Psychology encompasses all aspects of human behavior. For better management it is imperative to understand the human psychology. The core component of understanding human beings and their psychology is to listen. Listening skill is an essential for every successful entrepreneur. A behavior that is still prevalent among some entrepreneurs is that they impose their ideas on their team and colleagues. They have their own strategies, plans, ideas and ways of doing things. When we try to impose our ideas on others and expect others to execute them, things don’t get materialized because they don’t understand the thought behind our ideas. Understanding the philosophy is an essential ingredient for the success of the organization. An organization can be successful only if they have developed a clear philosophy. Without philosophy no organization can perform.
It is neither difficult to understand humans nor is it a complex process. Even a person who has not studied psychology or does not have this background can learn it. All they have to do is to develop their listening skills. Everyone, be it our employee, customer or an external agency, come to us with a specific purpose. If we do not understand the purpose of that meeting, we will not be able to understand the person. This situation can be avoided by just listening to them.
It is very simple when someone comes to meet us give them sufficient time to talk about themselves and their ideas. Many a times we feel that the person is talking about irrelevant things and it has no meaning. We don’t agree with their ideas or concepts and then we start arguing or stop them from talking further. We say, okay you are right but; we have our constraints and give reasons why it can’t be done. We are wrong here. We talk so much to prove our point right or their point wrong, that the other person goes quiet and sits down to listen to us.
Suppose that person came to us for a new venture then he will sit quietly and listen to our views. He would learn our ideas and concepts, take all the relevant points from it and implement them somewhere else for someone else’s benefit. They will not use these ideas for our business because they know that we do not listen to other people and don’t respect their views. Moreover we are so keen on proving our point and telling our thing that any smart person with little maneuvering can get anything out of us. By the time they leave, they would have gained lot from us and we would have lost a lot because we didn’t want to listen.
So it is important that an entrepreneur should talk less and listen more. The ratio in an entrepreneur’s discussion should be thirty percent talking and seventy percent listening. By giving a chance to the other person to talk we get to know what is there in his mind and understand him better. We would be able to understand his ideas, views, psychology, likes and dislikes. It’s not always about understanding the professional aspect, the personal aspect is equally important to understand a person. It becomes important because each individual has taste, likes and dislikes and his nature, temperament and different too. By style of working is understanding both aspects of the personality, we would be in a better position to understand if the person fits in our business model or not. The person’s personal needs, choices and desires will also help us understand him better.
Listening is the first step in understanding the psychology of a person. The moment we start a conversation with a person and give him sufficient time to talk about himself, his life and experiences, he would feel comfortable with us and would be encouraged to share more. When we let a person talk freely, he comes up with things that he generally would not like to not share. At this time, we should be careful enough to pick up the little cues and important points from his speech. This will tell us about the person and his style of working. Even If we are hiring an employee who does not have to interact with people and works in back end, understanding his nature and psychology will help us get a better performance out of him. Anyone getting associated with us, his ultimate objective is business. As an entrepreneur, it is important to keep in mind that our personal and professional lives are separate. Whatever we do or where ever we go, it is for the betterment of our organization.
Communication is a two way process, so while we strive to understand the other person it is also important for the other person to be able to understand us. If any of the two is missing, there will be communication gap. As an entrepreneur, it is also important for the other person to understand our ideas so that it can be implemented in its right spirit. So, the obvious point comes how to make the other person and ideas? understand our thoughts
After listening to the other person, we have to understand when, what and how to say. In general communication where the talking is only thirty percent it is important to use this time wisely, to be able to tell the other person exactly what we have in our mind without wasting their or our time.
Let’s say, if we have a conversation with someone which is of hundred sentences, then this is how the conversation usually goes. The other person pays full attention for the first ten sentences, by the time we are at the twenty fifth sentence, they lose interest and just sit and hear us which usually goes till the eightieth sentence. At the eightieth sentence, we have to interject the idea that we are closing the conversation and the remaining twenty sentences should be about summing up the important points of the whole conversation. It is important to understand this because people usually remember the opening and closing of the conversation. That is why in every meeting we should sum up the final points, which have been agreed upon for everyone to remember.
Hence, we should focus on conveying our ideas only in the initial or the last phase of the conversation. It is not that the middle part of the conversation is not important, it is also important. The middle part of the conversation is where all the discussion, interaction and dissection of the ideas happen, however it is by the end of the conversation that the final agreed upon points emerge. For example if we go to buy something, the first impression of the product is usually the last impression. In the same way, the first impression of the idea is usually the last impression. So, before we go for a meeting or hold an important conversation, it is helpful to structure the conversation in advance. It will help to decide in advance, how we would want the conversation or meeting to proceed for the other person to understand our point of view.
