ASK ANY RANDOM group of people to name an inspiring leader from history and the usual names will likely come tumbling forward: Alexander the Great, Elizabeth I, Napoleon, Washington, Lincoln, Shackleton, Churchill, Martin Luther King Jr. … figures who responded to a crisis, unified their nation or “tribe” and changed the course of history through a combination of will, charisma and daring.

Ask for great managers of history — the individuals who helped translate vision into action — and the names are likely to come a little slower: Alexander Hamilton … George C. Marshall … umm … Tim Cook? None of this should be surprising. Managers work behind the scenes. They prefer evolution over revolution, focus on execution of a plan over articulating a vision, and perhaps most importantly, the best ones work to make other people look and be better.

Much of the distinction between leaders and managers comes from the source of their power. Managers are given authority over others. Leaders are voluntarily followed by others. Or as the axiom goes: “Managers require, leaders inspire.”

The other key distinction is that a leader provides clarity of purpose, outlines the big picture and leverages this vision to guide their teams. In contrast, good managers zero in on what is unique about each worker, their individual strengths, and capitalize on those.

Clearly, a great enterprise — be it of a political or business nature — needs both: the dream and the day-to-day execution. Nation states and corporations have the resources and scale to support a leader and managers, but when your life’s work is a small business, you must wear both hats. And that’s where it gets tricky. Not just knowing when a situation requires leadership or management but also acquiring the competencies to do so. Management is a set of skills that just about anyone can learn with sufficient emotional and raw intelligence. Leadership appears to be at least partly innate: it necessitates certain mysterious magnetic traits that are harder to acquire if you’re not born with them … an “X factor.”

Still, while you may never develop the oratory skills of Churchill, the charisma of Kennedy or the lead-from-the-front courage of Patton, you can do a lot that is vitally important to the success of your business: set the mission, lay the ethical foundation, model the behaviors you want to see, make bold strategic calls and show your workers are cared for.

In Act Like A Leader, Think Like A Leader, London School of Business professor Herminia Ibarra argues that the only way to develop as a leader is to first act: to plunge yourself into new projects and activities and experiment with unfamiliar ways of getting things done. In short, to act your way into a way of thinking about the role. In the following pages, we share tips from your peers in the Brain Squad, industry coaches, and experts on management and leadership. We’ve split the tips between those that apply to a manager and those that are more relevant for a leader. What they all have in common is that they are actionable … They’re just waiting for you to implement them.

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LEADER
1. Look the Part

Sgt. Matt Eversmann took part in one of the U.S. military’s great “no man left behind” stories, leading troops in the firefight in Mogadishu, Somalia, that served as the inspiration for the movie Black Hawk Down. So, what’s his take on leadership? Fearlessness, charisma, self-sacrifice? No, it’s looking sharp, he tells Carmine Gallo, author of 10 Simple Secrets Of The World’s Greatest Communicators. To start with, “always dress a little better than everyone else,” he advises, especially your subordinates. “Presence” makes people receptive to the important stuff that follows, he argues.

LEADER
2. From the Front

As they say, culture eats strategy for breakfast. And culture starts at the top. You’re the leader. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Nikki Griffin of EyeStyles Optical in Oakdale, MN, follows a similar philosophy. “I lead by forging fearlessly ahead even when it’s a daunting task. The people around me see the rewards that come when I step out in faith and become more courageous themselves. As a manager I’m far softer because I step back and hold the bucket while the rest of the group makes it rain. Be a manager by trusting your team to do their job well. Be a leader by showing them how.” But if you prefer to take your inspiration from the hard-edged world of business, consider business author Tom Peters’ recommendation, “Give a lot, expect a lot, and if you don’t get it, prune.”

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LEADER
3. It’s About Values, Stupid

A chronic poor performer is a clear impediment to the goals you’ve set. “When you ask a group to deliver high performance, you are inviting them to a place of stress, one where they must stretch to achieve goals. If you shrink from or delay in addressing the issue of a poorly performing team member, you don’t lose just that person’s contribution. You send a message to everyone else about your values,” says Joseph Grenny, author of Crucial Accountability. People want to work for a company that has high standards, that they can be proud of and that is going to bring out the best in them. Don’t disappoint them.

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LEADER
4. Fake It Till You Make It

Traditionally “gravitas” — that trait that seems to attach itself to all great leaders — has been boiled down to three attributes: confidence, decisiveness, and a clear vision. The first is probably the most important in getting people to follow you, even if it’s not a great indicator of competence. (According to some studies, the probability of the most confident person in the room also being the most competent is a paltry 15% better than chance.) Nevertheless, it remains the mostly widely used proxy of the right to lead. Stride into a meeting and just repeat your point the most insistently, and you’ve a good chance of carrying the day. If that all sounds a little inauthentic, that’s fine, says Ibarrra. “Think of leadership development as trying on possible selves,” she says. “That’s not being a fake; it’s how we experiment to figure out what’s right for the new challenges and circumstances we face.”

