Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences Institute for Work, Social and Organizational Psychology
Personality and Competencies
of Entrepreneurs
Dominika Dej
Institute of Work-, Organizational- and Social Psychology, TU Dresden
Prague, 30.06.2010
- Silesian University in Katowice
Dresden University of Technology
Dissertation
“Entrepreneurial Success Factors and Health”
- Self- Employment
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Pillars of the seminar
Theory + (Inter)Action
“Skills cannot be mastered by listening to lectures but by
observation of positive models (…) coupled with repeated
practice and feedback.”
Richard Hackman
 Participation: Leaving the comfort zone
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Today‘s agenda
1. Bill Gates – A story of Success
2. Entrepreneurial personality traits
3. Assess your entrepreneurial potential
4. Active group exercise (teamwork, creativity)
5. Emotions in organizations
6. Leadership
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Positive models: Bill Gates – A story of Success
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Bill Gates – A story of Success
Your task
1. Read the story (10‘)
2. Work in groups on the following topic (10‘):
Which personal factors and circumstances were crucial
for Bills‘ success?
Which personality traits & competencies lie behind Bill‘s
success?
3. Present your results
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Entrepreneurs' Personality Traits
Need of achievement
Denotes individual’s need to strive hard to attain success.
Setting demanding targets for oneself, being proactive, tendency to take
immediate responsibility for tasks, plan and control events. Want to receive
feedback about their level of performance.
Locus of control
One aspect of the cognitive style which represents the extension to which
individual feels in charge.
Perception of control over the environment by one’s action, belief that luck and
fate do not really determine what happens.
Risk taking
Describes the individual cognitive style with respect to taking risks.
Actively seeking risky assignments and having greater propensity to take risks.
Personal initiative
A behaviour syndrome resulting in an individual’s taking an active and selfstarting approach to work and going beyond what is formally required in a given
job.
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Entrepreneurs' Personality Traits
Tolerance of ambiguity
Describes one’s ability to make decision with incomplete information.
Making decisions in situations of high uncertainty.
Creativity
Describes the tendency towards experimentation, trial and error, lateral thinking.
Thinking in non-conventional ways, challenging existing assumptions, flexibility
and adaptability in problem solving.
Need of autonomy
Represents one’s strive to be independent and having control.
Avoiding restrictions, rules, procedures and strong need for independence and
autonomy.
Self-efficacy
Describes optimistic self-beliefs to cope with a variety of difficult demands.
Belief that one's actions will produce desired results.
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Definitions of the Big-Five personality variables
(FFM; Costa &McCrae, 1992).
Dimension
Description
High scores on the scale
Low scores on the
scale
Neuroticism
Represents individual
differences in emotional
stability
Experiencing negative emotions:
anxiety, hostility, depression, self
consciousness, impulsiveness
Self-confidence,
calm, relaxed
Extraversion
Represents the extent to
which an individual is
assertive, dominant,
energetic, talkative
Tendency to be cheerful, like
people and big groups, look for
excitement and stimulation
Tendency to spend
time alone, being
reserved, quiet,
independent
Openness to
Experience
Describes tendency to seek
new experiences, exploration
of novel ideas
Being creative, innovative,
imaginative, reflective,
untraditional
Being narrow,
conventional, non
analytical
Agreeableness
Represents one’s
interpersonal orientation
Trusting, forgiving, caring,
altruistic, gullible, tendency to
have good interpersonal
relationships
Low need for
affiliation, unforgiving,
able to make difficult
decisions
Conscientious
ness
Describes individual’s degree
of organisation, persistence,
hard work and motivation in
pursuit the goal
accomplishment
High need of achievement,
persistence and dependability
(reflects the extend to which one
is organised, deliberate, fulfils
duties and responsibilities)
Low need of
achievement and low
dependability
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Personality can be defined as a dynamic and organized
set of characteristics possesed by a person that uniquely
influences his or her cognitions, motivations and
behaviour in various situations. The word „personality
originates from the Greek „persona“, which means
mask…“
Ryckman, 2004
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Personality traits vs. competencies
Personality trait
A relative stable, consistent, and enduring internal characteristic
that inferred from a pattern of behaviors, attitudes, feelings, and
habits in the individual.
Competence
One‘s developed repertoire of skills, especially as it is applied to a
task or set of task
VandenBos, G.R. (Ed.) (2007). APA Dictionary of Psychology. Washington, DC:
American Psychology Association.
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Example of Entrepreneurial Competencies
Entrepreneurial Career Vision
Includes formulation of long term goals and preparation of actionimplementation plan.
Action Orientation
Is understood to be the energy, force, courage and dedication necessary to
put into action and make real, all the ideas, proposals, opportunities and
entrepreneurial projects.
Decision Taking
Means to analyze the different alternatives in order to determine the best
path to follow assuming full responsibility of the outcomes.
Management
Ability to gather, integrate and manage required resources in order to start,
maintain and grow within the organization.
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Example of Entrepreneurial Competencies
Entrepreneurial networking
Includes establishing, maintaining and taking advantages of
interpersonal and institutional relationships in order to achieve
entrepreneurial goals.
Empathy
Ability to understand others’ emotions, necessities and interests and
to integrate them to our own.
Flexibility
One’s disposition to change focus in order to follow better fitting
options that allow tasks to be well executed.
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Your entrepreneurial potential
1) Personal initiative √
2) Self-efficacy √
3) Internal locus of control
4) Creativity √
5) Need for achievement √
Your task (10’)
1) Fill out the questionnaire
2) Calculate the mean score for self-efficacy and personal initiative
3) Calculate the sum for creativity and need for achievement
(yes 1, no 0)
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Your entrepreneurial vs. entrepreneurs’ potential
Personal initiative
Entrepreneurs' from Poland, Germany & The Netherlands (N= 325)
Mean = 4.00 (SD= .54)
-
No gender & country differences
No differences between industry sectors (IT vs. Restaurants)
Norm Population (M= 3.5)
(Frese, Kring, Soose & Zempel, 1996)
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Your entrepreneurial vs. entrepreneurs’ potential
Self-efficacy
Entrepreneurs' from Poland, Germany & The Netherlands (N= 325)
Mean = 3.13 (SD= .36)
-
No gender & country differences
No differences between industry sectors (IT vs. Restaurants)
Norm Population (M= 2.9)
(Schwarzer & Jerusalem, 1989)
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Psychological tests - measuring entrepreneurial
potential
-
Are they useful and when?
-
What are their advantages/
disadvantages?
-
What are their alternatives?
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Active exercises section
Your task
1. Find your random group (1observer)
2. Build the tower using given materials (20‘)
You are allowed to talk
You can use only:
-
Scissors
Paper
Glue
-
The tower have to be stable and transportable!
Evaluation:
- Size
- Stability
- Creativity
- Presentation  present your tower
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Active exercises sectionCreativity & Teamwork
Evaluation
Who is the winner?
-
Did you use a specific strategy or tactic?
Did you prepare the tower building beforehand? (Discussion, role
assignment)
Which kind of preparation would be useful?
Are you satisfied with your result? Why?
-
What was useful/ hindering for the performance?
Which emotions prevailed during the work?
How was the decision making strategy?
-
Are such exercises useful and should they be used by psychologists?
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Effects of emotions on performance
Are there negative effects of positive emotions on
performance?