By understanding these two basic points of listening to the other person and putting across our point in a conversation, we will be able to make the other person understand our point and get the response that we desire from the interaction or conversation. Nota bene, ‘words have no meaning - people have meaning’. A quality that an entrepreneur must have is the ability to solve problems. No problem can stand the assault of sustained thinking. To understand and we need to first is a “problem”? Problem is a situation which we don’t want to occur in our business or in our life. Any circumstance or event where we are not comfortable or we are not able to accept becomes a problem for us. We encounter these kinds of situations in business as well as in our personal life. Any situation or sometimes, people we don’t like, we term them as problem.
Source of the problem
To solve a problem or to get out of it we need to understand why it occurred. Sometimes, a situation which seems to us like a problem is not actually the problem. The root cause of that particular situation or problem is somewhere else or something else. An entrepreneur experiences different types of problems while running a business, for example there can be shortage of funds or the employees are not performing or we are not able to find good employees or we are not able to make profit. In the larger picture there are problems in every step of business. It is very hard to imagine that we can escape or keep away from problems. The major challenge is in handling and confronting these problems. For example, if an employee is not working, usually that is not the actual problem, the root cause of that problem lies somewhere else. It could be his discontent or that he is de-motivated. It could also be that he has lackadaisical attitude in the venture, getting low salary or any personal problem which is affecting his work. So to address a problem or to handle it, we need to go to the root of that problem.
Problem or Opportunity?
Flip side of a problem is the opportunity that it presents to us. Though problems are disturbing even then an entrepreneur should take every problem as an opportunity. If there is a problem in the industry or the market because of which our business is getting affected and we are able to provide solution then we will be able to make profits even in tough times. We can sell the solution to others who are also affected by that problem. This way a problem becomes an opportunity because the entrepreneur can identify the root cause of the problem and work accordingly to solve it. Let us comprehend it by presuming that in a particular area there is problem of transportation because of which not only our business but other businesses and organizations are also getting affected. It is time consuming to transfer material from one place to other. If we analyze the situation and start a transport service and provide the service to others as well, we will solve the transport problem for ourselves and by rendering services to other businesses we will earn as well. So, the problem becomes an opportunity for us. The best quality of successful entrepreneurs is that they never take a situation as a problem but as an opportunity. They identify the root cause of the problem, find a solution to it and get benefits out of it.
Types of Problem
When a situation or a problem needs to be addressed, what should be the course of action of an entrepreneur? Firstly we need to understand the different types of problem. Problems are categorized mainly into three different types depending on the type of action required. They are:
1. Immediate Action Required
2. Delayed Action Required
3. No Action Required
1. Immediate Action Required
As the name suggests Immediate Action Problem means, a situation where the problem needs immediate attention and the priority is high. Sometimes these problems may not seem important but they are urgent. This kind mainly involves financial damage.
2. Delayed Action Required
This is a situation where the problem can be postponed. In my personal experience, I have seen that when we come across a situation and recognize it as a problem, we feel the need to address it urgently. However, in many cases if we don’t address the problem for some time, the problem wipes out by itself or subsides.
3. No Action Required
These are the kind of problems that do not require any action or attention. These problems do not require any immediate or delayed action either. These situations are ideally not problems but are confusions which get resolved all by them.
How to solve the Problem?
Whenever we identify a problem we get tensed and disturbed. We feel the need to find a solution to the problem right away and it should be eradicated immediately. When we try to do it we invest a lot of energy, waste resources and time to solve the problem.
Intentionally, we should delay the problem and don’t address it immediately, so that there is sufficient time to find a good and a permanent solution. By ignoring the problem for some time we get reasonable amount of time to reach the root cause and understand it deeply. We can use our resources, contacts and network in a better way to solve the problem. Moreover when we give more time to the problem we gain authority over the problem. Generally, if we encounter a problem and try to solve it immediately the problem takes control of us, but if we delay the problem gradually we take charge of it. So it is advisable to delay the decision on a problem if possible. Whenever we encounter any problem in business it should not be addressed urgently. Immediately addressed problems are wrong unless they are Immediate Action Problems and can cause financial or physical damage.
Psychology plays a vital role in solving a problem, because most of the problems in a business are created by humans. So the best method to deal with the problem created by human is to delay the problem, and when we do so the person who created the problem gets frustrated. So a successful method or tool to solve a problem is to delay it and give time to it. While doing business we will come across people or organisation who have a motive or intention to damage or cause harm to our business and when we counter such people we tend to react immediately, the best action that we should do is to delay or ignore that problem or person and when we do so it automatically modifies or goes out of our competition.
So we should remember, what is a problem, the different types of problems, how to handle problems and most importantly a successful entrepreneur finds opportunity in every problem.