Table of Contents
Introduction
Although it is very important for entrepreneur to possess all the necessary qualities needed to stand tall in business, qualities such as initiative, goal setting, competitiveness, creativity, risk taking and many more. Possession of all these qualities alone does not guarantee success, what matters most is what the entrepreneur do with them, hence the success of the business is the function of the roles an entrepreneur performs.
Entrepreneurs and small firm success and failure have been the subject of extensive research. It is important to understand the external, internal and motivational factors responsible for business start-up, the barriers faced during the initial and continuous stages of trading and the advice and assistance available to entrepreneurs. This essay will outline and expatiate on the qualities and characters of a successful entrepreneur and further review the role demand of an entrepreneur
Qualities and Characters of a Successful Entrepreneur
Initiative
Being resourceful connotes never being short of ideas or tools, this is a healthy quality of a business leader. An entrepreneur must assume solutions to every problem, even when faced with turnover challenges, cash, development, personnel, production or logistics. Here specialist advice or tools might be the game changer (Sharma, 2019).
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Competitiveness
There exists less competitiveness by the entrepreneur without strategy. The hallmark of the modern day perfect competition is strategy. To have a strategy is to be able to define a long-term plan and stick with such devices. The stability of the commercial positioning for everyone is reassuring: customers, partners, specifies; and the rest of the team. The entrepreneur should know when it is the right moment for evolving competitive strategies (ibid).
Decisiveness
Many business leaders make decisions hurriedly and unprofessionally, for fear of the unknown or error. For example when hiring an employee, or acquiring a new equipment, this behavior could hamper the development of the company. However, for some decision makers, it is the lack of quality information which triggers doubt and fear (ibid).
Responsibility
The future entrepreneur must listen, be interested in others, and learn about them and their special interest. Putting oneself in the place of others to understand their behavior and their speech is essential, it requires an open mind. The entrepreneur should know the customers’ expectations, as suppliers and salespeople also give good indication on the market.
In addition the entrepreneur must put him-self in the shoes of the competitors and understand why they act in the way and manner they act in the market. So also partners and relatives must be put into consideration. To know others properly the entrepreneur could make well in decipher their speech (ibid).
Goal Setting
Knowing how to manage priorities consist in not being overwhelmed by everyday life. The objective is to establish a scale of preference of things, being realistic on the urgency of some files, without forgetting the essential: to keep good hygiene of life, to take care of the family, to know how to say no, to know how to get help (ibid).
Organization
The first key function of the entrepreneur is planning, after planning, the next function of the entrepreneur is organizing, every business enterprise should have an organizational structure. It should be noted that departmentization is a very crucial structure for an organization to succeed. For example, departmentization divides an organization into functional lines like Marketing, Accounting, Finance, Human Resource, Information Technology and more (NOUN, nd).
Energy and Drive
Perseverance is a very essential quality for an entrepreneur to posses. These qualities are unfortunately absent at the start. The leader being too passionate motivated and in a hurry to fight must have energy and drive. An entrepreneur must start from the premise that the seed takes time to germinate. A clientele is not built in few weeks but rather takes several years to build a stable clientele (ibid).
Self Confidence
To succeed the entrepreneur must believe in himself. Self –confidence is not something innate, it is acquired based on past experiences, failures, and success. Sufficient trust will allow the entrepreneur to dare to realize ideas to win against competitors, however, self – confidence is double edged, as over confidence might lead the entrepreneur for the bricks when inattentive (ibid).
Leadership
Leadership is at the core function of leading which is the act of influencing or guiding people so that they will strive willingly towards the achievement of group or corporate objectives. The primary role of leadership is followership. A good leader guides, motivates and conducts. Leadership is the human factor that binds a group together due to the importance of the leadership. The major two types of leadership styles could be job centered leadership and employee centered leadership (NOUN, nd)
Risk Taking
Since nothing is easily acquired and environments are constantly evolving, the appearance of competition, regulations, related risk, and the appearance of new trends, technological revolution emerge. Numerous risks requires that a good entrepreneur needs to put in place risk management strategies. Risk must be listed, risk must be priotise, each risk must be treated; and tools developed against possible risk (ibid).
Hard work
A good business leader knows that the key to success lies in the business effort he will lead. An executive must spend majority of the time searching for customers. There is no point in spending time doing forecast tables or sales growth charts when the real priority is going to the field. Many entrepreneurs leave this ungrateful job to others such as commercial agents (ibid).
