Business Strategy Understand What It Takes To Be Successful In Business

By ADIL KHAN

Being a stronger and effective communicator is not only a prerequisite for being successful in most roles, but also a crucial aspect for growing in your career. In this Book you will learn the foundational basics and best practices to improve your business communication effectiveness. Whether you are speaking with others, writing an email, or leading a meeting, there are key and simple best practices that you should follow to achieve a successful outcome. By the end of this Book, and with a little effort and practice, you will become a more effective communicator when conveying ideas/concepts or in getting others to act.

In respect of your time, this Book only focuses on the key and most important elements that every person should know and understand to communicate effectively within the workplace. You will learn when it is smarter to speak in person, send an email or have a meeting. You will learn how to get better outcomes by clearly stating objectives and by looking at situations from the other person's perspective. You will learn best practices for delivering and receiving messages.

The words you use, the order you say things, how you listen and being mindful of tone and body language, all contribute to an effective conversation. Learn workplace email etiquette and how to properly plan for and manage an effective meeting that generates real value.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ADIL KHAN
• Release date: Nov 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223107781

Book preview

Copyright

Copyright © 2023 by Adil Khan. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Business Strategy Understand What It Takes To Be Successful In Business

First Edition: Nov 2023

Book Design by Adil Khan

Table Of Contents

Copyright

Table Of Contents

About

Who this Book is for

Introduction

Team Management

Executive Presence 1

Executive Presence 2

Leadership Tips

Toastmasters Leadership

Team Leadership

Leadership Principles & Myths 1

Leadership Principles & Myths 2

Leadership Principles & Myths 3

Leadership Principles & Myths 4

Leadership Principles & Myths 5

Collaborative Communication Skills

How people evaluate you

Commitments

How to persuade others

Candor

Negotiating deals

Gaining power

Powerful people

Task oriented vs people oriented

Eye contact in the workplace

Body language

Writing emails within a company - part 1

Writing emails within a company - part 2

Phone calls

5 interpersonal skills and 3 communication barriers

Don't send mixed signals

Addressing problems assertively

Praise publicly and chastise privately

Giving critical feedback

Encourage all personalities to talk

Engaging with new people

How do you respond in stressful situations?

Dealing with stressful conversations

Communicate frequently

Be generous

reading

Be silent

Ask open ended questions

Tips

Entrepreneurship - From Business Idea to Business Model

Introduction

How To Use The Book

First Questions - Part 1

First Questions - Part 2

First Questions - Part 3

Employee VS Entrepreneur

Employee VS Entrepreneur - Continued

Balancing Your Work Life

Generating a Business Idea

Validating the Business Idea

How to Analyze your Competitors

How to Organize Yourself & Filter Priorities

Managing your Time Effectively

Managing your Stress Effectively

Entering New Markets & Finding Opportunities - Part 1

Entering New Markets & Finding Opportunities - Part 2

Diversify Products & Services

Getting the Right Partnerships

Joining Other Businesses

Conclusion & Next Steps - Part 1

Conclusion & Next Steps - Part 2

Time Management Mastery Do More, Stress Less

Introduction

Overview of the Book

The Good Feeling of Having Everything Sorted Out

Do You Also Feel Like A Juggler?

Time is Money! Or Not?

Give Your Tasks a Number

Forenoon vs. Afternoon

Find the Leading Domino

The Wall Calendar Method

The 20 Minutes Speed Run

Cold Start: 3 Tricks to Reset After You Shut Down

Think from the Other Ending

All Day Events in Your Calendar

Slicing Work into 30 Minutes Blocks

Cumulative 30 Minutes Blocks

The Idea of a Flight Plan

Discipline: Learn to Start and to Stop!

Motivation is Overrated!

Fake It Until You Make It

The April Fool Method

Challenge the Status Quo

Reward Yourself

Do It for Others: Part 1

Do It for Others: Part 2

The Columbo Method

Let Nobody Stop You!

