But does this always mean the leader people will follow is a "good" leader? Obviously not. People willingly followed Adolf Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte and, more recently, Osama bin Laden, all with tragic consequences.

Fortunately, people have also followed positive leaders like Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Mohandas Gandhi, and Franklin Roosevelt. But whether good or bad, it's obvious they all had certain characteristics in common that made them effective leaders.

But why should a body shop owner or manager care? Is it that important for business success to be an effective leader? And what does all of this have to do with effective marketing? Let's look first at the role of the effective leader.

Leading by example

Mark Twain once wrote, "Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example." A fellow writer, Christian Bovee, added: "Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate the characters we most admire."

And so, when we have a cowboy or a Texan for president, suddenly we see people sporting ten gallon hats and cowboy boots all over the place, and the first lady's hairdo becomes all the rage. So the shop owner who never listens may find his or her employees don't listen either. And the shop owner who puts off important decisions and procrastinates on important advertising and marketing campaigns shouldn't be surprised that people around him or her also put things off and procrastinate on important projects. In fact, that characteristic may have led to one of the truest of business proverbs: "If it weren't for the last minute nothing would get done at all."

One of the curses of leadership is that one's followers imitate both the good and the bad. As one scripture puts it, "If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall in the ditch." (Matthew 15:14)

The larger vision

Body shop owners are almost always fiercely independent, hard-working and self-reliant. While these characteristics are what allowed them to beat out the competition and survive, they can also limit their ability to lead when they are trying to grow beyond being the on-site boss/manager with a few key workers turning out the jobs. At that level, success simply consists of keeping parts and labor costs down far enough to take home some serious net profits.

The great danger at that point is trying to be "the lone ranger." Often we forget that even the Lone Ranger had Tonto to back him up.

The day a shop owner begins to think about hiring a manager or preparing his or her business to eventually sell it, a new frame of mind is needed.

Profits for the owner are no longer enough. Buyers and investors demand a return on their investment, so profits must now exceed what an owner wishes to take out of his or her business. A professional manager will expect to share in the proceeds and growth of the business. And the astute shop owner should know that if he or she hasn't created an upward career path with increasing remuneration for the shop's most productive workers, they will go elsewhere if they get the opportunity. Even Tonto might have quit on the Lone Ranger if he didn't get to share in some of those silver bullets.

A shop owner who provides only for his own wealth and retirement, while allowing his managers and workers to stagnate in a futureless void, is like a general who sends his troops to almost certain death while he enjoys relative safety and security behind the lines.

The inspiration factor

Harry Truman said, "Leadership is the ability to get men to do what they don't want to do -- and like it."

Getting other people to do what you want requires using some very effective leadership skills. I have used a familiar set of initials to identify three key elements to getting people to willingly follow a leader. You've all heard of the CIA, but my CIA doesn't stand for the Central Intelligence Agency. It stands for Communication, Inspiration and Agreement.

Whatever your political persuasion, I think that you'll agree that Ronald Reagan was a master of subtle control. He persuaded a predominantly Democratic congress to reduce government spending, to cut taxes and to rebuild the military. How did he accomplish this herculean feat? He communicated directly with the people. The speeches he made were filled with inspirational examples, stories and ideals. And using every bit of charm and charisma he could muster, he worked tirelessly to obtain the agreement he needed to get what he wanted.