The Skills Nobody Teaches You When You Start a Business

The people skills nobody teaches you when you start a business. Leadership, influence and breaking barriers. Free taster session Running a small independent business means being good at the thing you do. It does not automatically mean knowing how to lead a team, navigate a difficult conversation or understand why some people seem impossible to influence however good your argument is. These are the skills that rarely come with the job and yet they shape almost everything about whether the business grows, stays flat or quietly exhausts you. Lainy Russell of Flourish Ltd has spent her career helping leaders, managers and business owners in some of the most demanding environments in the country understand the human dynamics that sit behind every professional relationship. Her approach draws on the latest science and research into how our brains and minds actually work, and then, crucially, translates that into practical tools you can use the next day. In this 20-minute taster session across three sections, Lainy will introduce: Leadership and Management — what it actually means to lead in a small business, where the common pitfalls are and how to get the best from the people around you, whether that is one member of staff or a small team. How to Influence People and Have Difficult Conversations — the conversations we avoid and the influence we fail to have are usually where businesses stall. Lainy will show you what happens in communication transactions, why some people seem impossible to reach and what you can do about it. This is not sales training. It is something more useful: understanding how to speak the language of the person you are trying to persuade. Breaking Barriers to Success — time pressure, overwhelm, unhelpful relationships, fear of conflict and sometimes fear of success itself. Lainy will introduce the hidden barriers that quietly hold small businesses back and the first practical steps to addressing them. This session is for any business owner, sole trader or manager who has ever found the people side of business harder than the business itself. No prior experience of coaching or management training required. Just show up with the questions you have not known who to ask.