People respect angry. I have a hard time with that.

One big opportunity is the ability to look angry.

People respect angry. Look at Steve Jobs. Look at Elon. Two of the most followed leaders alive, and neither one built their name on being warm. They built it on being unmistakably serious about the thing in front of them — and a room reads that as anger before it reads it as anything else.

Angry reads as convinced. And a room will follow convinced faster than it follows nice.

I personally have a hard time with the angry face. I find it more fun to laugh with others — always have — and it shows up as checking the room for fun people before trying to present an image.

But here's what I don't think I should do: learn to perform angry. Fake conviction is its own kind of weak, and people can smell it. That's not the opportunity.

The opportunity is what's underneath the angry face when it's real. Jobs and Elon are independent — free of needing the room's approval before they act on what they believe. The anger is just the exhaust. The independence is the engine.

So the move is switching off the need to be liked and switching on the need to be right by your own read. That's a harder thing to build than a face, and it's the only one that's actually worth building.