I am jotting down ten skills of leadership for businesses.

• Leading by example – This is really important. If you want to be a leader, you should lead by example and pitch in when people need you. You should als lend a helping hand to people when they need you. Also, you should make sure that you team members understand the work that you are doing.
• Passion – It is hard to think of a leader without passion. He might be a leader at the lowest level but passion drives a lot of things. You should inspire others with your enthusiasm and passion. This doesn’t mean that you need to be cheery all the time but you should know what is your role in the company and your company is doing.
• Good organization – Disorganized leader can never lead well because he is always chasing his own tail. You should avoid being disorganized because it will lead to further disorganization. If you are messy and frazzled, your team will end up doing the same. Your productivity increases when you are well organized and you end up with better results.

• Delegation – It is not possible to do everything and hence a good leader needs to delegate his tasks well. When it comes to delegation, you should give your employees a sense of ownership of the work that you assign to them. They need to feel that they own the work.
• Take full responsibility and ownership-You might have delegated the work well but you also need to take ownership and responsibility of what your team is doing. Every team will go through a good and bad time. You will have to face both the situations.
• Effective communication – It is known that great leaders need to be good communicators. But there are some communication points that people forget. For instance, you need to tell your employees about the work they are doing and how beneficial will it be to the company in the long run. You should tell them that the work you are doing makes a big difference to the company. You need to be precise while communicating.
• Be honest and brave – Cowardly leaders will be shy of facing the different challenges that turn up when they are leading a team. But you will have to be brave and face any kind of situation that you might face in the organization. Honesty too is important. Do not sugarcoat or obfuscate. Learn to present things well.
• 

  Great listener -This is another part of communication – good listening. If you just talk and don’t let your people talk, then you are a bad leader. It is important to keep your people motivated by asking questions and listening to them. You should also understand their issues well. You will respond more effectively if you listen more. In the end, you will get to the heart of the things faster.

• Know your people – You need to know your people. You do not need to be best friends and don’t need to socialize after work but you need to know them well. It is important that you know thing about their personal lives because this matters a lot during work. You can keep a track of their marriages, children, birthdays, etc.
• Be a follower – Great leaders are good followers. If you don’t follow anyone, it means that you are a dictator and not a leader.

The economic growth of a country has a key role to play in its part to define the success of a business. Many economists and financial experts believe that the changeover of the non-renewable energy to its renewable counter part marks the inception of new business. However, many other state that the use of crude oil even today and the price advantage it offers will not allow the renewable energy business or clear energy business to stand for decades from now.  It is vital for an emerging business t monitor the scientific inventions, economic developments, and the market adoption from close proximity to decide how and when the transitions will realize and can give a business opportunity.

The shortages of the talent cannot be an issue for a country in case the theory of globalization prevails. In that case they can hire professionals from any part of the world. However, too much of a nationalistic views can harm this global hiring of employees. This will insist a company to see the present education system of the private and public institutions. The education will define the competencies that will be available for a business for employment. There are several occasions when a local mismatch occurs between the company needs and the skills the local people harbor. In that case remote outsourcing might be a good option and even in this case a company needs to judge the cost of outsourcing as opposed to the training of the local employees.

There are various other factors that play an important part in determining the success of a business while defining the human resource functions. And a little wrong prediction can lead to a business fiasco.

How often do we talk about the efficiency of an entrepreneur? A bunch of brilliant employees can yield a disappointing result in business if they are not bestowed with suitable leadership. The converse can also be true, when a firm excels with cumulative profits despite the fact that the employees of the firm are apparently average people. The trick lies in the leadership skills. I always flip through books related to leadership skills and in many occasions I have found some great advices and inspiring case histories. The recent effort taken by Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) caught my attention.

RYLA organized a program to impart leadership skills to student of junior schools. This event was organized during a weekend so that the students can attend it continently and was held at Pineywoods Baptist Encampment situated in Woodlake, outside Groveton.

RYLA has always shown its social commitment by its programs that aim at the betterment of the communities around the world. This program taught leadership skills to kids in their own language. The program used interesting stories to make children understand the significance of team work. As per the RYLA chairman Rhonda Herrington, students were told a story of crayon box in this program in order to make them realize the true role of team. They were told about a crayon box where color pencils don’t like staying together as they don’t each other. But they ultimately make a bond when they are used to color a picture, where they reside next to each other. Such simple stories and messages will definitely make a mark in every youngster’s mind as they will ponder over this issue. I am sure that the kinds who have attended this award program will make use of their learning in real life.

