21 Key Traits Every Entrepreneur Needs

On 1 May 1761, the 29-year-old Joseph Haydn entered the service of the Esterházys, a Hungarian noble family. His post was vice-Kapellmeister: he would direct the court orchestra and write music. The contract put in front of him was long and extremely detailed.

Under the contract, Haydn would be regarded as a member of the household and was to behave as befits an honourable court official. He was to be temperate; towards his musicians he should be not overbearing but mild and lenient, honest and calm. Whenever the orchestra played before guests, he and all the musicians were to appear in uniform, with white stockings, white linen, powdered hair and either a pigtail or a tied wig.

There was more. He was to compose whatever the prince demanded, share his compositions with no one, allow no copies to be made and write no music for anyone else without the prince’s permission. Every day, before and after noon, he was to present himself in the antechamber and ask whether the prince wished for a concert.

The document was a list of the qualities expected of a person. Yet almost none of the qualities that made Haydn Haydn were on it.

What the contract left out

We still read lists like this today: the qualifications in job adverts, the traits investors look for in a founder. Whether you are an entrepreneur is usually noticed not by you but by the people around you, from the way you look at life, weigh risks and sense what is coming. The 21 traits below are pieces of what they notice. Haydn’s story carries a warning, though: a list is a starting point, not an outcome.

Heart: risk, courage, resilience

1. Courage. Being able to take the first step on a path nobody has tried.
2. Taking calculated risks. Not gambling, but playing in the knowledge that you could lose.
3. Self-confidence. Standing behind your decisions, and being secure enough to change your mind when you need to.
4. Not being daunted by failure. Trying again after you fall. To see why startups that closed did so, have a look at the Startup Graveyard.

A way of seeing: intuition, curiosity, a wide angle

Haydn’s contract taught him obedience; yet with the same orchestra he was trying something new every day.

5. Sensing the future. Noticing change before everyone else sees it.
6. Looking at things from a different angle. Seeing a need where everyone else sees a problem.
7. Drawing inspiration from anything. A conversation, a complaint, another industry.
8. Turning inspiration into your own course. Not copying what you see, but adapting it to your own direction.
9. Being open to the new. Not getting stuck on "it’s always been done this way".
10. A broad perspective. Seeing the whole system, not just a single product.
11. Reading the economy. Being able to interpret what interest rates, exchange rates and demand will do to your business.
12. Following the world. Thinking globally while working locally.

Moving together: team and partnership

In 1772, Prince Nikolaus kept the court at his summer palace longer than expected; the musicians, separated from their families in Eisenstadt, wanted to go home. Rather than complain to the prince directly, Haydn wrote a symphony. In the final movement, each musician in turn stopped playing, snuffed out the candle on his music stand and left the stage. The prince seems to have got the message: the court returned to Eisenstadt the next day. This story, which Haydn told his biographers in old age, is known as the Farewell Symphony.

13. Managing a team. Holding people together and being able to raise your voice on their behalf.
14. Channelling the team towards a goal. Getting everyone to look in the same direction.
15. Acting together. Choosing to walk together rather than run alone.
16. Saying "we", not "I". Sharing success and owning mistakes.
17. Turning shared ideas into a new leap forward. Turning the different voices around the table into a single move.

Road map: plan, route, back-up

18. Planning and scheduling. Being able to structure the day, the week, the year.
19. Not shying away from developments. Heading into change without fear.
20. Charting a route to success. Knowing where you are going and the steps that will get you there.
21. Keeping a back-up in your pocket. Having a plan B, just in case.

"Meleke": not inborn, but built by repetition

There is a word Turks often use when talking about entrepreneurship: "meleke", a learned aptitude. It comes from the Arabic "malaka", meaning "something possessed, an acquisition", and shares a root with the word for property. The Turkish Language Association’s dictionary defines meleke as "an aptitude or habit acquired through repetition".

The word has a philosophical history, too. From the ninth century onwards, medieval Islamic thinkers rendered Aristotle’s concept of "hexis", a settled disposition acquired through habit, as "malaka" in Arabic translations. Writing about crafts in the Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun defines the concept like this: a meleke is a quality acquired by doing something and repeating it again and again, until the form of that activity is firmly rooted.

In other words, the 21 traits above are not a birth certificate. They are all learned aptitudes, gained through repetition. Haydn’s contract asked him for certain behaviours; he repeated them every day for nearly thirty years and went far beyond the list.

A final word

In old age, Haydn described his years with the Esterházys to his biographer Georg August Griesinger like this:

"My prince was content with all my works, I received approval. As head of an orchestra I could make experiments, observe what heightened the effect and what weakened it, and so improve, add, cut away and take risks. I was cut off from the world; there was nobody near me to confuse me or trouble me in my course, and so I had to become original."

Which trait is missing from your contract but makes you who you are, and how many times have you practised it this week?