Not only served as a business and technology leader for several decades, but I also studied leadership and talent performance at a doctoral level.
High-performance leadership is my research interest. As an entrepreneur, I have a particular focus on entrepreneurship. My approach to serving my clients are different than what taught at the traditional schools.
Even though I learned a lot from the body of knowledge, the more significant part of the iceberg manifested itself in ethnographic studies. In simple terms, being a member of business organisations and observing the dynamics methodically. Observing and being an observer added a different dimension to my studies.
Studying prominent traits that attract us to exceptional leaders provided useful insights that I shared in various publications and public presentations. My research revealed the difference between ordinary and extraordinary leaders.
In this post, I want to share ten essential roles and responsibilities of exceptional business leaders.
Learning these characteristics can provide useful insights to aspiring entrepreneurs and business leaders.
1 - Manifesting
Entrepreneurs are not only creators of ideas but also implementors of the solutions.
Producing tangible outcomes are critical for the success of startup companies and emerging business organizations. Business success requires tangible results, experimentally and iteratively rather than monolithic approaches.
Tiny yet rapid changes lead to significant outcomes in the solution lifecycle.
2 - Measuring
If progress is not measured, the outcomes can be challenging to achieve.
Measuring is an essential success factor for entrepreneurs. Savvy business leaders focus on both qualitative and quantitative measures across complex matrix structures in their companies and organizations.
Use of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and well-designed dashboards for the initiatives are their primary focus to measure success.
3 - Communicating
Communicating at all levels with clarity, confidence, and ease are essential to entrepreneurs.
These business leaders need to communicate what they created and measured.
They also need to role model for other people to communicate clearly and effectively to share their team's knowledge or outside of the immediate teams.
Clarity, brevity, and impact distinguish entrepreneurs from others.
4 - Watching Blind Spots
We all have blind spots. Blind spots can create risky situations for business organizations. As the owner of the blind spot, we cannot detect them easily unless others help us.
Entrepreneurs must be astute observers looking things from multiple angles. They look for big pictures and quickly deep dive into details when required. Both top-down and bottom-up approaches are essential for recognizing blind spots.
Entrepreneurs must be able to articulate situations by providing constructive feedback. They not only focus on their blind spots but also assist team members in seeing their blind spots.
They perform a continuous swot analysis, mentally and procedurally.
Entrepreneurs must be passionate about innovation. Original thinking and transferring old thinking to new ones are enablers of innovation. By combining and contrasting things, entrepreneurs create new understandings, new use cases, new values, desired meaning for the venture.
Entrepreneurs need to look at the situations and facts from a novelty perspective. They must create new values from old concepts, terms, and ideas.
By understanding the value of innovation, entrepreneurs can become a catalyst for innovation. By innovating relentlessly, entrepreneurs can create an innovation culture. They embed the innovation to the ecosystem of their ventures.
6 - Educating
Entrepreneurship requires teaching, mentoring, coaching, and facilitating.
While manifesting, innovating, and measuring, they educate the employees in the process. Their mentoring and coaching approaches serve as a soundboard, a guiding voice, and a therapeutic solution.
Mentoring and coaching capabilities entrepreneurs help the team members go beyond their comfort zone and produce with passion.
7 - Changing constantly and adapting to changes
Change is an essential part of all ventures.
Effective change management is a vital requirement for entrepreneurs. Leading ventures and dealing with rapid change is not an easy task. It requires scarce skills, experience, and insights.
Entrepreneurs play a catalytical role in change management. They refresh the culture and lead it towards becoming more agile, collaborative, and innovative.
8 - Learning
Learning is a never-ending process in life and business.
Entrepreneurs must have different learning styles. Based on situations and conditions, they should learn formally from literature and informally in experimental settings.
Entrepreneurs need to turn every possible interaction to a potential learning opportunity.
9 - Building High-Performance Teams and Keeping Talent
Building high-performance teams are critical for entrepreneurship and business leadership. Exceptional business leaders and entrepreneurs can create collaborative, well functioning, and high performing teams to operate successful business ventures.
Keeping talent is critical for business organizations. Entrepreneurs understand the value proposition and focus on the importance of talent for their ventures.
They encourage employees to perform optimally. They help the team members to transform into talented team players. Entrepreneurs must identify poor performance in the team and help remove poorly performing employees and replace them with talented employees.
10 - Performing Thought, Opinion, and Idea Leadership
Thought, opinion, and idea leadership are essential requirements for business ventures.
These leadership capabilities are necessary for changing cultures and transforming ecosystems.
Entrepreneurs are drivers of change with their thoughts, opinions, and ideas.
Conclusion
Being an entrepreneur requires knowledge, skills, experience, and a lot of experimentation.
These ten characteristics are patterns of entrepreneurship and business leadership, especially emerging, growing, and transforming business ventures.
I worked with many entrepreneurs and business leaders when guiding them in digital transformation initiatives. They have exceptional personal, interpersonal, and technical skills.
Understanding their roles and responsibilities and emulating their traits can be useful for aspiring entrepreneurs who plan to set up startup ventures.
If entrepreneurs lack one or more of these traits, they may face severe ramifications in their performance.
Thank you for reading my perspectives.
If this story resonates with you, I recommend checking my other business and leadership articles on News Break.
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