Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a business manager and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A business manager oversees and supervises all company activities and that of the company employees. He or she will be tasked with ensuring that the employees undertake their assigned roles and responsibilities in line with the company's vision and overall goals and objectives. They will in most cases report to the senior management team.
Besides that major primary role, he/she will also get to perform the following assigned roles; Conduct training to all company employees, undertake performance evaluation reviews, preparing and presenting reports to the management, formulating business strategies, ensuring that resources needed by the employees are available and undertaking disciplinary actions on errant employees.
Core Skills Required to be a Business Manager
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
A business manager should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Public Speaking:
Public Speaking though closely related to presenting differs in that it is the process of performing a speech before a live audience with the purpose of informing, persuading or entertaining.
A Business Manager must be equipped with good public speaking skills to be able to address an audience through presentations or talks to drive the point home and create a reputable record.
Inspiring others:
Inspiring is encouraging one to be their best in contributing to the vision of an organization where they are placed and entrusted to work.
A Business Manager must create a culture where the staff can use their professional prowess and aspire to be the best by giving them a clear vision and purpose through decisive leadership that motivates and inspires them.
Strategic Planning:
Strategic Planning is organizational management activity that is used to set priorities, focus energy and resources, strengthen operations while guaranteeing that employees and other stakeholders are working towards common goals.
A Business Manager should be liable to develop the systematic tools to be used in the organization's processes that coordinate and align resources and actions with the mission, vision, and strategy throughout the organization.
Competitiveness:
Competitiveness is the skill of being able to compete as a team or a company with other enterprises in the same line of entrepreneurship and emerging as the winner.
A Business Manager needs creativity in setting the pace for the organization on the policies and factors that determine the level of productivity of their enterprise against their competitors leading to the growth of the business and the income.
Emotion Management:
Emotion Management is the ability to realize, readily accept and successfully control feelings on oneself and sometimes in others around you by being in complete authority over your thoughts and feelings that are generated whenever your values are touched.
A Business Manager must be able to manage his emotions as well as assist the staff to control their emotions to ensure that the professional reputation, the efficiency, and productivity is not compromised.
Emotional Intelligence:
Emotional Intelligence is the capability to identify your emotions, understand what they are telling me and realize how the feelings are affecting you and the people around you.
A Business Manager should be wise to handle different personalities that carry different emotions presented in the workplace while ensuring relationships are managed more efficiently by respecting your perception and the employee's as well.
Personal Commitment:
Personal Commitment is an obligation that you have voluntarily agreed to fulfill without being cajoled or threatened and are willing to be held accountable for the results.
A Business Manager ought to understand that though adopting new policies and procedures will be met with resistance, the approach by which safety standards are implemented and enforced influences employee's attitudes and commitment towards the organization.
Managing Details:
Managing Details is the skill of paying close attention to details of every element of your job performance to ensure nothing is overlooked.
A Business Manager should be keen to handle every detail using strategic planning and organizational techniques that make it easy to keep track of everything that is happening in the organization consistently desiring to improve their knowledge and skills.
Project Management:
Project Management is structuring a to-do list for your project or company containing tasks and responsibilities as well as creating a roadmap for the execution of those duties promptly.
A Business Manager must place emphasis on the application of the project management methodologies and principles by the staff in the daily functions and responsibilities to foster efficiently as well as create a competitive advantage in the heavily competitive business space.
Entrepreneurial Thinking:
Entrepreneurial Thinking is a mindset that allows embraces critical questioning, innovation, service and continuous improvement with an attitude of change.
A Business Manager should challenge himself to see the big picture and creatively think outside the box too with the ability to fight all the challenges faced and keep going in the face of calamity and the social skills needed to build great teams in the workplace.
Hard Skills Required to be a Business Manager
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
A business manager should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.