Tag: leadership

A Boss or a leader? Key skills that every manager needs to be a successful leader
Fundamentals of Management · Management

A Boss or a leader? Key skills that every manager needs to be a successful leader

Madhumita ChakrabortyLeave a comment
Managerial skills

Hey … have you ever tried to look into your self and find out how strong are you in managing people and projects at your workplace or how well do you manage to support your near and dear ones? Be it your professional activities or be it your family affairs, every decision you take depends on how you think and what you think. When you communicate, your inner self speaks, and your personality reflects your experience and ideas.

Have you ever felt the importance of being a leader rather than being a Boss?

To be an effective manager at your workplace you need to manage to take right decisions at right time, need to motivate others, manage crisis situations, control emotions, show empathy to your coworkers and finally strive to lead a group of individuals efficiently so that the resources are intelligently utilized in a stress free environment to accomplish organizational skills.

Most of our workplace experiences in life makes us conclude that we prefer to work under managers with whom we can connect ourselves. When a manager guides us and motivates us, we feel that our life is enriched and work more happily to give our best to the organization. It is the manager and not the organization who is responsible to make an employee happy and ensure higher employee retention in the organization. 

When we get a chance to lead a group of people if we try to empathize other’s situations, try  to motivate others, have a pleasant body language and  regularly work towards improvement of soft skills, then we become a successful manager and a good leader and not just a stringent Boss.

Our technical skills will help perform jobs better so that others look up to us and can believe in our abilities.

What an efficient manager effectively manages to do?

If you are an efficient manager and a perfect leader, you should be able to-

  • Work effectively towards the accomplishment of organizational goals by proper planning and by assisting in building right strategies
  • Help the employees work contentedly by delegating the right assignments suitable for an employee with certain skill sets
  • Manage to handle clients efficiently and directing and coordinating at various organizational levels
  • Handle personal stress and change your behavior based on situational requirements and manage to handle chaotic situations in the organization
  • Respect self-beliefs and values, respect the beliefs of others and value and motivate them to help them connect with you

What are the key skills that can help you become a good manager and a great leader?

Prof Robert Katz has primarily highlighted the following 3 most important managerial skills every manager should have –

  • Conceptual skills help managers to understand the cause of a problem analyses and find the solutions.
  • Human Relation skills or Interpersonal skills help managers to effectively communicate with people at all organizational levels.
  • Technical skills allow managers to work efficiently with use of tools

However, experts also feel that the important soft skills that managers should possess should be as under –

  • Listening skills allow managers to understand and implement a concept effectively
  • Communication skills help managers to pass on messages through lucid language and perfect body language
  • Decision making skills help managers to take right decision at right moment. Their experience and analytical skills play a good role in decision making
  • Your problem-solving skills can help you solve problems easily
  • Time management skills allow managers to set goals, prioritize and delegate work efficiently so that higher level of productivity can be achieved
  • Administrative skills include participating in policy formation, successfully strategizing, controlling, coordinating, and organizing

If you possess the above skills you must be able to motivate people, manage conflicts, strategize, and get work done with optimal use of resources through your leadership abilities.

How do you improve your managerial skills?

Try to analyze your skills, practice positivity in life and work towards being a successful manager… be confident and you will realize that your organization and people around you really need you.

If you possess some of these following positive traits and try to nurture the others, then you can be sure that you lay hold of at least some if not all the above listed key managerial skills.

  • Be highly energetic
  • Be passionate about work,
  • Be self-motivated,
  • Be inspired by life experiences,
  • Be flexible,
  • Be honest,
  • Be creative
  • Be punctual
  • Be passionate about reading and writing

Looking for more ideas or planning to share your thoughts? Your feedback will be appreciated.

Please email at contactareaderscorner@gmail.com

Best wishes…

Women Entrepreneurship – All you need to know to be a successful woman in business
Entrepreneurship · Management · Women Entrepreneurship

Women Entrepreneurship – All you need to know to be a successful woman in business

Madhumita ChakrabortyLeave a comment
Women entrepreneurship, Why women need to be self employed, Female entrepreneurship

Women take huge responsibilities in their life and are blessed with a wonderful heart to care for all. However, responsibilities and obvious changes in their personal lives sometimes create hindrances to their career growth. This ‘great at heart and strong in mind’ gender with versatile qualities often turn this challenge into an opportunity and establish themselves as a business entrepreneur to materialize their dreams of becoming financially independent, and parallelly opening scope for others.

