I don’t mean to get carried away with the title of this post, but since reading John Maxwell’s book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, I’m convinced that one of the key success factors to being a successful business owner is becoming a better leader.

Here’s the good news – becoming a better leader is a learned behavior, just like most other skills we learn.

So, what exactly is this thing we call leadership? What does it look like?

According to John Maxwell “leadership is influence – nothing more, nothing less”. Leadership may come in all shapes and sizes, but it only comes from influence and that can’t be mandated by a title, position or knowledge. It must be earned. The only thing a title can buy is a little time – either to increase your level of influence with others or to undermine it.

I believe leadership is misunderstood. Many people mistakenly believe that by being a business owner or entrepreneur, you are automatically a leader. Nothing, in my opinion can be further from the truth. To be truly successful, a business owner needs to develop (and continue to develop) the necessary skills to not only influence the people in their organization, but their prospects and customers.

So what are some of the key elements of effective leadership?

Here’s a quick method to access what factors you rely upon to persuade people to follow you. For the following factors listed below, rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10. (1 means it’s not a factor while a 10 means you rely on it continually)

Now, try to determine ways to better utilize the factors with low scores.

Joe Costantino is a Duct Tape Marketing Coach located in Boston, Massachusetts. You can visit his website at www.businessmarketingsuccess.com.