Leadership roles in small-business are undergoing a fast-paced transition.

Leaders who fail to understand the transition and alter their ways will learn very-painful lessons. They will bounce back from the painful lessons, at least many of them will (because Canadians are cut from resilient fabric). Regardless, the lessons will be painful and costly.

This is a suggestion on how to avoid that pain and that cost.

If we want to lead in a small-business environment, it is helpful to remember...

1. You will do better when you help others solve their problems and
2. Most of the problems others at your company are working on affect you.

Wait just a minute here!

Are you trying to say I cannot sit in my silo, protected from the problems happening in other areas of my company?

Yes. That's exactly my point. If you want to lead in a small-business environment, forget about silos, safe havens, and isolated work responsibilities. None of those things exist for leaders in small businesses.

Note: These points do not apply to just 'The Leader' of your small business. These points apply to 'Every Leader' of every small business.  And, every person in every small business has the ability to choose whether or not he or she wants to employ leadership ways in his or her role.

Another Note: In today's small-business climate, every person should consider the value of accepting at least a small amount of leadership responsibility. Even if the reason is solely a selfish one - to make the company a little bit better to help protect one's job and one's pay - every person should think about how he or she can take leadership action.

And A Final Note: In today's small-business climate, every person who has a supervisory or management role must accept responsibility for more leadership thinking and action. Gone are the days that contained the luxuries of extra and redundant staffing and layers of management. Gone are the days that contained pure-specialist senior roles. And gone are the days of fat cash-flows. Today's small-business climate requires leaders to have a broad and deep understanding of their organization. That broad and deep understanding includes the premise that all small-business roles must be performed as if they are vital, interlinked cogs that must operate in tune with all other fellow cogs...because that's exactly what they are and that's exactly what they must do if the business is to succeed.