and have an open mind, you never know what opportunities may come your way.
9. Assigning blame: Take responsibility for team failures, because they are your responsibility. It is your responsibility to find a solution.
10. Inconsistency: Don’t confuse your team with misdirection. Use your ethics and vision to define the ultimate goal and stick to it.

1. Set the Standard

By nature, leaders identify brand morals as a reflection of their beliefs, team and the products/services they create.

• Defining a universal standard for the company creates equal goals for all members of the team. 
• The organisation and its team are a reflection of their leader – If a leader makes honest and ethical behaviour a key value, ideally, their team will follow suit.

2. Ethical Practice

Ethics is a very broad area. It essentially boils down to what is ‘right’ and having a desire to contribute to the greater good. 

• This creates a set of guidelines to follow, meaning it not only reduces time and decision-making, but also ensures you and your team can work towards that common goal. 
• It also increases integrity and creates a high-trust culture that encourages productivity and performance in your team. 
• Each organisation will have an individual moral compass so you should develop your own ideas in terms of meaning, composition, methods and implications that you believe most appropriate.

3. Be Authentic

Being authentic involves building from an ethical foundation. 

• When a leader is authentic and shows that their actions are motivated by integrity it creates a strong circle of trust. 
• Showing your team who you really are will encourage them to respect you, trust that you will make the ‘right’ decisions for the organisation and protect them from threats.

4. Create a Following

All leaders are responsible for influencing followers to perform an action, complete a task or behave in a specific manner. 

• You will become a leader because you have a following. Convince your team of your ethics, beliefs, visions and your authenticity. 
•  Illustrate how you will nurture them, help them grow and that their input is crucial to the organisational development.

6. Seize Opportunities

Leaders search for unique and innovative ways to excel in their organisation and bring out the best in their team. They are resourceful and see the rewards in logical risk-taking by seizing and creating opportunities. 

• To be a risk taker you must also understand that to succeed takes more than just a desire to achieve a goal, they accept that there will be failures. 
• Fear of failure is what most commonly stops leaders from taking risks. When something is labelled a risk it has negative connotations because of uncertainty, but it can be quite the opposite. 
• However, failure can be viewed as development and can make you perform better under pressure.

7. Inspire the Masses

Effective leaders influence a process, create change in attitudes and values, amplify self-belief and empower their team. They communicate their ideas and beliefs with passion giving everyone something to believe in, not just simply something to do or participate in. 

• Inspire those around you to become great leaders themselves, lead by example, show other organisations how it should be done and use your vision to define ways to challenge the norm. 
• Remember, trust and respect turn into inspiration. No one can be inspired by a leader if they do not trust them first.

A Streamlined Framework for Critical Thinking

You don’t need to be a subject-matter expert to think critically. While technical details vary, the core rules of logic are universal. Use this five-step checklist to see past assumptions, challenge expert opinions, and uncover the real truth behind any argument:

• 1. Pinpoint the Core Question: Strip away the noise. What is the exact problem or central claim you are actually trying to address?
• 2. Gather Objective Data: Build your foundation. Look for reliable, varied information across different mediums to get a well-rounded view of the facts.
• 3. Cross-Examine Your Own Logic: Challenge your initial gut reaction. Ask yourself: How did I reach this conclusion? Am I letting personal bias or comfort cloud my judgment?
• 4. Forecast the Ripple Effects: Look ahead. This decision might make sense right now, but what are the long-term implications? What hidden roadblocks could arise later?
• 5. Walk in Someone Else’s Shoes: Actively explore opposing viewpoints. Investigate why others see it differently, what data they are relying on, and where their own blind spots might be.

The Takeaway

Critical thinking isn’t a rigid formula—it’s a mindset. As you practice these steps, adapt them into a personal routine that works for you. By consistently asking the right questions, you’ll strip away bias and arrive at decisions that are objective, accurate, and deeply supported by facts.

