How to be a BETTER Leader...

It's 13 years ago since I embarked upon a career in marketing and it's given me the opportunity to work and lead lots of exciting projects for:

• The most stubborn traditional businesses who either choose to either digitally transform or die
• Those who had a digital presence, but who should have locked up for crimes against digital
• "Digital First"organisations focussing on the cutting edge stuff, but forgetting about the simple/basic things that make the biggest difference
  
  

It hasn't all gone swimmingly and there have been some dark roads along the way. 

Those dark roads were often borne from leadership mistakes. Whether they were made by others or by myself, they have helped me learn and become a better, stronger individual, both personally and professionally by:

• Starting from the bottom
• Learning from great people
• Surrounding myself with great people
  (OK not ALL the time, I have worked with some truly sh*t leaders)
• Getting  my hands dirty
• Asking (often stupid) questions
• Slowly growing into a leader 

Leadership, as opposed to management and dictatorship (there is a huge difference between them!) is an area that has always fascinated me.

Having spent the last year going back to my roots, focused on digital transformation (or at least trying!) and away from the 8 years experience I have in creating, developing, nurturing and leading teams it has enabled me to:

1. Look back at the positive and negative situations from the past - both leading and being led 
2. Think about if/how these situations could have been dealt with better
3. Observe leaders and their differing approaches, traits and styles
4. Identify what ingredients make a great leader and a bad leader
5. Apply the knowledge

Over the next few weeks I am going to look at each of these 5 stages in the hope that it will at least provoke some thought and debate, if nothing else!

**Note: Donald Trump is NOT used as an example of a great leader.