Wrap Your Complaints into Something Positive

Mind Mapping Mastery Effective Mind Maps Step by Step

Who this Book is for

Introduction

How to recognize the clues of self-sabotage and procrastination

How to avoid the top sabotage strategies

The 7 step action plan to avoid self-sabotage

Put a Stop to Procrastination Single-Voice Hypno-Acceleration Session

Put a Stop to Self-Sabotage Dual-Voice Hypno-Acceleration Session

Improve Your Business Communication Skills When Speaking, Writing An Email or In A Meeting

Who this Book is for

Business Fundamentals & Questions to Answer Before Launching

How to Get the Most Out Of This chapter

Know What Kind of Business You are Trying to Create

Why Do Most Businesses Fail?

Who Is Your Instructor for this Business Fundamentals Book?

The Details Can Wait -Time to Answer Fundamental Questions

Zero In On Your Competition

What Problem are You Solving?

Are You Building a Home-Based Business?

How Can You Be #1 in the World to You Customers?

How Much Capital Do You Need to Start Your Business Today?

How Long Is Your Runway?

Do You Really Need to Quit Your Day Job?

What Is the #1 Way Your Customers Will Find You?

How Will You Communicate With Your Prospects?

Who Is Your Ideal Customer?

Who will Your First 10 Customers Be?

Do You Realize Your Business Idea Is Worthless?

How Do You Want Your Business to be Judged?

Are You Going to Go High-End or Low-End?

Can You Make Your Business Truly Worthwhile to You?

Are You Wasting Too Much Time on a Business Plan?

Do You Know What Cures all Other Problems In a Business?

Can You Love this Business for the Next 7 Years?

Can You Control Your Supply Chain?

Is Your Business Idea Stupid?

Can You Focus On Just this One Business?

Are You Hiring Employees for the Right Reasons?

Do You Need an Office?

Are You Willing to Be Head of Sales and Marketing?

Are You Willing to Ask People for Money?

Are You Willing to Communicate With Customers On Their Terms?

Are You Wasting Time on Lawyers, Business Cards, Logos, Etc?

Are You Wasting Time on Other Nonsense?

Are You Wasting Too Much Time on Your Website?

One Last Chance to Make This Book Better for Your Permanent

One Last Chance to Make This Book Better for Your Permanent

Do You Waste Time with Excessive Secrecy?

Do You Have a Minimum Viable Product?

Are You Willing to Ask Questions On How to Improve Your Business?

Good Luck In all Your Future Business

About

Being a stronger and effective communicator is not only a prerequisite for being successful in most roles, but also a crucial aspect for growing in your career. In this Book you will learn the foundational basics and best practices to improve your business communication effectiveness. Whether you are speaking with others, writing an email, or leading a meeting, there are key and simple best practices that you should follow to achieve a successful outcome. By the end of this Book, and with a little effort and practice, you will become a more effective communicator when conveying ideas/concepts or in getting others to act.

In respect of your time, this Book only focuses on the key and most important elements that every person should know and understand to communicate effectively within the workplace. You will learn when it is smarter to speak in person, send an email or have a meeting. You will learn how to get better outcomes by clearly stating objectives and by looking at situations from the other person’s perspective. You will learn best practices for delivering and receiving messages.

The words you use, the order you say things, how you listen and being mindful of tone and body language, all contribute to an effective conversation. Learn workplace email etiquette and how to properly plan for and manage an effective meeting that generates real value.

Who this Book is for

Primarily for new employees in the workplace who want to improve their communication effectiveness, capability to effectively interact with others.

Individuals looking for best practices and tips to improve their workplace communication effectiveness

Introduction

People find happiness and success and work largely because of their soft skills. According to the book, 80 percent of people who fail at work do so because they do not relate well to others. I am going to teach you the skills that I've learned. I was a division director in Toastmasters.

