It may seem relatively clear to you that as the President or CEO of your company, you are the leader of it, but in reality your company likely has many leaders.  The trick is to get all of them pulling in the same direction. 

Ask any business guru, and you will get a list of characteristics or traits that define leadership, usually by making a comparison between mere managers and true leaders. As I see it, "manager" is a title that is bestowed on a person in an organization because there has to be someone who is ultimately responsible for getting things done.  "Leaders", on the other hand, come from many levels within the organization.  Ideally, all of your managers will be leaders, and you will likely have leaders on your front-line production and customer service staff as well.  This is actually a good thing!

Of course, managers have to have the ability to hire and fire, issue policy rules, and do other defined tasks that typically fall under management purview.  Leaders in the company cannot take the initiative to simply ignore the directives of a manager; however, you do want leaders on your staff because they can be a tremendous help to a manager, if they are enlisted to help, rather than alienated as trouble-makers. 

If your entire staff were made up of people who did only what you told them to do, how productive would your business be?  Do you have time in your day to dictate every decision and every action your entire staff makes?  If so, why do you have a staff?  It would probably be easier to simply do it all yourself.

What you want instead, are leaders who can take the ball that you have set into motion and keep it rolling.  You want people who can come up with new and innovative ideas that may even be superior to your own.  You want people who are willing to try new things rather than doing the same things in the same way simply because "that's the way it's always been done."  Every company needs its worker bees, but I would submit to you that every company also needs its leaders, and that these leaders should be embedded in every level from the janitorial staff to the executive suite.

Managing these leaders in such a way that they contribute to the direction you are trying to take your company is what distinguishes an executive-level leader.  Poorly managed leaders can quickly undermine the executive leadership by simply leading employees off the corporate path.  Leaders embedded low in the corporate organization chart can easily become disenfranchised when their ideas are not heard and when they are not valued as an important cog in the company machine.

This doesn't mean that you are turning over the prison to the inmates.  Rather, it means that you respect the abilities of your employees and make sure they have an opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to the company.