 How do the great leaders stay ahead of everyone else? They start by doing their homework. Welcome back and congratulations on taking one more step towards becoming one of the great leaders of tomorrow. All of our lives as we came up through school, we were told how important it is to do our homework. Sometimes it was unpleasant, sometimes there was too much of it, and almost always we wanted to be doing anything else but our homework. What we didn't realize at the time is that all of those teachers, parents and other people who cared about us were trying to help us develop a valuable skill for life. Doing our homework is indispensable to being great leaders. There's no substitute for taking the time to learn as much as we can about the situation and the people involved before we make a decision. Often though we face urgent situations where we don't have the time to do all the research we would like to do, and that's why it pays to do our homework ahead of time and today we'll talk about three ways you can do your homework ahead of time so you don't get caught behind the eight ball without the knowledge you need. First and most important, get to know the people you work with and who work for you if you're a supervisor, manager or other kind of leader. This also applies to getting to know your boss and the other people you work for. Get to know who they are as people. What do they enjoy? What stresses them out? How do they communicate with others? What's the best way to get through to them if you have to communicate with them? Also, get to know what they're responsible for and how does it contribute to the mission of the team? How does it fit in with what you do? What are the challenges they face in the workplace and think about are there ways I can help them overcome those challenges? The second thing you can do is start a reading list. A lot of research has been performed on leadership, management and relationships in the workplace, so find a few topics you're interested in and make a list of books on those subjects. Try to branch out away from books that are specific about your industry, business or leadership methods. Try to learn about some of the great leadership history all around the world. The specific challenges some of these historic leaders face may not be applicable with today's environment, but many of the leadership lessons they learned are timeless. Also, make some time for books you enjoy. Reading a great novel may not give us solutions to the problems we face in the workplace, but it can help us relax our brains a little bit and foster some creative thought as well. The last thing we'll talk about today when it comes to homework is keeping up with the trends in our industries. Understanding the recent trends and ideas that others in our industry are pursuing can help us see where our industry is headed and give us ideas that might make our company or team more competitive. Reading trade publications, attending conferences and trade shows, or even just networking with others in the same business we're in can give us an amazing insight into what the future holds. It takes a long time to develop the experience and judgment that help us decipher these trends so the sooner we start paying attention to them, the more useful that information will be to us. So homework isn't just for school. To be the kind of truly great leaders we want to be, we need to be doing our homework every day to understand the situations and people around us, benefit from the timeless lessons that great leaders from the past have taught us and truly understand the direction the world is headed in so that we can make informed, educated decisions that provide great outcomes for our teams and our businesses. If you found this helpful, please share it with a friend or coworker. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and click off on that globe to the right. That'll get to subscribe to our email list and that'll bring all of our content direct to your inbox. If you have any leadership or business questions that you'd like us to answer, reach out to us on social media or email us at info at evilgeniusleadership.com. Thanks for watching. I really appreciate it. Remember, the future is out there. Lead the way.