CEO's leadership is an organizational dimension that has not been carefully studied in the literature on small firms. Particularly, as organizational learning is now anchored as an important part of the building and sustaining of the small and medium firm's competitive advantage, how leadership characteristics may moderate the positive link between organizational learning and performance is important for managers and researchers. We could hypothesize that, combined with organizational learning processes, some leaders' characteristics and behaviours are more important than others to lead the development of an organizational climate oriented toward innovation or performance. This paper presents the theoretical framework and hypotheses of this on-going research on the links between organizational learning, leadership and performance in small and medium firms.