What is the difference between ownership and leadership

Five Traits of Leadership Many small businesses enjoy a couple years of initial success and then hit a wall. Their failure to grow beyond a certain level is often attributed to the owner's lack of one if not more characteristics, including: Focus: Chasing business is bad.

Some IT business owners spend a lot of time and money attempting to land every possible client in every conceivable market. Over time, great leaders learn which prospects offer the most potential and then build sales and marketing strategies that best leverage their limited resources. Those who can stick to their mission and make improvements only when needed seem to enjoy the most long-term success. Decisiveness: With so many things going on, usually at the same time, business owners must be confident in the decisions they make.

Should they proceed with a major project, hire a new employee or add to the firm's services portfolio? Leaders do their homework, pick the best fit for their corporate strategy and put forth their best effort to make sure it works. Listening Skills: The thoughts and opinions of coworkers and industry experts are invaluable. From clients and prospects to the lawn maintenance crew and help desk personnel, good leaders learn a lot from the people around them and take time to seek their counsel.

Owners with effective listening skills are typically more engaged with their team members, resulting in higher employee job satisfaction, reduced turnover and greater collaboration.

Leaders avoid self-praise and encourage team members to work together, stressing group performance over individual accomplishment. The board was chock filled with smart, compassionate and well-meaning professionals, but the founder held the reigns, and progress toward governance became stagnant. It was a rather unfortunate situation, but also not my first time to encounter this enigma. Grassroots organizations often face a future of peril when founders have a false sense of their power and board members have not had the chance to fully embrace and enforce their governance responsibilities.

Additionally, many founders are so highly respected by board members that a sense of complacency creeps in disguised as peace-keeping measures. It is a public organization that belongs to the public at-large.

Where in past workplaces there was an us vs them attitude with behind-the-scenes animosity, in my new office there was a fierce loyalty, an air of camaraderie, a strong commitment to good work, and, dare I say, happiness. Understanding members of your team as whole people will help you manage both your human and skills resources better, provide the key to their motivation, and make them feel valued.

For the same reasons you need to understand your target audience, you need to understand your people. Did you know that Richard Branson hires based on his own weaknesses? They help you improve your offering and grow the company. So while confidence is an important characteristic, ego, on the other hand, can be a barrier to producing better work. One of the things I like about working at Proposify is how hungry our co-founders, Kevin Springer and Kyle Racki, are to try new things, to learn from others, and to figure stuff out.

When they challenge the status quo, it, in turn, challenges me to think differently, to question, and to find solutions. Leaders welcome input, embrace change, and are open to new ideas other than their own. Being a leader, on the other hand, is a choice you can make every single day. I've owned my own business for most of my life, and I'll be the first to admit that I've made a ton of mistakes--and have even tricked myself into thinking I was a good leader, when in reality I wasn't leading anyone or anything.

For many years, I would roll up to the office every morning and walk right past all the young, ambitious, bright-eyed employees without making any sort of eye-contact. I was much more interested in how I was about to tackle a meeting with a client later that day, or just generally groggy from not having yet had my cup of coffee. In hindsight, I realize that I may have owned the company from the comfort of my desk in the back room, but I was far from being a good leader.

To be clear, I was completely unaware and unintentionally falling into the illness of "being the business" rather than leading the business, and subsequently fell into the trap of managing the business.

Sure, the time requirements are fairly substantial--filing paperwork, adhering to a list of business activities, submitting and paying taxes, performing sales and marketing activities, and of course, doing the actual work.

The hard part, however, is turning yourself from an owner into an actual leader that empowers the people around you to take ownership with and for you. And the truth is, not everyone has the skills or temperament to be a both a leader and an owner.