What leadership style should you adopt if you want to be successful as an entrepreneur? As if there aren’t enough difficult questions you need to consider in your entrepreneurial journey. This question is foundational though. Getting this question correct can be the determining factor between quick success and years of struggle and strife.
The best leadership style for an entrepreneur to adopt is a servant leadership style. It equips the entrepreneur with the skills and tools to build a strong business, connect with people inside and outside the organization, and provide the agility an entrepreneur needs to navigate the uncharted, potentially dangerous, waters of their journey to success.
Introduction
Starting a business comes with more challenges than I can list in this article. When I started my business, there was a myriad of questions that needed to be tackled. This was mostly because I had no idea what I was doing. I had never started a business and had spent my professional career pastoring in churches and teaching in universities.
If you are thinking of starting a business, or you have already started one, then you know the many things that need to be figured out before you can turn your idea into a full-fledged success story.
I want to help you today by answering one of those very important questions that you may not be asking yet: what leadership style should I adopt?
As a business owner, you are no doubt going to be leading. Even if you are a solopreneur, you still have customers, strategic partners, vendors, or suppliers you are going to have to work with. The leadership approach you take will determine how those people interact with you, and, in turn, your business.
It is important to remember your business success is in the hands of other people liking your product or service and coming back for more or sharing with others. So, I want to help you get the leadership question right, so you can focus on tackling other, more tangible issues in leading your business.
Leadership Style Options
As you may be aware, there are a dozen different leadership approaches you could adopt that will equip you to lead your business forward. Some are downright ineffective, others are good but may not be a good option for you as an entrepreneur, and there is one that ticks all the boxes to equip you as a solid leader and powerful entrepreneur.
Laissez-Faire Leadership
The laissez-faire leadership style takes a hands-off approach to leadership. The attitude of this style of leader is to ‘let it ride and see what happens’. This style can appear to be chill, nonthreatening, and even a friendly style that attracts people. However, this approach fails to make timely decisions, provide clear and reliable feedback to others, and is detached from the operations of the business. Entrepreneurs who are dialed in on their craft at a depth that they can’t be bothered by the function of the business exhibit a laissez-faire leadership style.
This works for hobbyists, but it won’t work for those who are serious about starting a business. Decisions need to be made, people need clear and reliable feedback, and there are aspects of the business that need attention.
Transactional Leadership
Transactional leadership is a style that approaches relationships from a quid pro quo perspective. “You do for me and I’ll do for you.” The temptation of the transactional leadership style is that it does work in the short term. You need graphics for your business, and you know a graphic designer. You pay them for their services and they provide you with the graphics. That is a working transactional relationship. However, that is very surface-level and your business can’t survive on surface-level relationships. This keeps people at the commodity level, and people don’t want to be a commodity, even if you are paying them. There will come a time in the life cycle of your business when you will need your customers, vendors, and strategic partners to operate beyond treating you like a commodity, so it needs to start with you.
Transformational Leadership
Transformational leadership is a leadership style that is primarily concerned with improving the performance of others and developing them to their fullest potential. A good transformational leader is able to get others to rise above themselves and their circumstances and act in ways that are focused on the greater good rather than their own self interests. Transformational leaders are charismatic in their approach to people, they inspire people to climb new heights they didn’t think were possible, they foster innovation and creativity, and they value people beyond the transactional nature that is often found in a business environment.
The transformational leadership style is a powerful approach that offers a great deal of value for an entrepreneur to adopt. However, even though transformational leadership values people, it is still organizational-focused. It aspires to raise people to their highest level with the motivation being to extract the most out of each individual for the advancement of the organization. Unfortunately, because entrepreneurs work so closely with each individual along their journey, people can sense when they are a means to an end…even when their best interests are being addressed.
The Best Leadership Style for Entrepreneurs
It would appear transformational leadership is the best option from the choices above, but there is one leadership style left to explore that goes even beyond transformational. This leadership style goes one step further than transformational by actually valuing people on their own merit without the baggage of seeing them as a means to an end.
Servant Leadership
Servant leadership exists as a paradox in the leadership world because it functions in a way that goes against common sense. Even the name itself, ‘servant leadership’, is a paradox. For most of us, the image we have in our minds of a leader is not in alignment with the image we have in our minds of a servant. In our minds, these two things seem to be on two different ends of the spectrum. But, allow me to unpack this a bit before you dismiss the idea.
At the core of servant leadership, people come first. Before products, services, riches, and fame there are people. Customers, vendors, strategic partners, third-party entities, employees, and clients are all people who want to be valued, prioritized, and seen.
There are ten characteristics of a servant leader that equip entrepreneurs to be successful in starting their businesses and developing a strong foundation to build future success.
Listening
At the core of every entrepreneurial journey is communication. Whether you are developing a product or a service, a graphic designer or a landscaper, your success comes down to how well you can communicate with others. You communicate in your marketing, in your sales conversations, in your customer service encounters, in deal negotiations, and in your recruiting and training.
Too often leaders approach communication as an opportunity to be heard, but the key to being an entrepreneur is hearing others. Your ability to listen to your customers’ needs and wants is paramount to your ability to deliver the value they will want to purchase.
Since servant leadership prioritizes listening, it equips entrepreneurs with deep insight to make better decisions that cut down the learning curve of building a business. By listening to others, you fill up your entrepreneurial toolbox with an arsenal of options to tackle any problems you will face in your journey.
