Forbes.com: The Psychology Of Success
“To understand the entrepreneur,” Zelaznick told The New York Times in 1986, “you first have to understand the psychology of the juvenile delinquent.”
“That’s a great quote,” responds Kelly Shaver, a professor of psychology at William & Mary College who is working in the field today. “But I think it’s really not true.”
Yeah, it is a great quote, irresistibly so. The meat of the article is in the excerpt below.
Nor, says Shaver, do the entrepreneurs seem to be devil-may-care risk takers. Only a subtle difference in the way they appreciate risk emerged. The entrepreneurs are worse at coming up with reasons they might fail. “Being able to generate more unpleasant possibilities might be making non-entrepreneurs more afraid,” Shaver says, but we don’t know that.
So far there is one other big difference between those who go into business for themselves and those who don’t, Shaver says. Entrepreneurs don’t care what other people think about them. “They really don’t care as much,” Shaver says. “They’re just happy to go ahead and do what they’re doing.”
Statistically speaking, then, [John R.] Simplot and [Bill] Gates would seem to have two things in common: They have trouble imagining failure, and they don’t care what you think.
Interesting article. It’s not surprising to see a mixture of self-confidence and charisma in the successful entrepreneur, but I’d be interested in seeing more detail on how they respond to the setbacks they face. If they can’t imagine failure, how do they deal with it when it happens? Cited in the article are such luminaries as Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs,as well as Simplot and Gates: how does the charismatic leader who laughs at disaster move past it without losing momentum?
Found in Rebecca’s Pocket