What’s your most important attribute?

Most folks find this question tough to answer, which is how it should be. If you can single out your top trait without giving it any thought, you’re liable to be pigeonholed as a one-dimensional person. Fair or not, one-dimensional people don’t get much respect.

At the same time, it’s important to have a good grasp of your general strengths: the handful of personality traits of which any fair-minded person would say you possess more than your fair share. If you can’t identify a single characteristic that elevates you above your peers, you’re liable to be pigeonholed as, well, average. Fair or not, average people don’t get much respect. (At least, no more than average.)

Entrepreneurs need to be doubly conscious of their personal strengths and weaknesses. If you can’t sell yourself, you’re going to have a hard time selling your business idea (or your product, when it’s time). This is especially true for younger entrepreneurs, who have more to prove than their wizened counterparts.

In the rough-and-tumble startup world, some traits are simply more important than others. When you do certain things well, your backers, employees, and customers can forgive almost everything else. If you think you have what it takes, match your personal strengths against this list of six traits every young entrepreneur should have:

1. Decisiveness

As the head honcho, the buck stops with you, and you need to know when to lay down the law. Contrary to popular belief, successful business owners do back down from controversial decisions — but not very often, and not without owning up to the mistake. To reduce the likelihood that you’ll need to back off once you’ve pulled the trigger, pair your decisive approach with open thoughtfulness — more “trigger-protective” than “trigger-happy.”

2. Drive

Setting goals is one thing. Doing whatever it takes to reach them is quite another.

Drive is hard to teach. To use an old cliche, you really have to want it more than everyone else.

3. Long-Term Vision

Drive won’t get you far in the absence of long-term vision. The reverse is also true; without an innate drive to reach your goals, it’s hard to make a long-term vision stick. The value of both, together, is hard to argue with; a great vision inspires your team with what’s possible, and a relentless drive spurs them to achieve or get out of the way.

4. Ownership

Successful business owners own their greatest successes — and their most humiliating failures. If you can’t admit when you’re at fault and prefer instead to pin the blame on a hapless subordinate, you might be in the wrong business.

5. Humility

This is a tough one for many Type-A entrepreneurs. It’s tempting to believe that you have all the answers, particularly as you notch key wins and find yourself at the helm of a business that seems to have boundless reserves of momentum.

If you don’t recognize that your wisdom has limits, and that you as a human being are fallible, you risk plowing headlong into a situation that you can’t control — and whose odds don’t favor you or your team. When you admit that you can’t do everything better than everyone else, you lift the burden of impossible expectations and remove a crucial bottleneck to growth — your own ego.

6. The Ability to Say “No”

Oh, yes, as a business owner, you need to know when to say “no” and mean it. Knowing when to say “no” isn’t just about marking your territory and making it clear that you’re in charge. It’s about recognizing and avoiding low-value demands on your time. By saying “no” to something that isn’t likely to benefit you or your team, or at least isn’t likely to create as much value as the alternative, you’re leaving the door open for a more productive — and profitable — use of your time.

What’s your best entrepreneurial trait?

You can follow Steve Voudouris here.

Congratulations! Your startup is getting off the ground. Prospects are calling, sales are rising, and real money is trickling through the door. If things keep up like this, you’re going to need to hire some people who actually know what they’re doing; driven as you are, you can’t possibly do everything necessary to keep your business running.

You know what you need to do next, but what comes after that? What happens six or nine months into your new finance guy’s gig when you ask him to take the lead on some mission-critical project and he responds dismissively because he’s years older than you? What’s a young boss to do?

Start with these straightforward tips for how to manage your elders:

Take a Hands-On Approach to Recruiting

In the beginning, this will happen as a matter of course. As one of the only people working for your company, you’ll necessarily interview each new candidate yourself. As your company grows, it’ll be easier to delegate recruiting to your emerging HR department, and they’ll hopefully do a great job.

Don’t completely detach yourself from hiring, though. Take the time to personally vet candidates for each mission-critical role, especially those who’ll own entire processes or departments. Start building relationships during the interview and on-boarding phases, making sure that each candidate feels like a valued member of the team — and that you need their skills just as much as they need their jobs.

Make It Clear That You Don’t Have All the Answers

You don’t want to come off like a clueless boss, but you also can’t afford to seem like a know-it-all — especially when you’re young enough to be your subordinates’ kid. When you bring someone new onboard, make sure they understand that you can’t do their job better than they can. Ask questions, invite them to tackle vexing problems, and give them space to manage their spheres as they see fit.

Stake a Claim to Your Own Expertise

You don’t have to come right out and tell your more mature underlings that “age is just a number and I’m the boss” to make the point loud and clear. From the beginning, make sure your subordinates understand that despite your lack of wrinkles and dearth of specialized knowledge in whatever process you’ve hired them to own, you have a legitimate claim to your own area of expertise: figuring out how to get things done.

In other words, though the experience you accumulate as a real-world business owner is necessarily more diffuse than what you’d learn in law school or accounting class, it’s no less relevant to the work at hand.

Remember, it’s essential to collaborate with these employees on equal footing, leveraging their expertise and drawing on your own hard-won experience whenever appropriate. It’s not always easy, but that’s why you’re the boss.

Coach Up, Coach Out

Career track management is a double-edged sword. You need to provide ample professional development opportunities for employees up and down the ladder, particularly expert-level workers who can’t easily be replaced. Team members who feel like there’s no room to grow at your company won’t stick around to find out.

Likewise, you need to recognize when a particular subordinate is no longer contributing to your company’s growth or goal-setting, and determine whether you’d be better off with or without them in the future. If it’s the latter, it’s your responsibility to coach them out of the organization.