This program has gradually gained prominence since its inception in 1991.I was amaze dot read the humble beginning of RYLA program of leadership skills with just 60 participants. Today the size participants have turned to 258 junior school students. This growing interest of the students over this program definitely rest on the apt trainers. Each trainer is awarded with a scholarship of $750.

At the closing ceremony of this event, trainers ask student sot write their experience in balloons. And later on in the balloon releasing event, their experiences are read out randomly.

Madonna’s career has spanned decades now and she has been the best female performer of all time even if you don’t like her music very much. She has been to the pop genre what Ali was to boxing, what Sampras is to Tennis; she is a living legend, and there is a lot to take away from the material girl when it comes to ruling your brand and your niche. Madonna has some powerful lessons to teach, and here we sum up 6 of those teachings that can be gleaned from the Material Girl.

Always believe in something

If you don’t believe in something, you’ll fall for just about anything. The simplest way to do this is to take a quick look at your about us page. What have you thrown on there? Is the message you are conveying very feel-good, but entirely forgettable? Is there a message at all in there? You have a powerful way of conveying what you believe in with your blog and you should best distill your message into something you fully believe. It’s your unique selling proposition and this is your raison d’être. Your customers should be able to say why you matter and why they turn to you.

Always come good with promises

Look around and you’ll see that the best of businesses will always look to deliver on their promises at all time. It requires putting in a lot of effort to make sure that they deliver quality again and again, without fail. Madonna claims she has “never canceled a show, ever” and you can translate this into something of meaning for your business. Make every customer interaction and make every product a promise that is fulfilled, and never rest until this is so.

Clarity of purpose

In the music industry, Madonna is famed for her ability to negotiate like a shark. Heck, she even wrangled $5 million out of Pepsi for an ad they never ran. They got the jitters, she didn’t care; she got her pound of flesh from them. There is a clarity of purpose for Madonna that is almost scary. She knows what she wants and she goes after it. Know your goals, and work relentlessly towards it. Setting a goal sets a tempo for your efforts, so get your goals and priorities right and you can deliver on something you want, and you can deliver it your way.

Trample on toes if you have to

Madonna has never been afraid to trample on toes and bloody a few noses if she had. Interest groups, professors, politicians, businesses, they all came the same to her. She doesn’t care if it’s the Vatican taking pot shots at her, and her fans love it. She never backed down from fighting things out and neither should you. Never apologize for who you are if you say something you feel is true. You can’t please everyone all the time. Take criticism on board so much as it makes sense and keep on moving towards achieving your goals relentlessly. If everyone does agree with you, maybe you’re saying something so innocuous that everyone can easily agree with.

Redefine the rules

The only rules that matter are the ones that you impose upon yourself. If and when Madonna does engage her fans, she doesn’t follow the regular rules and you can rest assured knowing that she comes up with unique ways to rip the rulebook to shreds. Rules are there for a reason, but to make the rules suited to your purpose marks out the successes from the failures and Lady Gaga might be the epitome of that today, but Madonna was the original.

Some people pin this as using swords for writing sharp words, they are not actually using swords or knife but yes, make it feel as if it was a real sword while written. Writing is an art, we are well aware about it so when the writer is writing something there are 2 objectives which gets to be fulfilled one is crafting their message right across to the audience and the other is putting across the things which actually doesn’t consist in their message. I have been attending many a workshop that has helped me a lot and it is especially beneficial for the people in the field of journalism, blogging, editing, etc. the best of written words comes very much from inside its an idea of self expression and once you are done with expressing yourself, you can use sharp words as knife to cut through people’s mind and heart that will make them aware of the reality, the actual thing that you wanted to portray, may be indirectly. It’s a innate ability of an individual which helps to let him put across his message and its often natural for them to fall in love with their words and sometimes its not possible for them to speak out sword like words, so here I present to you some of the tips which will help you cut out on emotional quotient and move ahead!

• Stick to your content -  when you have decided upon writing something for the audience, be open and let them know exactly what your feelings are. Your whole content should revolve round one focused topic that will let neither you or your audience deter from reading it ahead. If you have something that you only have slight idea about its better you don’t use it anyway.
• Cut out on first few words – its often the habit especially with the young writers who have just headed out or for novelists, who start their content with some background idea of what the content is all about. Its only an idea at first and once they get the grip of the audience than the actual words comes in. so my advice to you is to cut down on those starting words or paragraphs and come to the direct stuff you would like to discuss and see how things change.

