SKILLS FOR THE FUTURE OF WORK. What Skills Do You Need to Focus On?

How many times have you heard how important it is for leaders to demonstrate self-awareness, emotional intelligence, inclusion, mindfulness, empathy, social intelligence, and learning agility? Don’t forget the importance of advanced technical skills, continuing education, being a part of  industry associations, and cultivating your professional brand and network. This doesn’t include the reality of boots on ground work, deadlines, managing up, being a master of time management and efficiency and the growth and development of your teams.

Just writing this makes me feel exhausted. How about you? 

I recently had the opportunity to host a leadership development training and the topic was “Self Leadership.”

Why?

Leaders are burning out. The requirements of leadership today encompass not only what we deem as traditional HR practices, but they also need to understand the human element. Michael Hyatt is quoted as saying “self leadership will always precede team leadership.” If we want to support our leaders and hence all of our people, its important that we all have the opportunity to lead ourselves.

In addition, McKinsey and Company undertook a survey of 18,000 people in 15 countries to look at what skills were needed for the future of work and the results may surprise you. With the advancement of technology, emerging industries and the changes brought on by the pandemic, it turns out skill sets such as technological, social, emotional, and higher cognitive skills will continue to increase in demand. 

Here’s part of the challenge; this is not taught in typical educational institutions and is often overlooked in favour of more technical skills in the workplace. Now, to be clear, I’m not saying that technical skills aren’t important, but what I am saying is that your continued growth in your technical subject matter expertise will only take you so far in life. It turns out that skills in self control, grit, coping with uncertainty and self development plays a much bigger role than we may have previously thought.

So, where to begin?

When looking at leadership development goals, it’s important to also choose a self leadership goal that you would like to focus on cultivating. This will begin the self reflection process and allow you to gain traction in an area that will bring you closer to to how you define success. It could be resiliency, self confidence, or clarity on your future direction to name a few. Then take a stand for yourself and learn the skills needed to honour your leadership of self. One step at a time.

The added bonus?

By taking a proactive approach to self-improvement, you empower others to do the same and this proactive attitude helps foster a culture of accountability, responsibility and problem-solving within teams. What do you want to cultivate?