Ten skills that employers want

Power skills, durable skills, human skills, people skills, durable skills, E.Q.: Whatever you want to call them, they’re in big demand now. But, as employers scramble to hire enough high-E.Q. people (including new college grads), and launch massive efforts to instill “power skills” in vast numbers of the employees they’ve already got, one question leaps to mind: Can these skills be taught?

It matters. As companies grapple with digitization, automation, and constant change, creating a culture where people can communicate their ideas is crucial to competitiveness. So are collaboration and creative thinking.

Meanwhile, for employees, as more and more tasks are taken over by algorithms, durable skills are becoming a kind of career insurance. Studies show that people with both technical expertise and strong human skills not only have their pick of jobs these days, but they earn far higher salaries too.

But it’s hard to tell if human skills training helps people change aspects of their personality—being resistant to new experiences, or having tone-deaf social skills, for instance. At the moment, no one has yet come up with a standard way to assess those skills before and after training.

 

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

  

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?tag=Empathy

 

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?tag=Soft+Skills

 

Via Gust MEES

Via The Learning Factor

Although there are hundreds of books about how to negotiate more effectively, the advice they offer is often difficult to apply, for three reasons. First, there are just too many contextual specificities underpinning each negotiation, such that one size does not fit all. Second, the effectiveness of each strategy is partly dependent on the personal background of the negotiators — who they are, what they want, and how they connect. Third, many of the factors determining the outcome of negotiations are more emotional than rational, which requires a deep psychological understanding of the people involved.

 

Luckily, personality research provides valuable lessons in predicting an individual’s ability to negotiate effectively. Some traits are clearly indicative of good negotiation potential, while others are more of a handicap. That isn’t to say people can’t get better at it, but their success will depend on their ability to understand their own and the other party’s personality.

Via The Learning Factor

Via The Learning Factor

Worrying about deadlines, work flow or employee issues is natural for people working in the business world. Stress happens. You have options, though, on how you deal with stress.

 

Sometimes, taking a moment to recenter yourself is all you need to do: By putting things into perspective, you can find the grit to keep going. That’s not always the best course of action, though. If you find that a particular task or job regularly leaves you feeling overwhelmed, drained or quietly angry, you may want to rethink how you approach the work or even consider whether you’d be better suited for a different sort of job or different company.

Via The Learning Factor