6 Psychological Approaches That Can Actually Help You Run Your Business
Don’t you just love it that it all goes down to psychology after all, even in entrepreneurship?
Do you know what’s interesting? A huge part of the fellow entrepreneurs I know express interest in psychology. Coincidence? I don’t think so!
Of course, I doubt psychology will ever stop intriguing people’s minds. It gives us so much information and so many curious details both about ourselves and the people surrounding us. I can definitely see why so many of us actively focus our attention on the field — it’s an incredibly enticing exploratory journey.
Besides, in the last several years more and more people began to pay attention to all things mental health — luckily this tendency has additionally increased everyone’s interest in psychology.
But what exactly has entrepreneurship to do with the subject? Ask anyone in the field of business and you’ll most likely agree that they are all expressing interest in human behavior and character.
Running a successful business is much more closely related to psychology than you might think
We know that psychology is a scientific discipline whose goal is to work on matters connected with the human mind and character.
This scientific field gives us the opportunity to look beyond what’s obvious and to determine what lies beneath. Thanks to psychology, we can have a better understanding of a person’s behavior, way of thinking, beliefs, attitudes, and approaches toward life or other individuals, etc. When you come to think about it, psychology is what is giving us the fundament for proper, healthy, and understanding communication with others that can easily transfer into proper, healthy, and understanding relationships.
With all this being said, it’s only natural for us to assume that psychology in business can be as important as using psychology in pretty much every other sphere of life. Running a business has to do with a lot of communication, networking, and relationship-building — be it with employees, colleagues, investors, competitors, or clients. It’s essential for any business owner to be aware of some fundamental psychological principles in human behavior and interactions in order to be able to build and maintain meaningful relationships.
Business Psychology as a discipline or a job title hits an all-time high in terms of popularity nowadays.
In a nutshell, it combines:
the science of human psychology with practical business application in order to improve the work environment for employees, improve productivity in businesses, and organize groups of people in companies.
As we can see, psychology as a scientific discipline has actually a lot to do with the way a business runs in terms of communication and behavior for employees and customers. It would be incredibly naive for us to think that a company in this day and age can operate successfully without investing time and energy in its people’s mental health, self-awareness, communicative skills, proper task distribution, adequate duties assignments, etc.
All this perfectly answers the question of why so many entrepreneurs actually keep a keen interest in psychology. Simply put, they have understood the importance between proper communication and people skills and successful business development.
Let’s focus on 6 psychological approaches that can actually help you run your business
Let’s say you are an aspiring entrepreneur. You’ve already managed to cover some of the initial steps in establishing a company — you’ve come up with a great business idea, followed by a smart business plan. You’ve managed to find the best team members. You even have clients’ requests on a variety of business projects. Things couldn’t be better!
Yet you begin to notice a slight setback when it comes to having proper communication, both with employees and customers.
Before you go straight into panic mode, I’d suggest you take a look at some of the following psychological approaches that have proven to deliver great results in business:
- Help people feel that they actually belong to the company
Whenever someone feels excluded from a group, they tend to lose interest, motivation, and proactivity in the said group’s activities. A sense of belonging is something that must turn into a top priority for you as an entrepreneur. Helping both employees and customers feel part of the business can actually boost their willingness to participate in its endeavors — for employees that would be giving their best in terms of tasks and duties execution, while the customers would offer loyalty and trust for a stable long-term relationship.
There are many ways for you to achieve this sense of belonging: share the business’s goals and visions, be open about the company’s future, engage your people in mutual activities, ask for their opinion, be honest about issues and obstacles, etc. Transparency is your friend.
- Always show up
In basic human interaction, showing up always adds a sense of trust, loyalty, and support. Much like showing up actually strengthens your personal relationships, it can basically do the same for your professional ones.
As an entrepreneur, a leader, a manager, or a CEO make sure to always be present whenever someone needs you. Be there for your employees for guidance, support, and feedback. Be also there for your customers for information, advice, and expertise.
- Improve your listening skills
You know how frustrating it can be when someone is not listening to what you are saying, right? This lack of attention and focus can easily be understood as not caring — as we all well know, this is one of the top reasons why relationships fail.
It’s the same with business relationships — if you are not actively paying attention to other people’s words, you might create the idea of someone completely uninterested. This could potentially ruin your professional relationships with both employees and customers — no one likes being taken for granted. Listen carefully, ask appropriate questions, show interest, and express empathy — these are all great people skills that can certainly elevate and further develop your relationships in business.
- Get to know your employees
Just recently I wrote an article about the use of the 16 Personalities Test in team management. I believe it’s a handy tool that could provide you with plenty of information about your team’s individual characters. Think of it as establishing friendships — you certainly want to get to know your friends more and more right? It’s the same with team management — knowing your colleagues can help you a great deal with distributing tasks and overall professional communication.
You can access the article here.
- Show empathy
Being empathetic is considered one of the most important people skills. It simply allows a person to cognitively and emotionally understand and connect with other people’s emotions.
In companies, showing empathy is often put behind since business is usually meant to be separated from emotions. But the truth is that your daily communication with employees and clients cannot be entirely cut from emotions — this way you risk it seeming very uninterested. If an employee or a customer approaches you with a problem, you should, by all means, show concern and willingness to help them out. This, essentially, strengthens the bond and elevates the trust between both parties.
- At all costs avoid and prevent toxic relationships
Toxic relationships have always been a huge topic in psychology since a lot of people unintentionally (and often times without realizing it) participate in one. But being in a toxic relationship can be quite challenging, not to mention dangerous for your mental health. We often witness excessive controlling, gaslighting, manipulation, unfair treatment, etc.
It’s safe to assume that, sadly, there are toxic professional relationships as well. In fact, they are one of the very first reasons that cause employees burnout. So your job as a leader would be to always try your best to avoid and prevent toxic relationships in the office at all costs.
To wrap things up
Psychology in business is an extremely important asset for business owners, entrepreneurs, managers, and leaders. It can help them better understand both employees and customers, as well as to better distribute tasks, duties, and projects. I strongly believe anyone who has decided to enter the realms of entrepreneurship would try their best to wrap their mind around the world of psychology and human behavior.
Hi, guys, I’m Ivan, and I’m here to share with all of you my passion for words, great content, entrepreneurship, personal development, management, hobbies, and everything in between.
I serve as the CEO of my WordPress Development Agency @ Vipe Studio, where I have the pleasure to lead a diverse, wonderful and energetic team of experts. Feel free to contact me anytime — I would love to exchange new ideas and inspire each other!
