Does Being An Entrepreneur Make You A Leader?
Oftentimes, entrepreneurs and founders take the head positions in their own companies. Myself included. But the difficult thing that we entrepreneurs need to realize is that being a great entrepreneur doesn’t mean you’ll be a great leader. In fact, it’s very likely that if you keep thinking like an entrepreneur, you actually won’t think like a good leader.
When entrepreneurs start out, the business is their everything. It’s what they think about all day and (unfortunately) most of the night. They make sacrifices, they put all their energy into it, and they invest more than just money — they make emotional and psychological deposits as well. I know. I often refer to Clockwork as my baby and am so attached to it that it’s as much a part of me as my family.
Ultimately, that quality is both the upside and downfall of entrepreneurs. Personally, entrepreneurship suits me. I also just love what I do. Not just working in the tech industry, but being who I am in this industry at this time. Also — let’s be honest — I am basically unhireable, so I have to make this work.
Our society glorifies entrepreneurs and romanticizes start-ups — especially since the tech boom. From the outside it looks like a fast way to make a lot of money and to lead a lifestyle full of ping pong, beer, and sweatshirts. But, as you can guess, it’s not quite that simple. What I learned very quickly as an entrepreneur was that to grow our organization, I had to provide different things to the company and to the people. The company needed an entrepreneur, the people needed a leader. You can do both, but it requires a shift in how you think about every aspect of your business.
For me, the important lessons boiled down to three aspects of business: ownership, focus, and service.
Focus
Entrepreneur: Product development
Leader: Human development
A leader makes human decisions, not just business decisions. While all the decisions bubble up to being about the health, stability, and security of the organization, how you make decisions is about the people — and fostering a happy and healthy group of people doing the work — more than about the work itself.
Ownership
Entrepreneur: My idea
Leader: Everyone’s idea
Basically, you have to learn to let go. Entrepreneurs often think in terms of “their idea” — whether it’s the original business inspiration, a new product, or a new way of serving customers. But that flip-lops when you’re leading: That idea has to become everyone’s. Everyone has to feel ownership and they’ll only feel it if it’s true.
Service
Entrepreneur: Serve an idea
Leader: Serve people
Leaders serve people. Period. Being a good leader means compelling people to want to follow you. Entrepreneurs work at the service of their idea — they work to build a thing, a company, a device, a piece of software — but a good leader builds up people. They know that creating an environment that puts the needs and wants of it’s users first, in this case the employees, will ultimately best serve the long-term vision.
Sometimes the lure of the entrepreneurial lifestyle or the lure of the idea itself gets in the way of good leadership. In order to make your idea matter, you need people to bring it to life. You need to support them, encourage them, care about them. Be as mindful about what it takes to be an effective leader as you are about the marketability of your product. You will need to master both — or find a good partner.
