Ask anyone what the crucial skills are to compete in the future world of work, and they’re likely to rattle off a list of competencies such as coding, robotics, digital marketing, programming and so on. This overt focus on technical or digital competencies stems from the belief that machines and robots will automate jobs and remove the need for human labour and skills in the 4th Industrial Revolution, making millions of jobs redundant.
Granted, there is some truth in the fact that many jobs will be automated and driven by computers and artificial intelligence – but this has been a reality for decades in the drive for progress! For every pessimist who believes tech and disruption will make more jobs redundant, history has proven that technological advances create more jobs, in different industry sectors. The question that everyone should rather be asking of themselves, of their leaders and workforce is not what technical competencies are needed, but rather:
“Will I rise to the challenge of learning what is required to stay relevant in the future world of work? Do I possess the crucial human traits and behaviours to be a lifelong learner, to embrace change to continually learn new, in-demand skills to empower myself to transition and face the future of work successfully?”
For any employer, employee, student, leader or entrepreneur looking to get handle on what the skills of the future will be, the list is onerous. To cut through the clutter, the Future Fit Academy has defined 15 ‘behavioural’ future fit skills as critical to being relevant and competent, if not advanced, in the future of work. The emphasis on the ‘Future Fit’ skills is equally as important to individuals as it is to employers and businesses. To meet the skills challenge and ensure that businesses are sustainable and competitive demands that organisations developing their human capital ‘muscle’ to strengthen companies for future disruptions. Companies need a talent strategy that develops employees’ critical, future fit skills. For individuals, the need to upskill and reskill has never been more pressing.
In harnessing and developing these 15 skills, the Future Fit Academy’s Future Fit Index provides a comprehensive self-assessment tool that assesses your level of effectiveness in these 15 critical skills needed to be effective now, and in the future world of work.
The 15 Future Fit Skills are grouped into three key areas as follows:
New Ways of Thinking
Leaders need to change mindsets and adopt new ways of thinking. |
Seize Opportunities & Solve Problems
Leaders need to be equipped with the skills and mindsets to identify and seize opportunities and solve problems. |
Connect & Engage with Others
Leaders need to connect and engage with others to leverage differences and co-create value.
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Curiosity – the desire to know more, a willingness to seek out and embrace the unknown.
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Sensemaking – refers to how we structure the unknown so as to be able to act.
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Connectedness – The ability to relate to others in a manner that builds them up, encourages, and brings out their highest potential.
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Growth mindset – The mindset that talents can be developed through hard work, good strategies, and input from others. | Creating Clarity (Visioning and Mobilising) – defining shared values and engaging people in positive action. | Virtual Collaboration – Collaboration between dispersed team members that is carried out via technology-mediated communication. |
Learning Agility – the ability and willingness to learn from experience and use those lessons to perform effectively in new and different situations.
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Design Thinking Mindset – an ideology and a process concerned with solving complex problems in a highly user-centric way. | Leading without Authority – Getting others to willingly cooperate and engage, rather than following directives because of your positional authority.
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Dealing with Paradox – the ability to deal with contradictory perspectives, the ability to think “both/and” instead of “either/or”. | Resourcefulness – ability and creativity to cope with difficulties, the ability to deal resourcefully with difficult problems.
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Cultural Adaptability – An individual’s willingness and ability to adapt their manner of communicating, motivating, and managing across cultures. |
Tolerance of Ambiguity – the ability to comfortable with uncertainty, unpredictability, conflicting directions and multiple demands. | Adaptability – having ready access to different ways of thinking, enabling leaders to shift and experiment as things change. | Change Resiliency – Being able to adapt well and bounce back quickly in times of stress and constant change. |
Unpacking ‘New Ways of Thinking’
Without realizing it, most people tend to limit their potential by only focusing on the technical or vocational skills required for a given job or challenge, and don’t address their prevailing mindsets that can shape their entire life journey. Being able to embrace ‘new ways of thinking’ is underpinned by five of the future fit skills – curiosity, growth mindset, learning agility, dealing with paradox and tolerance of ambiguity. Here’s how they all work together…
In times of change having a growth mindset is foundational in developing your perspectives, skills and capacity to deal with the consequences of change. And an essential ingredient of a growth mindset is curiosity. When your curiosity is developed, you think more deeply and rationally about your skills – or even lack thereof – and are less defensive. At its core, curiosity leads you to want to improve, which supports a growth mindset.
It follows on that having a growth mindset is essential to developing learning agility. To be able to learn, unlearn and relearn, you must believe you can do so with planning, hard work and practice. People with a growth mindset believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work, and that intelligence and talent are just the starting point, rather than fixed variables that you either have, or don’t. This mindset creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.
This leads into dealing with paradox – an essential future fit skill in a ‘BANI’ World (Brittle – Anxious – Non-Linear – Incomprehensible). In a BANI world it is crucial that you’re able to think “both and” and not simply “either or”. You must be able to straddle seemingly contradictory or opposed perspectives, as it is in this ‘straddle’ that innovation happens!
And not only must you deal with the many paradoxes that define so many facets of our lives, but to be successful you need to have an ability to tolerate ambiguity. “Tolerance of Ambiguity” refers to the extent to which you are naturally comfortable with ambiguous or uncertain situations and have an ability to operate effectively in an uncertain environment by considering a range of creative solutions or options. Embracing ambiguity allows you to seize opportunities, take calculated risks to tackle previously unchartered territories and back yourself even when you don’t have all the answers. The reality is that in many situations, complete information is not always readily available – ask any entrepreneur or corporate business leader! An obsession with having all the answers up front before making decisions can stymie any forward movement or progress – the increasing rate of change makes the behavioural outputs of tolerance of ambiguity even more critical in business contexts.
In the next edition, we’ll unpack the second group of future fit skills that underpin the ability to ‘Seize Opportunities & Solve Problems’
Why are these 15 future fit skills so important?
The Future Fit Index takes into account all aspects of good leadership and management and how it works in practice. It recognises the need for rounded development across technical knowledge, capability and personal awareness. The reality is that many technical competencies you learned at university, on the job or at trade college are likely to become outdated and redundant in a world facing exponential change. Your ability to embrace change, learn new skills on a lifelong basis, and cope with the stresses of uncertainty are underpinned by your ability to harness and leverage the 15 future fit skills.
In mastering the 15 Future Fit skills, the detailed Future Fit Index provides respondents with an awareness of their level of readiness across these skills, as well as a developmental pathway for each of the 15 skills assessed. By understanding your level of readiness on each of these 15 future fit skills, the Future Fit Academy is then able to formulate a learning strategy to guide behaviour change and master these skills, knowledge and behaviours required to remain relevant and effective in an ever-changing world.