While the debate continues whether entrepreneurs are born or made, there are certain skills you must hone to join the ranks of world’s most admired entrepreneurs. The ability to think big and taking calculating risk is something that distinguishes entrepreneurs from small business owners. But that’s not all. To become the next Zuckerberg or the new Jack Ma, there are certain skills you must possess. Honing the skill set listed below will surely help you on your entrepreneurial journey.
1. Communication skills:
It is needless to mention that all successful entrepreneurs are excellent communicators. The ability to communicate the worth of your business is important and so is your negotiation skill. Selling something to a customer or onboarding a supplier will require you to be a confident speaker, empathetic listener and a negotiator. Apart from this, it is imperative to maintain a clear line of communication with your partners and employees.
2. Leadership skills:
To be a successful entrepreneur you have to be a good leader. Leaders help themselves and motivate others to take the right path. They set goals, draw a plan, and create value. Leadership is about setting clear vision and mission of the organization and directing, motivating a team or an organization towards achieving it.It is dynamic, exciting, and inspiring and requires time to develop.
3. Resilience:
Resilience is the ability to adapt with and rise to the inevitable challenges, problems and failures you meet in your journey, and come out stronger. Being an entrepreneur is not going to be an easy journey for you. As they say “whatever can go wrong, will go wrong”. But getting through dark times and coming out stronger, better will determine your success in the future.
4. Risk Taking:
Successful entrepreneurs are bold enough to take calculated risks and take roads less travelled by and that is what differentiates them from the crowd. A smart entrepreneur is not afraid of and rather loves treading beyond his comfort zone. However, it is also important to understand how far you can stretch before pulling a muscle.
5. Ability to innovate:
Successful leaders and entrepreneurs are innovators. A successful entrepreneur is well versed with latest trends in technology, communication, media, techniques, ideas and uses them to his advantage. He has to innovate continuously to beat the competition and serve customers better. Stagnancy eats away the potential of an organization.
6. Decision making:
When it comes to decision making, great entrepreneurs are both judicious and swift. Decision-making isn’t just about being decisive. It’s about making the right decisions. This necessarily involves reasoning, listening, probing and knowing when to trust your impulse.
7. Adaptability:
Entrepreneurs have to be adaptive. They have to be flexible and capable of making quick decisions in a fast-changing world. They are very responsive to the demands of the ever-changing market and cater those with never ending vigour. They adapt to change more quickly than others and embrace the new technology, ideas to deliver even greater value.