• Spicing up you words can be too harmful sometimes, people may get overly anxious about what is going to come next and if your content doesn’t meet their expectations than you are surely going to loose out on your audience, so the best is to make your point clear in a clear language.
• Don’t use Creep-in words that will make your text look dull, you can find it out on your own, just go through some of your text copies which you have written and after reading them you will get a little annoyed somewhere or the other there it is, and you will see you have done the same type of mess even I other copies. So find your own such creep in words and avoid the annoyance of your audience.
• Avoid exaggerations in your text, even if you are trying to convey to them how something was seriously beautiful, they wont get the exact picture of what you are saying and some people might not understand it altogether, so its best to write a simple word of your experience.

• Don’t gobble over words, find out the precise, accurate and the best word that is suited to define a particular situation or an object. When you hit the perfect set of words in your text, can you have the ability to strike that perfect chord which will portray your message across.
• Don’t let go off the cut text, you must have often seen how the left out food is utilized to make some other variety of served to the poor, the same thing applies here too. The best of novelists or writers will never let go off the single thing they write, if they had to cut a portion of the novel they are writing, they will make a point to use that part of text in some other writings.

Sometimes, it gets really difficult to get your audience’s attention to the thing you actually want to speak out, so the best solution is to follow the steps I have given, this way you will become more bolder and smarter. Have a go-getter attitude and get your points across to the people and remember to carry that knife in your words always.

• As a business person, you must have got loads of criticisms as a starter but I shall just say these are the stepping stones to success, unless someone criticizes you, you would have never known about your pitfalls so wisely accept them and get going to improve upon them.
• Don’t get emotions in business, once you are emotionally broke then it’s the end of the game, think logically and be practical.
• Networking is the key to ultimate success in business, even if you are an established enterprises never ever stop your networking.
• Nobody gets success at one go, there are things to learn from the mistakes you commit.
• Look out for opportunities, there is something in store for sales to be made, at every minute of the day.
• Greediness is not the word to become rich, spend money where you need.
• Keep your family and business lives miles apart.
• Never stop learning new things in life, accept them as it brings in new technology to your business.
• Appoint good lawyers and accountants for perfect accounting in long run.
• Pick a meaningful company name and the one, which people will remember without confusion.
• The bigger the enterprises, the bigger the sales force, problems will arise; learn the trick to come out of them.
• Have a good business partner for consultation that will yield you success in the business.
• Be ready to take up challenges.

• Have a good successful strategic marketing plan.
• Don’t ever under estimate the power of your competitors.
• Having a business mentor helps to take decisions and also guides you through your journey as a businessman.
• Diversification is a good way to do safe business.
• In markets, customer is the king; give importance to your customer’s needs.
• Pick up a website which helps you with free tips and advices to do business.
• Develop the willingness to work hard for better results.
• Sometimes even the most simplest and idiotic ideas build up a big business enterprise.
• Starting business itself is a big risk; business precedes risk, and sometimes it so happens, the bigger the risk, the bigger the profit.
• To attain success, you need not necessarily do business.
• To get venture capital is of utter most importance then any other investments or resources.
• Be a team player with sporting spirit, accept the losses as evenly as profits.
• Don’t let anything ruin your business plans.
• The path for success need not always be rosy, as it might seem so get ready to deal with it.
• Don’t be too aggressive or overpowering to your business colleagues, they can backfire.
• Networking is the best you can do to make your business popular.
• Whether you like particular individual or no, you never know when they would come handy to fulfill your obligations, so be nice to them.

• Have an attractive business email signature that will impress your potential buyers.
• You will always learn more things by doing practical business rather than going to any business school.
• Develop a personal brand by having your personal blog over business networks; have your business niche known in business circles.
• You can learn a lot from your enemies, so don’t always ignore them.
• Find ways to grow your business even if it means working free from someone.

I hope reading the above points will surely help you improve on your entrepreneurial skills. If you feel, you have something really exciting and out of the box ideas that can help our readers than please share here, you are more than invited.

The not so fortunate companies are the small companies, they may sound un attractive because of their low revenues, say some of them might not be even earning a million dollar per year but in actual terms, these are the most attractive of all let gets into a brief discussion as to why you shouldn’t be following the fortune 500s!

