What makes scale-up leaders different?

While all leaders in our sample follow a process of exploring for generating ideas, scale-up leaders follow a quicker and more spontaneous journey. They reported themselves as being significantly more open to chance encounters, leveraging the most from unexpected circumstances. Hence, we hypothesize that cultivating the art of serendipity plays an important role in successfully building a scaling impact enterprise.

Being a dreamer is necessary but not sufficient in building a successful business. Our findings suggest that scale-up leaders manage to maintain a clear vision towards large positive impact, without neglecting the importance of developing concrete business plans. They learn what they don’t know and take time to understand the managerial part of running an enterprise. Scale-up leaders scored higher in analyzing long-term opportunities, developing strategies, implementing processes to reach objectives, and identifying and mitigating risks.

Scale-up leaders are more likely to lead their organization in a way that allows for exploration, experimentation, and innovation. They create a space where risk-taking is favored over operational excellence, where people feel comfortable with the risk of failure, and free to take calculated and innovative bets. They foster continuous learning and invest in their people’s development, so that they have the space to unfold their capabilities, set their direction, and progress.

All leaders in our sample strive for success and aim at operational excellence. However, scale-up leaders reported that they never settle for a “good” performance; they believe that there is no ceiling to excellence and a wave of success won’t stop them from pursuing perfection.

An authoritarian leader dictates all policies and procedures, dominates the decision-making process, controls activities, and allows little room for autonomy within the team. Such a leading style is far apart from a scale-up leader’s style, who prefers leading from behind than leading by role-modeling.

Most scale-up leaders in our sample scored significantly lower on the self-efficacy scale. Self-efficacy is the belief that you will get to where you want to go by doing what needs to be done. Scale-up leaders’, self-reported levels of confidence that they will eventually succeed when facing difficult tasks were lower than among all other leaders. Are scale-up leaders “insecure overachievers”?

Scale-up entrepreneurs seem to lose interest on ideas or projects after a short period of time. They are easily distracted by a new idea or choose to pursue new goals more often. Could this be an explanation for maintaining a “leading-from-behind” style?

Are you triggered by these results? Please send us your questions, your own insights and experiences, your feedback, your thoughts on potential explanations, or suggestions on how to address them.

All those who would like to reflect on their own leadership characteristics are very welcome to contact Afroditi (lead researcher of the creative leadership research projects) through afroditi.terzi@thnk.org to fill in the survey and receive a customized feedback report.