Entrepreneurship and Mental Health

Build These 6 Soft Skills to Become a Successful Entrepreneur

Six diplomacy skills that Andrea shared with me as her life lessons

6 Soft Skills Made Andrea an Award-Winning Entrepreneur.

A Brief Background to Andrea’s Communication and People Skills

After years of formal education, Andrea became a neuroscientist and a polymath. However, she decided to become an entrepreneur to make a better impact on the lives of many people. Thus, she created a startup company that boomed and became an award-winning entrepreneur in her field.

In this story, I documented six diplomacy skills that Andrea shared with me as her life lessons. She asserted that these skills were as necessary as her technical and business skills for entrepreneurship. I hope budding entrepreneurs might find these simple yet powerful lessons valuable.

These points mainly revolve around people and communication skills. Andrea also was coached by Matilda, who became a communication expert. I mentioned her in a previous story titled Here’s How Mastering a Powerful Skill Made Matilda a Champion.

Andrea sharpened her communication and people skills with input from her grandparents and support from Matilda. A combination of her technical, communication, and people skills made her an award-winning entrepreneur.

Without going into details, here are summaries of the six points extracted from my conversations with Andrea.

1 — Listen to people with an open mind and heart.

Listening is an important communication skill. Listening to people with mind and heart is essential to improve our relationships with friends, loved ones, colleagues, and clients. Even though it looks simple, listening is challenging for many people.

Andrea particularly highlighted listening with mind and heart simultaneously. She meant that we must listen to the content and how it is delivered at the same time. She listens to everyone by supporting them with her body language and not interrupting them.

Focusing more on listening and less on talking, Andrea builds excellent rapport with her clients and other stakeholders. She said attentive listening with empathy and compassion was the best lesson she learned from her diplomat grandparents.

2 — Acknowledge thoughts and sentiments.

In addition to listening carefully, Andrea said we could agree to disagree in any conversation. She means we don’t have to agree with other people to build rapport. There are effective ways, as she articulates.

Her secret was to acknowledge the thoughts and sentiments of people by repeating them without saying she agreed. She also used her body language to recognize and acknowledge their thoughts and sentiments.

Andrea also applied this principle to written communication. She always provides feedback on emails, articles, and other written artifacts. I touched on the importance of this point in the next section.

3 — Don’t reject ideas immediately.

Many people instantaneously reject ideas in verbal or written communication even before understanding the details and intended outcomes. This approach might cause productivity loss to entrepreneurs.

Andrea mentions that she doesn’t reject ideas presented to her. She extends and enhances them by adding new meanings and values. This approach delights the stakeholders, leading more ideas to be generated.

For example, she used a common phrase such as, “how about if we also do or add XYZ to the equation?” Another example is, “how about we remove this part and make it more concise?” She said many of her clients, employees, and stakeholders admired this approach.

4 — Focus on positive feelings but don’t deny negatives.

When dealing with people, we might get both positive and negative feelings. Many people don’t want to feel negative emotions, and they reject them. However, denial of unpleasant feelings causes them grief in the long run affecting mental health.

Feeling and acknowledging negative emotions is as important as positive emotions. However, Andrea mainly focuses on positive feelings while dealing with people or situations.

One of her techniques was to deal with negative feelings in her own time by expressing them in several ways, such as self-talk, expressive writing, and meditation. Then she reframes her thoughts and turns negative feelings into positive ones or neutralizes them.

5 — Embrace adverse criticism in any volume or intensity.

Feedback is invaluable to making progress in life. However, most of us are afraid of negative criticism. It hurts our feelings and makes us defensive.

When Andrea mentioned she sought adverse criticism for her growth, I agreed because I do the same in my profession, as explained in a story titled Here’s How I Use Negative Criticism Innovatively.

Embracing adverse criticism can bring many benefits to entrepreneurs. The most important one is to improve the quality of products and services. By refraining from perfection but remaining pragmatic and modest, we can turn negative feedback into positive.

6 — Build bridges with trust and credibility.

Andrea did not have any funds to build her business initially. However, the bridges she created contributed to a pool with a sustainable flow. She believed that people skills were as critical as her technical and business skills.

She created excellent relationships with employees, partners, politicians, professionals, government organizations, and clients. Everyone wanted to deal with her. She had gratitude and pleasant feelings for support from her stakeholders.

By growing her quality network, Andrea obtained research funds from governments, academic institutes, banks, and other organizations that trusted her business. Her credibility and trustworthy attitude opened many doors.

Conclusions and Takeaways

Undoubtedly, communication and people skills are as crucial as business and technical skills for entrepreneurs. These skills can also contribute to problem-solving skills and make problems more solvable.

Successful entrepreneurs need excellent communication skills to get the support of people in their circles. Communication and people skills are also essential to support employees, clients, and other stakeholders. They also contribute to our mental health and well-being.

Everyone enjoys being heard, listened to, acknowledged, and recognized. These fundamental human needs make listening skills critical for businesspeople. But, as Andrea mentioned, we don’t have to agree with everything to build a rapport with others.

By listening attentively, agreeing with the disagreement, extending ideas, and embracing negative criticism, we can build rapport with others, gain their trust, and improve our personal and business relationships.

Communication and people skills are also essential for authentic leaders to touch followers' minds, hearts, and souls, as I touched on another story titled Here’s What Differs Authentic Leaders from Fake Ones.

Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.

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