LEADER
5. But Not Overconfident

According to Stanford business professor Bob Sutton, the best leaders have “the attitude of wisdom” — the confidence to act on their convictions and the humility to keep searching for evidence that they are wrong. It’s vital to couple strength with a humility that ensures you realize you will often be wrong, and which encourages people to suggest alternative ways of doing things, he says in a column in the Harvard Business Review. “Pivot must be in your vocabulary,” agrees Jami Kulpinski of the Eye Clinic of Wisconsin in Wausau, WI. “As a leader, stay humble and really listen. People will tell you exactly what you need to know, you just have to be brave enough to ask the hard things and thank the ones that are brave enough to bring you the hard things.”

MANAGER
6. Always Be Monitoring

“The greatest influence in the world is the influence of norms,” adds Grenny. “When people see visual models of desirable behavior, and when that behavior becomes widespread, it also becomes self-sustaining.” However, few people understand that norms change one person at a time. When someone offers a living example of behavior that solves a problem, others can be powerfully influenced by that one person.

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MANAGER
7. Fire the Bottom 10%

An employee should never be surprised to learn they are being fired. If their first response is “Why, why me?” the fault lies with poor management, writes former GM CEO Jack Welch in The Real Life MBA, explaining that it was obviously never made clear to the individual that he or she wasn’t measuring up. Says Welch: “You tell the bottom 10% where they stand, and if they don’t improve, you tell them to go. You want to field the best team; the only way you’re going to do it is by having the best players.”

LEADER
8. Schedule Down Time

The legendary cognitive psychologist Amos Tversky once quipped, “You waste years by not being able to waste hours.” And no one does that apply to more than a company leader. You need the time and space for reflection and the assimilation of lessons learned from experience. It was something the late statesman George Schultz appreciated. Once a week, he would shut the door of his office and sit by himself with only a pen and a piece of paper and let his mind wander. According to a New York Times profile, he would think strategically and conceptually, setting his sights forward in a way that he couldn’t in the day-to-day crush of his responsibilities as a cabinet member. Given our always-on lifestyles in 2025, it’s now probably even more important to give yourself such a break every week. Schedule it.

MANAGER
9. Meet One-on-One

Most employees and managers will cringe at the idea of more meetings. But instituting weekly one-on-one meetings with all staff can be the most important step a business owner can take to get the best out of your staff and retain your top performers. That was the result of an intensive data-driven survey conducted by Google of its own, already highly motivated workforce, according to a New York Times report.

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MANAGER
10. Know the Value of Your Time

It sounds obvious but the more senior the worker, the deeper the work they do should be. And yet shallow and reactive work seems to always beckon. The secret to getting out of this trap, says David Brown of the Edge Retail Academy, is to attach a value to your time and use this to guide your decisions. If, for example, your revenue target is $1.5 million a year, then divide this number by 2,250 (assuming that you’ll be working 45 hours a week, 50 weeks a year). Now you know the only way to reach your sales target is if you’re involved in activities and/or decisions that generate $670 in revenue per hour for the business. Also, do a daily tracking report of all your activities in 30-minute increments for several weeks (there are apps that make this easy). With this log you will be able to see what is sucking up most of your work hours. You may well find over 50% of your time is being consumed by trivial or “busy” work. Lastly, prioritize what’s important and start delegating a few tasks each month.

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LEADER
11. Embrace “Failure”

Warren G. Bennis, one of the pioneers of leadership studies (and an advisor to Reagan and Kennedy on the topic) had a failure epiphany that changed his life. “The leaders I met, whatever walk of life they were from, whatever institutions they were presiding over, always referred back to some failure — something that happened to them that was personally difficult, even traumatic, something that made them feel that desperate sense of hitting bottom — as something they thought was almost a necessity. It’s as if, at that moment, the iron entered their soul; that moment created the resilience that leaders need.” The lesson: Don’t fear failure. It seems valuable and important and necessary to your success. Embrace it. Here’s how to do it right:

• Fail cheaply. Always ask, “What is the minimum viable experiment?”
• Fail forward. Be sure to learn something you didn’t know before you failed.
• Fail quickly. The primary goal is to prove or disprove your concept.

