I spent most of my career in the hotel business, including time working in a number of foreign countries. Hotels taught me many things about leadership, but perhaps the most important was this: the higher you move up in an organization, the easier it becomes to believe you are supposed to have all the answers.

You aren’t.

As a hotel general manager and working with hospitality companies around the world taught me that I couldn’t know all the answers and that was okay. I continue to learn that lesson again and again here in leading the Fredericksburg Chamber of Commerce. Some of the best decisions I have been part of began with someone—including me—saying, “I don’t know. What do you think?”

That is why Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly Leadership Manifesto resonates with me. Brown describes a leader as someone who takes responsibility for finding potential in people and processes. Notice she doesn’t say anything about titles, corner offices or the number of people you manage.

By that definition, Gillespie County is filled with leaders.

They own restaurants, shops, wineries and lodging properties. They run construction companies, farms and professional-service firms. Some employ 20 people. Some employ two. And some unlock the front door every morning and are the entire company.

Leadership in a small business can be especially difficult because there isn’t much distance between the leader and the problem. When sales decline, you know it. When a good employee leaves, you feel it. When a customer posts a bad review, you read it and it hurts. And when cash flow gets tight, there isn’t a corporate office somewhere else worrying about it.

You are worrying about it.

That is where Brown’s message about vulnerability becomes practical. Vulnerability in leadership isn’t weakness. It is being willing to acknowledge uncertainty, ask uncomfortable questions, listen carefully and sometimes admit that something isn’t working.

For a Gillespie County business owner, that might mean gathering your employees and saying, “Business is slower than we expected. What are you seeing that I’m not?”

It might mean asking customers why they haven’t returned. It might mean admitting that the marketing strategy that worked three years ago isn’t working today. And perhaps hardest of all, it means listening to the answers without becoming defensive.

Here at the Chamber, some of my best information we use for our decisions come from simply listening to our members. They are on the front lines every day. They know what customers are saying, where expenses are increasing, what customers are doing differently and where opportunities may be emerging.

Leadership requires creating an environment where people are comfortable telling us what we need to hear—not simply what we want to hear. That is particularly important in Gillespie County because our independent businesses are part of what makes this community distinctive. Visitors don’t come to Fredericksburg because we look exactly like everywhere else. They come partly because we don’t.

The shop owner behind the counter, the winemaker pouring a glass, the chef visiting a table and the business owner who remembers a returning customer are part of our competitive advantage. Brown reminds us that courageous leadership requires curiosity, connection, honest feedback and the willingness to step into uncertainty.

Ask your employees what isn’t working. Ask your customers what you could do better. Ask yourself what you may need to change.

And every once in a while, be willing to say, “I got that wrong.”

After decades in hospitality and now working with hundreds of local businesses through the Chamber, I am increasingly convinced that leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It is about having the courage to ask the right questions, listening to the answers and then taking action that counts.

That is what it means to dare greatly.