The goal of entrepreneurship is usually to sell your products or services. Reaching that goal involves a lot of communication with customers, both external – our buyers, and internal or inner – our employees. It is important to know how to handle these relationships so that all parties involved are satisfied.

Sometimes it happens that an entrepreneur is only focused on buyers and forgets that his / her inner customers need attention too. Employees are human beings with needs and emotions, just like you and me. As far as Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy goes, people should always „act so as to treat people as ends in themselves, never as mere means.” (Brown, C. 2012). Everyone should keep this in mind, especially the head of a company, as for the boss, it is easy to end up hurting the whole firm. The boss might be inexperienced or under pressure, but for whatever the reason, staff should not be the target for blowing out steam. The key here is to talk to the employees and more than that, first of all listen to them. Kevin Daum has brought out “10 Things Really Amazing Bosses Do” to accomplish a supporting, motivating and trusting working environment which is a prerequisite for good sales results. The employees can find different ways of approaching their leader in this article by Susan M. Heathfield.

Conflicts can also happen between employees in which case the leadership of the company should give their best in trying to resolve them. Otherwise they can affect everyone in the company. It is naive to expect that the problem just fades away. This way it persists and starts influencing the participants and their surroundings more and more until all hell breaks loose. Susan Heathfield talks about resolving a conflict between employees in this article.

Not only is it easier to communicate with someone who is peaceful and happy rather than disturbed and stressed, but also when the employees work in a friendly environment it is easy to complete tasks effectively, the performance becomes much more efficient and external customers become more satisfied, which most likely also leads to increased sales.

by Joosep K. Kuljus and Mari Kuljus

Sources

Brown, C. 2012. Kant’s Ethics: Some Key Ideas. Trinity University website. URL https://www.trinity.edu/cbrown/intro/kant_ethics.html

Daum, K.10 Things Really Amazing Bosses Do. URL http://www.inc.com/kevin-daum/10-things-really-amazing-bosses-do.html

Heathfield, S. Bad to the Bone: Dealing With a Bad Boss. URL http://humanresources.about.com/od/badmanagerboss/a/bad_boss.htm

Heathfield, S. Workplace Conflict Resolution. URL http://humanresources.about.com/od/managementtips/a/conflict_solue.htm