Leadership is a combination of your character and how much you know.  If you want to improve your leadership capabilities, work on your character and learn something new.

How To Improve Your Character

Your character can be improved by you, or by circumstances.  I recommend you do your own character development.  If you wait for the “universe” or God to do it, it will be a lot harder.

You can improve your character through practice.  Take on small challenges.  For example, if you have an issue with one of your friends, go talk to them about it.  It will be uncomfortable to bring it up, but do your best.  Talk it out.  Try to resolve the issue.  The end result will be a better friendship, and some personal experience to improve the quality of your character.

Also, take on scary things.  I have talked about this before, but it bears repeating.  Do something scary.  Anything works.  Whatever scares you, try it.  Roller-coasters, scary movies, haunted houses, swimming in deep water, public speaking, anything.  It does not have to be huge.  You do not have to go sky diving or wrestle alligators.  Even if your activity is only a little scary, it will help.  Building up a tolerance to fear will improve your character.

You can also try talking to someone you hate without losing your grip.  You could even try saying something nice, or just not saying something vitriolic.  That can be easy, but it can also be really, really hard.  But, you can guarantee it will build your character.

Bring your character to the weight room once in a while.  You will be a lot better off, and you will be a much better leader.

Life (universe/God) will test your character from time to time.  Those things will build your character as well.  However, it will be hard.  Real hard.  If you have been in the habit of building your character already, then those tests will be easier to pass.  You will still grow from them, but it will come as a result of putting into practice the things that you have already learned.  If you have not been in the practice of developing your own character, those trials will be extremely hard.  You will be trying to learn a brand new skill while simultaneously trying to put it into practice.  That will be a lot harder than simply applying what you already know.

How To Improve Your Knowledge

Read books!  If you read books about how to do anything, you will get a little smarter.  The more you know about the world, the more creative you will become.  This type of creativity will give you better tools to navigate those unforeseen circumstances that leaders can run into.

If you want to know what sort of things you should be reading about, here is a list of topics for you:

• Psychology
• Artistry (You probably have that on lock already.)
• History
• Engineering
• Leadership (You are already doing that now!)
• Science
• Entrepreneur-ism
• Economics

These topics are very specific.  A little knowledge from each of these topics will improve your ability to think like an adult.  Critical thinking and logic will also help you to navigate like a pro in a world that is driven by emotions.  Twitter, for example, is 100% emotional.  5th grader logic is perfect for Twitter, but if you want to succeed outside of that environment, I recommend learning to reason like an adult.  If you think Twitter is giving you only the logical arguments, then you definitely need to start working on this reading list!

Persuasion

You desperately need to know more about persuasion.  This could be categorized as psychology, but I was worried you might not find it right away.

Persuasion is a set of skills that will help you to understand people.  That means you will also be learning about yourself.  The better you understand human nature, the better equipped you will be to work on yourself, other individuals, and groups of people.

~Sisyphus

Twitter is your enemy.  If Twitter has decided that you are a monster, then you will be declared a monster.  Years of hard work and dedication will be ignored if the right person declares that you are miserable trash.  Your “friends” will deny you.  You will be ratio’d, de-platformed, and cancelled.

Maybe.

This system of discrediting works very well and it works every time it is tried.  I was not the first, and I will not be the last.  However, there is a greater system that you might not see unless you are in the hot seat.  It is actually very easy to completely negate the entire mob.  It works best if you have help.  Still, even if you are the only one, it only takes one to start the dominoes falling.  BE THE ONE!

Imagine that one of your friends has just been declared a Nazi, bigot, homophobe, white supremacist, or a sympathizer or an apologist.  The bell tolls.  Something wicked this way comes and their days are numbered.  So, you do what everyone else will do.  You escape the blast zone as quickly as possible to prevent yourself from becoming collateral damage.  This is how it normally works.

But, what if you did NOT do that?  What if you did the exact opposite?  What if you said, “I do not care what you say about my friend.  I know this person is not the monster you claim them to be.  They are still my friend!”  You would get mobbed, immediately.  That is the tactic.  Isolate a target, mob the individual, and mob any ONE who stands to defend them.  But, if you and your friends all stand up to be counted when just one of you is mobbed, that is much harder to defeat.  When a group stands together, it is almost impossible to mob a group.  This is especially true, because when you stand with just one friend, you are given strength and encouragement.  It is easy to stand with at least one person who will stand with you.  You feed each other.  A group who stands undivided is bullet proof.  You become invincible.

If you openly state your support of your friend in spite of the mob, you are wielding a power that the mob cannot stop.  If you and all of your friends stand up, you will win!  The more of you who stand, the greater the effect.  For every one of you who adds their voice to the resistance, the impact is increased 10 fold.

This is scary, but also very easy.  There is almost nothing easier than posting a reply to a disparaging remark on Twitter.  All you have to do, to save your friend, is add your comment to say, “I am still your friend.”  Do that in front of everyone!  Others will join you.  The bravest friend is the one who goes first.  The best friends are all of the ones who wish they were the one who went first.  Look for ANY opportunity to openly state your support for a friend.  Even if the smallest accusation is posted against your friend, post the reply, “I am still your friend”, and tag them in it.  Be the first one!  Be THAT friend.  If you stand with your friends when they need it, they will stand with you.

You must stand by your friends, especially when your friend is legitimately wrong.  When you are wrong, and your friend says, “You are still my friend”, there is a redeeming power in those words.  It makes you WANT to be different!  It makes you WANT to fix your mistake!  It makes you WANT to admit your wrongs!  The gratitude of being openly supported has the power to change stubborn hearts.  There are few powers in the universe this great.

When you openly support a friend, even a friend who is wrong, you are at once giving them strength, and giving them a path to redemption.  There is nothing like the power of open support when you need it the most.  When you are being mobbed by spite, you need it the most.  When you can not see where you are wrong, YOU NEED IT THE MOST!

Just in case you are wondering, I want to be very clear about something.  DO NOT SAVE ME!  I am doing VERY well.  I do not need saving, and I am not asking anyone to put themselves on the line for me.  I have a lot of good friends who are supporting me behind the scenes and I LOVE where all of this is going.  I did not know this would happen to me.  I could not have predicted how it would effect me.  There are mysteries that lie beyond the catastrophe, but now that I am here, I am grateful to God for being wise enough to bring me here.  I know it sounds weird, but I have opportunities now that I never had before.

If one of your friends is currently being ratio’d by Twitter.  Go post your reply, “I am still your friend!”  Go do it now!  Be the first one!  Take the heat.  Be the commodity that you crave the most.

~Sisyphus