As a teenager, you are headed to a world where skills will take the highest pedestal. Even as you read this, skills are racing ahead of qualifications and talent to emerge quintessential for success. So, are you aligning yourself with this paradigm shift in the dynamics of growth, personality development and success?
Let’s try to validate this shift with some astonishing and crucial statistics. A study by Harvard University claims that 85 percent of career success is dependent on soft skills. Further, a study by the ILO indicates another important trend that students and parents must know. Students who work towards developing career skills in their high school years are 23% more likely to find employment within 6 months of graduation.
Moreover, as per the World Economic Forum, as much as 50 percent of the youth are not skilled enough for the future workforce. Clearly, as a teenager, your best chance to secure a thriving future is to start investing in your skills today! The more you work on developing credible soft skills and hard skills, the greater your competence in a competitive world.
I do not in any way endorse that education or grades are not important. The idea I am reinforcing is that personality development and skill building are equally essential. Now the question is, which skills and which personality development traits hold the key to future success?
That’s what this blog is all about! In this blog, we will feature the top 5 soft skills and personality development traits that will groom you for the future. Before I move on to listing these skills, I want to add something. I have been in tertiary education for more than 15 years now.
The skills that I am going to mention will be from the viewpoint of my experience and mentoring roles over the years. I have seen these skills grow in importance over the years and redefine the careers of students I have guided.
Without further ado, let’s get started!
Top 5 Personality Development Skills That Will Prepare You For The Future
- Communication Excellence
It is correct to say that effective communicators can conquer minds like a magician. Such is the power and prowess of effective communication in contemporary times. In fact, you may be shallow on content at times, but with outstanding communication, you can still win!
But I strongly believe that students need to look at communication skills from a broader perspective. You may be fluent in a language and can deliver fiery speeches at an MUN or Youth Parliament. However, that does not necessarily mean you are an excellent communicator otherwise.
When looked at from the lens of career success, communication has different dynamics. In the professional sphere, communication resonates more with active listening, formal communications and knowing what to say and when. In fact, active listening and non-verbal communication are absolutely essential in the corporate world.
Also, formal communication in the workplace, whether verbal or written, is very different from being a great speaker. You need to think critically before you speak to a co-worker about work or write an email to your senior.
How to Ace Professional Communication?
- Take up an internship for experiential learning and to witness a real professional environment
- Work on your active listening and writing skills
- Master the 7Cs of Communication
- Attend formal events like Moot Courts, MUNs, Legal Conclaves and more
- Watch YouTube videos on professional communication
Remember, there is no perfection in communication skills. There will always be a scope of improvement!
- Resilience & Problem Solving Skills
Broadly speaking, the world can be categorized into two kinds of people. On one side are those who break under pressure and lose track of everything as challenges catch them off guard. The second category is where people can withstand pressure, think critically in crisis situations and solve problems rather than quitting.
I don’t need to tell you which category you must belong to, right? Resilience is the ability to withstand pressure. In another sense, your resilience defines how promptly you can recover from adverse situations and bounce back to take control.
In your career and as you climb up the ladder, challenges will keep coming at you. The higher you go on the ladder, the bigger the challenges. Let me try to explain this through a small example. As a subordinate, you will only have your share of challenges and difficulties to navigate.
However, as a manager or a leader, you will have your own share of challenges along with your team members’. This is where resilience becomes such a key trait for professional success. Your resilience defines how you approach challenges, what your mindset is and what your professional attitude towards problems is.
If you are not resilient, you will not be able to withstand the everyday challenges. You will not be looked at as a leadership candidate then because leaders must be resilient.
However, the story does not just end at being resilient. It is great that you can recover from adverse situations quickly and be composed under pressure. However, your approach towards solving problems is equally important.
Hence, resilience and problem-solving skills go hand in hand. The term problem-solving skills is quite self-explanatory. Your problem-solving skills define how well you can identify problems and take effective action to solve them. Again, your problem-solving skills need to evolve parallel to your career growth. As you progress and take up bigger responsibilities, problem-solving skills will prove cardinal. Hence, the focus should be on holistic development of your skills, mindset and attitude.
Now, what I feel is that problem-solving skills, as an umbrella term, are a culmination of various skills. As I see it, problem-solving skills include
- Critical Thinking
- Adaptability
- Situational Awareness
- Innovation
- Collaboration
- Emotional Intelligence
Moreover, problem-solving skills shape your personality development in various ways. They make you an effective leader, a reliable team member and much more. This is where having a growth mindset is the best way forward.
How to Be More Resilient and Better At Problem Solving?
Resilience and problem-solving come from experiential learning. You only learn how to navigate adversities and challenges when you face them. So, the only advice is, observe how others around you navigate problems and conduct themselves in tough situations. Besides, have a forward-looking approach towards challenges and participate in challenging situations or events.
- Effective Leadership
The fact of the matter is that everyone wants to be a leader. However, isn’t it important to understand what it takes to be a great leader? No matter what your career ambitions are, you should aim to develop leadership credibility. After all, more than anything else, leadership takes you places.
The fact of the matter is that good leaders are needed in every sphere of life. Unfortunately, there aren’t many capable leaders. There is a serious dearth of leadership excellence that is affecting the world.
The world needs change leaders who can drive positive change and save a struggling world. Now, as I see, leadership is about a spectrum of skills and attitudes. Leadership in itself is an umbrella term, like problem-solving skills.
Great leaders must
- Be good at risk management
- Be innovative and creative
- Be emotionally intelligent
- Be great communicators
- Know how to delegate
- Promote psychological safety
- Know how to collaborate
- Have integrity
- Must be flexible in their approach
- Must lead from the front
& more
What I want young people to know about leadership is that it is not merely a title. Leadership is a responsibility and it takes a lot out of an individual. Another important fact about leadership is that effective leadership is quite a guarantee of success. If you are a good leader who is humble enough to keep evolving, success will follow.
So, from your teenage years, you should set a goal for yourself to develop into a strong leader. It is an ongoing process but starting early towards building leadership capabilities is the key.
How to Develop Leadership Abilities?
As a teenager, you will have ample opportunities to enhance your leadership abilities. You need to commit to making the most of them. You need to take up leadership roles and make every opportunity count. Gain leadership exposure from different avenues and opportunities.
Exposure to leadership can be as simple as contesting for the school council or watching a YouTube video on leadership. However, learning about leadership will always be better when it comes from experiential learning than reading an article or watching a video.
You can be a sports captain, captain of your house at school, a peer mentor, secretary general of your school’s MUN and much more. When you actually step into leadership roles, you get a hands-on experience of leadership challenges. That is what counts the most!
The more leadership experiences you embrace in your teenage years, the better the future rewards.
- Digital Literacy
The world is changing at a fast pace. It’s correct to say that the world is undergoing a digital revolution. Hence, teenagers must prepare themselves for a future that is largely digital. Here, when I say digital literacy, I am not talking about knowing advanced Python, programming or building AI agents.
My context of digital literacy here is knowing the basics of operating in a digital world. That includes basic knowledge of online safety and cybersecurity to keep your personal data and identity safe. Further, it means being able to work with MS Office, Google Drive, Google Sheets, ChatGPT and more.
You need to know how to use digital tools like ChatGPT or Google Drive to your advantage. I strongly believe everyone should learn about the benefits of ChatGPT and similar tools. These skills can take you places both academically and professionally.
Further, digital literacy should also include digital research skills, being able to solve problems through research and navigate the digital space to find solutions. