The wheels of business revolve around effective management. No company can reach success without stellar administrative abilities at the helm.

What skills does a business manager need to make their organization work as a single mechanism, and how can they learn them?

Let’s find it out!

Essential Administrative Skills in Business

Managing an enterprise is more than just being business savvy and passionately driven. A successful business manager is also an administrative wizard capable of juggling multiple roles and responsibilities while maintaining a bird's eye view of the company.

Let’s check the key administrative skills required:

• Organization

  You should be able to handle multiple tasks, set priorities, and control whether all work gets done on time.

• Communication

  Convey information to team members, stakeholders, and customers clearly and timely. For this, hold regular meetings or send the team emails with the recent updates. The better each participant of the enterprise knows what to do and what goals to pursue, the more effective their performance is.

• Problem-solving

  This skill includes your ability to identify problems early, make quick decisions, and find effective solutions. For example, if a project is running late, a good manager might reassign the tasks or find independent contractors who would assist the team in completing all the tasks on schedule.

• Strategic planning

  Learn to plan for the future and foresee business tendencies. Be ready to set long-term goals and map out the steps necessary to achieve them.

• Financial management

  As a business manager, you may deal with budgets and financial planning. You should know how to analyze reports and identify areas where the business can reduce expenses and increase profits.

• Technological savviness

  In modern business, the one who welcomes innovation is the one who flourishes. To manage all administrative processes, you need to have various programs - from MS Office to complex business intelligence software - at your fingertips. If you often deal with documents, consider using Lawrina Templates — a legal tech platform that offers a variety of legal templates created by professional lawyers for your business needs.

• Leadership

  Inspire and motivate your team. Acknowledge your employees’ hard work, celebrate their small victories along the way, and show them what effective work is with your personal example.

• Delegation

  Notice the strengths and weaknesses of your team and assign tasks accordingly. If a team member excels in creative tasks, asking them to make a financial plan is counterproductive.

• Time management

  Good managers know how to juggle numerous tasks and deadlines. Use special applications Google Calendar to organize your schedule and prioritize your tasks widely so that, at the end of the working day you know you have coped with all important tasks.

• Adaptability

  Business environments are constantly changing, and you need to be flexible and adapt quickly. Sometimes, a good manager should be able to change the whole business strategy overnight and create a new approach to bring the business to success. The COVID-19 pandemic is a great example of a case where flexibility allowed enterprises to keep working despite unexpected changes.

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How Can You Develop Administrative Skills?

There is a popular myth in the business environment that good managers are born, not trained. However, nothing is impossible for a person who really wants to gain success. All the skills mentioned above can be learned and developed.

To make this task easy for you, we have gathered several strategies on how you can improve your administrative skills:

1. Enroll in relevant courses, professional training programs, or workshops. Check the list of educational online platforms for business managers in the next section.

2. Engage in internships or volunteering to get practical experience. You may also consider taking on additional tasks at work to improve your skills.

3. Communicate with people in your industry and learn from them. It can be a fast and effective way to discover new practices and gain fresh insights from people who are more experienced than you. Also, attend industry events and join professional organizations to build a strong network.

4. If you feel like you need professional support, find a mentor or a career coach. They can give you valuable advice based on their own experiences and help you find the answers to the questions you cannot answer on your own yet.

5. Seek and analyze constructive criticism from colleagues, leaders, or subordinates. Feedback can offer a new perspective on areas you can improve on.

Resources for Self-Education for Business Managers

If you are so overloaded with work that you cannot find the time to attend classes and lectures offline, there is great news for you. Many online platforms offer numerous courses on business administration. You can access the materials at any time and work within the schedule and pace that are comfortable for you. Here are the most popular among them:

• Coursera

  Check numerous business and management courses taught by top-ranked universities worldwide. Try "The Manager's Toolkit: A Practical Guide to Managing People at Work" to improve your administrative skills.

• LinkedIn Learning

  This resource offers its users numerous courses in business, leadership, and management. You can also add certificates to your LinkedIn profile to demonstrate your results to colleagues.

• American Management Association (AMA)

  Various seminars available on the platform will help you upgrade your administrative abilities. Check "The Voice of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire, Influence and Achieve Results" to learn more about wise and productive leadership in business.

• edX

  This platform contains mostly university-level courses on leadership and management. One of them is "Management and Leadership: Growing as a Manager" from the University of London.

• MasterClass

  This educational resource features courses like "Anna Wintour Teaches Leadership and Creativity.”  From them, you can get unique insights on leadership and management from leading industry professionals.

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Conclusion

If you manage to master the administrative skills mentioned above, you'll be on the most promising path toward great results in business. It may be challenging, but remember, an effective manager not only evolves with their company; they catalyze that evolution. Stay patient, keep learning, and remember - every administrative triumph takes your business one step further on the journey to success.

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