Pathway 4: Managerial Tool and Leadership Skills

You can be smart, gifted, creative, and even provide value to your customers, but without the managerial tools and leadership skills to manage your business and yourself, you are likely to experience short-lived success. Managerial tools encompass the financial, marketing, and business development models and strategies necessary for business operations.

The Creative Entrepreneur Mandala is a business development tool. So are the SWOT analysis and SMART objectives model, which are described later in this book. These tools require some practice and experience to use, but they can be learned and applied by anyone. Leadership skills include areas of personal and professional development such as excellent communication and presentation skills, salesmanship, savvy in working well with suppliers, employees, and customers, and a commitment to continuous improvement in these areas. These are skills that must be learned and practiced; they rarely come naturally to most people. In fact, making presentations is rated as more terrifying than death itself on a scale of most-feared scenarios.