Top 17 Business Management Skills to be Best on the Job

Top 17 Business Management Skills to be Best on the Job

One important skill to have in running a business is the business management skills. It is one thing to set up a business and another thing to keep it moving for years.

To achieve this is not an easy task and therefore requires a great deal of management skills.

Generally speaking, business management skills are highly needed in the markets, companies, and other profit making ventures in running successful businesses.

What is Business Management?

Business management is the intelligent use of business ideas and knowledge to grow a given business regardless of the industry it is in.

Business management entails the use of skills, knowledge, ideas, and man power to move a business forward in the industry.

This article focuses on major skills and qualities you will need on daily basis to be effective in managing a business, whether as an employee or employer.

17 Business Management Skills and Qualities to Stay Top in the Industry

1. Leadership

For you to stay top in your business, one skill you must have is the Leadership skill. This involves the ability to convince and influence others to buy into a particular idea. Remember, you are not alone in the workplace. So for people in your workplace to buy into your idea, you need to exhibit this skill at all times.

Leadership skill goes hand in hand with confidence. When people in the workplace are able to see the confidence in your idea, it sounds convincing to them and that alone can compel them to buy into your idea about a subject matter regarding the business.

Also, understand that leadership involves taking calculated risks that some other people may not dare to take. It also involves thinking outside the box on how to get problems solved using innovative methods maybe unknown to others.

2. Multitasking

Part of your job as a business manager is to coordinate the activities of people under you, but that is not your only job. You must be able to look into other issues all at once.

This involves you being active physically and mentally. The ability to carry out several tasks and be effective in them is what is seen as multitasking.

Multitasking demands mental alertness and ability to focus on each job as they come.

This is a special quality to have because not everyone has the capacity to coordinate multiple activities in the workplace and yet produce the desired result.

But if you must stay top in your industry, then make effort to imbibe this skill in your daily activities.

Companies and businesses are always on the lookout for people with multitasking skill to hire.

To generate this ability comes with time and experience as you get involved and gather enough experience in various tasks in the same field or related fields.

3. Decision Making

Decision is the ability to choose between alternatives based on realistic factors. We are faced with decisions in the workplace every day. So, the ability to correct decisions at every given time is an indispensable skill in managing a business. Ability to make the right decisions at all times is what basically differentiates an expert from an amateur.

Before making decisions, past events and future predictions are taken into account. It is wrong to make decisions based on assumptions.

This is also part of the leadership qualities of a manager. A manager that wants to be a good leader in the workplace must be to make the right decisions that will yield the required results for the business.

Ability to make right decisions is dependent largely on experience. In all spheres of life, experts are always consulted to help make certain decisions owing to their wealth of experience over the years.

Business is not left out in this case. So this implies that for a manager to make sound and accurate decisions that has to do with the business, he/she needs wealth of experience to increase his/her chances of making sound decisions.

4. Motivation

Motivation is a key skill that every business manager should have. Motivation is needed when the chips are down.

The ability to motivate yourself and others is a veritable tool to keep the business alive.

Things will not always turn out as planned by a manager and his/her team, but motivation keeps them going.

To do this, first the manager must be able to motivate himself. Self-motivation gives you the balls to motivate others.

As the saying goes, “You can’t give what you don’t have”, you can’t be in a state of discouragement and be able to motivate others. Be motivated yourself and it will rub off on others in the workplace.

Secondly, the manager should be able to motivate his team when things go against the expected result. Like earlier stated, things will not always go according to plan and that’s why business is a risk.

The manager or the leader of the business should be able to help his/her team get their confidence back when they are discouraged.

5. Effective Communication

Communication is very important in the workplace. Communication is not just about what you say, but how you say it and the timing of your message is also important.

As a business leader, Learn to be effective in your communication in the workplace and be sure your message is understood the way you meant it to be.

It is also important to know how to communicate with your superiors to stay on your job, and your colleagues, to earn their maximum cooperation.

Failure to do this will have an adverse effect in the workplace. Let every communication be geared towards bringing out the best out of people and not the other way round.

Also, be open-minded to take corrections from people if any aspect of your communication is faulted. This might come from people under you, colleagues, or the management. This demands that you should be a good listener in order to pick up the necessary corrections.

6. Creativity

To remain in business demands a lot of creativity. Creativity involves creating something from an unlikely circumstance and/or improving on what is obtainable at the moment.

Creativity is a necessary quality every business manager or leader should have in any industry. The world is changing and the changes are products of productive thinking and creativity which results to innovations.
To be creative is not a rocket science, it demands keeping in touch with latest technologies and methods of solving a particular problem.

This helps increase your creativity to generate ideas on how best to solve the problem.

Ideas rule the world and better ideas keep the world moving. One key to having a creative mind is to have a positive mindset and set out to solve every problem as they show up in your business.

An idea may seem meaningless to people in the workplace, but when you sharpen it and combine it with what is obtainable, you will be able to come up with something special, that’s creativity.

7. Schedule

This is the ability to line up jobs according to their relative importance. This can also be referred to as prioritization of jobs. When handling jobs, it is important to line them up in their order of relative importance or priority.

Not all jobs take the same time to be completed, neither are they all equal in hierarchy of importance.

Though it is nice to be able to handle multiple tasks, yet it is nicer to line them up in order of the priority.

Jobs with higher priority should be attended to first before others. Failure to do this will lead to a situation where you misdirect your energy doing the right thing at the right time.

Also, jobs can be handled based on time taken to do each of them. Those with shorter time of completion should come first and others follow suit.

Also, jobs can be handled based on their complexities. More complex jobs can be tasking and energy-sapping.

This should be put under consideration when scheduling how and when jobs should be carried out. This can save time and energy with effective planning.

8. Cost Management

Though maximization of profit is the main aim of every business, yet, minimization of cost is key to achieving this purpose.

Increase in cost can reduce the profit margin of a business, therefore, the ability to work with a restricted budget and achieve much with it is a skill desired by every manager who wants to grow his/her business.

In cost management, commodities are compared to each other and decisions are made based on relevant factors.

Having strong cost management skill will enable a manager to avoid wastage of resources to the barest minimum.

Tenacity and shrewdness are the keys to cost management. Little details are taken into account by the manager in order not to create loopholes in the business that may result in waste.

Any business leader that can’t manage cost in the workplace will definitely bring down the business in no distant time.

So, for one to be a good manager and stay top in the business, he/she must learn to manage cost at all times. Failure to do this may set the business on the path to liquidation.

9. Analytical Thinking

Analytical thinking involves proper analysis, comparison, and productive conclusion on a problem.

A business will always encounter challenges either among colleagues, customers or competitors in the industry. To overcome these challenges require critical and analytical thinking.

To fight off competition and stay top of your job, you need to be an analytical thinker with the ability to dissect and bisect problems into small fragments and proffer long lasting solutions where necessary.

Ideas are formed in the moment of critical thinking. The brain was given to think and produce useful solutions.

A good manager who intends to take the business to higher heights should be able to have time alone to ruminate over recent events and be able to predict what the future looks like.

This is the secret of creativity in any business. A manager should be able to study events overtime and predict or draw conclusion on his/her findings before making decisions that have to do with the business.

10. Quality Control

Understand that competition abounds in every industry. It is the survival of the fittest and an industry saturated by companies that render similar services can only accommodate the competitive businesses. This is not debatable neither can it changed anytime soon.

To maintain relevance in any industry, a drop in quality of products or services rendered is not expected from a competent manager because that might be likened to shooting oneself on the foot.

Quality control is a quality business managers must always have. The manager is to make sure that his/her team of workers maintain high quality standard in their services or products. That is a sure way of staying competitive.

Once again, remember that the industry is saturated and only accommodates the most competitive companies, and this competition is mainly quality based not necessarily quantity based.

The business manager should always take cognizance of what is obtainable in the industry and make relentless effort to be in touch with such demands of quality.

11. Planning Skills

There is a popular saying that “Failure to make plan is a plan to fail”. This is applicable to the workplace.

A good business manager should be able to organize his/her team and plan how to carry out every task.

It is improper to do anything in the workplace without proper planning. The effects can be counterproductive.

In fact, failure in planning can lead to increase in cost and wastage. No business needs wastage and increase in cost of running it.

So to avoid this from happening, it is important to carryout adequate planning before embarking on any project.

This does not just prevent wastage and increase in running cost, but also increases the chances of succeeding by a high margin.

Planning also helps spot out pitfalls that can militate the smooth running of the business.

During planning, a lot of factors are put under consideration to prevent unexpected adverse occurrences.

This is not to say that uncertainties may not arise but proper planning reduces it to the barest minimum.

12. Time Management

Time management is very critical in the business world. People are on the move and as such businesses are bound to follow suit.

Customers want services at the speed of light and may not be patient enough to condone delays. They see it as gross incompetence.

So, one skill to help overcome delays is time management skills, which gives the ability to deliver services at the stipulated time.

Delivery before stipulated time is also a good idea to the customers. So a good manager should be able to deal with completing tasks at an expected time.

Companies are usually interested in hiring people who are capable of delivering services at the least possible time.

One way to manage time is to cut out unnecessary activities in the workplace and dealing with distractions.

Distractions may come in the form of visitors and spending time on the Internet or the social media for long periods of time, and this can have adverse effect on your job and ability to manage a business.

13. Personal Integrity

A good manager who wants to stay top in his/her workplace must be careful about his/her integrity.

Integrity is a notion you have built over a long period of time. People in the workplace and the society at large don’t feel comfortable dealing with those with little or no integrity.

Your integrity as a business manager gives you an edge over others in the industry and your job too.

Be known for standing by what you say and learn to deliver on your promises at all cost.

Your integrity is the biggest advert you can have as people who know you because of your integrity can talk to potential customers about you.

Integrity is built over a long period of time but can be destroyed within a second.

Integrity is gained over a long period of unshakable resolve, and is maintained in the same way.

Even when there’s a good reason to adjust in your promise, be able to give justifiable reasons to back it up.

Don’t leave people in your workplace, especially your customers in dilemma of what your intensions are at all times. It does not help the integrity of a business manager who wants to be best in his/her job.

14. Self-development

No one can be effective in his/her job without self-development. This is true in all ramifications of life.

Self-development can be likened to continuous improvement on your natural abilities.

This is also the act of constantly upgrading oneself to keep in touch with what is obtainable in the contemporary time.

The role of self-development cannot be overemphasized, neither can it be underestimated.

The more you improve yourself, the better your chances of being among the A list in any industry you find yourself.

Self-improvement is the foundation of group improvement. As a manager, update and upgrade your ideas, look for better ways and methods of doing things.

One enemy of self-improvement is having an unteachable mind. Understand that any level you attain in your business, there are better people with better ideas.

Study about them and their secret of success in that industry and try to apply their principles to yourself and watch yourself climb to the top.

15. Positive Mindset

The mindset of every business manager is very important to the success of the business.

As a business manager, it is necessary that you stay upbeat at all times even when things are not going on well as planned in the business or workplace.

Learn to instill positivity into people around you in the workplace.

A popular footballer by the name Alexis Sanchez, currently a Manchester United Superstar, once said, “If the mind can take it, then the body can withstand it”.

This is true because mental strength is superior to physical strength. Stay positive always and it will reflect in your disposition.

To enjoy a positive mindset as a manager, surround yourself with people of similar disposition and not people who always or only see negativity in every circumstance.

Negative minded people can challenge you but only positive minded individuals can help you overcome challenges in the workplace.

16. Strong Personality

Your personality matters a lot in any industry you find yourself. The most successful people in various industries are people of strong personality and influence.

To be the best in your industry, you have to build your personality to be strong enough to compete with others at the top.

The million dollar question now is, how can you build a strong personality? The bitter truth is this, building a strong personality in any industry takes time, discipline, and sacrifice.

A good business manager must be disciplined to the core. He/she also must be ready to pay the price of sleepless nights, time alone, and in some cases splashing the cash to develop new skill set to help him/her grow in the business.

Also, he/she must be patient. When you apply discipline and make the sacrifice, you can then relax because in no time you will find your way to the top.

17. Achieving More With Less

The true test of managing a business comes when there’s a restricted budget.

Your ability to make something big out of nothing becomes your distinguishing factor in this circumstance.

Business rises and falls in terms of income and this can greatly affect the budget the manager is working with.

However, an experienced manager should be able to work with restricted budget and make out something big out of it.

Blaming small budget for failure in management is a sign of incompetence. It’s a sign that such manager cannot also handle big budgets.

In order to work with restricted budget, the manager should be able to place activities and factors of production in order of their relative importance and pay more attention to more indispensable factors than the ones that can be managed.

This will help him/her work with the little they have and at the same time maintain productivity and achieve the maximum level. Train yourself to manage little in business.

Business Management Skills for Resume

If you are seeking a business management position, you will create a more compelling resume by applying the skills and qualities provided above in making the core competence or skills section of the resume.

The recruiter will be more attracted to your resume if they see that you possess the skills and qualities that they require for success on the job, which have been presented above.

Conclusion

The business world is meant for the smartest, fittest, and ever improving people. To stay top in your job, you need to stay competitive in relation to what the business world demands.

This article has been able to list and explain the various business management skills and qualities anyone who desires to be a successful manager needs to develop.