Congratulations, you are a small business owner! You successfully wrote a business plan that demonstrates the feasibility of your concept and you've raised the funds needed to begin. You've hired the best and brightest and the doors are opened. You've targeted your market and the customers are approaching and ready to do business.

For the first time in your life you feel completely in control of your work life and ready to build the business you've dreamed of during years of corporate drudgery.

Will you be a leader or an enabler?

No one enjoys conflict! Very few revel in confronting problems head on. However, as a CEO, particularly as a woman CEO, you must keep your eyes open with an attention to detail, listen to what is being said even when the words are not directly spoken and speak up in a timely fashion.

Your intuition only brings you success if you ACT on it. When you see an employee not meeting their goals, or hear problems of discontented customers you MUST speak up immediately. Action is required immediately. Business problems fester just the way personal problems fester and eventually will bring down a company. When employees are not meeting your expectations and you decide to let it pass, at least for awhile, the behavior rarely improves. Eventually the behavior is seen as the norm. You have enabled the employee and not addressed the situation as the leader you must be.

Running even a small business with one or two employees requires the same leadership qualities as a large organization. Enabling employees to do less than what is required and accepting excuses for poor behavior in order to avoid the consequences will eventually destroy the company you are building. Leaders speak up and keep teams focused on company objectives.

The see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil approach leads to the downfall of even the most successful business concepts. Women entrepreneurs are particularly vulnerable to this model.