INFORMATION SHEET 9.

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ENTREPRENEURIAL SKILLS OVERVIEW

Learning Objectives: After reading this INFORMATION SHEET, you MUST be able to:

1. Define entrepreneurship.

2. Identify the four traits of an entrepreneur.

3. Be familiar with the different workplace practices, policies, and criteria.

What makes someone a successful entrepreneur? It certainly helps to have strong technology skills or
expertise in a key area, but these are not defining characteristics of entrepreneurship.

Instead, the key qualities are traits such as creativity, the ability to keep going in the face of hardship,
and the social skills needed to build great teams.

If you want to start a business, it’s essential to learn the specific skills that underpin these qualities. It’s
also important to develop entrepreneurial skills if you’re in a job role where you’re expected to develop
a business, or “take thing forward” more generally.

DEFINING ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Some experts think of entrepreneurs as people who are willing to take risks that other people are not.
Others define them as people who start and build successful businesses.

Thinking about the first of these definitions, entrepreneurship doesn’t necessarily involve starting your
own business. Many people who don’t work for themselves are recognized as entrepreneurs within their
organizations.

Regardless of how you define an “entrepreneur,” one thing is certain: becoming a successful
entrepreneur isn’t easy. What we do know is that successful entrepreneurs seem to have certain traits
in common.

These traits are gathered into four categories:

1. Personal Characteristics

2. Interpersonal Characteristics

3. Critical and Creative Thinking Skills

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

First, examine your personal characteristics, values and beliefs. Do you have the mindset that’s typical of
successful entrepreneurs?

Optimism: Optimism is truly an asset, and it will help get you through the tough times that many
entrepreneurs experience as they find a business model that works for them – optimistic thinker.

Vision: You can create a compelling vision of the future, and then inspire other people to engage with
that vision

Initiative: You have initiative and instinctively start problem-solving or business improvement
projects.

Desire or Control: You enjoy being in charge and making decisions and motivated to lead others.

Risk Tolerance: You are able to take risks, and make decisions when acts are uncertain.

Resilience: You can pick yourself up when things don’t go as planned and you learn to grow from your
mistakes and failures.

INTERPERSONAL SKILLS

As a successful entrepreneur, you’ll have to work closely with people – this is where it is critical to be
able to build great relationships with your team, customers, suppliers, shareholders, investors, and
more.

Some people are more gifted in this area than others, but, fortunately, you can learn and improve these
skills. The types of interpersonal skills you’ll need include:

Leadership and Motivating: Can you lead and motivate others to follow you and deliver your vision? And
are you able to delegate work to others? As a successful entrepreneur, you’ll have to depend on others
to get beyond a very early stage in your business – there’s just too much to so all on your own.

Communication Skills: Are you competent with all types of communication? You need to be able to
communicate well to sell your vision of the future to investors, potential clients, team members, and
more.

Listening: Do you hear what others are telling you? Your ability to listen can make or break you as an
entrepreneur. Make sure that you’re skilled at active listening.
Personal Relations: Are you emotionally intelligent? The higher your EI, the easier or you to work with
others. The good news is that you can improve your emotional intelligence.

Negotiation: Are you a good negotiator? Not only do you need to negotiate keen prices, you also need
to be able to resolve differences between people in a positive, mutually beneficial way.

Ethics: DO you deal with people based on respect, integrity, fairness, and truthfulness? Can you lead
ethically? You’ll find it hard deal with people – staff, customers or suppliers – in a shabby way.

CRITICAL AND CREATIVE THINKING SKILLS

As an entrepreneur, you also need to come up with fresh ideas, and make good decisions about
opportunities and potential projects. Many people think that you can develop i you invest the time and
effort.

Creative Thinking: Are you able to see situations from a variety of perspectives and come up with
original ideas?

Problem Solving: How good are you at coming up with sound solutions to the problems you’re acing?

Recognizing Opportunities: Do you have recognized opportunities when they present themselves? Can
you spot a trend? And are you able to create a plan to take advantage o the opportunities you identify?

PRACTICAL SKILLS

You also need the practical skills and knowledge needed to produce goods or services
effectively, and run a company.

Goal Setting: Do you regularly set goals, create a plan to achieve them, and then carry out a plan?

Planning and Organizing: Do you have the talents, skills, and abilities necessary to achieve your goals?
Can you coordinate people to achieve these efficiently and effectively?

Decision Making: How good are you at making decisions? Do you make them based on relevant
information and by weighing the potential consequences? And are you confident in the decision that
you make?

WORKPLACE BEST PRACTICES, POLICIES AND CRITERIA

A happy workplace is a huge asset. In such places, something happens that transcends policies and
practices. It isn’t what the companies are doing; it is how their leaders are doing it. Best workplace
practices include the day to day relationships that the employees experience, and not a checklist of
policies, programmes and benefits.

1. Provide Clear Expectations

People get frustrated and demotivated when they don’t know exactly what is expected of them. It starts
with the CEO, and is important for every level of leadership in a business. Create a culture where you
clearly state:

• Vision, Goals, Roles & Values

• Results, Quality Standards, Timelines, Priorities

• Written lists of agreed actions and outcomes

Encourage your team to ask questions. Ensure the communication is clear, specific and without any
doubts.

2. Give People the Opportunity to Use Their Skills

Frustration and boredom are counterproductive so you need to align jobs with people with the right
skills. Uncover the special skills people could be using, and experiment with projects and roles to get the
alignment right. You need to recognize talent and use it. If a person is recruited for a role and then not
given the opportunity to use their skills, they will not deliver their best work and may leave.

3. Support Your Team

There are many workplaces where managers don’t care about their people and make no effort to show
interest. This is bad word of mouth. One should know about their staff: what is happening in their lives,
what motivates them, and offering assistance when they are overloaded.

4. Encourage People to Contribute Ideas and Get Involved In Decisions

Involving people, asking their opinions and listening to their advice and feedback makes a huge
difference to them and will provide an environment that is open to innovation and improvements.

5. Encourage Feedback and Recognition

6. Do people have fun at work?

Everyone needs a downtime from work. This could be a casual day, afternoon break with a difference
like culturally focused food, trivia competitions, team outing, etc. You need to find a way to build this in
as a regular part of your workplace.

7. Encourage learning and development

You need to promote learning, and opportunities to develop new skills. People need to know there is
the time to do it, and a positive emphasis on gaining new skills and learning from mistakes. Learning is
about developing new skills and improving the ones you have. Give people the opportunity to
continuously grow, learn, explore, innovate and you will have the best team ever!

8. Create a great workplace from an employee’s view:

From the Employee’s perspective, a great workplace is one where they:

• Trust the people they work for

• Have pride in what they do

• Enjoy the people they work with

Trust is the defining principle of great workplaces — created through management’s credibility, the
respect with which employees feel they are treated, and the extent to which employees expect to be
treated fairly. The degree of pride and levels of authentic connection and camaraderie employees feel
with one are additional essential components.