The burden of leadership is that you are the one that faces difficulty head on. If you skirt that responsibility and let someone else take the brunt of the difficulty, if you shirk the call of duty to face the challenge and shrink at the gravity of your situation, then in that moment you cease to be a leader and to regain your leadership will take greater effort and sacrifice. If you fail your people after you exerted all your strength and mental faculties they will forgive you but if you fail your people because you caved in to the fear or temptation of a situation then the forgiveness will not come so easily. As a leader you have to do the right thing no matter the difficulty. That is your job. That is what being a leader means.

When faced with a difficult choice or action you must do the right thing. People are following you because they trust you to do the right thing.

Worry less about what you are making and focus more on who you are becoming. Money is important and you need it to do almost everything in this world but it is still more important to be a good person. No matter how much or little money you make.

Help your team focus on what really matters. Don't always use compensation or the loss of compensation as motivators. Find other ways to reward brilliance beyond money.

If you are self absorbed you will struggle as a leader. A leader by definition is someone who leads others. A good leader is one that cares about those they lead and the followers follow them willingly. No one wants to follow someone that doesn't care about them, that would be self destructive.

If you don't care then people aren't following you and you aren't a leader. They may be following the money, power, or influence that you control or they may be giving the illusion that they are following you because they are afraid. But they are really only following their instincts for self preservation, gain, or praise. You are actually just an impediment to their desire. They think that they have to appease you to get what they want.

Real leadership, good leadership, doesn't rely on any of that and people follow you because they know that you care about them and you have a common interest that they believe you can help them achieve. Care first, then lead.

I define achievement as "accomplishing something worthwhile through effort." If something is handed to you, you didn't achieve anything. If something was easy, you didn't achieve anything even if you got what you wanted. The act of achieving implies striving and working towards an end goal. The process of achieving is just as important, if not more important, than the goal you are striving for. Plus, achieving something feels good. It has it's own intrinsic reward.

It is important to give your people opportunities to achieve things and it is equally important to celebrate those achievements.

If you are aspiring to be a great leader I encourage you to read the biography of your historical hero. I recently finished reading Ron Chernow's biography of George Washington titled "Washington, a Life" and I appreciated the unpolished look at Washington's life. In fact, I admire Washington more after having the curtain pulled back a little on some of his shortcomings because I feel like he is now more relatable. Also, because he felt more relatable to me the personal sacrifices to achieve what he did also feel more real and colossal. He essentially sacrificed his life, but rather than dying like most people who sacrifice their lives, he lived a life that wasn't anything close to being his own. It was a life where he put the good of the people over his own wants, comfort, family, time, body, finances, and everything else you can think of. America owes him a debt that is impossible to pay.

In order to be a great leader you will have to sacrifice many things. The greater the leader, the more you will sacrifice. 

Making choices is the main liability of leaders. It is the reason that leaders exist. They are the ones that make the decisions. Even in a committee where everyone is more or less the same in power, stature, etc. One or more people end up becoming leaders or the team becomes incapable of making a decision. That doesn't mean that a leader is a bully and forces people to do what they say. On the contrary, a true leader gains followers because people wish to follow them and want to do what they ask.

Listen to your people, really listen and take in what you hear as well as what you don't hear or see. Then make your best decision based on your abilities.

I am on a quest to be more selfless and the more that I work at it the more terrible I seem to be at it. Of course part of my issue is that now that I am paying more attention to my selfishness I notice it more. Hopefully, with time and practice, I can become more and more selfless. I have found that the more selfless I am the happier I feel.

The true cost of greatness is the self. I cannot think of a single person in history that became what I would consider "great" through selfish means. In my mind selflessness is a prerequisite to greatness.

Most of the time the absolute hardest part of any endeavor is the beginning. A lot of times the reason the beginning is so hard is that we are afraid of something. Fear it a great natural instinct to have in the wild but in the overly tame world we live in it typically does more harm than good. Put your fear aside and start doing whatever it is you need to do. 

If you have fears and concerns you should know that those that you lead also have fears and concerns. Help them overcome those fears. Help them to succeed and they will help you succeed in return.

"Success serves men as a pedestal. It makes them seem greater when not measured by reflection." -Joseph Joubert

It is easy to forget that people are just regular people if we place them on the pedestals of position, rank, power, and authority. It can be particularly difficult when that person is yourself. Remember that when you measure someone to not measure the pedestal with them. How they treat others and how they act in private are much better indicators of how good and honorable a person they are rather than how much money or influence they have.

It is better to surround yourself and build a team out of good people than to build a team based on prestige. Strength of character is impossible to teach and must be cultivated by the individual. Skills used in the work place are relatively easy to teach.