Shut Up.

Here's the thing. Without trying to make myself sound awesome, the truth is, over all I'm a pretty good leader. I can organise people, cast vision, care about them, do the things good leaders do. Where I totally fall apart is my mouth. My mouth is my greatest weakness, and my greatest strength.
It's so easy for me to be critical, that's why it's easy for me to pick on people and bully them. I can really easily, with out meaning to, become a gigantic jerk, and I don't really realise it until it's too far. Then I try to do some mediocre apology and fail to really change or I make excuses and blame the other person or people for whatever clever reason I can come up with.

That needs to stop.

If I want to be a great leader, I need to just seriously shut up.
If it's possible something can go badly, just remind myself to shut up - particularly when it comes to sports or other competitive natured things.
I need to shut up with the jokes. Often they are so to the truth it's cutting.
My wife said that I need to threaten people with ridiculous things, like "I'll rip off your arms and shove them in your nose." And when making fun of something, as an old leader used to say - " Make fun of them with something positive, like 'gah... Why are you so strong " and things like that.

Words can build your ministry or destroy it. The Bible has a lot of strong things that it states about the tongue. As leaders we best be mindful of it.

Part of my problem as a leader was I never really had this modeled for me growing up.  The vast majority of sorts I played were solo, like swimming and track and field, so my success was not really built on team work. The only team sports I player were baseball and soccer when I was really little.
Any time I heard people commenting on a team was the Maple Leafs, and how badly they were doing and what they should have done.
Ultimately, what I need are some people whom I respect in my life, who, when I'm saying stupid things, to stop me, or call me on it right afterwards in a loving way.
This is probably the biggest character thing I need to deal with, and I need to deal with it now, not later. Otherwise, I may leave a wake of destruction and not hope and encouragement.
This is obviously the first step: learning and recognising the weakness.

Maybe you need to work on this, too? What steps are you taking? And if you have 'dealt' with it, what did it take for you too so?