In my last article I discussed what some of the top traits of an entrepreneur were. This was based on my own award of Entrepreneur of the Year for W.A. in 2009 in the Small Business Champions Awards.

The challenge to you, is do you want to be an entrepreneur and if you do, what do you need to do to kick start your journey.

Entrepreneurs are leaders, not managers. Leaders inspire people to do things, whilst managers tell people what to do. There is a big difference between leading and managing your business. Leaders therefore understand their team members better than managers.

Your Team Are Individuals… What Motivates Them?

Entrepreneurs know their team as individual team members and understand that everyone is an individual. We all have different levels on our basic needs and are motivated by different drivers. Entrepreneurs take a practical approach to leading their teams. They identify individuals’ needs, ensuring these are satisfied where possible. They then fit people to the correct job and ensure they are satisfying the motivational needs of each individual.

Although this may sound theoretical, in practice there is a practical approach to how an entrepreneur develops their business. They don’t just recruit people for jobs; they recruit the right people to the right jobs. They analyse the job first to ensure they match the people.

Motivational Led Jobs

Jobs can really be divided into friendship task driven, achievement task driven or power task driven.

Friendship Task Driven: – Friendship task driven jobs are generally those that are group based or require a high degree of customer service. They include jobs that include a lot of selling or dealing with customers.

Achievement Task Driven: – Achievement task driven jobs include those that have short term goals and deadlines. They often involve the management of small teams.

Power Task Driven: – Power task driven jobs include control of large budgets and groups of people. The need is for a long term strategy and often includes developing the long term strategy of the business.

Every person is different and an entrepreneur is able to select the right person for the right job, they can read people better than other people. They can identify the friendship, achievement and power drivers within people.

Friendship people are those that have many friends, they often belong to clubs and are team players. One thing they dislike is working on their own. Friendship people get upset if they are left out of things and are the team members who stress the need for good relations in the team.
The achievement people show a competitive spirit, they often take up individual sports, such as cycle racing, marathon running, fishing and golf. They take pride in their individual skills. They are happy to work on their own, but prefer situations that show results within a few weeks or months. They take personal responsibility and don’t like close supervision.

The power people are the “go getters”. They enjoy arguments, but aim to win the argument. They seek to influence other people and take charge in a crisis. They enjoy recognition and status and are always keen to take on more responsibility.

The true entrepreneur looks at their business and team in a different way to others. It is not about them. It is about how they develop a team to grow their business.

To do this successfully, they look at job  and analyse the job, they then interview new recruits to find out what motivates them. They then put the right people in the right job.

Once they have found the right person for the right job, they introduce the most important element of people management.

Empowerment

Successful entrepreneurs introduce empowerment policies into their businesses. An empowerment policy is simply a policy of trusting team members to make the right decisions to grow the business.

Empowerment is not assumed. The entrepreneur makes sure that empowerment is part of the policy; it is written into the person’s job description. Both parties know what the limits of empowerment within the job role are. Once this has been introduced the entrepreneur can then trust the individual to make the right decision. As consumers we instantly recognise when an empowerment policy has or has not been implemented in a business.

In businesses where a salesperson has to keep referring to “the boss” when making decisions with the consumer indicates a business where empowerment is non-existent.

Entrepreneurs empower the team to make decisions.

It’s not About You, It’s About the Team

Who wants to be an entrepreneur? Initially it suggests it is those people who want to stand out “alone“ from the crowd. I disagree. The entrepreneur in today’s business world has the ability to be a leader. That means they understand the jobs under their control and what drives individuals. They put the right people in the right job and then empower them to make a difference.

John Stanley is WA Entrepreneur of the Year 2009 and his business JSA is WA Small Business Champion – Education 2009.  He is an acclaimed conference speaker, retail consultant and author.  For more information on how he can help your business grow, visit his website www.johnstanley.com.au or email info@johnstanley.cc

View John Stanley's Profile      Subscribe via RSS