What Skills Will Be Most In Demand In The Future of Industry?

If the information-heavy, tech-driven era has taught us anything, it’s that change is certain.

Business processes are always evolving. The most in-demand talents shift as quick as lightning. 

As a professional, if you want to keep up with the times, it has become essential that you don’t just lean on past capabilities and experience to fuel your career momentum. Instead, you have to actively hone the right skills to help you succeed in the future. 

But what are the right skills? While no one can be overly precise with these kinds of predictions, there are several skills — some time-tested, others quite new — that should remain at the top of the to-do list for anyone who wants to succeed in the unfolding 21st-century business landscape.

Learn Leadership

No matter how much work is outsourced over time, the ability to lead will remain. It’s an essential element that everyone should work on developing.

Leadership refers to much more than giving authoritative orders, too. It includes things like interpersonal skills, the ability to grasp complex administrative duties (and act on them), and keeping yourself and your team motivated.

It also involves a fair degree of risk management. From an IT team leader to a retail floor manager to an official emergency management specialist, the ability to stay cool and lead, come hell or high water, is and will remain important.

Pursue Personal Finances

One of the oldest yet enduring hard skills you can learn is financial management. This starts with personal finances. If you can’t keep your own books balanced, it’s difficult to do so at work.

This includes a variety of simple-yet-crucial activities, from creating a self-tailored budget to setting goals, tracking expenses, improving your credit score, and simply staying organized. The financial world is changing as fast as the professional one. If you can learn to stay abreast of the changes and effectively manage your money, it will serve you well both at work and play.

Study Self-Awareness

One of the best ways to master your workplace is by mastering yourself, first. If you can learn to become self-aware, it can give you an edge, especially in change-prone times. A self-aware individual can identify things like the state of their mind and body. They can discover a phone addiction or a build-up of stress and then take steps to address the issue. 

This ability to diagnose one’s own thoughts and feelings can also turn you into a better communicator. You can relate to others more effectively and communicate diplomatically. By building on your metacognitive skills, you can increase your ability to work with other humans — which is an ability that isn’t going to become dated any time soon.

Delve Into Digital Literacy

One of the newest skills that has worked its way into the “essential” category is digital literacy. In a nutshell, this refers to the ability to use digital devices to communicate and discover information.

“Use” is the operative word here. Staying digitally literate in the modern workforce is a lifelong process. This includes a wide variety of activities, such as:

• Basic electronic usage with things like computers and phones;
• The ability to create documents;
• Mastering current communication channels used by your peers;
• Learning critical remote work activities, like how to use workflow applications or share documents.

Staying on top of your digital game is one of the best ways to remain a viable candidate for future employers.

Garner a Growth Mindset

Finally, it’s important to maintain a healthy growth mindset throughout your professional endeavors. A growth mindset hinges on maintaining a mental state that is always in development. 

In other words, a growth mindset embraces the idea that you haven’t met your potential. It sees opportunities to develop and enhance your current skills as well as learn new ones in the name of personal improvement.

One of the best ways to cultivate a growth-oriented mindset is by looking for learning opportunities. Continual learning goes hand in hand with an “always in development” state of mind. Adaptability is another critical function of a growth mindset — and also an important attribute of a leader, too, which helps with the first skill on this list. By remaining flexible and ready to shift based on your circumstances, you ensure that you’re always ready to learn new things and take advantage of opportunities when they arise.

Equipping Yourself for the Future

No one knows what the future may hold. The only certainty is that change will continue to make its mark on the workplace. 

Fortunately, there are many foolproof skills that can safeguard your future career. From intangibles like leadership and a growth mindset to practical elements like financial and digital literacy, there are many ways you can build a professional skill toolkit that will serve you well no matter what the future may hold.

So, the next time you reach for a book or sign up for a course in the name of professional development, focus on long-term skill investments in the name of a brighter, successful future.