No matter what field you work in, you need the right mix of abilities and expertise to succeed.
Most of these skills directly relate to your job. If you work in sales, you should have negotiation skills, and if you’re a manager, you should exercise strong leadership.
But some competencies are valuable across roles and industries. These are business skills, and developing them helps you become a more effective employee. Whether you’re a CEO, an intern, or anyone in between, your skill set contributes to a company’s success — and your own professional development — in strategic and impactful ways.
Business knowledge comes in many forms, and knowing which professional skills to develop lets you advance along your career path while learning new things. The first step is to decide which skills spark your interest.
What Are Business Skills?
Business skills are any skills that let you do your job and contribute to a business, allowing you to collaborate and function successfully within an organizational framework. They help you meet your company’s needs and form the foundation of success as a business owner, team leader, or employee.
Business skills usually fall into a few different categories: interpersonal, analytical, and problem-solving, just to name a few.
Also referred to as soft skills, these abilities are in demand — 92% of employers seek expertise in these areas more than technical skills. Most are transferable between roles, while others vary from industry to industry. That’s why it’s important to decide which you want to learn and what’s most valuable to your career goals.
Why Are Business Skills Important?
In a benchmark study, Google found that the essential qualities to success weren’t hard skills. It was a combination of soft business skills that encouraged communication, teamwork, and innovation, resulting in the company’s greatest accomplishments.
Business skills give you the know-how to meet the needs of your employer, colleagues, and clients, as well as an organization overall. This is particularly important in service-related industries where gaps in your business acumen could prevent you from meeting customers’ expectations.
And as a job seeker, having the right skills is just as important as the experience under your belt. Working on your business skills helps you fill that gap and show employers you’re an asset. According to a survey from ManpowerGroup, 75% of employers find locating candidates with the right mix of technical and soft skills challenging. You can future-proof your career with the right transferable skills.
Top 10 Business Skills To Develop
Any of these business skills examples can help you deliver impactful contributions to an organization, whether you’re operating a small business or working for an established multinational enterprise.
1. Communication Skills
Communication has risen to become one of the most in-demand skills out there. In a modern workplace, not only do you need to express yourself clearly across multiple channels — phone, email, video conference — you need to purposefully engage with information through active listening. Communication allows that engagement.
Effective communication touches every corner of an organization. Without it, you can’t pitch ideas, delegate tasks effectively, or impress investors with your vision. It’s a transferable skill that applies to pretty much every type of job, which is why it’s so vital to professional development.
Examples of communication skills include:
- Public speaking
- Written communication
- Body language and nonverbal communication
- Feedback
- Empathy
2. Leadership Skills
Being an effective leader means motivating a team to work together to achieve a common goal — and you don’t need to become a manager to do so. As an active team member with leadership skills, you can organize, inspire, and encourage your coworkers every day. And often, leadership depends on the strength of the relationships you build, so interpersonal skills are an important part of this area.
Some examples of leadership skills are:
- Employee motivation
- Flexibility and adaptability
- Coaching and mentorship
- Goal-setting
3. Teamwork Skills
Not every task is best done alone. In fact, research shows that teams complete difficult tasks better than individuals can. Knowing when and how to work together and solve problems as a team is an important business skill because it lets you complete tasks faster and build relationships. Team-building also helps you partner with people outside your organization, such as associates, advisors, and investors.
Here are a few examples of teamwork skills:
- Organization
- Relationship-building
- Interpersonal skills
- Conflict resolution
- Reliability
4. Management Skills
Like leadership, business management skills organize teams and help them grow. But management focuses on strategy and organization rather than teamwork and interpersonal support. These skills help you deploy and direct human, financial, and technological resources to accomplish common business goals.
Some examples of management skills include:
- Coordination
- Giving direction
- Decision-making
- Planning
- Accountability and ownership
5. Delegation Skills
Learning to delegate effectively frees up your energy to complete the business-critical tasks only you can perform. You’ll pass responsibilities on to people with the office skills and resources necessary to support the organization and the team. As a leader, this requires striking the proper balance between telling people what to do and offering them the freedom to do their jobs as they see fit.
Examples of delegation skills are:
- Defining expectations
- Project management
- Guideline development
- Quality assurance
