Interpersonal Skills

Business, Entrepreneurship.

Starting a business? take inventory of what's in your skills portfolio - almost every start - up checklist that aspiring entrepreneurs will read, refers to the must know information about legal issues, sales, money management, marketing and operations. Fortunately, there are many resources available in the form of professional services or public agencies available to help us augment our own skills in these areas at affordable rates.

In fact, success as an entrepreneur not only relies on your knowledge and effective execution of these fundamentals, but also requires a constant commitment to keep growing and gaining knowledge in these areas. - as we busy ourselves getting on top of these business - technical skills to manage day - to - day operations, it doesn' t take long for us to realize that these skills, might not be, although essential enough. Maybe it is that other, start, less talked about - up check list - the one that speaks to the actual success behaviors necessary to successfully run and grow the business. What could be missing? Skills or traits such as judgment, agility, confidence, and creativity are some of the critical intangibles that are hard to measure and next to impossible to farm out. On the other hand, it might be, however hard for many of us to own up to having limited knowledge or weakness especially if we are fearful that admission might force us to shelve our dreams for business ownership. For most of us it' s relatively easy to look at the numbers and know if cash flow is good or bad or to look at a marketing plan and say if it worked or not.

The fact is, we can significantly enhance our chances of success if we take the time to inventory our skill set and put strategies in place to enhance the ones we can and seek help and support where we struggle. - however, with a little bit of introspection and honest evaluation of our preferences or behaviors, we can actually examine our own tendencies and put corrective action in place early. For most of us, much of this self discovery will take place on the job and our hope is that it will happen early enough to avoid serious consequences. The following simple assessment, albeit non - scientific, is one way to take inventory of our abilities in some of these non business - technical areas. Create a spreadsheet with five columns and label the columns as follows: Skill or Trait - List the following 20 traits. It is based on the well accepted principle which has been used successfully in the job interview for years - that past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior. Feel free to add others you know to be important.

Confidence. - agility. Courage. Decisiveness. Creativity. Self discipline.

Flexibility. - good judgment. Hard Worker. Multitask effectively. Leadership. Networking ability.

Openness to new ideas. - objectivity. Political Savvy. Self - starter. Resilience. Interpersonal skills.

Visionary. - risk tolerance. Rating - On a scale of 1 - 10, rate yourself on each of these traits with a" 1" meaning you have concerns about your strengths and a" 10" meaning you have confidence your skills are strong in this area. Strategy - Define a plan of action to address your shortcomings in any trait where your self score is less than a 6, especially if you consider it important to your business. Example - Identify the best example in your past that demonstrates your strength with regard to the trait or skill in question. Sensitivity - To help focus and prioritize your efforts, rank the skills and traits based on their relative significance to your business.

On the other hand if you run an in home day care, agility within very stringent government regulations might be a little harder and so you might choose to focus on your networking abilities to keep and gain new customers. - for example if you sell widgets via the internet, which are always, interpersonal skills important, might be less significant than agility to keep up with internet marketing trends. Column 3 is quite possibly the most important. If you have scored yourself with a high rating( 6 or higher) and cannot identify great examples in your past to support that ranking - you might need to rethink your self rated scores. It forces us as entrepreneurs to not just say how good we are, but to actually identify specific examples to demonstrate how we have acted in the past. Once you have completed the exercise yourself, ask someone whose opinion you value or potential business partners to complete a similar chart with their observations about you and each other. Brainstorm potential solutions and be open to the fact that it might come in many forms.

Comparing the results should give you a good idea of skills you have mastered and those which are potential weak areas you might need to address to improve you or your team' s chance of success. - one entrepreneur might choose to join business clusters to share ideas another could decide to create a board of advisors. Facing our fears head on will significantly improve our chances of success. No one path will fit everyone or every business model. The last thing we want as our businesses begin to grow is to find out that doing this personal inventory is long overdue and our skills bank is close to running on empty. Begin taking stock today!