Overview:
Mark Cuban believes that many important communication skills can be learned through working in sales for a period of time during your career.
He believes it’s important to be nice in your business dealings, but to stay driven to stay ahead of the competition.
So What?
Cuban knows that communication is vital for any kind of leadership success, and he has learned to communicate in effective ways as he works toward his goals.
Most people know Mark Cuban as the Shark Tank judge and outspoken owner of an NBA team. But this successful entrepreneur has reached billionaire status through a lot of hard work, encompassing successful communication and leadership strategies. Here is what he has to say about success and the ability to communicate.
Try Working in Sales
Cuban makes the point often that sales skills develop effective communication skills. He says that everyone should work in sales at some point in their lives to develop their ability to communicate well. Here are some of the skills Cuban feels a sales background teaches people:
- Explaining the benefits of an idea, service or product
- Convincing others to agree with your point of view
- Negotiating, which means listening to others, evaluating situations, and reaching agreement
- Asking for what you want and closing the deal
- Self-discipline to meet goals and consistently maintain performance levels
- Handling rejection without letting it destroy you
Many of these skills are needed in leadership and entrepreneurial roles, where you often have to “sell” your plans and ideas to investors, associates, and customers.
See Persistence and Self-Confidence as Essential
Cuban has been an owner of many companies over his career as an entrepreneur. And, of course, they have had varying degrees of success. To Cuban, having enough self-confidence to persist in the less successful times and deal with the inevitable ups and downs makes all the difference to a lifelong entrepreneur.
When Cuban was asked what he would do if he suddenly lost his fortune and all his companies, he said he would get a bartending job at night and a sales job during the day. He also said he had no doubt he could become a multimillionaire again because his previous experience would make new opportunities clear, and he already had the skills in place to take advantage of them.
Be Nice
Cuban said he had to learn this one the hard way. “I went through my own metamorphosis, if you will,” he told Vanity Fair in 2018. “Early on in my career, I was like bam, bam, bam, bam, bam — I might curse. I might get mad. And then I just got to the point — I wouldn’t have wanted to do business with me when I was in my 20s.”
“And so I had to change, and I did, and it really paid off,” he said. Now, he advocates treating other people the same way you would want to be treated, and just not being a “jerk” in your business dealings.
“People hate dealing with people who are jerks,” Cuban wrote in another article. “It’s always easier to be nice than to be a jerk. Don’t be a jerk.”
Stay Driven
Cuban knows that the daily grind can descend on even the most motivated leaders. And it’s easy to lose the drive that helped them get to their current position. His advice is to “work like there is someone working 24 hours a day to take it away from you.”
Taking the attitude that you might not always have what you have right now will prevent you from taking it for granted, which never turns out well. Not only could you lose something by taking it for granted, but having that kind of attitude could also impact your communication with colleagues and their motivation to work toward the goals you have identified.
According to Cuban, it may not be true that someone is working 24 hours a day to take away what you have gained or accomplished. But there are many forces like competition, changing markets, and inflation that are always working to destroy what has been built unless you are working even harder to maintain or build it.
Think Correctly About Meetings
Just leading one company can mean having a lot of meetings, and Cuban owns or invests heavily in multiple companies at the same time. Cuban advocates doing as much business as possible through email, or even better, through his new venture, Cyber Dust, which works similarly to Snapchat and “disappears” messages after 24 hours.
Meetings typically take longer than they should, have a lot of redundant information, and require everyone to interrupt the flow of their day for a non-productive task. Email messages can be sent whenever the leader has time and read whenever the recipients have time. They are far more efficient than meetings and leave a paper trail for what was discussed, which can be useful later on.
Whatever you decide to use, you will safeguard your time and communicate better through email or other messaging than you will by having more meetings. When you do need to have meetings, you should set a definite agenda and time frame, and then stick to it as closely as possible.
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