5 Essential Skills for The Future

So you want to have a successful career, one that lets you make the most of your talents, abilities, gifts, and strengths… and gives you a sense of achievement. There are a few skills you will need to make it big in the workplace of the future.

No matter what your industry or occupation, you will find there is an increasing demand for people who are adept at the following 5 skills, which I believe are essential for success at work today and into the future.

1. Mastering Change: Change is all around us, and yet learning to master change is a skill few people are taught. The ability to analyze the changes happening around you and adapt quickly is vital in the new workplace. Understanding how you react and also how others react to situations can make the journey of change far less painful.

2. Thinking Self-Employed: Even if you have a permanent job with an organization, you need to think of yourself as self-employed. Managers are asking people to take ownership of their job and act as if it were their money they are making or spending. Becoming a person who thinks like an entrepreneur can open up a whole range of new possibilities and greatly improve your self-confidence. 

3. Managing Your Own Career: The new workplace demands that you design your own career path. It may be made up of a number of different experiences that eventually bring you to a unique position, or it could resemble a more traditional route. Either way, it will be your responsibility to make it happen. This means you need to carefully consider your options each time you take a step, while keeping your eye on new developments in the marketplace. 

4. Promoting Yourself: In the past, it was only sales representatives and marketing people who needed to know how to promote. Now it is a vital part of everyone's portfolio of skills to be able to make themselves known in a less structured, more competitive workplace. But there is more to self-promotion than a good résumé and the right clothes. You also need to learn how to network, communicate well, and recognize opportunities to help others, which in the long run will help you. 

5. Lifelong Learning: It has taken us a while, but we have finally realized that learning doesn't end when we leave school. Innovations in technology and the information superhighway make it essential for us to spend more time just keeping up to date. Learning is no longer restricted to the classroom. Every day, we learn from everything we do. The key is to recognize what you learn in these situations and how to apply it to other areas of your life. 

How would you rate yourself in each of these skill areas? If the answer is less than excellent, you have some work to do. So, where do you start? What order of priority should you place on these skills? 

While they are all important, I think you should tackle them in the order they are listed, and here’s why. To start with, mastering change will help you with all the other skills because they all require the ability to change. Next, the idea of thinking self-employed will impact your job searching strategies, which in turn affect how you manage your career, and so on. 

Being successful in the new style workplace is easy... when you have the right skills.