• Big company, big talks but hell lots of time and money – the bigger the company, the bigger the managerial levels. If you are thinking your deal would be passed just meeting one official, it’s not the end. There may be even more official to talk to and you will never know the person you are meeting is going to take the decision.
• Apart from the costs of presentations, you will have to spend a lot of money if you are meeting the official outside office premises for wining and dining purposes. And if do get in to any deal with the company; the legal fees would be much higher than your expectations.
• Lots of people think, if they are in some way making a deal with a billion dollar company than they are going to make good money, this is a misconception; in fact, the money from the project might go to some other fortune 500 companies. Your company has a small contract so you will get a smaller portion of money.
• Bigger companies often have lots of pending bills, their processing is really slow and more the number of days they keep the money, they will get good amount of interest especially when their balance is running in to some billion dollars.

Its natural for any one to get attracted towards big companies and big deals but it nearly will consume whole of your time, investment and resources, with the same amount of money, investment and resource you can strike a much bigger deal with a good profit sharing ratio with not so fortune 500 companies, read ahead to know more:

• Small company, small talks but big money – the smaller companies run faster because of decrease in the managerial levels and by the time you keep waiting for project to start on with bigger companies, you could already be starting the second business venture with the smaller companies. Small companies might not have big budgets but you get good earnings for your services.

• You can use normal means to contact them rather than spending on putting advertisements in newspapers or magazines, you can save lots of money by not gathering a huge sales force, which you have to do in bigger companies.
• Even if the economy is in recession, your deal wont be affected. The smaller the company, the smaller the investment and small investments are not affected by changes in the economical cycle.
• Small companies have smaller valuation periods and hence quicker results. The bigger companies don’t take risks easily they try the project for few months before taking any major decisions, so evaluation period is more and so you will have to keep spending money for presentation, services, resources, etc.

• The larger the companies, the larger the competition and bigger companies face competition from multinationals so its very crucial for company to stand in the competition. Smaller companies hardly have any competitors so everything is easy going.

Big companies are big companies, nothing can match the high feeling of being on cloud nine, working with fortune 500 companies but it has its own pros and cons and after reading the above points, I guess, you would have got some idea as to what goes in to striking a deal or just a single meeting with officials from big companies. Start working with smaller companies and earn good money, one day you might be surprised to see big companies wanting you as their partners.

Some people think that if they rake in good number of investors in their company either from joint venture or selling the stakes in the companies, it is good sign of success. Then I think, they are highly mistaken for the fact, that most of take over happen because company is facing turbulent times, now there are again 2 possibilities, investor may come in due to his personal interest or simply want to help the company but the profit motive always remains. A person’s hard earned money is always the biggest risk individuals take while investing in risky businesses especially when it has no profits or shown downward spiral.

Sometimes, when you get investments coming to your company, you are easily excited about getting money and starting with few more ventures but you really miss to know, that it can really become hard for you in the future as most of the times even when its your idea of a particular business or marketing tactics to be used for product, there are investors who make major decisions of the company and that really bites your nerves. You have to do as per their wish only because they are the investors! Now that may or may not get consumed by many individuals, though you can always proceed towards achieving your goals tactfully even when they are against your decisions.

I had been attending so many conferences and workshops about entrepreneurship, take over, joint ventures and many more, the end point that they discussed was are investors really be allowed to take company decisions when they really don’t know anything of the process they have invested in, let some things be left to the individuals who are actually experts in it. The idea here is not to get bullied by your own people may it be your investors, your colleagues, your partners. If you are wrong, they can surely pin point anything. My advice to you is, use your ideas in a more receptive manner and make them understand if they don’t agree with you. Sometimes even the majority decision taken in a company fails due to improper project report or lack of judgment matter or due to peer pressure – juniors follow their seniors blindly without thinking logically.

An idea comes to a person only when he can think rationally, logically and practically. Although it fails sometimes but not always as, “Failures are stepping stone to success”, no one gets success without facing the failure and as time moves on you tend to learn by your own mistakes, you made as a young entrepreneur. Experience is all it wants, make proper study reports, presentations, market research, individual customer data and company financial data of a company – after analyzing all of these you can proceed ahead to fetch in investors and this will make sure that no investors ever bullies or surround you next time. Prepare yourself for all types of possible questions, give them the answers in a very quiet and dignified manner and you will never miss to win their hearts!

