Modern workplaces are more competitive than ever before, and it is no longer enough to just be good at your job. With smaller budgets and less staff on the books, companies are always looking for individuals who go above and beyond to develop their skills and offer more to the business.
In particular, companies are often looking for people within their workforce who would make a good manager. Being a business manager is something that requires a considerable amount of skill and expertise, and it isn’t a role that anybody can do. It takes time to develop your skills to the point that you know what you are doing well enough to lead a company and its operations.
So, whether you are looking for a career in business management or you want to expand your current skill set, here are seven skills every business manager needs to succeed in 2022.
Time Management
While all individuals need good time management to make it in the world of work, as a business manager, you need the best time management skills in the whole company. Your time management skills are so important as you won’t only be responsible for your own timekeeping but also for the rest of the business. For some people, time management is easier than others, but managers benefit from it especially as it makes them able to plan and allocate time correctly. Managers are often dealing with lots of different workloads and knowing how to best manage your time helps you to effectively delegate, prioritize and meet deadlines.
Know when to outsource. Micromanaging tasks is a time sap. Outsourcing lets you take advantage of skills other people have. This is especially useful in areas like IT, where you can let experts take care of solutions like principle of least privilege, while you manage the things you are qualified in.
Written Communication
So much of our world is virtual nowadays, but this still doesn’t mean that written communication skills aren’t essential. Whether you are putting together an end-of-year report or sending an internal email; you need to be able to get your point across quickly and effectively to streamline communications. If you don’t have good written communication skills; you may struggle to get information across to the rest of your team. This is an especially important skill with more people working from home and enjoying hybrid work environments than ever before.
Active Listening
Many business managers make the mistake of thinking that being able to communicate and talk to their team is the most important part of their job. But in fact, as a business manager, you also need to have great listening skills and be an active listener.
It is crucial to remember that being a good communicator is about listening and speaking; and a good manager will listen to those in their team. Everyone’s experience and roles at work will differ; so it would be a mistake to assume that you know how everyone in the team feels.
Therefore, if someone speaks to you and tells you about a situation they are having at work; be sure to listen to how they are feeling and ensure that their insights are heard and valued. This will make your team members feel more appreciated and improve the team’s performance.
Business Thinking
Running a business isn’t easy. And whether you are a team member looking to go into a management position; or you want to run a business of your own, you need to have the business thinking skills and knowledge to see you through. If you feel like you don’t have these skills; this is something you should work on if you want to succeed in 2022. Business skills are hard to teach yourself, so we recommend that you study for a master’s in business management at Aston University Online to give you the expertise you need. Studying for a program such as this will provide you with a wide range of skills such as developing pricing; and marketing strategies and interpreting financial statements.
Critical Thinking
Thinking carefully and rationally is a difficult skill to master; but once you have it you will be able to navigate through any problems that you and your team face. Critical thinking enables you to evaluate different solutions and find the best way of dealing with an issue. By developing your critical thinking skills, you will be able to weigh up the pros and cons of the actions you could take; and the long-term effects your choices could have on the business.
Collaboration
Being a business manager means being responsible for your own work; and the work of those in your team or workforce, so you can become accustomed to always working independently. However, a true leader also has great collaboration skills. A manager will spend a lot of time working with others; and you need to be able to encourage your team on how they can work better with each other.
While you may think that you are fine working alone, working with others will mean bringing together different perspectives and ideas to create more effective outcomes and solutions. Making your team feel like you value their input and expertise when working collaboratively will also benefit worker morale and make them feel happier in the role.
Goal Setting
Goal setting is an essential part of being a successful business manager; whether that means setting goals for yourself, your team members, or the business as a whole. Of course, you want the daily running of operations to be a success; but what is the point if the company isn’t achieving anything overall? Therefore, you need to be able to sit down and put goals in place; as well as a plan to help yourself and others achieve those goals. Setting goals and targets is the easy bit – the difficult bit is achieving them.
Becoming a successful business manager will take some time and a lot of patience. While you may hope that you can pick up these skills quickly, you need the knowledge that comes from experience.
Therefore, whether you want to step up to manager in a current role; or you want to go back to education and learn more about what business management entails; working on the skills we have mentioned above will help you succeed this year.