The business landscape is constantly evolving, and professionals who have relevant skills and talent are often sought out and preferred. However, it can seem confusing if you don’t know where to start your upskilling journey. While there are ample resources available, learning everything all at once will bear no fruit.
These things become more challenging when you are working a 9 to 5 job and are on the lookout to grow your career. However, things have changed, and there are a plethora of MBA online degree options available today that ensure adequate skill development. These provide you with the right qualification that makes you eligible to work in the business world.
6 Skills That Will Help You With A Career In Business
- Time management skills: Using your time in the most effective and productive way will help ensure you are able to deliver work without delays. This is especially important in fast-paced workplaces. Time management is indeed an important skill to master as it will ensure you are able to deliver better quality work, have more time in your hands to work on brainy and strategic projects and are less stressed about your day.
Here are some quick and efficient ways to manage your time better:
- Understand how your time is being spent: Identify areas you find the most challenging and have to spend more time resolving issues & the areas where you are able to make progress quickly.
- Create realistic deadlines: Instead of reserving 8-9 hours a day for a particular task, divide your time into constructive steps to ensure you are able to complete the task without procrastinating.
- Prioritise your tasks: Consider tackling the most challenging and difficult tasks first thing. As your mind is fresh, it will be able to focus more. Prioritising ensures you know what you are working on next, which significantly reduces stress.
- Keep your desk organised: Invest at least 10 minutes a day organising your work desk by decluttering it. As National Geographic reports, visual clutter causes anxiety, triggering an unwanted fight-or-flight response that can cloud your efficiency and decision-making ability significantly.
- Data Analysis Skills: Businesses cannot work on theory alone. Analytics has become an integral part of the process, and having an understanding of numbers will help you make more informed decisions and improve quality of service and products.
Analytical reasoning has become a highly sought-after skill. It enables professionals to summarise complex datasets, recognise market trends, and test hypotheses for effectiveness to provide an analytical framework to resolve complex (sometimes loss-causing) problems.
Through analytics, businesses can make decisions that yield success and growth.
- Negotiation Skills: The skill is highly appreciated regardless of the position you hold. An effective negotiator always ensures a fair deal and is able to turn tables in favour of their organisation. It will also benefit you when it comes to salary or position negotiation.
The key to becoming an expert negotiator is to think on your feet and have the ability to improvise the situation that works best for you. Maintaining clear communication is highly important to avoid later confusion and conflicts.
There are various negotiation styles that you can consider building. Alternatively, you can always work your way through finding and defining your negotiation style.
- Learn business management skills: Business management skills act like the pedestal that makes it possible for future leaders to look at a situation or problem from a wider perspective.
It enables them to understand and analyse the current situation thoroughly, create future forecasts and analyse figures to make an informed decision. The skillset is wide and often includes:
- Technical skills: Aside from having fluency in tools and software along with techniques and strategies to support current and future projects.
- People management skills: Having strong interpersonal skills that ensure you are able to keep your team motivated and are able to understand their concerns.
- Conceptual skills: Understanding your tasks and being capable of building an effective action plan to tackle the task at hand better.
- Effective communication skills: Having the ability to communicate your concerns, learnings, opinions, and knowledge clearly is important in the industry. Furthermore, it will ensure you are able to coordinate with teams and ensure transparency throughout the project.
This skill is a life saviour when you are working with different teams that have a specific work methodology. Clear communication also ensures that you are able to keep a record of project reports for future reference.
- Emotional intelligence: How you are able to recognise your own emotions and react to others appropriately. It helps in understanding your core strengths and taking up leadership positions as and when required.
Here are common ways to develop emotional intelligence:
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- Observe how you feel and where the emotion is centring from.
- Observe how you feel when experiencing a certain emotion during challenging situations.
- Take responsibility for your own feelings instead of relying on others to regulate them for you.
- Identify your triggers and where they come from.
- Celebrate your glimmers and take note of the positive feeling you get.
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- Networking: Your professional life should not be limited to your workplace, and networking is a great way to expand your horizons strategically. This could include attending workshops, corporate events and even webinars where you are able to interact with like-minded people within your industry.
Attending these events will give you a wider perspective on where the industry is headed, how you can make a contribution, and what are the upcoming trends to look forward to.
Parting words
Getting ahead in the business world is all about continuously working on yourself to acquire skills that make you an asset. The combination of hard and soft skills ensures that you are able to tackle challenges without feeling lost. It also enables you to make choices that take your career to the next level. While many of these skills can be taught in classrooms, remember that everyday practice is what will make you perfect in the skillset of your choice.