Building self-confidence and assertiveness are probably a lot easier than you think. ‘Non-assertive’ people (in other words ‘normal people’) do not generally want to transform into excessively dominant people. When most people talk about wanting to be more assertive, what they usually really mean is:

‘How can I become more able to resist the pressure and dominance of excessively dominant people?’
‘How can I stand up to bullies (or one bully in particular)?’
And also, ‘How can I exert a little more control in situations that are important to me?’
Pure assertiveness – dominance for the sake of being dominant – is not a natural behaviour for most people. Most people are not naturally assertive.

Most people tend to be passive by nature. The assertive behaviour of highly dominant people tends to be driven by their personality (and often some insecurity). It is not something that has been ‘trained’.
For anyone seeking to increase their own assertiveness, it is helpful to understand the typical personality and motivation of excessively dominant people, who incidentally cause the most worry to non-assertive people.

It’s helpful also at this point to explain the difference between leadership with dominance:

Good leadership is inclusive, developmental, and a force for what is right. Good leadership does not ‘dominate’ non-assertive people, it includes them and involves them.
Dominance as a management style is not good in any circumstances. It is based on short-term rewards and results, mostly for the benefit of the dominant, and it fails completely to make effective use of team members’ abilities and potential.
Dominant People
The fact is that most excessively dominant people are usually bullies. Bullies are deep-down very insecure people. They dominate because they are too insecure to allow other people to have responsibility and influence, and this behaviour is generally conditioned from childhood for one reason or another. The dominant bullying behaviour is effectively reinforced by the response given by ‘secure’ and ‘non-assertive’ people to bullying. The bully gets his or her own way. The bullying dominant behaviour is rewarded, and so it persists.

Dominant, bullying people, usually from a very young age, become positively conditioned to bullying behaviour because in their own terms it works.
Their own terms are generally concerned with satisfying their ego and selfish drives to get their own way, control, achieve status (often implanted by insecure ambitious parents), manipulate, make decisions, build empires, collect material signs of achievement, monetary wealth, and particularly to establish protective mechanisms, such as ‘yes-men’ followers (‘body-guards’), immunity from challenge and interference, scrutiny, judgement, etc.
Early childhood experiences play an important part in creating bullies. Bullies are victims as well as aggressors. And although it’s a tough challenge for anyone on the receiving end of their behaviour they actually deserve sympathy.
N.B. Sympathy is not proposed here to be a sole or significant tactic in countering bullying. Rather, sympathy is advocated as a more constructive, stronger, alternative feeling to being fearful or intimidated.

Non-Assertive People
Non-assertive people do not normally actually aspire to be excessively dominant people, and they certainly don’t normally want to become bullies.

When most people talk about wanting to be more assertive, what they really mean is ‘I’d like to be more able to resist the pressure and dominance of excessively dominant people.’ Doing this is not really so hard, and using simple techniques it can even be quite enjoyable and fulfilling.
Importantly, the non-assertive person should understand where they really are – a true starting point: non-assertive behaviour is a sign of strength usually, not weakness, and often it is the most appropriate behaviour for most situations – don’t be fooled into thinking that you always have to be more assertive.

Understand where you want to be: what level of assertiveness do you want? Probably to defend yourself, and to control your own choices and destiny (which are relatively easy using the techniques below), not to control others.
For people who are not naturally assertive, it is possible to achieve a perfectly suitable level of assertiveness through certain simple methods and techniques, rather than trying to adopt a generally more assertive personal style (which could be counter-productive and stressful, because it would not be natural).

People seeking to be more assertive can dramatically increase their effective influence and strength by using just one or two of these four behaviours prior to, or when confronted by a more dominant character or influence, or prior to and when dealing with a situation in which they would like to exert more control.
Here are some simple techniques and methods for developing self-confidence and more assertive behaviour.

