ASK ANY RANDOM GROUP of people to name an inspiring leader from history and the usual names come tumbling forward: George Washington, Elizabeth I, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King Jr. … figures who responded to a crisis, unified their people and changed the course of history through a combination of will, charisma and daring.

Ask for great managers from history — the individuals who helped translate vision into action — and the names are likely to come a bit slower: Alexander Hamilton, George C. Marshall … um, Tim Cook?

The shorter list should not 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 their 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.”

Another key distinction is that a leader provides clarity of purpose, outlines the big picture and leverages this vision to guide their teams. They identify the universal and capitalize on it. In contrast, good managers zero in on what is unique about each of their workers, their individual strengths, and then 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 cause is a small business, you have to 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 provide either. 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.

To help with both, in the following pages we share tips from our reading of the world’s leading experts on leadership and management as well as advice from your peers in the PETS+ Brain Squad. We’ve split the guidance between that which applies to leaders and recommendations more relevant to a manager, with the option for you to decide which to use and when. What all of the tips have in common, though, is that they are actionable — just waiting for you to implement them.

LEADER1. 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 percentage points better than chance.) Nevertheless, it remains the most 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, listen to London School of Business professor Herminia Ibarra. She writes in Act Like A Leader, Think Like a Leader: “Think of leadership development as trying on possible selves. It’s OK to be inconsistent from one day to the next. 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.”

MANAGER2. Always be monitoring

“The greatest influence in the world is the influence of norms,” Joseph Grenny, author of Crucial Accountability, says. “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. He explains, “When we coach executives to inspire others, we tell them to find that one positive example — a person, a team, a unit that went the extra mile to help a customer, to help out a fellow employee, meet a particularly high standard — and make it evident that these are your expectations, and let it sink into the collective conscience of the entire organization.”

MANAGER3. Manage more

A recent article in the London Business School’s Business Strategy Review recounts an experiment carried out with a sales team at an insurance company. The manager was asked to free up two additional hours a day to just manage. She handed off some admin work, skipped less important meetings and spent the extra time giving more guidance to her team. After three weeks, sales were up 5% over the previous three-week period, low performers had greatly improved, and no one wanted to go back to the old ways of working. If your typical response to handling a problem is, “Let me take care of this,” then you may well have something to learn.

LEADER4. Be decisive

Among the virtues traditionally considered as “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, business author and ad man Roy Williams says. “Avoid the ‘Ready-aim-aim-aim-aim’ syndrome. You have to 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.

LEADER5. 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, especially in retail and services, where it’s imperative your customers know what you stand for in the market. 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 100 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.”

MANAGER6. Know the value of time

It sounds obvious, but the more senior the worker, the deeper the work they should do. And yet shallow and reactive work seems to always beckon. The secret to getting out of this trap, David Brown of the Edge Retail Academy says, 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 sales per hour for the store. That figure alone should make you drop the squeegee and call your neighbor’s kid to see if he wants to make some extra money cleaning windows. But also, do a daily tracking report of all your activities in 30-minute increments for several weeks (there are some great phone 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 that more than 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.

LEADER7. Be visible

“Even when you delegate, be visible,” Victor Santucci of Garden State Pet Center in Audubon, NJ, advises. “Your team needs to see that you’re present, invested, and willing to get your hands dirty when needed — even if you’re no longer sweeping floors every day. Your presence sets the tone, shows commitment and reminds everyone that the vision matters. People won’t follow someone they never see.”

MANAGER8. Embrace negative feedback

Don’t buy into the argument that there is no place for negative feedback in the workplace, social psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson says. Yes, be effusive with praise when someone is learning a new skill — it boosts their confidence and their commitment to the task — but don’t shy from offering “informative” criticism to a seasoned hand. “Negative feedback (e.g., ‘Here’s where you went wrong …’), tells you where you need to spend your effort, and offers insight into how you might improve,” she writes on HeidiGrantHalvorson.com.

LEADER9. 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 Out of The Question: How Curious Leaders Win, he argues that the best leaders and managers constantly want to learn, explore and innovate. Venture capitalist Paul Graham came to a similar conclusion in his widely read essay “How to Do Great Work,” writing that, “Curiosity is the best guide. Your curiosity never lies, and it knows more than you do about what’s worth paying attention to.”

MANAGER10. 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 during the day 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 as his greatest asset. “And the way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement,” he once said.