Study of Sy, Côte, and Saavedra (2005):
- participants were 189 students (56 teams)
- blindfolded tent exercise: Team members were told to build up a tent
quickly and effectively while blindfolded. Only the group leader could
see the tent. He was instructed to lead the team until the task was
finished

Positive mood enhanced group coordination, effort of the team members
BUT inhibited a good task strategy to solve the task
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Effects of emotions on performance
Possible reasons for negative effects of positive emotions
•
performance on a creativity task depends on the character of the task
(Vosburg, 1998)
- optimizing condition (find an optimal solution)
- satisficing condition (generate as much as possible ideas
regardless their quality)
•
positive emotions signalize security and satisfaction indicating
requirements for information processing are lower; appliance of
simple heuristics and low levels of processing strategies
(Hertel et al., 2000)
•
positive mood therefore tends to cause fast, simple, and flexible
decisions (Forgas, 1999)
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Effects of emotions on performance
What does a meta analysis indicate?

Baas, DeDreu & Nijstad (2008):
- synthesizes 102 effects regarding the influence of positive emotions
on creativity
- effect size overall revealed a positive correlation between
positive emotions and creativity (r = .15)
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Effects of emotions on performance
Why does good mood enhance performance?
Other reasons for good performance in a positive mood:
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Effects of emotions on performance
Other reasons for good performance in a positive mood:

Baron (1990): positive mood leads to striving for higher goals

Tsai, Chen, & Liu (2007):
*p < 05. **p < .01.
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Class activity:
Charismatic leadership examples
Which charismatic leaders do you know?
(also negative ones)
What makes them charismatic?
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Case study: Bill Clinton
"I still believe in a promise called
America and I still believe in a
place called Hope.“
Bill Clinton, 1996
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Case study: George W. Bush
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Case study: Osama Bin Laden
"If a person's values are destructive, insane,
then the more charismatic the leader, the
worse off you are."
Jerry Wofford
"Osama bin Laden is obviously delusional,
but ... his charisma is probably the most
significant factor in why he has so many
followers."
Jodi Deluca
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Class activity:
Leadership & Entrepreneurship
•
What kind of leadership might be benefitial in small and
medium sized companies?
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Thanks for your attention!
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