Today, with competition rising everywhere you cannot afford to make a single simple mistake as there are lots of others waiting in line to grab the contract, so the question here is, how do really present your business ideas in front of your investors that will satisfy them in investing in your project? Being a good influential personality is one of the characteristics that you need to possess if you really want to achieve something on in life. A person gets more interested in to doing business when he is impressed by your talks, and few words are all it requires to make your potential buyers in to actual buyers.

You need to create a filter of the words that are spoken out from your mouth that will highly be dependent upon persuading your client’s needs. You never know when someone might get interested in your talks and invest in your business. The end point is people should be caring for you and your business by making yourself more appealing and persuasive. Remember, when you are surrounded by the business biggies they are going to surround you with numerous questions so prepare yourself well to answer all of their queries with utter confidence and diligence.

Make a point to tell them why you are actually here and for what purpose you are doing a particular project and why you need their support. After you do explain them everything that you want to, there may be still some portion of people raising, “so what” type of questions, explain them interestingly and make them understand its importance and how it will profit them. Now, the last step is, “What Next?” -  explain them the outcome if they are joining you and if they have any queries still, with the process.

You can portray varied concepts and ideas for your business with the help of the company website or through live chat programs. Use extra marketing efforts to get their attention in your business and ask them interactive questions in your blogs which would get you good number of replies and you would understand what they are looking for and may take measures to improve upon. Talk everything relating to business sense and portray yourself like a real professional (although you are already a professional, the point here is to impress them). If need be you can personally talk to them in conferences and get interactive even when you are strangers, you never know which conversation might just strike in a good going for healthy business relationship in the future.

Hearing about all this, I quickly recollected a book that I read just few months back, it was written by one named Robin Sharma, “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari”, the author portrays his life as a fully successful lawyer, owning all the luxuries in life starting from Armani suits to Ferrari and one day suddenly he collapses in court due to a heart attack and then onwards he left his courtroom forever and went out on his search to find the disciplined way of living, he reached Himalayas where he found the method of enlightened living and his yogi (teacher – guru) teaches him ways to live a simplistic life learning all the virtues of life.

Frankly speaking, we feel living a simple life is easy but to the extent I can see people living in this fast paced world of computers I think suddenly moving from a fast paced life to simplistic life of monks is not easy, unless you have really made up your mind to chuck off all the worldly pleasures, it has to offer. Once when you decide in your mind and heart to find deeper meaning to the life, it wouldn’t be difficult for you to leave the life you have been living.

There are so many books and discourses being held to let and teach you the enlightened way of living, but these efforts goes in vain, once you are out of the book. Its only when you decide it on yourself, then shall you find your own ways to enjoy the simple pleasures of life. The true pleasures of life are not in owning a villa or a Ferrari or an Armani suits, its in simple living and high thinking, have you ever heard of a modern man living in a cave enjoying all the natural pleasures of life. His name is Daniel Suelo, he left his job in the year 2000 and decided to stop earning and living in a cave, he says when he had money, he always lacked in something and now he doesn’t have to earn money nor using it so he doesn’t find anything lacking in life. He is currently living in a cave in a deserted area that is just one hour by foot from the desert town of Moab, Utah.

Such type of living needs a true passion, I myself, tried a couple of times staying isolated but how much far we can stay like this, I got rid of everything I had been using to live a modern fast paced life, I obviously dint go and lived in the caves, I lived at hotels across Europe, lived a total isolated life away from public glare. Believe me, it was an amazing experience of my life – living and doing nothing is so simple and sophisticated except for minimal work you have to do staying alive but what comes next? Are we going to earn something out of it? This type of living is only suitable for the individuals who want to live a simple life and enjoy the natural stuff life has given us, remember, how in olden days people lived for 100 years living in caves and eating all natural stuff and going to work even at the age of 90. This feeling comes out of frustration, one goes through in our fast paced life – especially with the entrepreneurs who face so much of business risks day in and day out.

Actually speaking of simple life has no impact, you are just living it for the heck of it, when you are surrounded by individuals and live in a social world. You are here in this world for some purpose, to change the world and make it a better place to live in, wake up from your dream world and get going nothing is going to come at your doorsteps ready made, you got to earn it! You can live with uttermost simplicity with minimal expenses by staying in a city, if you really want to and don’t forget to spread the word for happiness.