4 Strategies to Help Your Team Strengthen Their Business Skills

Even before the COVID pandemic, business communications increasingly shifted towards email and digital platforms like Zoom and Google Meetings. When coronavirus forced many businesses to adopt remote work, that trend accelerated significantly. Ways to help your team to develop business skills became vital.

Education has also increasingly moved online, with social interactions becoming as common digitally as face-to-face. Social media has contributed to this shift. Consequently, interpersonal communication has suffered in the business world.

However, individuals with strong social skills for engaging people and directing in-person conversations now stand out more to employers and potential business partners. Whether for self-development or team growth, these four tips will hone your business skills and help you stand out.

Encourage and Enable Entrepreneurial Mindsets

Though some employees prefer clear instructions, most dislike micromanagement and prefer autonomy in their jobs. When given the freedom to perform without constant oversight, these employees excel.

Encouraging employees to voice their opinions about their jobs helps them develop business skills. They need these skills to effectively communicate their points. By listening to them and offering constructive feedback, you can improve their communication during idea pitches, leading to better interactions with potential clients and customers.

Set Up Employees for Leadership Opportunities

Allowing anyone and everyone to lead in some aspect is another way for business communications to naturally grow. Many shy individuals are happy to fall in line, but creating scenarios where everyone needs to lead allows these shy individuals to showcase their leadership skills and ideas that may have otherwise been shaded simply due to their nonchalance related to sharing opinions. Leadership opportunities allow for both “old school” and modern professional skills to be honed, as they require interaction with all demographics a given office has.

Corporate Trainers

One of the most mindless and hands-off approaches to honing your team’s business skills is hiring a 3rd-party contractor to do the training for you. Corporate training has evolved rapidly in the past decade, and the days of click-through PowerPoints are being replaced with legitimate, immersive training given by individuals whose entire livelihood is providing training to corporate teams.

Depending on the size of your team, these can be auditorium-style training or small groups, and topics covered by these services are virtually endless, including in-office communications, external communications, global communications, and relative focus such as implicit bias and inclusion that make colleagues and clients more comfortable.

Mentorship Programs

For many reasons, mainly related to technology, younger generations often lack essential business skills. To address this, encourage or require younger employees to spend a few hours weekly with an industry veteran on your team. This practice significantly aids their business skill development.

If finances permit, offer paid mentorship opportunities where industry experts can share their knowledge and experiences with your team members. This investment not only develops skills but also enhances overall team performance.

Digital

In-person communications can set you apart from the competition, but digital communications remain the primary method and are increasingly preferred. While honing in-person skills is crucial, constantly refining digital communication skills is equally important. Fortunately, these tips apply to digital communications as well!