Which comes first entrepreneurship or leadership or are they so intertwined that they come hand in hand? If I want to be successful in business do you focus on being more entrepreneurial or do you focus on developing my leadership skills? Where’s the starting point or does it not even matter?
Many people see themselves as entrepreneurs because they are seeding and growing a business but many of those same people may not see themselves as leaders. You will also hear someone described as a good leader but not very entrepreneurial, is this even possible?.
There is I believe an important question underlying this discussion that goes to the core of building great businesses. Let’s consider three perspectives:
Perspective One: What Makes for a Great Entrepreneur?
Bil Aulet, a lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management lists what he considers are the myths of Entrepreneurs in an article by Minda Zetlin titled ‘What Does It Really Take to Be an Entrepreneur? 6 Beliefs That Are Dead Wrong.’
In the article Minda identifies the myths as follows:
- Entrepreneurs are not born and it takes willpower and a willingness to learn.
- Individuals don’t build companies it takes a diversified team.
- Good academic grades are not an indicator of entrepreneurial success, its hyper-focus in something that fascinates that is the mark.
- Charisma is not the ingredient for success rather it is vision, systematic thinking, strong analytic skills and a blend of humility and ambition
- Extreme self discipline is a key ingredient to success not the crazy or wild traits often ascribed to entrepreneurs
- Its not about taking reckless risks its about intelligent risk taking.
So from this list a good entrepreneur should be:
- Be a team leader
- Develop visions and a hyper-focus to pursue them
- Be analytic and capable to judging risk
- Be very self disciplined
- Be willing to learn, all the time
- Be humble whilst also ambitious
Perspective Two: What are the Seven Traits of Highly Successful Businesses?:
This list was developed from a study in 2001 of highly successful business people and sought to capture the reasons they had been able to build great business. The first seven reasons in order of importance are:
- Strong leadership providing direction and focus
- Focusing on the customer
- Vision in setting the future course
- Creating the correct culture
- Being proactive
- Identifying the core competencies and building on these
- Recognising the importance of employees
Highlighting the key words – leadership, focus (customer), vision, culture, proactivity, core competencies, importance employees.
Perspective Three: The Traits of Exceptional Leaders
This third perspective examines the traits of exceptional leaders and is taken from a study of a series of works titled the Seven Military Classics of Ancient China, which sought to identify the key agents in growing empires and winning conflicts. This list draws out the leadership traits that were considered the most important determinants of success. They are centered on character and very real and tangible qualities, and not merely the veneer of leadership.
The positive traits to be encouraged are:
- Wisdom: to enable you to quickly recognize circumstances in the business environment and lead necessary change expediently.
- Sincerity and Humanity: so that the participants in the business will know you are committed to the visions and strategies expressed, that you will support and reward them in their efforts to achieve the vision and that you understand the effort required to them.
- Courage: to act and take the risks to enable the business to achieve its goals.
- Discipline: to enforce rules within the business in pursuit of the vision.
The negative traits to be avoided at all costs are:
- Recklessness: will only destroy a business. There is probably no worse set of traits in a leader than that of bravado and overconfidence. Courage must be moderated by wisdom for a business to succeed.
- Cowardice: will only lead to lost opportunities. A leader who is scared of failure will not be able to lead a business through change.
- Impulsiveness: can be provoked into rage and result in a leader being drawn and led. A competitor may recognize and exploit such a weakness.
- False Pride: is readily manipulated by a competitor. Further, a leader with false pride will quickly place their own well being above that of the business to protect their image and feelings.
- Weak Compassion: leading to a relaxing of the need for strict conduct and compliance by the participants to the visions and strategies, will only result in the incapacity to reach business goals.
Three Perspectives Combined:
There are common themes that flow across what it takes to:
- Be a great entrepreneur,
- Build highly successful business, and
- Be an exceptional leader.
You can see the same themes being repeated across the three perspectives above. There is also a natural progression:
- from finding the spark of an idea that ignites your passion (your entrepreneurship) through;
- to recognizing and understanding the building blocks of growing highly successfully business, and
- then leading the great business that you have built.
They are not separate traits but all part of the whole that must be interwoven and continuously strengthen as you lead the pursuit of your vision and inspire others to follow and participate.
Great Entrepreneurship, Exceptional Leaders and Highly Successful Business are all built from common cornerstones and they all rely upon your character as an individual and whilst none of these are necessarily naturally born they are certainly breed over a lifetime of experiences and choices.
The starting point to success is to understand these traits and to seek to recognize and grow them in yourself.
