Welcome to the start of a brand new series of career talks! Over the next few weeks, we’ll discuss high-performance skills in the workplace and offer tips for developing yours.
Skills in the workplaceor human skills, to describe the way you do it your tasks, (as opposed to technical skills or hard skills, which relate to your ability to do tasks). These are usually the skills that make you a person that other people want to work with – your creativity, your reliability or your strategic thinking, for example – and these are the skills that will take your business to the next level.
Strong workplace skills can be the difference between a technically sound report and an innovative and engaging presentation; or the difference between a useful project plan and a resourceful action plan.
Some workplace skills will come naturally to you, while others will take more effort to master. In fact, you probably already know your strengths and weaknesses. Think about what kind of worker you are and the type of work that is easiest for you to do. You may be strategic and collaborative, but have trouble managing your time.
Fortunately, like technical skills, you can learn skills in the workplace. Which begs the question:
What workplace skills do you need to learn?
Of course, one starting point is to focus on strengthening your weaknesses. Another is to consider the skills employers are looking for in their employees.
According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2023, these 10 skills are on the rise:
You will notice that most of these in-demand skills are workplace skills. As technology and artificial intelligence (AI) change the way people use technical skills, workplace skills are becoming increasingly valuable to employers. It is no longer enough to know how to do something; it’s important to do that too creatively, curiouslyor empathetic.
Consider, for example, the number one skill on the list: analytical thinking. Logical reasoning and decision-making are tasks that are less likely to be taken over by artificial intelligence because they require strategy, deliberation and holistic thinking. Third on the list is resilience, flexibility, and agility—another skill that humans can better utilize because AI can’t quite adapt to changing conditions as gracefully as we can (at least not yet).
Throughout this series, we’ll take a closer look at a few of these highly impactful workplace skills, thinking about how they might play out in the workplace and how you can fine-tune your skills in your everyday life.
A look at what’s to come
Learn more about the top skills of 2023 or start researching the three most in-demand skills today:
- Analytical thinking: Research and Data Production for Business Decision Making from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Creative thinking: Creative Thinking: Techniques and Tools for Success from Imperial College London (this is free!)
- Resistance, flexibility and agility: Positive Psychology: Resilience Skills from the University of Pennsylvania
What workplace skills do you most want to improve? Let us know in the comments and we’ll be sure to feature them in this series. Next week we’ll start at the top of the list with analytical thinking. I’ll see you then!