A brand manager at Sony and I worked for years as a consultant where I had to hone my interpersonal skills. I've learned the skills in top business schools including Columbia and Northwestern. I've also done many leadership training programs and learn from prominent people including partners at McKinsey and Carney the former CEO of Kraft and the former CEO of backstitch whose content comes from a variety of sources including my interpersonal experience and a number of reliable resources including books on interpersonal skills and a professor from Stanford University failure to develop soft skills is one of the main reasons people fail in business.

I've seen small companies in disarray because of a failure to manage people and politics. I've seen large companies where people fail with their jobs because they couldn't relate well to their employees and their bosses. Many people can't even get a job because their interview skills are not up to par. I'll help you develop these soft skills so you can succeed and be happier at work. Let's begin.

Team Management

Next, I am going to give you some advice on team management, which is going to rely heavily on the book on teams by Harvard Business Review's Ten Must Reads. The best predictors of productivity were a team's energy and engagement outside the formal meetings. So what are the fundamental concepts of this Book? Is the idea that humans are fundamentally social animals. And what we see here is that the socialization that's happening outside of the formal meetings are the strongest predictor. Of how successful the team is going to be.

Now, this is also an indicator of why economic clusters, physical economic clusters are so important. For example, tech is very successful in Silicon Valley, centered around the San Francisco San Jose areas. Hollywood is very successful with movie production. And why is that? Why don't we have more geographic dispersion? It has a lot to do with the socialization that happens when you have economic clusters, centered around certain industries. A lot of information about a lot of ideas, a lot of brainstorming happens through these physical socialization discussions that often happen outside of, for example, formal Zoom meetings. Now, what are the characteristics of successful teams?

Number one, everyone on the team talks and listens roughly equally. So we are not talking about a situation where the most skilled people, the most competent people, the most impactful people have a highly disproportionate say in what happens in the meeting. Instead, an effective team is more or less democratic in how it behaves. Members face one another and they are energetic. Members connect with each other and not just the leader. So it's not an overly hierarchical or pyramid like relationship that's happening with team meetings.

Number four, there's lots of side conversations, so you want that kind of brainstorming happening. You want a lot of information going back and forth between team members. Another key thing is that you want to add breaks so that there is an opportunity to explore outside of the team and outside of formally scheduled team meetings. That's how you build a successful team. Now, nothing beats face to face meetings. Of course, with Zoom, Google, and Meet Microsoft teams, sometimes it's inevitable that you have to have these virtual conversations, and that's a good second best. But particularly when somebody first joins a team or first joins an organization.

I would make a strong effort to try to meet face to face. So for example, I have a friend that recently moved to London, England, but he, after being hired, was quickly sent to New York to meet the team face to face, because that's incredibly important for building rapport. And the socialization that happens is incredibly important to the success of the team, not just the emotional betterment of the employees. Other key factors are going to be energy and engagement. So if you see the energy levels in engagement are low, then that suggests that there's some part of the meeting that needs to change.

Perhaps it's when the meeting is held. Perhaps it has to do with the dynamics of the team. Maybe somebody brings down the energy of the team and needs to be excluded. One of the most important factors when you first form a team is you need to get agreement in alignment on what the purpose of the team is if the team members have different ideas of what they should be doing or where they're going. Then you're going to see a lot of them. Bizarre contradictions and disagreements throughout the team meetings and discussions. Another key thing is you want to keep the team small. So the general rule of thumb from Harvard is you want single digits, fewer than ten people. There are going to be cases perhaps where the team must be larger for political reasons, but it's certainly not optimal in most cases.

Another key thing is that you want a deviant. So someone might call this a devil's advocate. Not everyone should be a deviant, but we do see that the most successful teams will have at least one. This helps avoid groupthink. It helps keep the team on its toes, prevents it from going down a path. That doesn't make any sense. The other key thing is that when you are choosing team members, you want to choose them not based on cultural fit, not based on personality, but first and foremost based on their skill. What skills are they bringing to the table? What experience do they bring to the table?