Women though capable of multitasking and intelligently driving a business, find it hard to get the chance of upskilling themselves, hence lack confidence to boldly make decisions and try out any new venture mostly in developing countries like India.

Women in general are bestowed with the highest human qualities like patience, hard work, tenacity, conceptualization, and innovativeness.  The most important elements of intelligence be it being practical, analytical or being creative are all the natural possessions of a woman which she learns through her life experiences.

The socio cultural, economic, and political situations play useful role in deciding whether a lady would choose to take up a business and if chosen what type of business would she prefer to do.

In recent times, due to great shift in the social concepts, hierarchy, orientation and general acceptance and awareness, women have emerged more strongly as entrepreneur and their choice of business transformed from mere minimal earning through kitchen extension to successfully taking up and driving technically advanced businesses that contribute greatly to the economy of the nation.

The Government of India and many corporates are supporting women through training programs and economic assistance to empower them and to promote an inclusive growth.

Women entrepreneurs currently contribute a huge portion into the Indian and world economy. Businesses run by women are growing at fast pace with more efficient women willing to take greater operational risks.

What is exactly meant by Women Entrepreneurship?

Women who come up with innovative ideas, plan, make preparations and step to initiate a business or adopt an existing business to earn for self and provide employment to others while running the business independently are the women entrepreneurs and the process involved is known as women entrepreneurship.

According to the Government of India, women enterprise is the enterprise which is managed by one or group of women entrepreneurs in proprietary interests where they should have a minimum of 51% share capital.

The common problems faced by women entrepreneurs

  • Short of fund to run a business.
  • General financial trouble.
  • Hitch due to family complications and responsibilities.
  • Dependence on middlemen for marketing and raw material supplies. The cost for hiring a middleman is sometimes too high and the overall earning diminishes.
  • Lack of technological knowhow and inaccessibility to technical trainings.
  • Dearth of family support and self-confidence. 
  • Gender bias in the society.
  • High competition.
  • Safety issues.

How the Government of India is empowering women?

The Government of India understands the importance of women entrepreneurship and strongly believes that a family or a nation may see an improvement in social and financial status when women participate actively in every sphere and moves forward with determination.

The Government runs training program to upskill women, raise their awareness and make them self-confident and independent through such initiatives.

Mahila Vikas and Mahila Udyam Nidhi are some of the programs to provide financial support to women.

Government schemes supporting women

If you are a woman who is self-motivated , high in ideas to start a business and looking for some ways that can help you make your dream come true, then follow the list below that will guide you with the existing helpful Government schemes.

  • Stree Shakti Package is a scheme started by SBI to support women entrepreneurs who participated in the Entrepreneurship Development Program (EDP).
  • Mudra Yojana Scheme provides loan to women entrepreneurs for small business and are available under Shishu, Kishore and Tarun plans based on the vastness and stage of the business.

The other schemes in tandem with the list above that might be helpful in supporting your venture are Assistance to Rural Women in Non-farm Development (ARWIND), Tread Related Entrepreneurship Assistance and Development (TREAD), Women Development Corporation (WDC), etc.

SIDBI supports the EDP initiatives by the state agencies.

The industries in general dominated by women

  • Beauty parlour and beauty products
  • Kitchen
  • Pickles and papads
  • Handicrafts
  • Garments

Presently, women are found grabbing higher education, technically capable to take more risks and more aware and confident to run businesses that require high skills and strongly create a niche for themselves in all types of industries.

The successful women entrepreneurs

Women being flexible, energetic, goal oriented and tolerant are finding more space for themselves and contributing more in the present socio-economic scenario. The successful women entrepreneurs in different industries are the role models whose achievements inspire many in their life (irrespective of originating either of push or of pull factors) and have already concretized dreams of many others.

The untapped potentials of women are unleashing with a boom and the economy of India like many other countries is highly dependant on the women entrepreneurial businesses.

Some of the outstandingly great women who are highly successful and have highly impacted Indian economy and who should be considered as exemplar are Kiran Mazumdar Shaw (the founder of Biocon Ltd), Vandana Luthra (the founder of VLCC), Indra Nooyi (former CEO of Pepsi Co, currently board member of Amazon), Aditi Gupta (Author, Co-founder of Menstrupaedia) to name a few. Their success originated from outstandingly acquired skills, confidence and hard work shows that “nothing is impossible to achieve and can be accomplished if the heart is keen to reach”.

