10 Business Skills

Passion and hard work aren’t enough to succeed in a business. Practical business skills are the secrets to success whether you’re an owner, manager, or employee. In this article, we’ll talk about everything from leadership to financial management to help you make an impact on your business today.

1. Leadership

Leadership is all about people. Every business needs people who can lead, organize, and motivate teams to drive success. A leader also creates and maintains working relationships with clients, customers, investors, and other external people. Aside from these soft skills, leadership is about making critical decisions in high-pressure situations. You’ve got to be resilient, versatile, and flexible.

That’s why it’s essential to learn a variety of leadership styles. Yes, there’s more than one! If you’re looking to train leaders in your organization, EdApp has a library of editable microlearning courses on everything about leadership designed by learning experts based on experience. For example, there are courses on leading under pressure and performance management. You can customize these courses with your learning materials and company branding to make them your own.

Train great leaders and create effective courses on business skills with EdApp today! It’s free forever.

2. Training

Businesses are built on great teams, and great teams are made of exceptional employees. An essential business skill is creating impactful training programs to help your employees be their best. They’re the key to your business’s growth. Aside from this, there’s research written about how investing in employee training and development increases employee retention. People will want to stay in a company that cares about their growth.

And these days the best training programs are created through microlearning tools. Microlearning is creating short-form courses that are engaging and easy to digest. For example, EdApp has a course creation tool that you can use even without any design or coding knowledge. Or you can have courses custom-built for you by EdApp’s expert instructional designers with their course creation service.

3. General Management

General management is a business skill that involves the execution, implementation, and direction of company resources. Managing your business can mean you’ll be on top of your team’s schedule, tasks, and goals. You need to be the one to plan these out and make sure everything is being done on time and correctly. But this also doesn’t mean micromanaging. A great management system doesn’t require regular fine-tuning.

Take your time to learn different management styles that will best fit your business or team. There’s a lot to learn and many ways to become an effective manager.

4. Communication

Business is about managing and maintaining relationships with people, whether they’re clients, customers, or employees. And so you have to learn how to communicate effectively in different ways. Communication can include public speaking, empathetic communication with employees, and getting your message across to customers, among many other things. Just remember that at the end of the day in business, you must be clear and concise.

These days, communication also involves speaking and messaging virtually. This means you’ve got to brush up on your email, chat, and video communication skills. EdApp has a great course on effective communication that covers public speaking and connecting with people virtually. 

5. Problem-Solving

There’s no perfect business, and there’s always going to be room for growth and improvement. A part of business growth is creating solutions for existing problems. Problem-solving is a business skill that involves a logical systematic approach to investigating a problem. You’ll need to learn how to create practical solutions through data. This may also include thinking outside the box for solutions that seem too difficult. 

But don’t worry about getting overwhelmed – there are problem-solving steps that you can take and apply to different business situations. Some of these steps include gathering data, formulating questions, ideating, developing strategies, and making decisions.

6. Financial Management

You don’t have to be an accountant to be proficient in financial management. It’s a business skill that can seem daunting at first because of all the numbers and math involved. But in reality, financial management can be quite simple, if done the right way. It’s all about creating the right systems and planning to make sure cash is flowing in the right direction. It’s also key to learn budgeting and financial analysis, along with understanding concepts such as "apy vs interest rate" to make informed financial decisions.

One of the best ways to easily learn this is to take online business skills training on financial compliance. For example, EdApp has a course with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) on financial systems.

7. Time Management

Everyone in business knows that time is an important resource. And it may be a common sense skill, but it has a great impact on your business. Great time management aims to maximize productivity across your entire organization. Part of this is delegation, scheduling, and boundary setting. 

But, time management doesn’t just mean you’re working your employees to the bone every hour. It’s about carving out enough time for all tasks and especially rest which is just as important. Time management lessons weren’t taught in school, but fortunately, there are a lot of resources on time management systems, tips, and guides available online. Incorporating effective time management strategies into your business plan is crucial for ensuring long-term success and sustainability.

8. Negotiation

A report by the World Economic Forum shows that negotiation is one of the top ten business skills you need to thrive in the workforce.  Negotiation is simply learning how to balance. You need to balance what your business, employees, clients, and customers need. It includes knowing how to strike a win-win situation for all parties through strategic weighing for pros and cons. It’s also about great communication skills and flexibility.

Even if you aren’t a business owner or manager, as an employee negotiation will always come in handy. You can strike a bargain for starting salaries or make a case for your eventual raise. It’s also a business skill for resume building since it’ll make you stand out from your competition.   

9. Team Playing

Teamwork makes the business work. A business is always going to be better as a team, as you can accomplish more and do more. Team playing includes learning how to manage interpersonal relationships with employees, managers, clients, customers, and other people involved in your business. So you’ve got to learn empathetic communication skills and conflict management to make sure everyone is working their best together.

Team playing can also include creating opportunities for collaboration. Encourage team projects or open avenues for sharing feedback within your teams. For training, make use of social learning. A culture of sharing knowledge makes everyone feel valued for their experience.

10. Strategizing and Planning

Another key to securing your business’s future is strategizing and planning. Creating well-defined plans within a three-to-five-year period can spell the difference between failure and success. You’d need to include company vision, organizational direction, resource allocation, and long-term goals in these plans. If you have these basics down, you can simply build on them to create even better plans in the future.