Now there are three essentials for group effectiveness. The first is trust. And a lot of that can be formed through the socialization process that I was talking about earlier. Another is a group identity. So are they identifying as a group or simply a collection of individuals? And is there group efficacy? And lastly, humor is important. So we do see in the business world that humor can be very effective. We see that things like emoticons can be effective. We can see that a lot of executive leaders will use humor to dispel tensions during very serious conversations and sometimes to avoid very tough questions. For example, Goldman Sachs was blank. Lloyd Blankfein can use humor as a way to get around certain hot topics.

Executive Presence 1

One of the single most important concepts in leadership development is executive presence. This is what I like to call the missing link. It is the missing link between being an individual contributor or a mediocre people manager to becoming a true leader, a true executive. And often it's the only thing that you really need to get beyond that threshold of $200,000 per year.

In this chapter, we're going to rely heavily on the book, The Executive Presence. If you want to learn more, I suggest checking it out. So there are three major things to consider when we're looking at executive presence. The first is confidence. Are you conveying confidence regardless of whether you're actually confident internally? Do you have poise and are you perceived as authentic? In other words, you're conveying the idea that you are in charge. You're the captain of the ship. Or at the very least, you deserve to be.

An example of that would be if you're in an interview. You deserve to be the person to get that position, that leadership position. Now there are three ways that you convey executive presence. The first is how you act. The second is how you speak. And the third is how you look. Now, not all of these are equally weighted. The single most important factor in conveying executive presence is how you act. Are you conveying the idea of gravitas? And basically what gravitas means is that you are taken seriously. You don't seem like some fickle, indecisive person that's going to immediately get angry, get flustered. If there's an emergency, they're not going to remain cool. No, you are someone that is taken seriously.

People believe you and they're confident enough in you to follow you as a leader. That is gravitas. Now when we look at the data and we look at top leaders and we consider what are the things behind gravitas, we can rank them from 1 to 6. So the most important factor is confidence and grace under fire. So when things are getting turbulent, are you still confident? Number two, decisiveness and showing teeth. Number three, integrity and speaking truth to power. Number four, emotional intelligence. Number five, reputation and standing. And your pedigree. And number six, vision and charisma.

Now, if you look at a lot of conventional wisdom out there about what makes for a good leader. Often they'll say charisma. But that's not actually the most important thing. Really? It's about competence. As being the main driver of gravitas. Now when we look at the animal kingdom and we see who the leaders are, we can look, for example, at alpha gorillas. And one distinction between the alpha male and the other gorillas is that he remains calm and confident. He's not jumping around. He's not nervously shaking. He's not sporadic. He's calm. He's cool. He's collected. Even when things are turbulent, even when there's a threat, even when there's a loud noise, even when people are fearful, they could still turn to the alpha. As a show of confidence and calm. So one of the most important things is to never lose your cool as a leader.

Another key thing is maintaining eye contact. Now, it's fairly easy to maintain eye contact when you're reading. I can look you in the eyes and receive what you're saying. But it's much more difficult to maintain eye contact when you're speaking. But if you can maintain eye contact when you're speaking as some authoritative people like Bill Clinton are capable of doing, you're going to seem much more persuasive. You're going to see much more confidence. You're going to have more executive presence.

Now another key thing is you need to be decisive and action oriented. So, for example, let's say you're on a team and everybody is discussing different ways to go, different solutions to an emergency. Perhaps they're complaining, perhaps they're worried that if you're the one who takes control, makes a decision and says this is the action we need to take to move forward, you will have a stronger executive presence. Another key thing is not to complain. Lots of people in the business world and organizations are good at complaining about processes. They complain that things aren't fair, but the person with the executive presence does it. They're more pragmatic. They're more concerned with getting results than they are with complaining about the status quo.

Now, another key thing to consider with executive presence is that you're going to have a reputation, whether you like it or not. People are going to talk about you. There's going to be a lot of gossip. In fact, being a large company is very much like being in high school where people for cliques, they talk about each other behind their backs. So what you need to do as an executive is to shape how others perceive you. You need to develop your personal brand. You need to take control of your reputation so other people are not shaping it for you.

