[January 04, 2014] All great leaders study leadership. They make it part of their routine to ensure that they understand and seek to improve their leadership skills and knowledge.

When the seasoned executive leader’s mind is adequately mature and has obtained sufficient awareness to understand, only then does the leader have the true capacity of senior leadership. Otherwise, in the less experienced and less mature leader, the study of leadership will only involve the mechanical memorization of the elementary components of leadership.

This capacity is what separates the senior executive leader from other, less mature leaders. The commonplace leader, who has yet benefited from the study of history or from extensive experience, is unable to obtain the full advantage of leadership studies.

Great leaders are then able to independently probe into greater detail, reflecting and reasoning on what they see and read. In short, their intellect and their hearts are occupied instead of merely their memory.

It is a measure of intellectual professionalism that they are able to acquire a taste for the truth of leadership rather than in the superficial. This will help to direct their reading and study into the proper channels in the future.

This is why it is imperative to have reliable intellectual resources to use, as in well-informed books and articles, professional blogs, and reliable classes that help to continually prepare the mind of that senior leader.

The senior leader must adapt their daily activities to provide the time for study and contemplation on the fundamentals of senior executive leadership. In time, the leader’s mind develops wisdom and is then able to use the virtues of senior leadership in their conduct.

Failure to consciously study senior leadership, to develop the mind in the aspects of those skills, is the mark of lesser maturity; a person who has yet to obtain the success of great leaders. These less mature leaders are those who use artificial traits to rely upon for advancement and position. These can be the most dangerous, toxic, and least affective leaders.

The best of the best, those who achieve the highest levels of leadership, focus on the routinization of leadership study and the development of their leader mind. This is what separates the greatest leaders from those who remain.