Personality, Abilities and Motivation & Mental Toughness
Background
In the early part of the 21st Century, Merseyside BusinessLink worked with AQR International to explore what might be the characteristics of a successful entrepreneur – individuals who would establish a business which in time would employ others. It was seen as a key component of the development of the Merseyside region in the UK.
The objective was to see if psychometric assessments could be useful in supporting fledgling entrepreneurs.
Businesslink arranged for AQR International to assess 39 individuals who had started their own businesses over the past 3 to 4 years as well as use focus groups to dig deeper.
The individuals had started businesses, which ranged from hairdressing to technologically innovative (an educational software developer).
Of these, a significant number had been identified as successful. Success for this exercise was defined as:
- Had been in business for 3 or more years.
- Had increased turnover in each of those years.
- The individuals were involved full-time in the enterprise and were making a living from it.
- Their business had recruited or were in the process of recruiting at least one person.
(The last criterion was the real point of the exercise. It was thought better to sponsor lots of small potential employers rather than just encourage a single big investor in setting up in the region who might employ large numbers of people.)
Personality, Abilities and Motivation
Using the Prevue assessment, we assessed the group and we were able to use its benchmarking feature to “create” a broad profile for a successful entrepreneur in terms of these characteristics.
The Prevue assessment is a high-quality measure of personality (behavioural), abilities and interests widely used in recruitment and selection.
The results were interesting:
- The most successful entrepreneurs were people of average abilities. People with higher-than-average ability levels generally did not do as well!
This was important because there was desire to encourage many more into self-employment. One issue is that people with poor educational attainment levels often had corresponding low self-esteem. By focusing on ability and measuring it in this way they hope to encourage more to have a go.
The explanation here is that a good deal of work when you run your own business is fairly humdrum.
Those who are brighter than average can become easily bored with the day-to-day routines of running a business.
- The most successful had a strong interest in working with people. Relationship building is important for business development.
- The most successful entrepreneurs were generally slightly more cooperative and submissive than average. This surprised many but is logical when one considers the relationship-building issue noted above.
- The most successful were more structured than the average person would be and there is little evidence that innovation is necessary. (Suggesting that success is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration!)
- The most successful were more poised than average but were fairly excitable (=energetic). The best were above average on emotional stability – which is what you would expect.
A benchmark for a small business entrepreneur seems to emerge in general. Certainly, this can be used to help assess an individual’s capabilities in terms of striking out on their own.
Mental Toughness
One of the elements of the study was a focus group where the participants described their experiences in getting underway. All described the first two years as being very demanding. One used the phrase “we needed mental toughness”.
All spoke of the pressures arising from factors such as:
- the unexpected happening (always apparently at the wrong time) and customers changing their minds about their needs – often at short notice (challenge)
- working to targets – often from an unsympathetic bank or customer (commitment)
- dealing with setbacks (confidence)
- working long hours because they had so many things to do and they only had themselves as a resource. (control)
We have since developed the MTQPlus which assesses these elements in significant detail (8 factors). This is based on the 4Cs mental toughness concept which is now the most widely adopted explanation for mental toughness across the globe.
Using both measures it should be possible to identify where – on several very practical scales – the individual might have potential strengths and potential weaknesses. As in most things, if we acknowledge and understand who we are, we can optimize this when needed. Especially in taking on changes such as establishing your own business.
