As we continue our discussion about entrepreneurial thinking, we want to talk about entrepreneurial behaviors.
Specifically we want to understand how entrepreneurial behavior produces and influences our mindset and motivation and how they relate to them. Specifically, we'll look at four different areas. We will talk about:
- Confidence and what role it plays in entrepreneurial behavior
- Interpersonal skills, and how you work well with others
- Social capital
- Take risks
This content is the third component of The Opportunity Canvas Analysis.
4 of Entrepreneurial Behaviors
1. The role of trust in entrepreneurial behavior
Trust between entrepreneurs is definitely a good thing. We want to realize that it is important for entrepreneurs to believe in themselves, believe in the power of what they can do and the potential of their project.
Now this may require breaking some rules and against some advice. But if you doubt yourself too much, it will create suspicion among your team, your partners, your investors, and even your customers.
2. Interpersonal skills, and how to work well with others
Interpersonal skills are linked to the potential for admiration in communication skills and for an entrepreneur, it is good to be liked, it is good for your team to like you, it is good for your investors, partners, and customers to like you and individuals who have the ability to communicate will have a better ability to communicate with customers.
This may come naturally to you. It might be something to learn or improve. And so you want to be honest with yourself about where that is and how to improve it.
3. Social capital
Social capital is like financial capital in that it is a resource, a measurable resource but linked to your personal networks, it is linked to your relationships, it is linked to who you know and who they know, and its richness depends not only on number, not only on size, but also on quality and variety.
I could know 100 lawyers, but I'd rather know five lawyers, five bankers, five marketing experts, and five technicians. And that group of 20 would be more valuable and richer than 100 of the same thing.
Building social capital is incredibly valuable. It matters because people with social capital are considered wealthy, know the quantity and variety of their networks better, are more creative, are more efficient, are better at problem solvers and thus save time.
They see opportunities that others don't, they can foster collaboration, they can get information before it is popular, or information that is publicly known. In this sense, we want to build social capital as entrepreneurs.
4. Take risks
Taking risks is another thing we want to think about. With risk tolerance, it's not necessarily an element of the pursuit of risk, but of an acceptance of risk, a tolerance for it and the ability to really think about the ratios of risk to reward that exist and how to strive to balance it.
Summary
When we think about entrepreneurial behavior we want to realize that this is where the entrepreneurial mindset and motivation pay off.
It's how we diagnose, our interpersonal skills, our social capital, and our tolerance for risk.