Entrepreneurial Passion and Personality Differences among the Team Members

Entrepreneurial Passion and Personality Differences among the Team Members
Reflective Report: Passion and Personality in the Group
1 Introduction
Working in a group to create a new solution to an existing problem can be both an exciting and challenging experience. I learned this recently when working with my team to create a new approach to sustainability at Paravel. I have had experience working in teams in the past and learnt how to effectively be a team player. But while working on the group assignment, I realised that the task also influences how people work in a group. The venture idea we worked on seemed easy to plan and pitch. However, this was not the case because I found that the formulation and delivery of the pitch were influenced by team entrepreneurial passion (TEP) and personality conflict within the group. This report aims to discuss how this challenge manifested itself, how it was addressed, and its impact on the venture's prospects. The report will also discuss how the challenge would be approached in future, the effect of the type of venture on the challenge, and how this whole experience relates to my future career direction.
2 Nature of the Challenge
Our team's main challenge relates to personality and how personality differences contribute to TEP issues and conflict. According to Cardon et al. (2017, p.284), members of a venture team do not have an equal passion for their venture, ideas, or goals, but the entrepreneurial passion of each individual influences the overall TEP for the group. As indicated in the team introduction section of our group assignment, the passion and personality of individual team members were quite diverse. Some team members were passionate about the venture idea and shared ideas on creating a compelling pitch. In contrast, others were not passionate at all about the venture idea or anything else we were doing as a group.
While this diversity is good, it created a problem because members who were passionate about the venture idea were more interested in inventing the product rather than the customer target or the value proposition, which are essential in developing the venture. There was also conflict because of different personalities. This conflict made it difficult to focus on different areas of the pitch beyond the proposed product. When the venture team members are passionate about one aspect of the venture idea at the expense of other elements, achieving success with the venture becomes problematic (Cardon et al. 2017, p.284). Also, de Mol et al. (2019) reveal that the diversity of team passion and focus variety in venture teams negatively affect the performance of the venture. The degree of the diversity of passion and team members focus on one aspect of the venture idea negatively influenced how we approached our pitch in the initial stages.
3 Overcoming the Challenge
We quickly realised that the TEP diversity presented us with problems that affected our decision-making capacity and ability to move on with the venture plan. Even though we lacked equal measures of passion for the venture, we shared one goal of at least creating a pitch that would convince potential investors and other shareholders that our idea was worth their time and resources. To overcome the...