John Russell, President, Harley Davidson: "The more you engage with customers the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing."
Social skills help the entrepreneur to succeed.
We are, by nature, social beings. Hence social skills can help us in life.
The socialization process begins at an early age, with the assistance of the child's environment, and those social skills can be developed in different ways.
The entrepreneur:
The entrepreneur is required for Networking, developing a network of business and social relationships. He/she has to strengthen existing relationships and create new ones to promote his/her venture and to learn from others.
Alongside developing business and social networks, as an entrepreneur, you should understand that you can get help from acquaintances and friends to establish the venture. However, in the long term, you can't rely on these relationships to make an enterprise to succeed. In the end, for a project to succeed, the target audience is the one who should want the product/service offered to them.
Most children, as well as older people, are waiting for others to contact them. But if we want to expand our network, we must initiate conversations and reach others.
Examples from the children's arena:
Children who want to be elected to the student council are elected first in their classroom and then in the school elections. Who is more likely to be elected: a child with many friends or a child with few friends?
If I want to meet and play with my friends after school, I have to turn to them and ask to meet. We may get a refusal, but we won't let it discourage us. We may try other with kids or another time. And perhaps it is best to try to understand why the same child we invite does not want to meet, and in any case, we will always look for more opportunities to bond.
The child is bored and wants a friend? Let him invite someone. As parents, we shouldn't do it for him/her. If the child is of preschool, he/she will talk about it in kindergarten with his/her friends, and then we, as parents, will schedule. If the child doesn't know how to use the phone, we will make the phone call for him/her, but he/she will talk. At first, the children may be reluctant to do so, but they practice and gain confidence over time.
An example from the entrepreneurial arena:
The book, Good Business Under Israeli Administration, by Yigal Ben-Aharon, describes successful managers and CEOs of companies: "what these people have achieved was, first and foremost, thanks to their ability to communicate with people, and only then for reasons of strategic planning or control finance."
The entrepreneur:
Creating collaborations between people and organizations also requires social skills.
The entrepreneur has to be able to communicate and get close to people, along with the ability to identify opportunities and negotiate. To do this, he must use his interpersonal skills.
One with high-level social skills can leverage them to create relationships and opportunities.
Collaborations between organizations and corporations always begin with people who talk to each other and show an interest in each other.
The outcome of a collaboration between people from different fields is:
The outcome of collaboration between people from different fields is:
Creating an endless source of creativity and innovative ideas. Therefore, entrepreneurs are advised to incorporate people from different domains into their entrepreneurial teams.
It is also advisable to join inexperienced ones. The latter know how to ask questions and see things from a different perspective.
