The business environment has always been extremely dynamic and has become even more so in recent years, rapid development and transformation across sectors have resulted in the complete revamping of the way we work. Very soon, a large part of the workforce will be working in jobs that do not currently exist. So, what skills do they need to cultivate to remain relevant in the ever-changing job market? Here is a list of ten skills that you need, to not just survive but also thrive in the existing and future industrial scenario. These skills are:
Cognitive Flexibility:
Cognitive flexibility is the mental ability of a person to switch between thinking about two different concepts or thinking about multiple concepts at the same time. Hence, adaptability and awareness of the changes in the environment become two underlying skills needed to be cognitively flexible. Cognitive flexibility helps you to apply concepts from one context to solve problems in another unrelated context and see things from different points of view with a proper understanding of the situation.
Negotiation Skills:
Negotiation skills help you to discuss important issues with others and reach a beneficial outcome. They help you to close deals, resolve conflicts, build better relationships, and discuss important issues. To be a good negotiator you need to know your requirements, take a comprehensive view of the situation, understand what the other party wants from the deal, be very clear and specific about what you can offer in exchange for what you want from the deal, and pay attention to detail.
Service Orientation:
These skills demonstrate the awareness and willingness to anticipate the needs of the customers and try to meet them, sometimes even before they are articulated. Whether you are offering a product or a service to your customers, service orientation is a must-have skill in the highly competitive business environment to improve the customers’ service experience and retain them. With a large number of players entering any industry, service orientation becomes imperative to achieve customer loyalty.
Judgement and Decision-Making:
Judgement and decision-making skills mean, the ability of a person to understand a situation, analyze facts and come to a sensible solution within a particular time frame. Judgement and decision-making skills are a combination of gut feeling, intuition, knowledge of facts and experience. To make the right decision and judgement you need to be a good listener, be able to read the body language to understand what the other person actually means, read between the lines, and understand patterns and behaviour.
Emotional Intelligence:
Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to recognize, understand and manage your own emotions and the emotions of others in the organization and use the power of emotions productively. To be emotionally intelligent you need to be self-aware, that is, be conscious of your feelings and know their effect on yourself and others, self-regulating, that is, having control over the emotions to avoid taking impulsive decisions, motivating, that is, working consistently towards goals, empathetic, which is, understanding for others, and socially skilled, that is, being able to communicate effectively with others, connect well and build a productive network.
Coordinating with Others:
Coordinating with others refers to the ability to put together different complex activities, performed by different individuals, to achieve an outcome of a higher value which is more than the sum total of each activity individually. Organizational goals can be achieved only and only by combining the efforts of its members, hence, coordinating with others is an important skill that organizational members must possess.
People Management:
People management skills include leadership skills, communication skills, motivation skills and delegation skills. These skills are important for leaders to train, motivate and direct employees to improve organizational productivity, maintain a smooth flow of activities and boost employees’ performance.
Creativity:
Creativity is considered to be the most important skill needed by the 21st-century workforce, a skill that alone can help an organization or an individual to survive and grow in any kind of crisis. Creativity means the ability to think out of the box, that is, identifying opportunities in every problem and providing a range of possibilities to effectively solve the problem.
Critical Thinking:
Creativity and critical thinking skills go hand in hand. Critical thinking refers to the ability to think clearly, analyze business ideas and understand the logic and viability of every idea before its application. This skill set helps the leaders to know what they are aiming for and then arrive at the best possible solution, from the range of possibilities, in the given circumstances.
Complex Problem Solving:
With the increase in the complexity of the functioning of businesses, the problems faced by businesses are becoming more complex. Complex problem-solving skill helps leaders to solve, in a time-bound manner, ill-defined and poorly structured problems, which means those problems which do not have a set specific way of solving them.
The only way to succeed in the current business environment is to be adaptive and ready to learn, hence, one must work conspicuously to acquire and sharpen the above-mentioned skills.
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