LEADER11. 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 minister. Given our always-on lifestyles in 2025, it’s now probably even more important to give yourself such a break every week. Schedule it.

MANAGER12. Leverage strengths

According to Marcus Buckingham, author of The One Thing You Need to Know: … About Great Managing, Great Leading and Sustained Individual Success, the key attribute of top managers is that they are extremely adept at identifying their employees’ individual strengths and capitalizing on them. Apart from the natural productivity boost of getting people to do what they are good at, there are a host of other benefits of such management — employees are better motivated, need less supervision and stay longer. Similarly, it helps to know what triggers people and fires them 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 (your business makes more sales, they make more money, get greater job satisfaction, feel appreciated, etc). This approach, he argues, is considerably more effective than trying to improve people’s weak points — an uphill battle that yields suboptimal returns.

LEADER13. Maintain your values

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,” Grenny says. 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.

MANAGER14. 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 staff and retain 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. It’s OK to keep them short.

LEADER15. 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 Mogadishu, Somalia, firefight 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.

LEADER16. Say it over and over and …

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.” He adds, however, that the important thing to remember about such studies is whether the magic number is five or 55, “The message is — people are skeptical about what they hear unless they hear it repeatedly over time.” This is especially true as your business grows in size and complexity.

LEADER17. Listen

Today, at 75 years old, Tom Peters 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.”

LEADER18. Pause

Kirsten Puhr of The NW Dog in Poulsbo, WA, agrees, “Whether in one-on-ones, team meetings or tough conversations, pausing and allowing silence can be one of your most powerful tools. It gives employees time to process, speak honestly or bring up concerns they might otherwise bury. It shows you’re not just waiting to talk, but truly listening. Most managers rush to fill silence with answers or solutions, but often, the best insights come when you don’t. It’s quiet leadership that speaks volumes.”

MANAGER19. Coach the coach

With the internet now delivering much of the product knowledge and “value” that sales associates only 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.”

LEADER20. Embrace ‘failure’

Warren G. Bennis, one of the pioneers of leadership studies (and an advisor to Ronald Reagan and John F. 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.

MANAGER21. Don’t let 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, Yves Doz and Mikko Kosonen note in Fast Strategy.

Some examples:

• Forging a clear vision — can result in tunnel vision.
• Honing business processes — can create inflexible systems that can’t adapt to new challenges.
• Building deep customer relationships — can inhibit experiments.
• Choosing proven leaders for projects — can breed overconfidence and resistance to new ideas.
• Team building — can lead to silos and a lack of cooperation.

The answer? Shake it up. Assign staff to work in an area outside their key competence, give 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 to keep running small experiments so as to perpetually evolve as a leader and as a manager.

LEADER & MANAGER22. Be both

Katherine Ostiguy fills both the leadership and managerial roles at Crossbones in Providence, RI. “To me, they’re so intertwined that it’s tough to tease them apart. Even when I have to do ‘managerial’ duties, like resolve a client concern or delegate tasks, I’m still trying to do it from a place of leadership. By that, I mean inspiring and motivating as much as possible along the way.” She adds that strengthening skills in both areas is important. “I have not regretted one minute of any time I have spent improving my communication skills or learning about how to be a more effective leader. Your continuing education shouldn’t just be about pet food ingredients or dog training techniques. If you have a team, it also needs to be about managing and leading people.”

MORE TIPS FROM THE PETS+ BRAIN SQUAD

When we asked the PETS+ Brain Squad to share their thoughts on leadership and management, the insights came rolling in. Here are 12 additional tips from their feedback.

LEADER & MANAGER1. Shift as needed

“I make a very conscious effort to shift between being a leader and a manager, depending on the situation and the needs of my team.

“As a leader, my focus is on vision, culture and inspiration. I try to lead by example, staying passionate about the mission behind Garden State Pet Center — from offering better nutrition for pets to educating the community. In this mode, I’m more about coaching than correcting, encouraging growth, creativity and ownership. I ask questions like ‘What do you think we could do differently?’ or ‘How can we make this experience better for our customers?’ to spark engagement.

“As a manager, I shift gears into structure, accountability and execution. Here, I’m more hands-on with setting clear expectations, tracking performance, and making sure the day-to-day operations run smoothly. This often involves being more direct, setting deadlines and making sure systems are being followed.

“The key difference is in tone and intent: leadership is long-term and inspirational, while management is immediate and operational. I’ve learned that balancing both is essential — a good leader without structure creates chaos, and a good manager without vision builds burnout.