Self discipline
To know one well is to know the inherent qualities and also one’s fault. In order to better understand his strengths and weakness the entrepreneur must ask:
- What can I do well?
- What do I know less about?
- What repels me and why?
- What are the main criticism addressed to me?
- What qualities does my environment recognize in me?
- What makes me vulnerable?
The key to success is actually looking for solutions to get around our weaknesses (ibid).
Honesty
To remain honest is to accept to face reality by reviewing his assumptions and if it is realistic. Accept the figures and change when necessary. Production should be stooped if not profitable even when significant investments have been made. Keeping an idea that is not as good as expected may bring doom. Remaining honest is to keep in mind that the number one objective remains to live, which is neither pessimistic nor optimistic (ibid).
Internal locus of control
The control function of the entrepreneur basically involves the measurement and correction of the performance of the business activities to ensure the organizational objectives are being met. There must be the pre-requisite of laid out plans against which the performance will be measured and there must be a clearly defined organizational structure (NOUN, nd; Sharma, 2019).
Feed backs
Support from family and friends are particularly important for the success of a business project. This requires feedback: it is by explaining the project precisely to his spouse or his children, or by associating them concretely so that they will be able to give him feedback (ibid).
Dealing with failure
To fail is not a shame; the most important thing is to understand what did not work, to do better next time. However, big entrepreneurs today had failed several times before they succeed and no one has been careful with them (Sharma, 2019).
Tolerance to ambiguity
A potential customer offers to order N20, 000 worth of goods for certain commodities, against a discount of 38% (ABU, 2018). What next? Do you agree, cross over a large part of the margin, refuse and miss a nice command. To negotiate means being sure of oneself and the quality always has a price. Highlight strengths and do not devalue self (Sharma, 2019).
Furthermore the role demand of entrepreneurship is also illustrated for the clarity of the aforementioned thesis.
Role Demand of Entrepreneurship
Possession of all these characteristics does not really matter, what matters most is what the entrepreneur do with them. The success of the enterprise is therefore, the function of the roles an entrepreneur performs in the enterprise. Entrepreneurs should perform the following roles for their enterprise to be successful (ABU, 2018).
Acceptance of the venture: Without the acceptance of the business as part of one’s system, the business may not grow beyond the initial stage. An entrepreneur must understand the importance of his or her business in the society, and gives it all that it takes for its success (ibid).
Knowledge of the business: The acceptance of the business as part of one’s system will enable the entrepreneur to go ahead to get more information about the business. Skills (managerial and technical) are required for her to do this effectively (ibid).
Total commitment to the Enterprise: The success of the enterprise requires that the entrepreneur get him or herself totally committed to the business. His commitment is a function of the results he gets from the business. Nothing good comes easy we all know. The level of commitment determines the height of achievements or the results one get in life (ibid).
Creativity and Innovations: Creative people are leaders all the time. Competitions and rivalries among firms in the industry demand than an entrepreneur should be highly creative and innovative, so as to be different from others and always be above average in his business dealings (ibid).
People and Team Building: An entrepreneur must accept the responsibility of capacity building. He or she must understand the role of people in the success of his business. He must learn to carry his people along, towards the accomplishment of the business objectives. He must understand the concept of people, people, and people (ibid).
Economic Values: These include private ownership system, free entry and free exit, the concept of profit maximization. The importance of capital to the business etc. An entrepreneur must place adequate values to important issues in the business (ibid).
Ethics: Certain standards have been placed in the industries; not keeping them will be regarded as contravening against the law. An entrepreneur is expected to have respect for laws and ethics guiding the industry where he or she operates (ibid).
Integrity and Reliability: The success of the business also requires that an entrepreneur should be transparent and reliable all the time. Integrity is not a choice to make. Dead conscience is equal to dead destiny (ibid).
Conclusion
Entrepreneurial qualities are made of the initiatives, goal setting, competiveness, decisiveness, responsibility, leadership, organization, locus of control and many other characters. Nevertheless, the above illustrated traits in an entrepreneur may not be adequate for the function of a successful enterprise. What is required for a successful enterprise in addition to the aforementioned qualities of an entrepreneur is the role demand of the entrepreneur. Some of these roles of demand are acceptance of venture, knowledge of the business, acceptance of commitment, people team building, ethics and others. Finally from the above thesis it can be deduced that for an entrepreneur to be successful in business he must not only posses the prerequisite qualities, but must also instill the role demand functions for smooth running of the 21st century company.
