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Understand that being a lion means you'll often be misunderstood during good times and then begged by sheep to lead them during bad times. When the great awakening comes, you have a chance to be one of the audacious few.

When you are trying to build a massive organization, you don't care where the killers come from. Their position or department doesn't matter. What matters is that you have killers throughout your organization since raising standards is contagious.

Lock on to your winners...and look for them in strange places.

Think about 5 people in your life that have gotten the best out of you (teachers, coaches, bosses, friends, enemies, etc.). Then think about the people who have tried to bring you down or drain your energy. Then ask: what will positively impact your life more: Increasing the number of people who bring out the best in you or decreasing the number of energy vampires?

Focus on decreasing negativity rather than increasing positivity. Negative people can destroy so much that you have to eliminate them from your business and life.

Lots of research about enemies. (You will know why very soon). One of my favorite quotes is from Baltasar Gracian, the seventeenth century Spanish philosopher: “A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends."

Choose your enemies wisely. The wrong ones will set you back. The right ones will drive the hell out of you. The wrong enemy can divide an organization, a marriage or a political party. The right enemy can unify an organization, a marriage, or a political party.

Being wrong. No one of us are in the business of winning arguments. We're in the leadership development business. That's why we leverage being wrong to learn lessons that allow us to lead better.

When you have conflict, it's the best time to observe and size up people on your team to see who is reasonable, who can admit mistakes, and who can grow from being wrong.