Leadership in the Heat of the Battle Called Entrepreneurship

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Darrell Kopke

Entrepreneurship is full of ups and downs; there are good days and bad days. Each moment, test, victory and defeat comes with it its appropriate, accompanying emotion. Regardless how you are feeling, your community of suppliers, employees and customers are watching for who you are being in the face of what is happening.

Understand that you have a choice, in every business situation, to choose who you are being. It is up to you, and only you, to decide how you will react, how you will lead your team forward. Will you choose to blame, deflect, or dodge? Will you choose to celebrate decisions and risks? Will you act with generosity? Will you diminish and assault? All of these are your alternatives no matter what your circumstance.

Although it is hard to synthesize leadership hints into a short blog post, I would like to offer two key lessons I have learned while building a high growth company.

The first is to understand your values: both your personal values and your organization’s values. Most people I know do not have a clear understanding of their personal values. My wife and I have identified several family values that we leverage to contextualize our parenting and to reward or discipline our children. Those are being hardworking, having integrity, being principled, and having fun. We incorporate these values into family discussions.

Why care about your personal value system? In my opinion you should be cognizant how consistent or inconsistent your personal values are with your corporate values. Are you working for and with an organization that reflects who you are?

Most companies have defined their values but few have determined what are the consistent behaviours that are related to those values. For instance, if you have a corporate value of transparency, some related behaviours would be:

“we practice open book accounting with our employees”

“our manufacturing is third party audited and reported publicly”

The second key lesson is to choose to act in alignment with your values no matter the situation you are facing. Business is volatile and the act of entrepreneurship is at the peak of the corporate volatility index. You will be faced with many stressful situations that require your decision making and leadership. More often than not, your values are based on powerful intention and generosity of spirit. Choose to behave consistently with them all the time. This will help you build long term, solid relationships with all of your community stakeholders and get you through some tough times.