A great article at firstround.com. It is talking mainly about leadership traps for startup leaders. The lessons, though, apply to everybody who wants to lead.

Main take-aways:

• Leadership is a practice. Like musicians, athletes, artists, you should practice every day.
• There is no secret formula. Every situation is unique.
• The base for learning and mastery is daily reflection on your experiences.
• There are three areas to reflect upon: did you get your work done, did you advance the people you worked with, did you take care of yourself?
• Be aware: whatever happens, you can always make a choice. Embrace responsibility for whatever happens – see also my article here.
• There are three traps: know trap (my worldview is right), victim trap (it is not my fault or it is all my fault), and the sucker’s choice (I have to give up on either who I aspire to be or what I want to achieve)
• The root cause of the traps in binary thinking. This relates to the framework No. 6 (the value quadrant) I have talked about last week.

Link: The Most Dangerous Leadership Traps – and the 15 minute daily practice that will save you