Empathy
As entrepreneurs, it is easy for us to get caught up in the struggle, the challenge, and the constant fight to get our businesses off the ground. Unfortunately, this also causes us to forget that there are others around us struggling and facing challenges.
As a servant leader, you can ‘step into the shoes’ of someone else and try to see their perspective, feel what they are feeling, and emphasize to their situation. It keeps us from operating in a vacuum or thinking our entrepreneurial pursuit is the most important thing in the world. Our ability to empathize and see people for where they are helps endear others to us and our entrepreneurial journey.
Healing
Climbing Mount Everest is better done with others because everyone is guaranteed to need everyone at some point in the journey. Well, the entrepreneurial journey is no different. As a leader, when you see people, are empathetic to their struggles, and go out of your way to be a part of their healing process, you also find healing yourself.
This is why communities of entrepreneurs are so valuable. We are all walking up the same mountain to a success we long to achieve. We all struggle, fail, fall down, and need help getting up. As we help each other, we are fulfilled and inspired through the process.
Awareness
None of us operate in a vacuum. Even those of us who are in our rooms, or offices, or garages creating content and sending it out into the world. Whether it is virtually or in our everyday interactions, we are in contact with others. As a servant leader, you are keenly aware of the environments you are in and know how to navigate them strategically. You are able to recognize partnerships, growth opportunities, early signs of threats, and strategic moves before anyone else sees them.
Servant leaders are not tunnel-visioned, which provides them with a knack for taking advantage of opportunities before others even realize they exist.
Persuasion
A leadership trap too many fall into is trying to coerce others into doing something. Coercion introduces tension and opposition into the relationship and devalues people into commodities or cogs making the entrepreneur successful. People do not want to be treated that way.
Servant leaders use persuasion instead. Persuasion uses gentle, but consistent, nudging that is respectful and honoring to the individual. Since servant leadership is focused on others and helping them reach their full potential, the use of persuasion keeps the entrepreneur focused on helping and serving others in the midst of seeking their own success. This means when someone joins in the journey with you, they are all in, loyal, committed, and want to do what they can to help you become successful.
Conceptualization
When you are starting out as an entrepreneur, you have a dream you are chasing that is a big picture serving a grander purpose. If you are like me, though, it is easy to get lost in the weeds of tasks, activities, deadlines, and creation. As a servant leader developed in the skill of conceptualization, we are able to bury our heads in the weeds of things needing to be done but keep our big dreams and goals right in front of our eyes.
This is incredibly valuable when the moments arise for us to make pivotal decisions. Since our perspective has remained on the big picture even as we have focused on the details, we have healthy insight into what decisions need to be made to strategically place us where we need to be to further advance our businesses.
Foresight
Surprisingly, out of all the leadership styles we have looked at, this is the only one that truly has a foresight aspect to it. Since servant leadership focuses on listening and awareness, the leaders who adopt it are uniquely equipped to foresee the future and what is coming in the years to come. Foresight is an awareness of trends and signals that point to coming realities. This minimizes the potential for servant leaders to be caught off guard by unforeseen circumstances and situations. In a rapidly changing world that is speeding up all the time, a keen sense of foresight is incredibly valuable for the entrepreneur charging into the future with a dream and excitement.
Stewardship
In recent decades, there have been countless leaders who have fallen from grace, collapsed their companies, and inflicted untold horrors on the people in their spheres of influence because they were unwilling or unable to steward their leadership well.
Since servant leaders are people-focused, they are always aware of how they are going to steward what is entrusted to them. As an entrepreneur, you may have investors, partners, early adopters, or other individuals who are putting something on the line to help you in your pursuit of success. They trust and believe that you are going to steward what they give, even if it is only their trust, with integrity and responsibility.
Committed to People Growth
As an entrepreneur, you need to be surrounded by people who are growing at the pace you are. If you aren’t then you will eventually have to replace them with others who are more skilled and developed to serve you and your business to continue to grow.
As a servant leader, people growth is of vital importance and is prioritized in the growth of your business. You look for ways and opportunities to grow the people around you, not because they add value to your business, but because they are worth the investment of growth. Each person is intrinsically valuable and providing them with growth opportunities, even if it doesn’t benefit your organization directly, is worth your time.
In the end, your people may move on because they have grown into another opportunity outside your business, but outsiders are aware of how well you value your people and that you invest in their growth. This makes your business a desirable place to be and you a wanted leader to follow.
Building Community
In our growing digital lifestyles, real genuine community is becoming scarce. Whether it is for your employees, your customers, or those in your community, building a community has only an upside for you and your business. As an entrepreneur, you are connecting with people all the time. As a servant leader, when you step out of the middle of the relational circle and allow the community to become the focus, people are drawn to one another, ideas come at a feverish rate, and energy increases exponentially. A solid community that you have cultivated and grown will almost guarantee your success as an entrepreneur.
Conclusion
There are many approaches to leadership. Every entrepreneur is a leader whether they choose to be or not. Those who aren’t intentional about what kind of leader they are, and foster the leadership style they want, flounder to lead effectively and often see themselves struggling in their entrepreneurial journey.
Those who are intentional about their leadership development focused on how they interact with others and make decisions effectively, have a shorter path to success in front of them.
As an entrepreneur, I would encourage you to adopt a servant leadership style. It will help you keep people at the forefront of your mind, allow you to make sound decisions, and keep you one step ahead of the competition as you endeavor to gain greater market share and build your base of customers.
Your dreams are valuable and the world needs to see them come to life, and you need a leadership style that is going to equip you to make that happen.