In the wild, the person with the skills and know-how survives. Or at least, that’s how survival game shows go.

While business owners don’t camp out in the woods or hike perilous trails, they still face significant challenges that require certain skills for success.

As a business leader, you need to develop key management skills if you want your organisation not just to survive, but also thrive. 

Having management skills that can help you excel in different business areas will ensure that you maintain excellent overall performance and a profitable business.

5 management skills you need to develop as a business leader

This shortlists the five management skills that can help you grow as an effective business leader and develop your organisation. 

1. Leadership 

Learning leadership skills is crucial to creating a strong team, fostering close bonds and nurturing a positive workplace culture. As a leader, you need to have the ability to see the big picture while still being considerate of the people you’re leading. 

Different leadership strategies that can help you become a better leader include:

• Nurture emotional intelligence and empathy – High emotional intelligence helps you become attuned to your emotions as well as to other people’s feelings. You genuinely care for your staff and are invested in their growth.
• Future-proof your staff – This involves investing in your team’s growth and development and building new leaders that can help you achieve organisational goals.
• Implement a healthy work-life balance – You understand the boundaries between your personal and professional lives, and you make sure that you and your team enjoy a healthy balance between both.
• Build an inclusive workplace – Having a diverse and harmonious team encourages a wide array of perspectives and ideas that can ultimately help your organisation keep moving forward to success.
• Encourage teamwork – Forming camaraderie and establishing bonds among your team can ensure that everyone is aligned in achieving both individual and team goals.

2. Strategy

Having strategy skills enables you to identify inefficiencies and quickly make improvements. It also enables you to forecast potential obstacles and how you can address them.

Strategy skills include:

• Strategic thinking
• Problem-solving
• Creativity
• Analytical thinking
• Conflict resolution

Great business leaders are adaptable and willing to try different strategies to find the most effective approach. Having strategy skills also encourages you to monitor industry advancements and integrate them into your organisation. 

3. Strategic planning

You need to have good planning skills if you’re managing people, projects or a combination of the two. Strategic planning skills help you in preparing for a vision, setting goals and implementing a plan to achieve them. 

Strategic planning ensures that your organisation meets all of its goals in the designated time frame. This requires long-term thinking as well as flexibility and adaptability in case those plans need to be changed for any reason.

These planning skills can also be useful in administrative tasks, such as budgeting and scheduling appointments or meetings. Strategic planning allows you to prioritise your efforts, allocate your resources and align your team to ensure that you are all working to achieve your organisational goals.

4. Communication

Great leaders are effective communicators. They know how to express their thoughts and share their ideas in a way that motivates and inspires the people around them. 

There are four tactics that you can use to become a great communicator:

• Use short words to talk about hard – Communicating with long, complex sentences can be harder to understand and mentally draining for your audience. You’ll have an easier time winning your audience if you communicate concisely.
• Choose impactful metaphors to reinforce key concepts – Using metaphors enables you to compare abstract ideas and concepts. Metaphors can be useful in explaining complex ideas with short, catchy phrases or sentences.
• Humanise data to create value – The most effective way to make numerical figures interesting and memorable is by humanising the data and showing why it’s relevant to your audience.

5. Organisation

Being a leader means being responsible for multiple high-level responsibilities and tasks, including handling teams or departments. Being organised is helpful in effectively completing all your work and ensuring that you maintain an excellent standard of performance. 

It’s important to balance being organised with being flexible. You can embrace the convenience of calendar planning, while still being open to changes with those plans if something unexpected comes up. The most important thing is to recognise the value of your time, and how it can be best used.

How you can develop management skills

Now that you have a clear idea of what skills you need to become a better leader, you can start taking measures to develop these skills.

There are three ways that can help you in developing management skills.

1. Take the initiative to lead

Seizing the opportunities for growth and development can encourage you to expand your professional and personal development. Participating in a leadership program can help you in developing your skills, and it allows you to learn from successful industry leaders. 

Joining professional groups and attending seminars also allows you to expand your industry knowledge, enabling you to further develop your skills.

2. Find a role model

As a business leader, having a mentor to guide you in your journey can help you develop the necessary management skills. You can benefit from partnering with an executive coach as you continue in your business journey.

An executive coach helps you foster creative and innovative thinking, encouraging you to think outside of the box. Your coach can push you out of your comfort zone and explore unconventional ideas and solutions.

You also have an objective adviser with an executive coach, which can be beneficial in your decision-making process. They can have insight that you haven’t previously thought of, enabling you to make a more informed decision.

3. Ask for feedback

Nobody is perfect, and everyone can benefit from feedback. Constructive feedback from trusted peers or mentors can help you identify areas for improvement or even weaknesses that you need to work on. 

The best way to receive constructive feedback is to have a positive mindset going into the discussion. Aligning the feedback with your goals can also motivate you to improve yourself as a business leader.

Identifying the management skills you need to develop can help you become a more effective business leader, creating a ripple effect in your organisation that ultimately contributes to achieving your goals.

Contact us and we’ll help you develop the necessary management skills you need to be an effective leader.