Some great business ideas to try at low investment

Do you like to dream high?

Our dream comes true when we put all our efforts to realize it.

If you ever thought of being an entrepreneur and work flexibly, try out your creativity and be independent then here are some small business ideas for you to endeavour-

  • Be a wedding planner or an event planner and you can be sure to earn huge revenue and open opportunities for others
  • Handmade goods sell, dress designing are some other areas where your creativity can help you earn and employ other women
  • You may try photography
  • Digital marketing service is an increasingly growing business area and can help you earn high and provide opportunity for others.
  • Practice your hands out and be a writer. Authorpreneurs have the scope to earn utilizing their passion. Blogging or publishing ebooks are the additional scopes open for modern writers

Most importantly, if you give your full potential, if you remain motivated and upskill yourself in congruence with nurturing confidence and patience within self then you are sure to be a successful entrepreneur of tomorrow.

For more details and feedback please contact us at email: contactareaderscorner@gmail.com

How Body language matters in business communication? Tips to improve body language
Business Communication · Management

How Body language matters in business communication? Tips to improve body language

Madhumita ChakrabortyLeave a comment
How body language matters in business communication

Have you ever felt that ‘what’ and ‘how’ you say matters? Did you ever realize that our body speaks a lot about us?

Body language is the way to communicate with others nonverbally and with correct postures, gestures, and eye movement you may send out a message with more positivity.

Both your personal and professional life get highly impacted with how you communicate with others.

There are several instances that a business communication happens better when a verbal and visual communication takes place clubbed with a set of nonverbal actions. The level of understanding and retention increases.

When you communicate with your stakeholders, co-workers, target audiences, or consumers a positive body language ensures your dominance.

What is Body language? How is it important?

Speaking face to face in person or in video conferences is a stronger and more effective way to communicate with others even in this age of emails, chats, and text messages. It helps to create better rapport and engage with others more productively. But why so?

The leaders all over the world focus more on face to face interactions as this gives them a chance to send out and receive messages through nonverbal cues properly known as body language. The level of engagement can be understood through postures, vocal tone, facial expressions, eye contacts and so on.

The movement of hands, smile, eye contacts, and other elements of body language can speak a lot about you and be the prime factors for establishing ‘trustworthiness’, ‘friendliness’, ‘agreeableness’ or ‘power’.

If the words you speak does not match with your body language, then you may be wrongly perceived by others.

Your body language can

  • Provide information about the real thoughts and perceptions
  • Can express emotions
  • Can either contradict or support a verbal message
  • Can replace the oral communication at times
  • Influence others
  • Regulates the flow of message

A positive body language can create a positive impression in almost no time. Try and see how the practice of positive attitude can better your body language and hence help you carry a better personality; help grow leadership abilities, promote better coordination and discipline and impress others easily.

According to some business leaders, we may overcome the barriers to communication through a positive body language.

How do you improve your body language?

You, being a small or a giant business owner, an entrepreneur or a professional, should practice to better your communication skills through improvement of your body language. A business meeting or a presentation to a set of audience, or communication with boss or subordinates or co-workers may turn out effective or successful only if you follow the following tips:

  • A calm face with a smile can help elevate your personality and create a positive ambiance. Your customer, or client or co-worker feels relaxed and engaged and this would help to discuss more productively. If you smile more frequently, you get more confidence and promote assertive communication.
  • A stress-free approachable appearance can be attained and help avoid misunderstanding if there is no frown on face.
  • A frequent eye contact can help establish trustworthiness and interest.
  • Cross hands and legs can show lack of interest and confidence. Speaking with open arms can help establish openness and engage others better.
  • A good handshake or a warm ‘Namaste’ can spread friendliness and warmth and encourage collaboration.

However, some gestures and postures may originate due to socio cultural and religious influence and should be understood and should be handled intelligently.

A good body language can show status, confidence, warmth, and strong leadership abilities.

Your body language is a mirror of your personality.

Once you practice decoding the nonverbal messages, you can enrich yourself and start sending messages of your choice about yourself. The brand of your business and of you as a person can be built and established with right practice of good body language.

Good luck with body language practice …wish you happy communications.

Looking for more details?

To know more or to send your feedback, don’t forget to email at contactareaderscorner@gmail.com