Understand Who You Are In Your Business
Entrepreneurial Hats
You will play several key roles in your new business:
- Visionary
As an entrepreneur, you envision the central idea behind the business and the problem it aims to solve. You set the overarching direction, objectives, and identity of the venture. - Leader
As a leader, you rally, inspire, and motivate the startup team. You make major decisions, communicate priorities, and establish the working culture. - Manager
You will manage company operations including finances, resources, processes, growth planning, and legal compliance. Additionally, you oversee workstreams and personnel delegation. - Builder
By turning strategy into action, you construct and evolve all aspects of the startup from product development to marketing and partnerships. Using data and customer feedback, you will adapt as needed. - Expert
Drawing on your domain experience and skills, you contribute expertise to the offering development, user support, industry relations and service delivery. - Evangelist
As the face of the brand, you promote and sell the overall vision and offerings. You will also drive partnerships, community engagement, and public awareness.
It’s no wonder, then, that to be an accomplished entrepreneurial leader, you need a high level of self-awareness.
Self Awareness
📖 Self-awareness is your ability to recognise your emotions, beliefs, values, and thoughts, as well as understanding their impact on your behaviour and actions.
It might not be something you consciously think about, but the accuracy of your perceptions impacts virtually every experience you have. Research indicates that the benefits of being self-aware include:
- Making you more proactive, boosting your acceptance, and encouraging positive self-development (Sutton, 2016).
- Seeing things from the perspective of others, practising self-control, working creatively and productively, and experiencing pride in yourself and your work as well as general self-esteem (Silvia & O’Brien, 2004).
- Improving decision making (Ridley, Schutz, Glanz, & Weinstein, 1992).
- Upgrading your performance at work, making you a better communicator in the workplace, and enhancing your self-confidence and job-related wellbeing (Sutton, Williams, & Allinson, 2015).
Similarly, when starting up, you should detail your role and identity in the business because that:
- Boosts confidence and resilience
A strong sense of self-awareness stimulates confidence to trust your vision and stand by ideas amidst naysayers. It also provides an inner resilience when things get difficult by connecting to a deeper purpose for undertaking the entrepreneurial journey that transcends setbacks. - Guides leadership style
How you see your role – as an innovator, risk-taker, coordinator, decision maker etc. – shapes your leadership style and how you interact with stakeholders. Understanding this helps you lead in an authentic and effective way. - Informs branding
Your personality, ideals, and dreams shape the brand identity and culture that attracts customers and talent. - Plays to your strengths
When you know your natural strengths, weaknesses, working and leadership styles, you can operate and scale the business using your abilities while seeking help for duties unaligned with your character. - Aligns values and purpose
Clarify the core values, motivations, and vision for the business to ensure it aligns with your identity and sense of purpose. This intrinsic alignment drives passion and determination to see the business succeed.
*Each of the actions mentioned is available as a downloadable resource – just follow the 🔗links.
Personal Values
On a deeper level, connecting choices and actions to your internal creed makes it easier to operate with a clear conscience. To do this, you must first catalogue your personal values.
📖 Your values are the principles or standards of behaviour that guide your decisions and actions. They influence how you uniquely distinguish between “good” and “bad”.
As your own code of conduct, it’s important to ✍️ identify your 🔗personal values because they:
- Define your identity and what matters most to you.
Your values reflect what you stand for. - Help you set meaningful goals and priorities.
Knowing your values allows you to make decisions and plans aligned with them. - Provide an internal compass for making choices.
When facing complex decisions, your values serve as a north star guiding your thought process. - Influence your relationships.
Shared values support stronger interpersonal connections and align expectations. - Promote personal well-being.
Living by your values and acting with integrity is linked to higher life satisfaction. - Guide ethical behaviour.
Values shape your perceptions of right and wrong when navigating moral dilemmas.
“Your personal core values define who you are, and a company’s core value
ultimately define the company’s character and brand. For individuals,
character is destiny. For organisations, culture is destiny.”
Tony Hsieh
Company Values
📖 Company values are the principles and beliefs that underpin how a business operates and shape its overall culture and approach. Having well-defined core values helps ensure a business can grow and evolve while still staying true to what matters most to the organisation.
While business plans and strategies may be adjusted over time, the fundamental values that guide a company typically remain constant.
Once your personal values have been clearly articulated, you can translate them into business values by following these steps:
- ✍️ Write a 🔗business values statement setting out guiding principles, behaviours, and mindsets that shape how your company conducts itself in pursuit of its goals. Values influence its culture and ethics.
- Make values part of the hiring process. Choose employees and/or contractors whose values resonate with yours.
- Establish policies and processes that reinforce values. Establish decision-making frameworks, product standards, codes of conduct, and handbooks that codify the values of your organisation.
- Lead by example. As the public face of the business, model important virtues in your communications, product development choices, and business partnerships.
- Promote the why over the what. Share stories with customers that convey values-driven motivation over facts about offerings. Connect quality, hassle-free service with caring.
✍️ Test Your Knowledge
Answer the questions to mark this lesson as complete.