When you’re starting a business, it’s not enough to know how to navigate the ins and outs of accounting or master the art of making the best pizzas in town. You have to take care of the invisible stuff, like relationships with customers, conflicts between employees, or stress levels at your restaurant’s kitchen. In other words, soft skills are just as important as the hard skills.
When you are caught up with the technicalities and are neglecting the less tangible and less obvious aspects of your business, you’ll quickly experience a slump in your growth. You may not even arrive at the launch. That said, master these soft skills as you start your business:
1. Leadership
Obviously, you’ll be leading a team when you’re starting a business. However, just because you can tell people what to do doesn’t mean you’re leading already. Leadership is more than giving orders. You can easily be in a leadership position, but you will always have to work hard for leadership credibility, wherein the people around you believe and place their trust in you.
You can only develop that credibility when you know how to understand different personalities and rally them towards achieving your goals. One of the best ways to harness leadership potential is to stick to good leaders themselves. Join a business community and look for mentors. Spend time with them and be observant as to how they motivate the people around them.
2. Flexibility
There’s nothing certain in business. The economy improves, and then it declines. The customers are excited today, and then get cold the next week. The business idea is hot now, but would sizzle sooner or later. It’s important to be flexible in such an ever shape-shifting industry. The key to being a more versatile entrepreneur is to be open-minded.
The more you expose yourself to new ideas, the more promising opportunities you can get into. When you have such ventures lined up for you, you’re able to quickly shift gears when the going gets tough. Just remember that opportunities aren’t created equal. There are some that prove to be more promising than others.
When you evaluate an opportunity, let’s say a proposal to be a pizza restaurant franchisee, ask for the essentials — business registration, success rate, market research, and of course, the most important of all, the pizza franchise cost.
3. Resilience
The first phases of the business are the most frustrating and exhausting. You will most likely encounter people who will say your business won’t work. You’ll be overwhelmed with the mountain of tasks to accomplish. You’ll grow anxious about your funds. All these are happening at the backdrop of the risk of failure. It’s then important to develop resilience.
Train yourself to be comfortable out of your comfort zone, to cope with stress without losing your sanity, and to welcome failures. Surround yourself with trusted people who can give you emotional and moral support.
Again, all these mentioned traits are something you cannot afford to ignore. Start your business on the right foot and grow it in the best way by mastering your soft skills.
