Learn leadership from books: self-awareness before authority

The path, stage by stage

Our leadership path builds from the inside out.

Foundations — mindset and self-awareness. Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Dweck's Mindset, and Sinek's Leaders Eat Last. You can't lead others past where you've led yourself.

Core management skills — people and performance. First, Break All the Rules (what great managers actually do differently), The One Minute Manager, and Scott's Radical Candor — care personally, challenge directly.

Intermediate — team dynamics. Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and Multipliers (leaders who make everyone around them smarter).

Advanced — strategy and change. Collins's Good to Great, The Leadership Challenge, and An Everyone Culture.

The habit: keep a decision journal

The fastest way to grow as a leader is to close the feedback loop on your own judgment. Keep a decision journal: for each significant call, write what you decided, why, and what you expect to happen. Review it quarterly. Nothing else builds self-awareness — the foundation of the whole path — as reliably.

Around 71 hours. Follow the path or browse the leadership hub. Leaders negotiate constantly — pair it with negotiation — and it overlaps with product management.