The pattern · Control
What locus of control is and why it matters
People who believe outcomes depend on their own actions start and sustain more businesses, research shows. Understand the trait and how to develop it.
Locus of control is where a person places the cause of what happens to them. Those with an internal locus of control believe that outcomes depend, to a large extent, on their own actions. Those with an external locus attribute everything to luck, to other people or to the system. Among entrepreneurs, the internal locus shows up often, and it makes sense: no one starts a business believing nothing they do matters.
What the research shows
The concept was proposed by psychologist Julian Rotter in 1966, in a monograph that became a reference. He showed that people differ, in a stable way, in their belief that they do or don't control the reinforcements in their own lives, and that this belief changes the way they act (Rotter, 1966).
Four decades later, Andreas Rauch and Michael Frese gathered dozens of studies on the personality of business owners in a meta-analysis published in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology. They found that traits matched to the task of entrepreneurship, among them internal locus of control, proactiveness, self-efficacy and stress tolerance, are associated both with the decision to start a business and with its success (Rauch and Frese, 2007).
An internal locus isn't believing everything depends on you. Crises, markets and governments exist. It's choosing to act on the part that does.
Who lived it
Soichiro Honda owned a piston ring factory, Tokai Seiki, when the war came. In 1944, a bombing raid destroyed one of the plants. In January 1945, an earthquake brought down the other.
Honda didn't wait for the country to rebuild. He sold what was left of the company to Toyota and, in October 1946, with that money, founded the Honda Technical Research Institute. He began by fitting small engines to bicycles. In 1948, Honda Motor was born (Soichiro Honda).
In Bairo's journey
The moment this trait shows up most strongly in the life of Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez is also the hardest. He had come in as an investing partner in a company that wasn't what it seemed. The business didn't hold up. And, as he tells it, there were fifty people who depended on him.
There's a natural reaction to a moment like that, and everyone knows it: complaining. About the partner, the system, the country, luck. Bairo didn't complain. He decided to do something he didn't know how to do and went off to build.
Years later, he gave one of his ventures, the CLAIN artificial intelligence orchestrator, a name that comes from the English claim: to claim what is yours. The man who decided not to complain swapped one word for another. Instead of a complaint, a claim. It's the internal locus of control turned into a project name.
How to develop this trait
- Split the problem into two columns. On one side, what depends on you. On the other, what doesn't. Spend your energy on the first.
- Swap "why me" for "what do I do now". The question shifts the focus from blame to action.
- Own your part in the mistakes. Without destroying yourself. Those who recognize their own mistake can fix it; those who blame others repeat it.
- Start with a small decision. Control is regained through concrete actions: a phone call, a bill paid, a step taken.
- Beware of excess. Believing everything depends on you leads to guilt and burnout. A healthy internal locus recognizes limits.
- Seek help if you're paralyzed. When nothing seems to depend on you for a long time, that may be a sign of burnout or depression. In Brazil, CVV answers at 188.