Maxine Laceby says 'Everything I learned from motherhood I apply to the boardroom'

Are entrepreneurs born or made?

Having read ‘Are entrepreneurs born or made?’ in the The Guardian small business network, I puffed out like a peacock as I read down the list of attributes needed, as I have them all! As a mother I believe I have learned and earned, all the skills and qualities outlined in this article to succeed as an entrepreneur by running my family.

To all mothers out there, think about it, you do have all these skills;

Intuition and the ability to perceive; a mother can walk into any room, quickly scan and judge the situation in seconds.

Open, flexible and spontaneous; boy we do this on a daily basis.

Adapt and go with the flow; we do this on a second by second basis.

Are not known for being overly concerned with rules and regulations; Now, every mother knows our children learn the biggest lessons by breaking every one of the rules.

And as for risk-taking which is what most people associate with being an entrepreneur; If we didn’t take risks our beloved children would never leave the house.

The attention to detail, the practical outlook, and the step-by-step approach; are all the business demands we learn the moment our little ones come into this world.

Being highly planned with a structured approach, fixed goals and high levels of control; Are all skills I practiced every time my beloved children pushed me to the edge, which was often. Not saying I maintained the highly planned structured approach with fixed goals and high levels of control for longer than 3 seconds but it was there!

Psychologist Dr Mark Parkinson goes on to say the flip side of intuition, sensing; is all about the disciplined cousin of “perceiving” (referred to as “judging”); Don’t start me on judging, I spent many hours being judged and I’m ashamed to say judging at ‘the gates to hell’ aka the school gates, on which I could write a book!

Apparently, an obvious omission is optimism or a view of the world that is unfailingly positive and linked to a powerful expectation of how things will turn out; Every mother believes their child is the best at everything and woe betide anyone that tells her different!

Think Richard Branson. Another is persistence, which is perhaps the key characteristic as virtually every great entrepreneur has failed numerous times before they succeeded; The area of persistence we know only too well, from every tear, every nappy, every tooth, every step and every time we encouraged our children to overcome a fear they had, every time we introduced a new food, every time they didn’t want to go to, bed, to school, to the party, to grandmas…and so on.

Now this made me chuckle; emotional stability – closely associated with resilience; if there’s one thing you need to be as an entrepreneur, it’s a hardy individual who can put up with the twists and turns of business; Equally, I say if there is one thing you need to be anything you desire to be, it’s a hardy individual who can put up with the twists and turns of motherhood.