Leadership: Seven Rules To Live By

It’s inevitable that when managing your small business, leadership demands a powerful role to play in it. Because the purpose of business is to foster the life the entrepreneur desires, the right leadership style then becomes imperative to facilitate the entrepreneur’s aspiration for business success. It can be said without argument that leadership is the most important component of being an entrepreneur.

So, here are seven leadership rules to live by and reap the rewards from managing your business effectively in the 21st Century:

1. Adaptability

As a leader, adaptability means reacting efficaciously to shifting circumstances in your business environment. Everybody experiences adaptive challenges, but leaders are keen to resolve these issues with a carefully thought-out plan of action. If there is one trait that an entrepreneur needs most in today’s business environment, it is adaptability.

If adaptability is not your strongest asset, then hone your skills by:

• Learning to accept difference.

• Preparing backup plans of action for problems you anticipate to happen.

• Keeping an open mind and committing yourself to learning constantly, learning fast, and reacting accordingly.

• Adopting an approach of flexibility when faced with any adaptability issues.

Also, build your business for adaptability and you’ll find dealing with adaptability a more pleasant and fulfilling experience.

2. People Skills

Experts classify people skills as a term to indicate four sets of skills:

• The ability to observe people in your business. This gives you the insight needed to take the appropriate action required for the right result.

• The ability to communicate effectively. Contrary to popular belief, it is not easy to get ideas across a group of people when attempting to make the right decision or reach a solution. A leader should be able to communicate effectively to be productive.

• The ability to motivate gives you the leadership edge to get the best out of those who work for you.

• And as previously mentioned, adaptability.

Developing better people skills, specifically in the four areas highlighted above, helps you attain your business objectives much faster by working more productively with today’s very knowledgeable generation X and Y workforce. It is about genuinely connecting with your employees and earning the people’s trust.

3. Self Awareness

Entrepreneurs who are aware of how they’re perceived by others or how they impact the behavior of others are more likely to succeed as leaders than those who aren’t self aware. Most of us are guilty of believing we are better than we really are because of intent, living our lives assuming others can read our minds and intentions.

On the contrary, others can only judge us based on our behaviors which can often lead to misunderstandings and miscommunication. So as entrepreneurs and leaders, practice self awareness to establish a more positive working relationship with your employees by identifying first your personal strengths and weaknesses.

4. Decisiveness

Decisiveness is an exercise in good judgment, affording well-informed, fast and sound decisions when needed from a leader and it is not to be confused with inflexibility. It’s often conspicuous, which sometimes makes it difficult for an entrepreneur to enforce his leadership for fear of being liable for a conspicuous, albeit incorrect, decision. But by being indecisive, although being inconspicuous, chances of facing more tragic consequences are higher.

Decisiveness is an important rule in leadership and the decisions you make as an entrepreneur will have a direct impact on how you’re accepted as a leader. Deciding by going with your gut feeling or intuition wouldn’t hurt either.

5. Purposefulness

Every business needs a vision to set its direction and every entrepreneur envisages attaining their business vision. Business books of yesteryears clearly advocate businesses using vision as a resource, but having a vision in the 21st Century may not be enough for an entrepreneur.

What may be more advantageous today is the ability to own a strong sense of purpose and the ability to convey this purposefulness to your employees. Purposefulness can be more powerful than a vision because it shares the ambition of growing your business with your employees and your team. A vision, on the other hand, may make sense only to you.

6. Collaborative Skills

Technology has forced our hands on this and entrepreneurs have no choice but to adopt the skill of collaboration. Today’s business environment requires you to develop a culture of collaboration within your business and across all departments, both internally and externally. The Internet makes this extremely easy to do at a very low cost.

Collaboration is a method that can quickly add to your bottom line if you’re able to develop a system where everyone can play their part in contributing ideas or increasing sales.

7. Innovate And Execute

Another advantage of inculcating a culture of collaboration is the constant exchange of innovative ideas within your business. This means you are not forced to come up with ideas by yourself, but your employees can work in teams to constantly push the boundaries and put forth new ideas for business growth.

Nothing happens without action and without execution of a vision. If you’d lived by the 7 rules of leadership, you would have developed an execution strategy. With an execution strategy, not only would you be able to see progress being made daily, but your staff would be more than capable of handling their tasks without the need of supervision.

It is this clarity of an execution strategy that binds everything together and propels your business in the direction you had envisaged it to follow.


Robert Moment is an innovative small business coach , speaker and author. Robert specializes in teaching entrepreneurs how to start a small business that profits and grow. Visit http://www.howtostartyoursmallbusiness.com and sign-up for the FREE Small Business Coaching 7 day e-course, “Turn Passion into Profit: Small Business Startup.”



Leadership: Seven Rules To Live By - To learn more about this author, visit Robert Moment's Website.

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