this note is for a friend who decided to jump over a cliff (metaphorically!) and got elected as a leader for his team 
all the best (you know who am I talking about, do you?)
before De Bono’s Lateral Thinking, have a look at his “six hats” and “getting to yes”, from Fisher-Ury-Patton
but look online also at the “L game”: it is the fastest way to get into strategic thinking, faster than the alternative (starting to play go- you never learn, as with the Chinese and Japanese ideograms 
)
the only piece of advice for a newly born leader? you have to be willing to fall on the same sword you are willing to send your people to fall on (again, metaphorically- unless you play at StarCraft or the WoW)
along the 5-minutes “faking your way to leadership”, read also Shakespeare’s monologue on the “Band of Brothers”- or watch the movie “Renaissance Man” with Danny De Vito, that contains, to my view, a better rendition of the monologue than Laurence Olivier’s much critically acclaimed
if you know Italian, or have somebody around you that knows it, read the monologue from Ulysses to his sailors and soldiers- it is older than Shakespeare’s, and, IMHO, much much better- beside being only few lines long (see from “‘O brothers, who amid a hundred thousand” until “But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.”; the Italian version sounds better and more moving).
on the practical side, other readings: “A theory of Justice”, from John Rawls- will give you a quick perspective on the ethics of all the affair, or your “social contract”
finally, few little bits of advice:
1. in all my projects, as people who worked with me know fairly well, I ask to my team members to let me know anything that they think could go wrong or issues before turn into reality: the “veil of ignorance” is already thick enough, without having your team members hiding information from you
2. shit happens- but if you are the team leader, you are responsible vs your “customer”; how then you manage inside your team distribution of “guilt” or anything else, well, that is something that you have to learn-and-feel or feel-and-learn; but “naming and shaming” a loyal team member just because of a failure in front of the others is not exactly what I would call “leadership”
3. in some cases your newly created team will include a parasite- the rumors spinning machine that spends times gossiping on the failures of other team members, and contributes only venom to the team if you can, letting you become an Othello while he is your Iago
4. every plan is a course- not an itinerary; you know where you want to go, but maybe the interim positions will change- try to be think of a plan as a chess game: think few steps ahead, not just simply at the original step-by-step
5. if you see that you need to change a plan, communicate with your “customer”- and involve this party into your planning, by presenting alternatives to get back on track as well as the issue (it is a variation of 2.)
there could be plenty of items more- but this is a short (and, thanks to the multimedia references, potentially enjoyable) way to understand the basics in few hours
of course, as I see it- but “il mondo è bello perchè è vario”: in English, there are a thousand ways to skin a squirrel (or something like that- I prefer the Italian way: “the beauty of the World lies in its diversity of ways and means”)
Tags: cliff, coaching, de bono, faking, fisher, game, jump, justice, lateral, leadership, learning, management, patton, rawls, team, thinking, ury