Written by Denitsa Simeonova
What are the similarities to entrepreneurship and which are the key skills to have in order to be successful?
Are leaders born or made?
The endlessly debated question in startup circles if being an entrepreneur is a matter of nature versus nurture also arises when leaders are discussed. To me the two concepts are linked in many ways, therefore I have decided to look at the interrelations between them and share my findings through my prism of a former ESTIEM leader and Executive director of the Association of the Bulgarian Leaders and Entrepreneurs — ABLE.
Needed characteristics for success
The individuals being considered as leaders and/ or entrepreneurs do share similar characteristics — at least when we talk about the successful ones. Being a natural leader or entrepreneur does not mean you would excel in your undertaking. In order to be successful, you need to develop certain skills — leadership is a combination of them, not a trait itself. Same applies for being entrepreneurial.
We can point out way too many skills that would help you be a good leader or entrepreneur — e.g. creative thinking, responsibility, excellent communication, but I would like to highlight one of them which may not come to your mind first. I have heard it from a speech of the well-known Simon Sinek* who describes the importance of first listening to others’ opinions before making your own, arguing that the best leaders are the ones who learn to be the last to speak**.
“Listen to others’ opinions before making your own — the best leaders are the ones who learn to be the last to speak.” — Simon Sinek
From my own experience, I have also realized how important it is for the leader to understand and empower its team, to provide its members with a safe environment where each person’s opinion is heard and taken into consideration. In addition, this is a much-needed skill for the entrepreneur — usually he or she would bring vision and guidance to a strong team of sectoral experts, while sometimes he or she him-/herself is not even partly aware of the sector or the technology behind the product being developed. Being a good listener is also empowering the entrepreneur in their research on customers’ needs since only when they really know the desires of their potential clients, they can create a good product-market fit. Finally, investors always look firstly at the team rather than the business idea itself when investing, therefore if you would like to raise money for your venture you would need to build a strong team and prove to be a good leader of it.
Practice makes perfect
All the above said is linked to experience, since to be a successful leader you need to have the experience in leading. It is similar to the idea that in order to create a successful venture you must have possibly failed in a few others and learned crucial lessons from this.
“To be a successful leader you need to have the experience in leading.”
A study from Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Kathryn Shaw in 2014 looked at data from 2.8 million small businesses to determine rates of success based on previous experience. It does not come as a surprise that success rates were many times higher for entrepreneurs who had previous experience running a business.
This may seem like an obvious observation, but it is important to consider in the discussion on whether entrepreneurs are born or made. The study leads us to conclude that regardless of your tendency to start a business, the real determining factor for success is how much experience you get in an entrepreneurial role. Everyone can become successful entrepreneur if they spend enough time developing certain skills, gaining entrepreneurial experience and committing themselves to self-improvement. I am sure that this applies for leaders as well.
It is not easy to derive neither the formula of leadership nor of entrepreneurship. It is also not easy to answer if leaders are born or self-made — there are, as we have all seen, hundreds of articles on these topics. Therefore, I would like that the takeaway from this short piece I wrote be the following: view ESTIEM as a playground to practice leadership and create your own initiatives within the network, listen to the fellow ESTIEMers with an open-mind and do not be afraid to fail a few times before finally succeeding. This may take you a step closer to be among the leaders of tomorrow.
* British-American author, motivational speaker and organizational consultant. ** In his talk Sinek is referring to the leadership lessons of the South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, political leader, and philanthropist Nelson Mandela.
Originally published at http://estiemblog.azurewebsites.net on May 28, 2019.
