# 81. The Most Common Leadership Blindspots in Small Businesses

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/visionary-s-pursuit-7083552/81-the-most-common-leadership-blindspots-in-small-businesses
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/visionary-s-pursuit-7083552/81-the-most-common-leadership-blindspots-in-small-businesses.md
Podcast: [Visionary's Pursuit](https://stenobird.com/podcast/visionary-s-pursuit-7083552)
Published: 2026-04-22T08:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://www.carozuleta.com/podcasts/visionary-s-pursuit/episodes/2149197739
Audio file: https://app.kajabi.com/podcasts/medias/2149197739.mp3
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Duration seconds: 1834

## Resource

Episode Summary So many of my conversations with high level executives are about their disdain for their work. One told me he goes to the office every day to breathe toxic air. That's what prompted this episode. Research from the National Association for the Self-Employed shows employees of smaller businesses report higher satisfaction than those at larger corporations, but only by about 11 points, which tells me there's still a lot of room for smaller businesses to do better. And the biggest lever for that sits with the founder. In this episode, I move past the usual conversation about "happy employees" and make the case for something more durable, which is engagement. I walk through the three categories of reactive tendencies we all carry into leadership, the ones we developed as kids to keep ourselves safe, and how the overuse of those tendencies quietly erodes trust, culture, and performance inside small businesses. If you've ever wondered why your team isn't following through, why the same patterns keep surfacing no matter who you hire, or why you feel resistance to the harder parts of leading, this episode is for you. Key Takeaways Employees at smaller businesses report 11 points higher satisfaction than those at larger companies, according to the National Association for the Self-Employed. But small doesn't automatically mean engaged, and the founder's leadership is the single biggest variable Happiness is fleeting. Engagement is different. William Kahn defined it in 1990 as the degree to which people bring their full selves physically, cognitively, and emotionally to their work. That's what we should be optimizing for Reactive tendencies are behaviors we developed as young children to keep ourselves safe. They made sense then, and many of them st…

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