Whichever the field, if you want to survive in today’s era of globalization, you must have the following ten smart skills.
- Emotional Maturity: Being emotionally mature meansnot letting anyone cross your boundaries.If you’re constantly hanging out with someone demanding your time, for example, setting a boundary is showing you won’t compromise your self-respect. The ability to understand and manage not only owns feelings but also the feelings of others. Emotionally mature people are able to regulate their impulses, and they don’t allow a conflict to get the best of them. Even during an argument, they act with empathy; they take responsibility for themselves, and they recognize when other people have different points of view. They recognize that they will need to engage in learning and self-improvement throughout their lifetimes. It means being honest about your feelings and building trust with those around you because you don’t have an agenda. Emotionally mature people seek to fix the problem or behavior and accept accountability for their actions. They are open to new learning and believe that every situation has some learning to offer. An emotionally mature person has reached (and continues to work at reaching) a level of self-understanding with regard to their thoughts and behaviors.
- Validation: means the action of checking or proving the validity or accuracy of something. Most of the time it’s the ability to provide or ask for affirmation that feelings or opinions are worthwhile, working with people is a constant exercise in validation. Validation can calm fears and concerns, reduce or resolve conflicts, and encourage people to open up to others. Sometimes this kind of validation is good but not always. In a 2018 article, media personality Oprah Winfrey commented, “I’ve talked to nearly 30,000 people on this show, and all 30,000 had one thing in common: They all wanted validation.” She added that offering validation is the simple act of letting people know: “I see you. I hear you. And what you say matters.”
- Listening: the ability to focus completely on what other people are saying, understand their messages, and respond thoughtfully. All of us have been in situations where we felt unheard or misunderstood, so we should recognize that the people around us feel the same. I ask my students to listen more—to focus on the problems before they try to find the solutions. 3 levels of listening are important…
Level 1: Internal Listening, where we focus on ourselves, our experience, our opinions as they related to what’s being said.
Level 2: Focused Listening, where we listen to the other person. Our thoughts do not enter into the conversation, but curiosity can.
Level 3: Global Listening, where we listen to what isn’t being said; “body language, the inflections and tone of their voice, their pauses and hesitations.”
- Followership: Followership is the ability to accomplish goals under a leader’s direction. Successful followership involves following instructions, completing assigned tasks, supporting initiatives and being motivated. Good followers see the value in listening to others and helping achieve their vision. the capacity or willingness to follow a leader, a mission, or a cause. While business schools often promote good leadership, people follow more than they lead, so business programs also should emphasize good followership. Followers don’t blindly accept everything a leader says, but they actively participate in organizational goals, and they help leaders succeed. Even when an organization has a strong leader, if team members aren’t able to carry out the leader’s vision, the organization will fail.
- Managing up: “Managing up” in the workplace refers to the strategic and proactive approach employees take to effectively communicate and collaborate with their supervisors or higher-ups.The ability to develop a good relationship with a superior; the ability to solve problems for a variety of stakeholders. The first definition is the classic one, and the second is the more modern interpretation. One of the biggest challenges my students identify in their action learning projects is managing a wide array of stakeholders: their hosts, faculty advisors, faculty directors, business coaches, and each other. They often ask me, “Who is the person I should listen to? Who is my ‘boss’??” The truth is that managing up requires balancing the needs of multiple competing stakeholders, often simultaneously.
- Humility: Humility means “the state of being humble.” Both it and humble have their origin in the Latin word humbles, meaning “low.” Humble can be used to describe what is ranked low by others, as in “persons of humble origins.” People also use the word of themselves and things associated with themselves; if you describe yourself as “but a humble editor” or refer to your home as your “humble abode,” you are saying that neither you nor your home is very impressive. The ability to recognize your value and the value of others while realizing that we all are where we are because we are sitting on the shoulders of others. People with a sense of humility see that they can always learn more and achieve more—and they realize that others have the same ability to grow. The president of ASB, Charlie Fine, says, “The world is full of smart and arrogant people. I want to work with the smart and humble ones.” The truth is, most MBAs lack humility. They must constantly remind themselves that the more they know, the more they will realize how much they don’t know. This knowledge keeps them humble and encourages them to keep learning.
- Adaptability: It means being able to rapidly learn new skill sets, behaviors in response to a changing environment. The willingness to change with changing conditions. As Charles Darwin said, the only species that survive are the fast and adaptable ones. Have you seen any dinosaurs lately? If humans don’t evolve, they will disappear, too. Professionals with strong adaptability skills will survive. The rest will probably spend their time in Jurassic Park. Adaptability also tends to improve your level of resilience, meaning that periods of uncertainty are less likely to impact on your overall personal wellbeing. Adaptable people tend to be happier and more content as they’re not struggling against the tide or trying to resist when things change. Its required 7 important things..1. Curiosity 2. Learning 3. Resourcefulness 4. Communications skills 5. Organizational Skills 6. Teamwork skills 7. Resilience
- Cultural and ethical literacy: ethical literacy encourages ethical, reasoned actions. the competence to recognize and respect differences among people. These might include differences in background, culture, race, religion, or country of origin. Every group will have its own set of attitudes and values, so professionals must be able to identify moral and ethical contexts and dilemmas. This particular smart skill is more critical than ever because of the global expansion of the workforce.
- Strategic and critical thinking: the process of conceptualizing, analyzing, synthesizing, and applying information. Critical thinkers evaluate and deploy knowledge to reach a goal and develop a plan for execution. They are able to solve complex problems in the absence of blueprints and standard operating procedures. Whenever I ask employers what skills they value most, strategic and critical thinking come out on top. Attributes like curiosity, compassion, and communication are among the top commonalities that critical thinkers.
- Cognitive readiness: Situation awareness, memory, transfer, meta-cognition, automaticity, problem solving, decision-making, mental flexibility and creativity, leadership, and emotion. Cognitive redlines are considered as bases for ways in which we can prepare operational personnel to deal with the unexpected. the mental preparation to sustain competent performance. Cognitive readiness encompasses the skills, knowledge, motivations, and personal dispositions people need to operate in unpredictable environments. Leaders and their teams have to be prepared to face unpredictable and ill-defined challenges in situations that are volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. This is a hard skill to master, and it requires professionals to be prepared on a constant basis.
Published by: Grace Ladies Global Writers Forum
On 24th January 2025
Copyright 2025 Grace Ladies Global Academy