Cultivating personal skills for business success

By Andrea Hill

My clients often tease me about being their business therapist, but we all need one from time to time. The roles of entrepreneur, leader, manager, and professional can be very challenging—and stress is known to highlight our least mature behaviors. But giving in to stress and dysfunction is a sure way to short-circuit competence. Whether you are already on the path to becoming the most balanced person you can be or just beginning that journey, here are some important tools to put in your behavioral toolbox. They can help you to keep your cool, communicate more effectively, lead with greater authority, and remain more positive.

It’s Not About You

The temptation to believe that everything that happens in a business day is personal is very strong. Don’t give in to this temptation. The less personally you take things, the more likely you are to see them for what they really are.

Employers regularly fall into this trap on the topic of employee compensation. The whole process of deciding how much to pay employees, how often to raise their pay, and how to evaluate performance tends to be a giant thorn in the throat of most entrepreneurs. Why? Likely because they do not pay themselves enough, they work ridiculously long hours for the amount of pay they take home, and they are the ones struggling to juggle the bills and keep the vendors happy. It’s easy to fall into a trap of thinking an employee is somehow ungrateful or unrealistic for expecting to be paid market value and regularly reviewed for a raise when the same rules don’t apply to the owner of the business.

If you find yourself falling into this way of thinking, remember, it’s not about you; it’s about them. I suggest that as an entrepreneur you should shift your perspective to that of the employee when this happens. If you were working for someone else, would you be willing to work for less than market value, for an inadequate hourly wage due to long hours, or for years at the same rate? Looking at the issue of pay from this angle helps employers remember that the pay issue is not personal, it’s business. Once the personal is taken out of it, the issue of compensation can be reviewed according to performance compared to expectations.

But this is just one example. The business day can be filled with instances of employees, vendors, and customers demanding too much, misunderstanding requests, or communicating ineffectively. The better you are at remembering it’s not about you, the more effective you will be at sorting through issues and solving problems without the haze of emotion clouding your judgment.

Accountability: The Non-Stick Spray on the Pan of Life

Problems—and solving them—are part of the essential fabric of business. If you’re not encountering any problems to be solved, you’re probably not growing and experimenting as much as you should be. But what happens when someone refuses to own his or her part of a problem? And why do some problems get bounced from person to person, brushed under the carpet repeatedly, only to re-emerge bigger and more frustrating than before?

The answer is a lack of accountability, which is typically defined as taking responsibility for something that has gone wrong. But that is only part of the definition. Accountability is also the act of taking responsibility for something just because someone has to. And a culture of accountability begins at the top. The next time a problem jumps up and pops you in the chin, try responding with, “I own you.” Then do. Analyze it, find a resource to advise you about it, apologize for it—do whatever it takes to own the problem and make it go away. Your results will be better than ever.

Humble Pie: Baking It Is Better Than Eating It

Our fragile human egos have been the inspiration for at least half of all literature and more than half of all conflict, so advice on how to keep egos under control is way outside my realm of expertise. But I have learned an important trait that successful people share, and that is to cultivate humility. When we actively look to others for what they can teach us and what they are better at than us, when we recognize the contributions, creativity, and intelligence of others, we cultivate humility. This is essential to success. Not only do we need our employees, vendors, customers, and community to feel good about working with us, we also need their contributions of ideas, time, and experience to be successful.

Learning to not take things personally, being accountable, and cultivating humility are personal development issues—but they can greatly impact your business. Your employees, vendors, and customers are directly affected by how you interact with the world as a human being. Cultivating these skills will do wonders for your daily happiness and business success.