“Knowing when to step into each role — and being intentional about it — is what keeps my team motivated, productive, and aligned with our bigger mission.” — Victor Santucci of Garden State Pet Center in Audubon, NJ

LEADER2. Forgive yourself

“Always do your best. If you fail, at least you know you gave it your all. If you succeed, you have every right to celebrate. People spend too much time worrying about what they could have/should have done. For one’s sanity and, ultimately, health, you just need to forgive yourself and move on.” — Julie Johannes Happy Hounds Pet Supply, Bigfork, MT

MANAGER3. Practice distance

“I am a very good leader, but not a great manager. Being a manager takes an incredible amount of fortitude and strength. It also requires maintaining emotional distance from employees. I read something once by the manager of a baseball team, who said he never travelled with the team because if he got too close to anyone, he’d have a tough time firing them the next day. That stuck with me. I’m improving my managerial skills by consciously separating business relationships from friendships. It can feel lonely at times because we all spend most of our waking hours with business acquaintances, not friends.” — Molly Lewis, Dog River Pet Supplies, Hood River, OR

LEADER4. Lead by example

“A leader carries a baton and marches along whistling a cheery tune. Others can’t help but want to join the parade! Being a manager is never as much fun, lots of details, requires accountability, holding people to standard. For me, it’s all about loving what you do. Leading by example. Enthusiasm is always contagious.” — Rebeca Santos, Pets Love and Happiness, Huntsville, AL

LEADER5. Hear them out

“In my opinion, one of the best qualities of a great leader is someone who is a good listener. People have a desire to be heard. That doesn’t mean we may always agree with what someone is saying, but we give them the respect to hear them out.” — Pat Schiek, Lucky Dogs, Skaneateles, NY

LEADER6. Work on your business, not in

“We have transitioned more this year to leaders and are trying to let our managers run the store. It’s hard to not be as involved in the details, but it’s been good for them. We work from home ‘on the business’ and no longer ‘in the business,’ unless we are needed to cover a vacation, etc. We still attend manager meetings and come in and walk merchandising goals and maps, seasonal changes, etc. Being a manager can be challenging keeping the team focused and on task, but it’s also fun. Being a leader is challenging to be more hands off when it is your baby, and not micromanage the managers.” — Jennifer Larsen, Firehouse Pet Shop, Wenatchee, WA

MANAGER7. Be direct

“Be clear and direct, but polite, about what you need someone to do — don’t sugar coat it or leave room for interpretation.” — Cassie Nilsson The Mill Stores, Whiteford, MD

LEADER & MANAGER8. In this order

“When I’m successfully leading, I find the managing gets less and less  …  not the easiest for me, but it works. Definately have to put the ‘boss’ hat on to keep repeating the goals and expectations, over and over. Indies like control, but it does hamper your staff. Lead first, manage second. Something I need tattooed on my wrist. — Karen Conell, The Bark Market Llc, Delavan, WI

MANAGER9. Customize support

“I believe every individual on my team is different and their definition of success is going to be different from every other individual on the team. With 20-plus team members between two locations, there’s a lot of moving parts, but I always take the time to make sure I’m personally speaking with each of them to learn what they need from me in terms of support so they can realize their own definition of success. By doing that, we realize success together as a team.” — Erin Paitrick, Woof Gang Bakery & Grooming Summerville & Moncks Corner, Summerville, SC

LEADER & MANAGER10. Lead by example, manage with compassion

“I’ve worked under managers who got stuff done, but people really hated them. I just can’t be that person.” — Keith Henline, Asheville Pet Supply, Asheville, NC

LEADER & MANAGER11. Lead from the front

“I’m a ‘lead from the front’ manager. I never ask my staff to do anything I won’t do. These roles are intertwined. I don’t separate one from the other. Real managers lead. Just delegating or bossing earns far less respect than leading. Work side by side with them. Do the dirty work in front of them so they have no gripes when you ask them to do it.” — Brett Foreman, Eupawria Holistic Pet Center, Owego, NY

MANAGER12. Be selective when hiring

“Creating a culture that makes the daily hustle and bustle enjoyable is imperative,” Lacey Welcher of Firehouse Pet Shop-Puyallup in Puyallup, WA, offers. “While you may get a resume for a candidate that looks amazing and has tons of relevant experience, if they are going to disrupt your team it is not worth it.”