MANAGER
12. Communicate Better

Think you’re an effective communicator? Chances are you’re not. According to an Interact/Harris Poll, 91% of employees say their bosses don’t communicate well, be it explaining what they wanted done, where they’d gone wrong or even what the employee had done right. The study’s author, Interact CEO Lou Solomon, told the Harvard Business Review that leaders and managers could do a better job in this area by offering specific praise and recognition, giving personal and public thank-yous, sharing information, and showing their humanity.

MANAGER
13. Listen

“This is a visual industry, but the best tip for either role is to use your ears: listen,” shares Deb Jaeger of Eye Center of The Dakotas in Bismarck, ND. Author Tom Peters, who is now 75 years old, says listening is “the bedrock of leadership excellence,” but characterizes himself as a bad listener and “a serial interrupter.” So, to help him stay focused on the other person, he writes the word “listen” on the palm of his hand before walking into meetings. He says, “The focus must be on what the other person is saying, not on formulating your response. That kind of listening shows respect for the other person, and they notice it.”

MANAGER
14. Leverage Strengths

“I have to remind myself some people respond better to concrete plans, while some respond best when their input is an influence,” shares Michael Broome, OD, owner of Broome Family Eye Care in Evans, GA. Good job, Dr. Broome, because according to Marcus Buckingham, author of The One Thing You Need To Know … About Great Managing, Great Leading And Sustained Individual Success, effective managers are adept at identifying employees’ strengths and capitalizing on them. Apart from a natural productivity boost, there are a host of other benefits — these employees are better motivated, need less supervision, and stay longer. Similarly, it helps to know what fires people up — extrinsic motivators like money, or something more intrinsic, like participation in a team or the satisfaction of mastering a skill — and ultimately to merge their goals with your goals.

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LEADER
15. Be Decisive

Among the virtues traditionally considered “leaderly” such as courage, integrity, sociability and compassion, is decisiveness. “Be willing to make decisions. That’s the most important quality in a good leader, says business author and ad man Roy Williams. “Avoid the ‘Ready-aim-aim-aim-aim’ syndrome. You must be willing to fire. Indeed, that is one of the things that distinguishes a leader from a manager. “Managers say, ‘Ready, Aim, Fire.’ Leaders say ‘Ready, Fire, Aim,’ but this isn’t as crazy as it sounds. When shooting a cannon, this is called finding your range,’” he writes in his MondayMorningMemo.

LEADER
16. Keep Your Powder Dry

A counterpoint: While being willing to pull the trigger is important, it’s equally crucial to appreciate you only have so much ammunition in the form of financial capital, energy and focus. The hardest thing about being a leader is saying no to good ideas. As Steve Jobs, who famously told former Nike CEO Mark Parker to stop making so much crap and just focus on the products people lust after, put it: “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying ‘no’ to 1,000 things.”

MANAGER
17. Hire Well

Each of the 217 times David Ogilvy opened a new office for advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather, he would leave a set of Russian nesting dolls on the desk of the incoming manager. On reaching the tiniest doll, the manager would find a fortune-cookie style note from Ogilvy: “If each of us hires people smaller than ourselves, we shall become a company of midgets, but if each of us hires people bigger than ourselves, we should become a company of giants.” One thing that is common among all strong businesses is that they hire well. In Good To Great, Jim Collins identified hiring as one of the key elements of what he called superior “Level 5 Leadership” — recognizing that no one can achieve greatness alone. Build strong teams with an emphasis on assembling and nurturing talent.

MANAGER
18. Say It Over and Over and …

“Watch the numbers and correct immediately and repeatedly. You always, even with an A+ team, have to say things multiple times and explain the logic behind it,” says Susan Elizondo, OD, owner of Westlake Hills Vision Center in Austin, TX. Dictators aren’t usually people you want to emulate, but in this one instance, Stalin had it right when he supposedly said: “Quantity has a quality all its own.” That applies not just to steelmaking or military strength but to communicating with employees. According to Patrick Lencioni, a former Bain & Co. consultant and author of 5 Dysfunctions Of A Team, while you may feel you’re being redundant and even annoying, “studies show employees won’t believe a leader’s message until they’ve heard it seven times.”

LEADER
19. Trust Your Curiosity

After spending more than 10,000 hours coaching senior executives and their teams to better performance, Allan Milham concluded that genuine curiosity is what separates great leaders from the rest of the pack. In his book Out Of The Question: How Curious Leaders Win, he argues that the best leaders and managers constantly want to learn, explore, and innovate. The venture capitalist Paul Graham came to a similar conclusion in his widely read essay “How to Do Great Work,” writing “Curiosity is the best guide. Your curiosity never lies, and it knows more than you do about what’s worth paying attention to.”

