on Tools & Techniques

One of the most important skill sets you could master to prepare you for business leadership is sales and negotiation. Some of you may be thinking, “Gosh, I’m not going into sales or marketing. I can skip this blog post!”

But I want to assure you, regardless of your field, sales and negotiation are part of it. 

If you’re working in operations and want to expand your department, you need to sell that idea to your executive staff. If you’re a designer with a bright idea for a new line, you’re going to have to sell that idea to the people you work with … to the other managers, engineers and stakeholders in your organization.

Regardless of your technical background, the higher you move within an organization, the more you need to understand about the organization’s finances.

Accounting is often referred to as the language of business. And I believe it. Before I studied corporate finance and accounting, I often felt lost. I didn’t speak the language. I remember sitting in a board meeting where other managers and board members were reviewing the financials for the organization. And I simply didn’t understand what all the numbers meant. By the time I starting making some simple two connections, the meeting had moved onto the next topic.

No discussion about managerial skills would be complete without talking about time management. Effective managers are excellent at utilizing their time. More than just their time, successful managers proficiently steward the range resources under their control … the people, the equipment, and the finances. But time is the most valuable of them all.

The first and most important aptitude needed to move from a maker mentality to a management or leadership mentality is that of a lifelong learner.

Now, I’ve heard plenty of people say, “I learn something new every day.” And it’s a cute adage. But watching the History Channel or scrolling mindlessly through YouTube videos won’t likely produce a leadership mindset.

Instead, lifelong learning is an ongoing, self-motivated journey of acquiring new, particularly in-demand skills. Lifelong learners develop and employ strategies and plans to acquire new career skills. These plans may involve returning to university to acquire a new degree, but they certainly don’t have to.

Most successful engineers, analysts, programmers, and other types of makers of products and services will, at some point in their career, encounter a crossroads where they can either continue making, engineering, and programming, or they can begin managing those who do.