Executive Presence 2

When I was younger, I was a good student. And I felt that having integrity had a lot to do with the content or the substance of what you're saying, and making sure that you're being as precise, as truthful and as accurate as possible. But when you look at the research of leaders, what we realize is that the people that follow leaders, the audience that listens to leaders is much more concerned with how they communicate than the content of what they communicate.

And a good example of this would be Simon Sinek, a very, very popular author speaker. But a lot of the stuff he says is just flat out wrong. It contradicts the data that's out there. And a lot of what he says is really just conveying what you want to hear or convenient, simplified stories that go against conventional wisdom, even in cases where conventional wisdom happens to be right. So what are some examples of how you can communicate in ways that matter to people? Well, one is to lower your voice. You lower your voice. You seem more like an executive.

Another thing that you could do is you can use stories. So a lot of individual contributors are deep experts in their fields. They know the data very well. They know copywriting really well. They know each other really well, whatever that technical subject competence is. There may be a tendency to over communicate, but often what leaders do is they're actually using short stories to convey very complex ideas with a lot of moving parts, but leaving a lot of those details outside of the stories so they don't even include them. Now, one of the mistakes a lot of people make as they try to transition into high level leadership executive positions, is they talk too quickly. When you talk too quickly, there's not a lot of weight behind what you say.

The other problem with speaking too quickly is you might be perceived as anxious, indecisive, sporadic, unpredictable, not calm. People want a calm leader. That means you need to speak more slowly. And that means that the best speakers use a lot of pauses. This is something that they train you in Toastmasters and speaking engagements and in leadership training. You need to use pauses. You need to slow down so that people can process information and so that you seem confident and calm. Some other tips. Be succinct. You don't want to ramble. People won't pay attention to a rambler.

You want to be forceful and assertive when necessary to move things forward. And you want to have good posture for slouching. You don't seem very confident. You don't seem very interested. You don't seem very much at the moment. Now. What we're going to do is we're going to look at communication blunders. And once again, we're referencing the book Executive Presence. So here are the key communication blunders that people make. One of them is checking your device too often. So you're giving a presentation, you're in a meeting and you're checking your phone, you're on a zoom call. And it's very obvious that you're looking to the side, checking your phone for messages.

You are not in the moment. You're not a leader. People want to follow. It doesn't seem like you care. Having too high a pitch will make people lose confidence in you. Over Reliance on notes suggests that you don't really know your stuff. Breathlessness. Trembling signs of anxiety. Signs that you're not a safe person to trust. Crying, appearing bored. One way that you appear bored is by fidgeting, shaking, caressing yourself, shaking your leg. Signs of nervousness, rambling and redundancy. Repeating yourself too often and unintentionally. And having poor eye contact. And as I mentioned before, it is easier to maintain eye contact when you're reading than when you're speaking. And lastly. Don't be sensitive.

The corporate world can be a dangerous place. It can be an offensive place. People might throw you under the bus, people may cheat you. Contracts are going to be written to somebody else's benefit and to your disadvantage. You do not want to be a sensitive person. You want to have a thick skin, or at the very least, you want to project the idea that you have a thick skin. Thick skin. So try not to be sensitive. Try to be confident and always be looking forward instead of regretting what happened in the past.

Leadership Tips

I'm going to share with you some miscellaneous tips for leadership development. There are four key things that you can do to help project your competence so people believe that you're intelligent and capable enough of achieving outcomes. The first is to be assertive. You won't do not want to be perceived as a passive person. The second thing that you can do is you can initiate contact and not just wait for people to contact you. So, for example, if you need help, you can go and approach someone. You can go and invite someone out to lunch to help build rapport. You can be the first person to shake someone's hand, the first person to say hello. This positions you as a leader rather than just a follower and a receiver.

The second thing is maintaining eye contact once again, not just eye contact when you're reading, but also when you're speaking. And the fourth thing is maintaining good posture. Another key thing that you want to do as a leader is get the timing and the location right when you're doing something like public speaking or when you're holding a