A team of researchers released a very well-conceived study about what transferable skills will be in high demand in the near future; the study is called Future Work Skills 2020 and was published by Institute for the Future. To identify the skills, they derived six drivers of change (in their words): extreme longevity; rise of smart machines and systems; computational world; new media ecology; super structured organizations; and globally connected world. I am not going to discuss these drivers, but they provide a detailed discussion about them in their study.
I decided to label the skills in their study, “Emerging Transferable Skills”; the skills and their definitions are in the table below (in their words only).
|
Emerging Soft Skills |
|
| Sense-Making | ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed |
| Social Intelligence | ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions |
| Novel & Adaptive Thinking | proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule-based |
| Cross-Cultural Competency | ability to operate in different cultural settings |
| Computational Thinking | ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning |
| New-Media Literacy | ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communication |
| Transdisciplinarity | literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines |
| Design Mindset | ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes |
| Cognitive Load Management | ability to discriminate and filter information for importance, and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques |
| Virtual Collaboration | ability to work productively, drive engagement, and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team |
This team of researchers used a compelling way to develop their forecast, so I suggest reading their study if you want to learn more. In summation, I might add that we are starting to experience some of the driving forces mentioned in the study, including: movement to cloud computing; shift to mobile devices; social media; and big data. They suggest these skills will be in high demand by 2020, so we should begin tooling our workforce with skills they will need for this upcoming demand; our educational institutions should prepare their curriculum to teach these “emerging transferable skills” (and this is discussed in the study under implications).
In my next blog, I will discuss why we should consider “traditional” and “emerging” transferable skills as we apply a skills based approach. The discussion will be centered on properly identifying and assigning skills, so they can be effectively used in planning, building, and presenting your skill set.
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Reblogged this on Always Be Job Hunting and commented:
An interesting piece, what are your soft skills?