Influence of Leadership Skills on Entrepreneurship Success:

Abstract

The main objective of the study was to assess the influence of leadership skills to entrepreneurship success in Tanzania. The research was guided by the several objectives which include; to identify leadership skills required to lead a successful entrepreneurship business, secondly to examine environmental factors that affect entrepreneurial business and lastly, to investigate any demographic factors such as age, gender, education that affect leadership skills of the entrepreneur. The researcher uses various theories include Transformational, Transactional and Entrepreneurial Leadership Theory, Furthermore, the researcher uses cross-sectional research with quantitative approach were by data was collected using questionnaire from a sample of 353 respondents from the study area. A homogenous sample of entrepreneurs were selected for this study using purposive sampling and Data were analyzed using Likert scale scores to determine the influence of leadership skills to entrepreneurship success in Tanzania. Findings indicated that, self-confidence, decision-making ability, and determination to achieve goals constitute the highly rated leadership skills required to lead entrepreneurial businesses. On the other hand, the researcher found that, the main environmental factors that affect entrepreneurial business were need to combat corruption. Moreover, Spearman correlations were used for the demographic variables with the leadership scale score. Inspection of the results found the leadership scale score was not significantly related to gender, age, and education level. The researcher recommended that, the government through the ministry of investment, industries and business should help the entrepreneurs to grow by providing more education about leadership skills so as to achieve outstanding success in their business, universities should also ensure the coaching and mentoring of entrepreneurs to give more confidence, self-discipline and skills of leading the business.