5 Powerful Communication Tips for Entrepreneurs

Managing a successful business is a formidable, yet extremely rewarding task. It requires dedication, planning, technical expertise, adequate resources and strong determination. It also requires excellent communication skills. Here are 5 tips that will improve your ability to communicate with a diverse array of people.

1. Demonstrate empathy in all of your interactions. Empathy is the ability to relate to, and understand another person's feelings, situation, ideas, values, and desires. There are many ways to demonstrate empathy, but the best way is to listen first (i.e., listen to the other person before you try to get your message across), try to understand where your speaking partner is coming from, and communicate your understanding. From a business perspective, the consistent use of empathy is a very effective way to improve customer service.

2. Use active listening to confirm your understanding. Active listening consists of your attempt to paraphrase what has been stated by your communication partner. This serves two important purposes. First, it allows you to clarify the speaker's statement. Second, it lets your partner know you understand what he/she has said. To listen actively, restate what the speaker has said using phrases such as, "Sounds like you feel _____" or "What I hear you saying is_____".

3. Demonstrate an understanding of both the affect and content of a message. When using active listening, make sure you summarize both the emotional and subject matter elements of your partner's message. For example, you might say, "It sounds like you are unhappy with the support you received during your product orientation."

4. Summarize your conversations. Similar to active listening, summarization is also designed to condense your communication partner's thoughts, feelings, experiences and behaviors into a few sentences. The main difference is that summarization is typically done once, near the end of the interaction, to sum-up the conversation. For instance, you might say, "We have been talking about two main issues and it sounds like we agree about what should happen next."

5. Use self-disclosure to develop a deeper understanding. Self-disclosure is an excellent tool for demonstrating empathy. It is the act of sharing information about yourself as a way to demonstrate your ability to relate to your communication partner. For example, if you have a frustrated customer, you can discuss how you have been in similar situations and this has motivated you to do everything in your power to resolve this problem to the customer's satisfaction.

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10 Characteristics of a Successful Entrepreneur

For many people, entrepreneurship has become the job choice of the 21st century. That's understandable given the challenges and rewards of building a successful business. If you are considering entrepreneurship, you should begin the process by understanding the mental, psychological and behavioral characteristics needed for success.

1. Positive mental attitude. This is arguably the most important of all the characteristics. You will never be a successful entrepreneur without a positive attitude. The one thing you can be sure of is that you will experience difficult times. Your success or failure will be determined at these times. If you maintain your confidence, persevere and continue to stay positive, you will be successful. Conversely, if you allow doubt and uncertainty to prevail, you will probably fail.

2. Enjoy being around people. Being a successful entrepreneur means you will continuously interact with a diverse array of people such as customers, potential customers, colleagues, competitors, suppliers, lawyers, accountants and coaches. It really helps if you enjoy being around these people.

3. Excellent communication skills. Communication can be defined as the accurate exchange of information between two or more parties. This is important because you will have many conversations. You need to be able to accurately exchange information in a fast-moving world using a variety of communication methods (e.g., interpersonal, electronic). Of particular importance is the ability to listen and truly understand where another person is coming from.

4. Have a need to achieve. Successful entrepreneurs are achievement-oriented. They value accomplishment and the intrinsic rewards that go along with achieving difficult goals. It is a strong motivator for most business owners.

5. Resourceful. Most new businesses have limited resources such as money, information and time. Successful entrepreneurs figure out how to get the most out of these resources. They are masters at stretching a dollar and making a few resources go a long way.

6. Objective. It is not easy to be objective about your business because you are passionate about making it successful. However, you do need to be impartial and dispassionate when it comes to making business decisions because emotion, bias and sentiment can result in poor choices.

7. Committed. Building a successful business requires an absolute commitment. It takes a lot of work and there will be times when you become discouraged. It is during these times that you must be steadfast, faithful and committed to your vision.

8. Dependable. This should go without saying but I will say it anyway. There is a strong positive relationship between your perceived level of reliability and the success of your business. No matter what type of business you have, your customers expect you to be dependable.

9. Proactive and not reactive. Successful entrepreneurs anticipate problems in advance and deal with them before they occur. If you simply react to problems and issues as they arise, you may get overwhelmed.

10. Possess technical skills and knowledge. Every business requires unique technical skills and knowledge on part of the owner. You have to be good at what you do for your business to succeed. This often means getting additional education and training on an ongoing basis, sometimes for the purpose of obtaining specific credentials (e.g., certifications, licenses).

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How to Talk to Anyone with Ease and Confidence

Got an important business meeting coming up or job interview, or just meeting new people. Some really good preparation tips to easily follow. Would love to hear your views..

Upping Listening Skills by 9 Times - Empathy and Listening: How to Be a Fantastic Functional Listener

Has anybody said you do not listen very well? Well that happened to me from a past girlfriend. It sure did hurt. My reply to her was 'What' No I wasn't being funny either. It was natural to say. She was having financial problems and I was trying to fix her problem. That's when she said I don't listen very well, really at all.

So that was one of the tips. Stop trying to fix people. It is hard to do. As I was teaching these skills of listening to an older man in his 80's he stated to me that he couldn't stop trying to fix someone. It was an impossible task for him to try to attempt. He just had to fix. That is also a way to cut the connection with someone. Stop Fixing! please?

Another tip which is almost impossible to attempt is to answer somebody who is talking with a question of a value included. Like are you wanting honesty or trust? This is a way to build a question and connection. I teach this very simply yet people do not get it. It is a paradigm shift. People do not want to use values even though it is building great communication. Usually they answer with a huh because they are not used to receiving understanding. It feels good though

It is a different way to speak to someone. You are speaking to them with understanding. It is a deeper understanding what somebody is going through or experiencing. Empathy isn't a word we use in life even though a President said to use it. Nobody really knows what it really means. It is just a deeper understanding to someone. It is not feeling their feelings. Who wants to feel bad? Yet it is a way to connect with somebody deeper. It actually feels good for both people.

One thing that everybody wants to do is one upping. This is trying to make somebody's story seem smaller than it is by your story that tops theirs. Do you use this insane way to communicate. Guess what, nobody likes to have their story seem smaller than it is. Offer that person empathy. Yes, a deeper understanding using connection. You will make a new friend too.

So empathy is 2 things. One it is a question like, Are you wanting _______? The blank is a need or quality word such as honesty if someone is not telling the whole story. It could be care, love, healing or quality. Don't try to give too much empathy. A little dab will do it or you maybe sounding like a Psychologist.

So have fun with this paradigm shift on your communication skills It will build your communication skills by a whopping 9 times. It is amazing!

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