Hetal Chirag
Most people believe that communication skills are essential only for those in sales and marketing. However, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of having effective communication skills to become a successful entrepreneur.
As an entrepreneur you will have to represent your idea and vision as clearly effectively as possible to everyone you meet within your start-up as well as outside your organization. One way or another you will be using your communication skills every day when it comes to motivating your employees, convincing your investors or charming your valuable customers.
I still remember the early days of my start up. Due to limited resources, I was singlehandedly making all the phone calls to find new suppliers, talking to investors and media people and at the same time communicating regularly with the internal team members as well as end customers. The complex role required me to be good at all possible channels of communication including listening, speaking, writing and presenting.
Creating a culture of effective communication and alignment is relatively easy with small teams. However, as your business expands, your team members may feel disconnected if you do not take time, effort and energy to establish a proper communication channel. It hardly takes 10-15 minutes every day in the morning or every Monday to meet your core team in person and discuss the periodic progress, issues, or updates. It may seem like an obvious thing to do, but many start-ups and even big companies have collapsed due to lack of effective communication channels.
Even if it’s a simple weekly email, if you share your personal views of how the company is moving forward, all the employees will feel like they are engaged with the entire organization. When employees see the bigger picture of the overall direction in which the company is moving, they can relate to how their individual actions are effectively contributing towards the growth of the company.
If you want to become a successful entrepreneur, you must master communication skills. Even if you are not a natural extrovert, you should dedicate some of your time and energy every day to develop and improve this key business skill.
