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Entrepreneurial LeadershipIs there such athing as “Entrepreneurial Leadership”? Is it different than Leadership alone and/ or Entrepreneurship? Is their commonality between them, which makes it logical to combine such distinct concepts?

When you hear the word leader, what comes to mind first: one who has influence and power, a person who rules, guides, or he who inspires others? There is more to leadership than what we think.

TALENT MANAGMENT

Pavan Sriram

According to a recent research done by Forbes; they having put together what most respected business thinkers define as leadership – “Leadership is a process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal”.

Successful leaders empower employees to act on the vision. The core of leading effectively lies in their ability to transfer their beliefs to those around them. They execute through

inspiration and develop implementation capacity networks through a complex web of aligned relationships.

Organizations are undergoing a metamorphosis. Technology, products, and customer demands areconstantly changing. Whether one speaks of downsizing or a transformation, no onecan deny the profound changes

across geographies. The organizationalstrategies and structures that might have been effective earlier don’t seem to be working now. In the increasingly turbulent and competitive environment firms face today, a new type of “entrepreneurial” leader distinct from other behavioural forms of managerial leadership is required.

Researchers have attempted in the past two decades tomerge these two distinct terminologies into an integrative one. In fact Gordon Lippitt in 1987 defined the ‘entrepreneurial leader’ as one who is able to take risks,

innovate and assume personal responsibility. This presented the earliestdefinition of entrepreneurial leadership. He said leadership qualities are more than beingan administrator or a manager. As an art, it means orchestrating the totality of the enterprisewith energy, self-confidence, persistence, and learning capabilities.

It’s argued that onecould associate entrepreneurs with leadership functions such as providing vision to thedevelopment of a new product, service, or an organization as a whole.

Entrepreneurial leadership deals with concepts and ideas, and theseare often related to problems which are not of an organizational nature. Instead, they tend to beindividual characteristics or behaviours. They include vision, problem solving, decision-making,risk taking, and strategic initiatives.

Are Leadership, Management and Entrepreneurship mutually exclusive?

Entrepreneurial leadership is what you do when no one else is watching – be it an Olympic athlete challenging himself in silence to break new barriers, to a longdistance runner dealing with the agony of distance or for an orchestra conductor whobalances the different skills and sounds to turn it into pure melody.

There are usually two terms used to describe this, “willingness and intent”. As a leader if you have the willingness, you will take those measured risks and the intent to make choices, moving in a positive direction. Combine “willingness and intent” and you have a compelling combination for people to follow you whether you are corporate leader or a budding entrepreneur. And those who demonstrate this leadership can’t put their mantle down because it is a state of being for them, inextricably linked with who they are.

“The passion and drive of entrepreneurs move the world of business forward as they challenge the unknown and continuously create the future” - Kuratko

Being an excellent entrepreneurial leader is not

easy, as it requires a lot of effort and people do not appreciate what you do. This is why some successful leaders never become successful entrepreneurs.

When you talk about entrepreneurship, it’s a vibrant process of forward looking change and creation. It calls for energy and passion towards creation and implementation of newer ideas and creative solutions for businesses to grow and the willingness to take “calculated risks’ – risks requiring time, equity, to formulate an effective business strategy; the fundamental skill of building resources and, finally, the vision to recognize opportunity where others see chaos, contradiction, and confusion.

Are Entrepreneurial Leaders born or made?

This is a question endlessly debated in most of the corporate circles today. Do or Can organisations provide that platform for leaders to test waters and come out successful. Let’s look at the term “Intrapreneur” for a minute – it’s basically an Entrepreneur except that he/she focuses inward in an organisation - on ways his business can act “entrepreneurially” from within established set of protocols and standards. Intrapreneurship isbecoming a widely used termgiven that companies are struggling to find ways to maintain their competitive edge in today’s business.

In many ways organisations

provide a great laboratory for their emerging leaders to test their entrepreneurship leadership metal. While those who make such choices learn from the early experience of the first contact of their entrepreneurship leadership style with possible opportunities to help them achieve their goals.

So what does it look like? What differentiates Leaders and ‘Entrepreneurial’or ‘Intrapreneurial’ Leaders - here are few examples from my own experience of having worked with some of the best entrepreneurial-led companies and their leaders:-

• An Entrepreneurial Leader makes the people connect and strives to bring out the best in people. They see a persona, not a person. They identify, assess and build people to work for a bigger cause.

• They have fire in their bellies. Passion is such a key part of being a great leader that if you don’t have it, you simply can’t be a great leader. Think of all the great leaders who started the biggest firms throughout the ages and try to name one that did not have passion. And passion is infectious; others

feel it and want to get on board with such leaders.

• They look for opportunities in the unlikeliest of places. Constantly checking, correcting and balancing their own behaviour to suit needs and challenges.

• Entrepreneurial leaders lead change – a defined dissatisfaction with the present, a vision for how things should be, and a clear idea of the first steps that need to be taken.

• And the most critical of them all – Stepping out of their comfort zone. In fact they rarely get stuck in a routine. Entrepreneurial leaders learn to confront risk and protect the downside by figuring out the odds of success, working out what the worst possible consequences would be, then deciding whether to accept.

Do write to me at pavan@ittige.com on how you organisation is identifying and encouraging entrepreneurial leadership.

Pavan Sriram is the Founder and CEO of ITTIGE Learning, a performance-based training company that works with c-level executives to improve learning outcomes.