Soft Skills: Essential Business Management Skills

Some of the most important soft skills are being lost in today’s business world. Today, companies like yours are starting to recognize once again the importance of soft skills. Things like technical skills, background and qualifications are always required, but there is now another shift. We are sure you would agree that soft skills have been neglected for too long. That is why you need a simple and effective solution to help your employees develop in the workplace. To do that, we need strong managers with the confidence and ability to make the difficult decisions. Your business’ success depends on your managers’ soft skills and Bookboon can help you to get on the right track.

Defining management skills as soft skills

Arguably, management skills are a set of skills rather than a single attribute. Being a manager in the 21^st century means many things. It is a mistake to think that management skills are only appropriate or relevant to managers, though. Nearly everybody is in charge of somebody, even if that somebody is himself or herself. Nevertheless, your managers require a range of skills and abilities. How do we define good managers?

• Good managers are dependable and reliable. Anybody who cannot be relied upon to help in difficult circumstances will soon lose employee’s support and respect.
• Good managers communicate. More than that, they understand the importance of communicating the right information to the right people at the right time.
• Good managers are perceptive about such things as workload, stress, friction, difficulty and interpersonal problems
• Consequently, good managers have great emotional intelligence and are great at listening. The old style authoritarian boss has gone. The new manager listens and takes employee feeling on board, encouraging team work
• He or she has great decision-making can include delegation, risk-taking and accepting responsibility.

They are in positions of authority, decision-making and require confidence in their abilities. Naturally, they also need assertiveness and conflict resolution. He or she is somebody that everybody else respects. This is why they are in those roles.

Why is it important for your managers to have these soft skills?

It is important that we all have soft skills; but for managers, it is vital. They are expected to be a leader and a mediator, somebody who accepts the buck and stands up for his or her employees. They must be willing to help when there are problems and offer praise when things go right. They need to know the difference between being authoritative and being authoritarian and step in during a conflict.

It is not surprising that you need managers to perform at the highest level all of the time. The modern world of business is tough. Everybody’s job is difficult. That is why we select the people that we do to move up to supervisory or management roles. We expect and hope that they have all of these skills and will continue to perform at the highest level. However, some managers have gaps in their knowledge and understanding. These flaws may go unnoticed until you hit a serious problem. That’s why you need to train your managers now using this simple solution.

Bookboon’s eLibrary Solution to gaps in your managers’ skills and knowledge

Everybody has flaws and they are not always problematic. You should act when these personal flaws begin to affect your business. Your managers may not be bad bosses, but their team and your company may not be performing at their best. Your managers require just as much extra training as your employees.

Bookboon has a simple solution for the gaps in your managers’ skills and knowledge: We have an extensive and carefully chosen range of educational eBooks in our eLibrary to help improve your business performance. Research has shown repeatedly that eLearning is the best method to impart new skills on your employees. By implementing Bookboon’s eLibrary, your employees can learn whenever they have time and in their own pace.

Test Bookboon’s eLibrary with this free demo.