The bad news is that until you invent an efficient cold fusion process, you're going to be reporting to SOMEone. Even if you're the Big Boss, you're still going to have a board of directors and maybe some shareholders breathing down your neck. So you need to be clear on how to follow as well as how to lead.

Being a better minion

Being a good minion suddenly becomes a lot easier when you have minions of your own, because you can better understand what kind of behaviour you would expect from your people. Here's a tip - always turn up with solutions rather than problems, answers rather than questions. This is something that makes you valuable in a team. Make them need you.

As a leader

I'm not going into some dull treatise on leadership - if you want that, go read "Good to Great". But when you became a leader, some things changed.

Again, borrowing from House - asking questions makes you look smart. Beyond that, you need to ask the right questions - not only the smart sounding ones, but the ones that will lead you right to the core of an issue. There's too much data out there to parse - that's why you have a team in the first place - so skim the parts that look OK to you, but dive right into the intricate detail if you smell anything fishy going on. This is why you need to know exactly what your team does - maybe you've done that job before, or you're just that good.

Lou Gerstner:
"People don't do what you expect, they do what you inspect."