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