Servant Leadership: Serve to Be Great

Over the last two years, I met a quite number of entrepreneurs looking for investors to present their ideas. A few of them were successful in finding funds for their projects. The reasons are very much linked with their leadership competencies. I became aware that the journey of an entrepreneur shows quite a few similarities with the journey of a leader.

Entrepreneurs are, by nature, people who step forward to achieve an idea. This is a fundamental leadership skill. In addition, like leaders, they need to have a great vision, need to influence people and need to engage people to achieve their goals.

Great entrepreneurs, in both social and commercial domains, often start the journey when they are dissatisfied  with the present and develop a vision for a better future. The degree of innovation, business benefit and social impact will increase the chance of engagement with others around the vision.

Good entrepreneurs engage people to achieve their goals. They find partners, ask advisors, recruit staff, engage investors and, most importantly, engage customers. This requires, asin leadership, strong influencing skills to attract people first on their vision and later with  high rates of progress and excellent value delivery.

Good entrepreneurs are also good at performing.  They plan and coordinate tasks,  and are able to break the journey down into smaller sub-journeys. They cultivate people, mentor and delegate to bring the team to peak  performance. They walk with the followers (partners, staff, investors, customers and  society) to achieve the goal.

The journey of an entrepreneur is filled with uncertainties and risks. Like leaders, entrepreneurs need to have a sense for the unknowable and be able to foresee the unforeseeable.

I believe the success of an entrepreneur is very much linked to leadership competencies. What would you share on this?