ENTREPRENEURS Business owners: Know thyselves

Personality traits can both help and hurt small-business owners.
ORLANDO SENTINEL
For former first-grade teacher Sharon Bergin, opening a private tutoring center was a welcome return to working with children who needed help.
She not only enjoyed teaching kids who were struggling in their regular classrooms, she thrived on training other teachers to do it, too.
When it came to some of the more conventional business chores, however, Bergin lost some of her edge as the franchise expanded.
Less appealing
Negotiating the lease on a bigger location for her fast-growing company, for example, or talking to contractors who would do the renovations held less appeal.
"It takes away from what I'm passionate about," she said of the nonteaching work.
The focus Bergin brought to bear on the primary mission of her new business is just the kind of intensity that can drive a small company to success.
But psychologists who study the dynamics of business and the workplace warn that the same kind of singleness of purpose can result in blind spots that imperil an entrepreneur's company.
"They don't look back to ask, 'Have I created a system, a process, ways to document what has happened?"' said Roger R. Pearman, a Winston-Salem, N.C., counseling psychologist. His company, Leadership Performance Systems Inc., consults to companies on such business issues.
"This problem with the entrepreneur seems to be a pretty consistent pattern," he said.
In Bergin's case, things worked out.
Her husband was in a master's of business administration program at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., when she started her first Huntington Learning Center nearby.
So he did everything from write a business plan for her to handle all the details of opening a second center two years later, so she could concentrate on the primary business activity, she said.
But without that ready access to free expertise, what can a business owner do to stay on track not only with the core product or service but also with the host of ancillary activities, from payroll and accounting to long-term planning?
Know yourself
The first step, many experts in the field agree, is to have a firm grasp of your own personality and interests, so you can play to your strengths and compensate for your weaknesses.
"Self-awareness is the first key," said Hile Rutledge, managing partner at Otto Kroeger Associates, a Fairfax, Va., consulting firm that specializes in analyzing personality types.
"What are my strengths and how do those help the company succeed? And how do those same strengths plant the seeds of my failure?"
"The same skills that create success in you as an entrepreneur, when taken to extremes, are going to be a liability," said Rutledge, co-author of book on personality types in the workplace, "Type Talk at Work."
A good example of that double-edged sword is that the self-confidence and independence that inspire many people to start a business in the first place frequently get them into trouble, Rutledge said. "They tend to step away from regimentation and procedure -- but every business needs that."
One way to moderate your natural tendencies and make up for shortcomings is to hire people who are different from you, said Rebecca Tilley, managing director of Adventure Associates in El Cerrito, Calif., which does corporate training and team building for companies.
Like many in the field, Tilley's firm and Otto Kroeger Associates both rely heavily on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator system.
"We help people figure out what their type is and understand a little bit about their likes and dislikes," Tilley said.
Advisers
One way to get other people's viewpoints in your business is to call on the advisers who are available at colleges and universities that have small business or entrepreneurial programs, said Pearman, of Leadership Performance Systems. Another way would be to "create a small board of directors -- even if it's an advisory board" of friends or relatives to review how you are running your business, he said.
It is important for an entrepreneur to get others' views on what he or she is doing, Pearman said. "Sometimes, when we have spinach on our metaphorical teeth, we need someone to tell us."