The field of business has seen a lot of changes in the last decade. Gone are the days of brick and mortar stores and now is the age of digital business. The same can be said for the marketing practices that a business used to undertake for visibility and sales. To survive in the new, digital world, a business has to do more than it used to. Today is the age of globalization and the demands of today’s business environment are completely different than before. The more chances that a business has to thrive, the more risks it has to face and the more uncertainty it has to face. Let’s face it, and these are very volatile times. And in times like these, there are specific skills that a person needs to survive. In the times before, we would have all the expertise and the skills that we needed, and we could cruise by without anything else. These were called “hard skills”, like accounting and programming. Nowadays, the scenario has changed. Now hard skills aren’t enough to help a guy survive in the market. What people need nowadays are the skills that are known as “soft skills”. These are the skills that can not only help you survive in the market, and they can actually help you thrive and stand out in a sea of competitors so that your customers can identify you and relate to you. This is how you can achieve success in business in today’s global age. These can be a collaboration, problem analysis, influencing or a wide variety of other skills.
Whether you are running your own business or working at one, you need these skills to have a good career, launch your own startup or do anything related to the market. Whether you have a business degree or a management information systems degree, you are going to need these soft skills if you want people to know you as an expert in your field.
Skills Needed To Survive In the Business Environment
So, what are the skills that you are going to need?
Here are the top five skills that a person in a business environment needs:
• Communication skills
• Collaboration
• Influencing skills
• Critical thinking
• Emotional intelligence
Communication skills
It doesn’t matter what role you have in a company, whether you are the owner or an employee working in a department. The fact is that you have a very diverse set of people working with you at any given time. They can be from different backgrounds, cultures, religions, or anything else. They could be your colleagues, customers, or vendors. To become successful at what you do, you will have to consider their backgrounds so that you can effectively communicate with them. Communicating in such a diverse environment requires sensitivity, respect for others and a hint of diplomacy. You need to make sure that when you are talking to someone, you have an open mind. Remember: good communication is always good for business.
Collaboration
Success is never an individual effort. It is always a team effort, and there is no time as right now to feel the need for effective teamwork. You don’t just have to build your network, and you also have to make sure that you work well with that network. If you don’t get along with your colleagues—in the house or abroad, you can never get the kind of success that you are looking for. Effective collaboration calls for humility, sensitivity and great leadership skills. You need to ensure that you have the confidence to give and receive feedback, and you need to make sure that you do it respectfully.
Influencing Skills
Your entire business or job depends on how much you can influence the person in front of you. It could be a customer that you are trying to sell your products and services, or it could be an investor that you are trying to get on board. It could also be an employee that you are trying to encourage to update themselves and reach their true potential. The people who are true leaders develop their own skills as well as their relationships to increase their influence.
Critical thinking
With the new age, comes a new set of problems and all of them are as different from one another as you could possibly imagine. This means that you will have to face issues that you have never faced before. For this purpose, you will need to be confident enough to act quickly if a problem comes your way and to think outside the box to solve those problems. You will need to ensure that you act and not react to these problems and that you come with a critical solution that solves this problem quickly and effectively. This will mean that you have to show humility, curiosity, as well as control your impulses.
Emotional intelligence
Nowadays, people are more worried about their emotional intelligence than their “IQ”. Studies have proved that people who have higher EQ are more reliable and rock-solid as compared to people with high IQs. When you are doing business, especially in the global market, you will have to ensure that you work on your emotional quotient and become self-aware, take control of your emotions, and remain calm in stress-related situations.
CONCLUSION
If you work on yourself and develop these major skills, you can easily ensure that you are at the top of the food ladder and that your competitors are left behind. Customers will want to work with you more than others, and you can easily achieve the level of success that you’ve always dreamed of.
