If you feign to deem yourself a leader of anything, you must constantly be looking at the people who have blazed trails ahead or beside you to see what they're doing.
And just when you think you have it all figured out and you got the groove and you've learned the basics of the practices all the guys-you-follow, you notice, on the right-hand side of their blog page, their blog roll. And you find out that these are the trailblazers for the trailblazers and that you're just a spec in their rear view mirror. You have much to learn, grasshopper.
True learning is learning how much it really is that you have yet to learn. The rest is just specifics.
A few things I've noticed by observing the truly great leaders, innovators, and trail-blazers -- things I'm trying to work on myself in my own personality:
- Never be too quick to assume you're on top of things. Life will ensure that you're humbled at the most inopportune moment. Just make sure that when your time comes, you're in a position to be humbled gracefully. The other option is to suffer extreme embarrassment (sometimes involving a law suit).
- If you ever meet someone in person who starts talking about your favorite subjects (.NET for example), assume that they're the smartest person in the world and that, if .NET hadn't been invented already, he/she would've invented it. If they're not the smartest person in the world, they will quickly reveal this to you and you will have no doubt.
- Also, don't judge people by their poor social skills, poor conversation, or poor spelling/grammar. Some of the smartest people I know write the worst-edited blog posts. But I pay them (by web hits and comments) for their content, not for their correctness of language.
There is always more to learn, and it will scare you, and you will feel inadequate. The only way to effectively and constructively rid yourself of these feelings is to learn those things and become an expert at them.