Experience and Self-Leadership: An Exploratory Study of Norwegian Entrepreneurs

The purpose of this study has been to discover how entrepreneurs with different levels of experience use self-leadership strategies to navigate the entrepreneurial landscape. Several scholars have emphasized the importance of entrepreneurial experience when dealing with the obstacles being an entrepreneur entails, like finding motivation, dealing with challenges and goal management. In the past years, self-leadership has gained increased traction in an entrepreneurial context, as a tool for entrepreneurs to lead themselves effectively. However, there is limited research on how entrepreneurs actually use self-leadership strategies, and no previous empirical evidence on how entrepreneurial experience influences selfleadership ability. Our goal has been to promote knowledge about how entrepreneurs actually lead themselves by comparing novice (inexperienced) and serial (experienced) entrepreneurs. We have conducted in-depth interviews with eight informants, four novice and four serial entrepreneurs. Our results show that entrepreneurial experience does influence the use of strategies. While serial entrepreneurs rely heavily on one single strategy, novice entrepreneurs utilize the variety of strategies to a larger extent. The most interesting finding, however, is about consciousness. Based on our findings, we conclude that as experience increases, the conscious use of self-leadership strategies decrease. Whether this is because the strategies become internalized over time, or because entrepreneurs that have these skills are more likely to become serial entrepreneurs, could be an interesting topic for future research