Several years ago I wrote a book about leadership based on my, at that time, 20 years of experience as a senior executive. There was and is some good stuff in that book. It’s also true that more has changed in the last five years, than in that first twenty.

What have I learned—or figured out—since then? A lot. Here are ten things.

1. Leadership is more about people than it is about anything else. Period.
2. Empowerment creates far greater success than control does.
3. You have more choice when it comes to doing things that don’t feel right to you than you think you do. And if you don’t, you’re not in the right place.
4. Doing the right thing is based on values, not rules or policy.
5. Long term effectiveness as a leader is about influence and relationship, not positional authority.
6. You will win over more people with authenticity than certainty.
7. Vulnerability is not weakness. It is self-aware courage.
8. The most important thing you can provide a team is psychological safety.
9. Risk is unavoidable. Embrace it. How you approach risk can be the difference between paralysis and competitive advantage.
10. Leadership affords privilege. Make it about service.

And a bonus learning: People you are accountable to (other executives, owners, boards, trustees, investors) are sometimes wrong. They are typically siloed with limited perspective and narrow ideas of “success.” This may be one of leadership’s greatest challenges: influencing those with more “power” or resources than you have to pursue a path that is more in their interest, but that they cannot yet see.