How to Improve Your Business Management Skills and Reinforce Your Resume Credentials
Rarely can one say that they are a complete manager. Business owners and leaders all over the world are constantly seeking ways to improve their management skills. This is a fact widely known, and the evidence for that lurks around every corner. No matter where you look for job postings there are going to be requirements for good leadership and management skills.
To make things more interesting, this is now becoming a requirement even for non-managerial roles. This just means that as more and more people are working in a team, there is a high demand for each member to have good management skills as well. If you are not a manager yet, all the more reasons to start working on these extremely valuable skills.
This will give you a massive advantage if you are switching jobs at one point. However, how does one go about improving their business management skills exactly? Here is an overview of the different ways you can improve your management skills and boost your resume.
Understand emotional factors
Talking about emotions in a business context seemed somewhat odd up until recently. More and more people are recognizing the value that comes from trying to understand and develop emotional intelligence. This means developing the ability to notice different emotions and to understand why they manifest in your coworkers, but also in yourself. This is an important skill to develop as a manager as you will be able to ‘read’ people.
However, it is important to understand that this has nothing to do with emotional manipulation. It just simply means that you will be able to understand other people’s needs and reactions better. Developing this skill will make you a more effective manager overall, because you will be able to make things work not only technically but also emotionally. You and your team will then be able to understand your customers when running advertising campaigns as well.
Listen more
Being a manager might seem like giving out a lot of orders. This is completely wrong and it is actually counterproductive. A good manager is someone who is there to see the big picture and carefully guide the workflow by making careful assessments. This can only be achieved if you develop active listening skills. To do this you can start off by not talking as much.
Try to simply observe and really understand what others are saying and then try to help them reach a good conclusion. Learning another language is also great for developing listening skills. By actively listening, there are definitely things that you will learn about what makes a good business because other people will know something that you don’t.
Work on your own projects
If developing these skills comes somewhat difficult, perhaps you do not have enough skin in the game. In order to truly realize how valuable other people’s and your own time are you have to run a project or organization of your own. This will provide a far more engaging environment where making decisions is going to feel more relevant to you. Along with this, you might want to consider how you structure things on a bigger level.
This is where making priority lists is really useful. For instance, running a side-project of your own can directly improve how you prioritize tasks in your day-to-day work at your company.
Learn through gaming
Research from Vanderbilt University has tested over a thousand pupils on the effects that gamified learning has had on them. The results showed that this approach allowed much better retention of information compared to regular curriculum-based learning. That is why many innovative business management short courses take this approach. Now you can thoroughly sharpen any of the business management skills that you want in a seamless and extremely fun way.
Another benefit to this approach is that you have nothing to risk. Making mistakes has been shown to be one of the top limiting beliefs for people, especially in a business setting. However, game-based learning completely changes how you approach acquiring new important skills.
Value time more
How you use your time is really important and this is true not just in business. Developing a good sense of time will allow you to sharpen your time-management skills within your workplace as well. A good leader should understand the value of time deeply. Because what people who are working in your organization are essentially doing is exchanging time for productivity and making profit.
In order to value their time, you need to understand a couple of things such as: making good estimates on how long projects should last, scheduling meetings only when important, limiting distractions, and keeping established time-frames consistent day-to-day.
In order to upgrade your resume as a manager, you will need a new set of skills. Luckily you can work on the following to get there: develop emotional intelligence, try to actually listen to others, manage your own projects as well, apply game-based learning and value time more. These skills will transform how you lead others.
Written by Mike Johnston