Internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a strategic business & technology advisor Bernard Marr shared his Top 10 Most In-Demand Skills list with Forbes earlier this year.
The tips have been derived from his best selling book, Future Skills: The 20 Skills and Competencies Everyone Needs to Succeed in a Digital World, and gives working professionals, including prospective MBA students, an insight into which skills are predicted to remain in demand for the next decade.
Bernard Marr’s Top 10 Most In-Demand Skills For The Next 10 Years
-
Digital Literacy
Digital literacy encompasses the skills to learn, work and navigate everyday life in our digital world. These skills involve the ability to use devices, software, and apps safely and with confidence. People with strong digital literacy skills can communicate and collaborate easily using digital tools, and they keep on top of new technologies and understand how they might impact their job and their business.
2. Data Literacy
For most companies, data is now one of their most important and valuable business assets, which means organisations will want to employ people that are able to take data and use it effectively. In the average business context, data literacy means being able to access appropriate data and work with it confidently. To cultivate data literacy, working on extracting meaning from data and communicating data-based insights to others. With data literacy, you’ll also be able to question the integrity and validity of any data you are working with rather than just blindly following the information you are given.
3. Critical Thinking
In this era of fake news, social media bubbles, and information overload, critical thinking is at the top of the list of the most vital skills to cultivate for success. Thinking critically means analysing issues and situations based on evidence rather than hearsay, personal opinions, or biases. When you are practicing critical thinking, you can question the validity of evidence and figure out what’s true and what’s not in a variety of situations.
4. Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the ability to express and control our emotions. An emotionally intelligent person is aware of how their emotions influence their own behaviours and impact others around them and can manage those emotions accordingly. I believe empathy – the ability to see the world from someone else’s perspective – is a key component of emotional intelligence.
5. Creativity
Have you ever wondered what creativity really is? One way to define it is “the act of turning imaginative ideas into reality.” Creativity will be one of the most desirable skills in the future workplace, especially as we hand more and more routine tasks over to machines. Creative thinking, like coming up with new ideas, problem-solving, imagining beyond the status quo, and implementing ideas to fix issues and make things better, will be critical in the workplace of the future.
6. Collaboration
The nature of collaboration and teamwork is changing as teams evolve to include hybrid workers, fully remote workers, contractors, and other employees who flow between projects and teams. In this changing workplace, you will need to be able to effectively collaborate and communicate with a variety of colleagues and coworkers.
7. Flexibility
Are you open to change? In the workplace of the future, change is going to be even more of a driving factor than it is today. We’ll have to continually contend with new technologies, rising automation, the rapidly evolving pace of work, and vast business disruptions. We must all develop the mental resilience to thrive in times of constant change. Adaptability – the ability to adjust to new conditions – is key to developing flexibility. Adaptable people are open-minded, curious, and willing to learn new things because they focus on opportunities, not obstacles.
8. Leadership Skills
Good leadership is about bringing the best out of other people and making sure they can thrive. And if you think leadership skills are only necessary for those at the top of the ladder, think again. Factors like distributed teams, increasing diversity, the gig economy, and more fluid organisational structures mean that leadership skills will be important for every individual throughout the company – whether they are leading a project, a team, or an entire department.
9. Time Management
Whether you work from home, work full-time in an office, run your own business, or work for an organisation, the ability to manage your time effectively is essential for your workplace performance. Remember that time management is about working smarter rather than harder. Putting in extra hours isn’t necessary for people who are great at managing their time. They know when they are most productive and use this time wisely, reserving their less productive hours for other tasks.
Cultivating effective time management skills is also important for your mental health. When you can manage your time effectively, you create a better work/life balance to ensure you have room in your life for the things that are most important to you.
10. Curiosity and Continuous Learning
If I were to pick just one skill that I think everyone must cultivate, it would be curiosity. Whatever your age or industry, adopting a mindset of continuous learning is critical to thriving in tomorrow’s workplace. Curiosity and continual learning will help you stay flexible and embrace change, as well as help you keep your skills sharp so you can keep up with the major changes taking place today. Want to stay relevant to employers and give yourself the best chance at building a successful, fulfilling life? Adopt a growth mindset and spark your desire to learn.
