The concept of leaders and followers can be traced back to many moons ago, at a time when people would flock around a particular person to listen to his/her beliefs and sayings while taking inspiration from them and implementing the same in their own lives.

A leader today, be it in any aspect of life- spiritual, professional, social, etc. is somebody who people look up to and whose beliefs and ethics they choose to follow. It doesn’t necessarily have to be philosophical and can merely be advice given by a successful individual to others who idolize him/her. In a professional environment, it can be hierarchal wherein a senior advises his junior about how to go about things in the most likely situation of the junior wanting that piece of advice from him because of the admiration that’s involved in the process.

However, when talking about Leadership in a professional environment, it is important for an entrepreneur to be a good leader as well.

Who is an entrepreneur? According to Investopedia, “An entrepreneur is an individual who creates a new business, bearing most of the risks and enjoying most of the rewards”. In other words, a goal oriented person who takes financial risks in order to achieve the end result which is ‘profit’ can be said to be an entrepreneur.

The percentage of successful entrepreneurs is quite small. According to a recent survey, at least 20% new businesses fail within the very first year while 50% make it to their fifth year of existence. This is a frightening number.

But wouldn’t everybody like to be a Mark Zuckerberg or a Bill Gates? Well, this article may help you understand what it takes to be successful.

In order to sustain, one must make the concept of “entrepreneurial leadership” his motto when starting a business.

There is a difference between an entrepreneur and entrepreneurial leadership. Entrepreneurial leadership is about inculcating certain characteristics in the employees of a business which not only helps the company run but also helps them grow professionally. It majorly revolves around helping employees see the factor of “self”- which means that they must be self-reliable. They should be able to self-reflect, develop, correct and accept which is the best way of helping them grow.

Entrepreneurial leadership has three main principles:

• Cognitive Ambidexterity
• SEERS
• SSA

Cognitive Ambidexterity is about prediction and creation logics and leans more towards the professional aspect of the concept of entrepreneurial leadership.

Prediction in this context refers to analysing a situation given various data, statistics and other information and predicting the end result.

Creation refers to acting upon a particular result or final analysis, which over time becomes better.

SEERS which expends as Social, Environmental, Economic Responsibility and Sustainability is impacted by every business around the globe. Hence the necessity for every business owner to implement strategies that impact these aspects in the best way possible comes as a responsibility that no one can run away from. For example, businesses dealing with chemicals or plastic should have a proper way and policy of discarding off their waste. They cannot be treated as regular biodegradable garbage and should therefore be given importance to when it comes to disposing them off.

Apart from that, equality amongst different sectors of the society including women and people of different races must be taken into consideration. Discrimination amongst employees depending on their gender or background shouldn’t be tolerated and a good leader is one who sets an example about the same. For example, even today there are companies who pay women less for the same job profile in comparison to their male colleagues and this does nothing but hamper the whole concept of equality in the eyes of his team.

SSA is the abbreviation for Social and Self Awareness.

Self-appraisals every now and then conducted by team leads can benefit the team to a large extent since every individual working for the company will be subtly forced to look into their own flaws and mistakes, thus being able to taking the step of correction to a whole new level.

Apart from employees, the founder/ entrepreneur himself should have a sense of self-awareness and more than the others. It is important to mentally go over the tasks that you came across during your working hours to get an idea about a certain event that could’ve been handled in a different and a better way in order to deal with it in a way that’s more preferable in the future.

For any entrepreneur to achieve success, entrepreneurial leadership is certainly the key!

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