(FORTUNE Small Business) – I used to think that everyone at Emerald Packaging, our family-owned plastic-bag-manufacturing company, needed to change--except me. Our plant manager had to upgrade his communications skills. My brother had to learn how to write a sales plan. And our materials manager--why couldn't I get his projections for our raw material needs on time? Meanwhile, I tended to think of myself as on top of my game, the chief architect of 30% annual sales growth, four years running. Not a bad record.

Yet my style was that of a laissez-faire CEO, always complaining about my managers instead of trying to improve their performance. My habit was to routinely point out my managers' inability to boost machine productivity or their failure to accurately forecast sales. Yes, sometimes I'd push through a new approach or program myself. More often I'd just let the matter drop until it angered me weeks or months later. Then I'd complain and let the cycle start again.

How had I reached this low point? It seems I had become as complacent as my managers were. Maybe I felt a touch of moral or intellectual superiority because I was able to see their shortcomings. That arrogance blinded me to an important truth: I often didn't really know what to do about these problems.

Then, a few months ago, I hired a raft of young talent to reinforce my troops, who were overwhelmed and exhausted by three years of fast growth. The result? I found out I had to remake myself. I needed to become a mentor, stitching together two groups--the Emerald Packaging lifers and the newbies--into a team. For the first time since I'd arrived almost nine years earlier, I felt as if I'd better head to business school to take refresher courses on leadership. During idle moments I even began looking up management programs, eagerly thumbing through classes I could take to boost my people skills.

I had hoped the arrival of young, aggressive new hires would shake up our culture. Over the course of three months I hired a new assistant plant manager to deal with materials planning, a woman with a master's degree in industrial engineering to battle our productivity issues, and a director of sales, whom I charged with finding new markets and creating a sales plan. Around the same time we also added a young college-educated woman to our customer-service team. All of them expected me to provide guidance and help them sort through the issues.

But for the first two weeks I barely spoke to the industrial engineer, even though she was my hire. I expected our plant manager, who had never managed anyone with her expertise, to smooth her transition into the company. But then I began to worry about how she was fitting in. It turned out that because our plant manager was overwhelmed by his own chores, the new hire felt a bit adrift. I helped her pick her priorities, then worked with the plant manager to make sure those tasks made sense to him. More important, I began to make time each week to meet with the three new managers and occasionally checked in on our new customer-service agent. I also addressed the growing insecurities of our old-timers, who were worried that the new kids might replace them. On a hunch I reassured our plant manager that his job was safe. He sighed. "I'd heard you planned to move me into sales." Knowing his job was secure, he became more receptive to ideas from the new hires. He seemed liberated.

And me? I felt renewed. The recruits confronted many of the issues I'd complained about, and the veterans eagerly helped. For the first time in years I experienced the adrenaline rush that comes with embracing new ideas without knowing exactly how our efforts might turn out.