Sharpen Your Leadership Skills Every Day 
Being an effective leader is more than just pointing a direction and saying "Go!" Being a leader is about bringing a team together and making the most of that interaction. Here are 4 leadership activities to do every day:
Having a Forum
There is more to a successful forum than having a bunch of people sitting around parroting what the boss wants to hear. While it is wise to have a forum daily or weekly if it can't be accommodated more, it is even more important to learn how to glean the most information from these forum sessions. As the boss, this is your opportunity to gather everyone around and pick their brains not only for what they know, but to also get their advanced knowledge to the table.
With a little practice, the daily forum might even become one of the favorite times of day at your office with your subordinates. With great practice, the leader stops asking questions and becomes more of a facilitator for discussion. Use judgment and wisdom to help conduct the conversation further in a progressive direction.
Collaborating with Leader Friends
Why is it good to have friends? Because they motivate you to be all you can be! That is why it is always a good idea to make friends with people who have the same ideals as you.
Having a posse of other bosses who also take care in motivating and respecting their employees from your company or (if your ego can take it) other companies doesn't make you weaker, but in fact provides you a powerful support network of talented individuals who have words of praise or wisdom for many of the challenging situations you go through every day.
Being at the top is lonely, but it doesn't have to be.
Teambuilding---Over Pizza
Who said you can't have a beer with your boss! Bad liver? Who said you can't have pizza with your boss!
Excursions, business lunches not only give you a place to recharge and have a good time, but it is where you have an opportunity to give your staff a chance to meet each other as people, and not mindless worker drones.
Machines function together, people work together. Maybe you'll glean some useful insights into who works well in your team over Sunday afternoon paintball. Maybe a steak and a beer at lunch is just what the crew needs to relax after a punishing morning.
While it's great to send them out on their own, it's even better go with them. Better than being a leader, you are part of the team. Strong enough to lead them, you still aren't too stuck up to laugh at some jokes, maybe play a game of darts.
Actively Work on Becoming a Better Leader
With research and personal development. Leadership isn't a job but rather a craft. Much like an artisan learns new skills and works hard to to distinguish his perfect skills from those of an amateur, you also need to refine your craft---till you die (or at least retire). There are three directions you can go to improve your leadership capability.
You can improve yourself by learning to better orate in front of a mirror, or learn NLP to understand human speech flows. You can also learn to improve how you work with your team by taking courses like Six Sigma or Advanced Project Management, to squeeze every ounce of efficiency out of them. Lastly, you can learn your own industry better. It takes a different kind of leadership to run a war, than it does to run a flower shop.
photo credit: Stuck in Customs via photopin cc
