The most useful leadership advice for a small business owner is also the least flattering: in the early years what you personally accomplish matters less than what you help other people accomplish. A team that gets better is the only thing that lets a business grow beyond the founder’s own working hours.
Sheryl Sandberg has made this argument consistently, framing leadership as investing in the success of your team rather than in your own visible output, and describing strong working relationships as the product of being useful to people and wanting the same things.
Your output caps the business, your team’s does not
A founder who remains the most productive person in the business has built a job rather than a company. Every hour spent making someone else capable returns more than an hour spent doing the work yourself, and the arithmetic only becomes obvious after the point where it would have helped most.
Direct feedback given with genuine care is the hardest skill
The practice Sandberg is best known for combines saying the difficult thing clearly with obviously caring about the person hearing it. Most managers manage one half: either they are kind and vague, which leaves people unable to improve, or direct and cold, which makes people defensive. Both halves together is rare and it is what makes feedback usable.
Vague feedback is a failure of management, not of kindness
Telling someone their work was fine when it was not protects your comfort at the cost of their development. In a small team where one person’s performance is a large share of output, that cost is immediate. Saying precisely what was wrong, precisely what good looks like, and offering to help is the version that works.
Shared goals make relationships durable
Sandberg’s point about wanting the same things is a practical test for any working relationship, whether with a co-founder, a key employee or a supplier. Where the objectives genuinely align, disagreements are about method and get resolved. Where they do not, no amount of goodwill holds it together, and the sooner that is established the less it costs.
Caring about people is also a retention strategy
Small businesses cannot usually match larger salaries, so they retain people through work that develops them and managers who take them seriously. That is not a soft consideration, it is the main competitive tool a small employer has, and the baseline obligations that sit beneath it are set by the Department of Employment and Labour.
Frequently asked questions
What does people-centred leadership mean practically?
Measuring yourself on what your team accomplishes and learns rather than on your own visible output, because that is what lets a business grow past the founder.
What is the problem with being the most productive person in your business?
It means you have built a job rather than a company, and the business is capped at your personal working hours.
Why is most feedback ineffective?
Because managers deliver either kindness without clarity, which leaves people unable to improve, or clarity without care, which makes them defensive. Both together is what works.
How do you test whether a working relationship will last?
Whether both parties genuinely want the same outcome. Where goals align, disagreements are about method. Where they do not, goodwill does not compensate.
How does a small business retain good people without matching salaries?
Through work that develops them and managers who take them seriously, which is the main competitive advantage a small employer has.
Further reading
Originally published in September 2017. Updated September 2026 to apply the leadership argument to the position a small business owner is actually in.