MANAGER
20. Coach the Coach

With the Internet now delivering much of the product knowledge and “value” that sales associates once provided, the dynamics of the sales floor have changed. Selling and people skills are at a premium, which means there is a greater responsibility for sales managers to provide such coaching, Wharton faculty member Linda Richardson recently told the business school’s monthly bulletin, Knowledge@Wharton. Her studies have shown big payoffs when sales managers upgrade their coaching (not selling) skills. “If you can’t afford a training course, do e-learning, or buy books,” she says. “Even the smallest companies can and should develop their sales managers.”

MANAGER
21. When Good Practices Turn Bad

As Ibarra said earlier, consider everything you’ve read here something to “try on.” Even the best management practices can lead to problems if left in place too long, note Yves Doz and Mikko Kosonen in Fast Strategy. Some examples:

• Forging a clear vision — can result in tunnel vision.
• Honing business processes — can create inflexible systems that cannot adapt to new challenges
• Building deep customer relationships — can inhibit experiments.
• Teambuilding — can lead to silos and a lack of cooperation.

The answer? Shake it up. Assign staff to work in an area that is outside their key competence, set mock constraints such as a small budget ahead of a marketing strategy meeting, set fuzzy goals. The common theme here is to keep an open mind and keep running small experiments to perpetually evolve as a leader and as a manager.

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MANAGER
22. Firewall Your Bad Moods

The late Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen once argued that managers have among the most important jobs in the world. How they treat their workers will determine whether billions of people go home happy or agitated. How to do it? Consider managing your moods as one of your chief responsibilities. You are a “walking mood inductor” and your subordinates are “receptors.” Your mood impacts how they feel, and, consequently, how they perform. Charles M. Schwab said he considered his ability to arouse enthusiasm among his workers the greatest asset he possesses. “And the way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement,” he once said.

HOW TO DO BOTH…

Some people excel at leading and inspiring their teams to greatness, some at making sure all the details are tended to until the job gets done, but as a small business owner or manager, you more often than not have to do both. Here’s how your fellow ECPs see navigating these dual roles.

• Leaders need to keep the “next step” in mind and a manager must keep the “needs” in mind. — Colby Spivey, Vision Center South, Dothan, AL
• A managerial role is more the “sage on the stage.” As a manager, I have to teach, show staff what needs to be done, and the best practices for doing it. This includes explanations about the why behind our policies. The leadership role is more of a “guide on the side,” where I work side by side with staff to help them learn and show them that I am willing to engage in all the same tasks I am asking them to do. As a manager, have a clear goal in mind for the practice and achievable milestones to reach that goal. As a leader, actively listen and show staff that nothing they do is beneath me. — Whitney Head-Potter, Beatty Eyes Optometry, Missoula, MT
• I make a conscious effort to modify my behavior depending on the hat I’m wearing. Leaders handle people and managers handle processes. If you can understand that you’ll be on your way to the top. Managers make sure the processes of the business are being executed consistently and work to troubleshoot why the products or results are not to the standard of the organization. — Ben Thayil, OD, Lifetime Vision and Eye Care, Miami, FL
• Leaders lead people. Managers manage assets. If you remember this, you never have a problem taking care of things and people. As either a leader or a manager, you must always write stuff down and keep all the information at your fingertips, which allows you to take care of people and business. — Pablo E. Mercado, Highland Eye Boutique, Atlanta, GA
• When I’m managing, I will tell people what to do. But when I’m leading, I will emulate what I want others to do by my own behavior. For those of us who are detail-oriented: give others agency. Find tasks they can own, that you won’t have to micro-manage (and then, don’t!). Employees are happiest when they have a sense of ownership. — Jen Heller, Pend Oreille Vision Care, Sandpoint, ID
• Have a daily task list as a manager and wait 48 hours before taking any action so emotions are not involved. As a leader, the 48-hour rule is even more important to follow. — Dorothy Reynolds, Eyes on Fairfield, Fairfield, CT
• As a leader, my goal is to set the vision, spark innovation, and inspire others. It’s about painting the bigger picture, whether we’re introducing a new collection, being involved with the community, or refining the patient experience. Leadership means … empowering others to think creatively and embrace change. When shifting into a managerial role, I focus on the tactical side — streamlining processes, creating structures, and actively engaging with the office culture. With the constant evolution of the industry, this means staying on top of trends, managing inventory effectively, and adapting to new technologies that improve both patient care and business operations. Managing means understanding the intricacies of the business and executing with precision while ensuring our team stays focused and motivated… The success of a business depends on both a big picture vision and solid execution. — Heather Harrington, Optical Nomad, Denver, CO