Methods and Techniques to become more Assertive
Know the facts relating to the situation and have the details to hand.
Be ready for – anticipate – other people’s behaviour and prepare your responses.
Prepare and use good open questions.
Re-condition and practice your own new reactions to aggression (posters can help you think and become how you want to be – display positive writings where you will read them often – it’s a proven successful technique).
Have faith that your own abilities and style will ultimately work if you let them.
Feel sympathy for bullies – they actually need it.
Read inspirational things that reinforce your faith in proper values and all the good things in your own natural style and self, for example, Ruiz’s The Four Agreements , Kipling’s If , Desiderata , and Cherie Carter-Scott’s ‘rules of life’
Know the facts and have them to hand:

Ensure you know all the facts in advance – do some research, and have it on hand ready to produce (and give out copies if necessary).
Bullies usually fail to prepare their facts; they dominate through bluster, force and reputation.
If you know and can produce facts to support or defend your position it is unlikely that the aggressor will have anything prepared in response.
When you know that a situation is going to arise, over which you’d like to have some influence, prepare your facts, do your research, do the sums, get the facts and figures, solicit opinions and views, and be able to quote sources; then you will be able to make a firm case, and also dramatically improve your reputation for being someone who is organised and firm.
Anticipate other people’s behaviour and prepare your responses:

Anticipate other people’s behaviour and prepare your own responses. Role-play in your mind how things are likely to happen.
Prepare your responses according to the different scenarios that you think could unfold.
Prepare other people to support and defend you. Being well prepared will increase your self-confidence and enable you to be assertive about what’s important to you.
Prepare and use Good Open Questions

Prepare and use good questions to expose flaws in other people’s arguments.
Asking good questions is the most reliable way of gaining the initiative, and taking the wind out of someone’s sails, in any situation. Questions that bullies dislike most are deep, constructive, incisive and probing, especially if the question exposes a lack of thought, preparation, consideration, and consultation on their part. For example:
‘What is your evidence (for what you have said or claimed)?’
‘Who have you consulted about this?’
‘How did you go about looking for alternative solutions?’
‘How have you measured (whatever you say is a problem)?’
‘How will you measure the true effectiveness of your solution if you implement it?’
‘What can you say about different solutions that have worked in other situations?’
And don’t be fobbed off. Stick to your guns. If the question is avoided or ignored return to it, or re-phrase it (which you can prepare as well).

Re-condition and practice your own new reactions to aggression:

Re-conditioning your own reaction to dominant people, particularly building your own ‘triggered reactions’, giving yourself ‘thinking time’ to prevent yourself from being bulldozed, and ‘making like a brick wall’ in the face of someone else’s attempt to dominate you without justification.
Try visualising yourself behaving in a firmer manner, saying firmer things, asking firm clear, probing questions, and presenting well-prepared facts and evidence.
Practice in your mind saying ‘Hold on a minute – I need to consider what you have just said.’
Also, practice saying ‘I’m not sure about that. It’s too important to make a snap decision now.’
Also ‘I can’t agree to that at such short notice. Tell me when you really need to know, and I’ll get back to you.’
There are other ways to help resist bulldozing and bullying. Practice and condition new reactions in yourself to resist, rather than cave in, for fear that someone might shout at you or have a tantrum.
If you are worried about your response to being shouted at then practice being shouted at until you realise it really doesn’t hurt – it just makes the person doing the shouting look daft.
Practice with your most scary friend shouting right in your face for you to ‘do as you are told’, time after time, and in between each time say calmly (and believe it because it’s true) ‘You don’t frighten me.’ Practice it until you can control your response to being shouted at.
Have faith that your own abilities will ultimately work if you use them:

Non-assertive people have different styles and methods compared to dominant, aggressive people and bullies.
Non-assertive people are often extremely strong in areas of the process, detail, dependability, reliability, finishing things (that others have started), checking, monitoring, communicating, interpreting and understanding, and working cooperatively with others.
These capabilities all have the potential to undo a bully who has no proper justification.
Find out what your strengths and style are and use them to defend and support your position. The biggest tantrum is no match for a well-organised defence.
Feel sympathy rather than fear towards bullies:

Re-discover the belief that non-assertive behaviour is actually okay – it’s the bullies who are the ones with the problems.
Feeling sympathy for someone who threatens you – thereby resisting succumbing to fearful or intimidated feelings – can help to move you psychologically into the ascendancy, or at least to a position where you can see weaknesses in the bully.