I recently saw a study of serial entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs had started multiple businesses and experienced both success and failure. It is interesting because the survey also compared the characteristics of entrepreneurs with a control group.
The survey found that entrepreneurs possess five skill.They excel in five soft skills and fare in them much better than the control group of corporate professionals. These skills, by their nature, develop slowly over time. These are the five skills:
1. Persuasion: Persuasion for this study was defined as the ability to persuade others to join the mission. So the presence of this skill is not surprising.
2. Leadership: Leadership was defined as having a compelling vision for the future.
3. Personal Accountability: has been defined as willingness to take responsibility for personal actions.
4. Goal orientation: in this study was defined as focusing all the efforts on a goal or objective.
5. Interpersonal skills: They include communicating, building rapport, and relating well to people from different backgrounds and communication styles
But the surprising part of this survey is the lack of four skills that entrepreneurs do not possess. Here are the four skills that entrepreneurs lack.
1. Lack of Empathy: This is surprising because entrepreneurs typically solve problems of people when they come out with their new ideas. This suggests that entrepreneurs have empathy at an intellectual level. They expect returns from understanding others problems, which people with empathy typically do not expect.
2. Inability to manage themselves: This is not so surprising, because entrepreneurs are so busy managing their enterprises that they do not have time to manage themselves.
3. Inability to plan and organise: Lack of this skill is also perhaps due to the above reason. They are unable to manage their calendar, organise their meetings, and keep their office neat and tidy.
4. Lack of capacity in Analytical Problem solving: Lack of this skill is surprising. But hindsight suggests that this may be due to their 'action orientation' and wanting to 'get things done' yesterday. They constantly hear others who block their ideas and therefore they perhaps tend to dislike analytical problem solving that will slow down their decision-making
This survey also suggested that good entrepreneurs somehow find a way to negotiate the lack of above skills. For instance, entrepreneurs find someone to fill the gaps in second and third skill by having someone to take care of their time management and meetings. Similarly, good entrepreneurs find someone to manage their employees - either their friend or a loyal employee - who perhaps has more empathy than them so that they can retain their employees. To compensate for their inability to solve problems analytically, successful Entrepreneurs find partners who can execute their strategy well.
As an entrepreneur, do you lack any of this skill? And what are you doing to compensate for it?.
The survey found that entrepreneurs possess five skill.They excel in five soft skills and fare in them much better than the control group of corporate professionals. These skills, by their nature, develop slowly over time. These are the five skills:
1. Persuasion: Persuasion for this study was defined as the ability to persuade others to join the mission. So the presence of this skill is not surprising.
2. Leadership: Leadership was defined as having a compelling vision for the future.
3. Personal Accountability: has been defined as willingness to take responsibility for personal actions.
4. Goal orientation: in this study was defined as focusing all the efforts on a goal or objective.
5. Interpersonal skills: They include communicating, building rapport, and relating well to people from different backgrounds and communication styles
But the surprising part of this survey is the lack of four skills that entrepreneurs do not possess. Here are the four skills that entrepreneurs lack.
1. Lack of Empathy: This is surprising because entrepreneurs typically solve problems of people when they come out with their new ideas. This suggests that entrepreneurs have empathy at an intellectual level. They expect returns from understanding others problems, which people with empathy typically do not expect.
2. Inability to manage themselves: This is not so surprising, because entrepreneurs are so busy managing their enterprises that they do not have time to manage themselves.
3. Inability to plan and organise: Lack of this skill is also perhaps due to the above reason. They are unable to manage their calendar, organise their meetings, and keep their office neat and tidy.
4. Lack of capacity in Analytical Problem solving: Lack of this skill is surprising. But hindsight suggests that this may be due to their 'action orientation' and wanting to 'get things done' yesterday. They constantly hear others who block their ideas and therefore they perhaps tend to dislike analytical problem solving that will slow down their decision-making
This survey also suggested that good entrepreneurs somehow find a way to negotiate the lack of above skills. For instance, entrepreneurs find someone to fill the gaps in second and third skill by having someone to take care of their time management and meetings. Similarly, good entrepreneurs find someone to manage their employees - either their friend or a loyal employee - who perhaps has more empathy than them so that they can retain their employees. To compensate for their inability to solve problems analytically, successful Entrepreneurs find partners who can execute their strategy well.
As an entrepreneur, do you lack any of this skill? And what are you doing to compensate for it?.
