All this Talk of Mindsets: But What IS an Entrepreneurial Mindset?
I have written a 3-part blog series on mindsets. The first focuses on perhaps the most widely known and understood mindsets, including the growth, positive, abundance, and challenge mindsets. A second blog is dedicated to the mindful mindset. This third blog explores the lesser known (at least to me) entrepreneurial mindset. The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) defines the entrepreneurial mindset as:
A set of skills that enable people to identify and make the most of opportunities, overcome and learn from setbacks, and succeed in a variety of settings.
While widely related to characteristics, attitudes, behaviors, and skills crucial to other mindsets and applicable to many of life’s circumstances, this list of assets is critical of an individual with entrepreneurial strengths. Research shows that an entrepreneurial mindset is valued by employers, boosts educational attainment and performance, and is crucial for creating new businesses. This list includes:
- Comfort with risk
- Creativity and innovation
- Critical thinking and problem-solving
- Initiative and self-reliance
- Communication and collaboration
- Future orientation
- Opportunity recognition
- Flexibility and adaptability
If you are familiar with 21st Century Skills and/or Socioemotional Learning, you will recognize many commonalities between the three skill lists. This is because they come from the same research base regarding what individuals need to be successful in educational/college, career, and life settings. They are what employers are seeking in their new hires and what schools and training programs of all sorts (including the military) look for in their recruits and extend further teachings to with their students/participants.
You’ll notice that these are distinct from the knowledge base broadly taught in most secondary schools. Subject matter, while important to a certain extent, is being left behind for more competency-based learning models as we move forward into a more progressive, applied skills, technology-driven world. Schools in the United States have been slow on the uptake of these future-facing types of learning experiences, and this is part and partial to why our students have been falling further behind the world’s leading/most educated countries for several decades now.
Won’t you join me in supporting our youth and our country at large?
How can we scaffold our young ones to
- think for themselves and develop self-reliance,
- communicate face to face and collaborate with others,
- take risks and grow their flexibility, and ultimately,
- recognize the opportunity to create their dream future?
If you would like help in navigating this challenge, reach out to me today! Together, we can learn and practice healthy parenting skills, brainstorm how best to bolster our loved ones, guide them in doing this hard work, improve our communication skills with a generation that is getting harder and harder to reach, and model what it looks like to be a happy, successful, and fulfilled adult during a time when this is so frightening for so many.
For further exploration on ways to support our younger generations, read my blogs: