What Are Business Skills? (With Examples)

To find the ideal employee, hiring managers are always on the lookout for those who are well-rounded in both their technical skills and their personal skills.

While technical skills are straightforward to pick up through studying and being taught, there is no real concrete way to teach personal skills.

Business skills are a type of personal skill that refers to your work ethic and how you work with others. They are something that is gained with time, maturity, and experience.

Because they are so hard-won, these skills are highly valued by employers and could be what gives you a competitive edge.

What Are Business Skills?

Business skills are a collection of soft skills (as opposed to hard skills) that will make you the ideal employee. Employees with business skills make running day-to-day operations much easier, and these employees are often those who are considered when trying to fill a management position.

These abilities help to minimize hiccups and hang-ups that can negatively affect a business’ capacity to operate smoothly.

Business skills are transferable and can be used by any professional, working at any level, in any industry, to set themselves apart from their colleagues. And they are often the hard-earned skills that employers look for when considering a promotion or a raise.

Types of Business Skills

To be a business professional, one must possess a wide variety of soft skills, or skills that are not taught in a classroom format.

Business skills are mainly composed of your style of work, and your proficiency in these skills often determines the amount of responsibility you are assigned, as well as your position in a professional hierarchy.

Gaining these skills is crucial if you want to become the most efficient, capable, and resilient employee you can be:

• Communication. In this day and age, communication skills are foundational to an effective businessperson. Those with refined communication skills are effective and efficient with their words.

  They have mastered every type of communication (textual, verbal, nonverbal, etc.) and they know when it is appropriate to use each type.

  Having communication skills also means you keep your team in the loop, so everyone has the information they need to do their job best. Disseminating information most productively allows for you to avoid misunderstandings and miscommunications, which waste time and cause confusion.

  Communication skills are essential to doing any sort of job effectively, especially when working as part of a larger team, where things are more likely to get lost in the shuffle.

• Management. Management skills are extremely important and used all over the business, whether you are in a management position or not. Time management is especially essential to being an effective employee.

  Maintaining a level of organization is also important, as this keeps your responsibilities under control and ensures that you are always prepared for the task ahead.

  Being able to plan, organize, and implement are skills that go a long way toward making your supervisor material.

  If you are already in a management or leadership position, you will find that delegation and problem-solving skills are a necessity to being an effective leader.

  Good delegation skills ensure you are making effective use of each team member, and problem-solving skills show that you can deal with obstacles that pop up.

  Having refined management skills means you and your team can provide deliverables faster, saving everyone time and keeping the process streamlined.

• Finance. Even if you’re not an accountant or bookkeeper, being aware of things like profitability and costs can allow you to make more informed decisions and set you apart from your coworkers, identifying yourself as someone who analyzes how they can best contribute to the company.

  Employers love someone who is always thinking about saving money.

  It also allows you to see a bigger picture and consider consequences outside of your current scope, which tells your supervisor that you could be ready for more responsibility and put you in line for a promotion.

Important Business Skills for Workplace Success

Communication, management, and finance skills are, in general, what is needed to reach your full potential as an employee. But here are some specific skills you can improve that can make you stand out and can put you on the fast track towards professional success:

• Interpersonal skills. Several other soft skills feed into your interpersonal skills, such as your emotional intelligence, your ability to be an active listener, and your empathy skills.

  Emotional intelligence and empathy show that you not only consider logical consequences but emotional ones as well.

  And each exercise in trying to understand others, whether they are your coworkers, your boss, your clients, or your competition, helps you better understand what is expected of you and how you can help out.

  Each of these skills shows that you can form and maintain positive relationships with those you work with, which can help you sell products, gain new clients, and network.

  A professional with great interpersonal skills is someone who can expand their company’s reach and is an invaluable member of the team.

  Those with interpersonal skills are also able to repair relationships, which can make them great for customer service or quality assurance roles.

• Organizational skills. Staying organized is necessary when you have work-related responsibilities. Keeping track of due dates, managing timelines, and maintaining a proper filing system are all things that can be very valuable to supervisors.

  Being organized increases your dependability and the amount of responsibility you can handle, and therefore is a must-have skill, especially if you are trying for a promotion or a raise.

  Organizational skills also allow you to be more adaptable. When a new problem arises, you are going to be more likely to have what you need to face it, rather than scrambling to get your things in order.

  An adaptable employee is also valuable, as they become great problem-solvers and can take on any obstacle that may emerge. Taking the time to organize oneself can be a helpful investment and make work easier for you down the road.

• Time management. We’ve all heard the phrase “time is money,” so it makes sense that how you spend your time matters. When you have several different projects with several different deadlines, showing your supervisors and your colleagues that you’re able to get deliverables to them on time is essential.

  This means that you have to be aware of how much time you are spending on each project, and sometimes means knowing when to put something in the drawer for later. Time management skills also mean staying organized and prioritizing well.

• Leadership and team-building. In any position, you will most likely need to work with others, so you have to be a team player and not an island. You should know your role within your team well and do your best to fill it.

  If you’re a leader of a team, you should understand everyone’s role and how these roles depend on one another. Leaders see the big picture and know how each cog helps the clock tick.

  Ideally, each team should be a well-oiled machine, capable of tackling any task thrown at them. Those with team-building skills should be able to identify the abilities of their team members and assign tasks accordingly.

  This will help everyone contribute equally to the project and allow for work to get done much quicker.

  Effective leaders are those who motivate and direct work efforts, keeping their team focused, on-track, and running smoothly.

• Analysis and problem-solving. Problems are bound to arise in a business, so employers are looking for those with problem-solving and analytical skills.

  The ideal employee, when faced with an issue, needs to be able to assess the situation, list possible solutions, identify the pros and cons of each solution, and choose the solution that leads to the best outcome.

  This is more easily said than done, of course, but being able to make the tough decisions will make you all the more valuable in a management or leadership position.

  Analytical skills can come in handy with negotiating as well since you must assess the risks and rewards of a proposal and then discuss how you can maximize benefits and minimize drawbacks.

Final Thoughts

These skills can be just as important as those learned in a classroom setting, as they determine how you work and how well you handle responsibility. Since they cannot be taught to you, you must take tangible steps to develop these abilities and improve your overall value as an employee.

Identifying where you are lacking, reading business and self-help books, watching TedTalks, and attending business seminars are just a few ways that you can start improving your business skills today. Take full advantage of the resources you have available to you.

Mastering these skills will take time, but any employer worth their salt will be able to recognize your efforts and reward you for them.

Author

Chris Kolmar

Chris Kolmar is a co-founder of Zippia and the editor-in-chief of the Zippia career advice blog. He has hired over 50 people in his career, been hired five times, and wants to help you land your next job. His research has been featured on the New York Times, Thrillist, VOX, The Atlantic, and a host of local news. More recently, he's been quoted on USA Today, BusinessInsider, and CNBC.