How to Be the Leader Everyone Wants to Work With

Let’s be honest – leadership can be lonely.

The weight of decisions. The pressure to perform. The balancing act of keeping people motivated, focused, and performing at their best.

And yet, you’ve probably had a leader in your life who made all the difference. Someone who saw you. Who helped you grow. Who made work a place you wanted to be.

What if you could be that leader for someone else?

Here’s how you can be the leader everyone wants to work with – based on everything I’ve learnt over the last two decades working with leaders and focusing on building a thriving team culture.

1. Start with Self-Leadership

You can’t pour from an empty cup. How you think, move, eat, and breathe profoundly impacts how you lead.

The foundation of powerful leadership is personal wellbeing. When you’re energised, clear-headed and resilient, you can lift others too.

That’s why I teach leaders to embody the Live Well Principles – to Uplift your thoughts, Nourish your body, Invigorate your life with movement, Strengthen your mind and relationships, and Restore to keep everything in balance.

I once worked with a senior leader – let’s call her Sarah – who was concerned her team weren’t dealing well with stress at work. She wanted them to have better energy and better balance. 

What I quickly discovered, was that Sarah wasn’t demonstrating much balance herself. She was constantly running on empty. She stayed late, constantly tried to multi-task which left her overwhelmed, she skipped meals, and rarely moved from her desk during the day.

Her energy was low, she found it hard to feel optimistic, she felt flat and frazzled on a regular basis and her team started mirroring that fatigue.

When she finally implemented just two things – walking meetings and a proper lunch break – everything changed. Her team said she seemed more present, and that they felt “permission” to take care of themselves too.

We often underestimate the power of modelling. Your team don’t want to just do what you say – they want to see a great example to follow.

It’s the unwritten rules – the way you show up – that really matters.

All leadership begins with self-leadership. The way you show up creates a ripple that flows on to everyone around you.

2. Build Trust and Psychological Safety

Want to know the one thing top-performing teams have in common? Psychological safety. What builds it? When leaders cultivate a high-trust environment.

Great leaders build trust – both of themselves and amongst their team members.

Psychological safety is so important. When people feel challenged but not threatened, they can be at their best. It’s a leader’s job to foster a culture where people feel safe.

Psychological safety isn’t about being soft. It’s about being real. When people feel safe at work, they innovate more, engage more, and stay longer. They bring fresh ideas, try new things and own their mistakes (rather than covering them up which helps no one). 

Simple ways to build psychological safety:

1. Listen without interrupting.
   • Great leaders are fantastic listeners.
   • Be the leader who people feel they can come to with anything.
2. Admit your mistakes.
   • Own them, speak up and apologise when necessary.
   • Set the example for others as well and focus on a “What can we learn from this?” attitude.
3. Start meetings with check-ins.
   • On a scale of 1 to 10, how’s your energy today?”
   • Or a constantly changing question such as; What did you love doing as a kid? What’s something you’re grateful for? Where’s one of the most beautiful place you’ve visited? These questions build connection and trust. 

3.  Lead With Vision, Not Just Metrics

Numbers matter, but purpose matters more.

People want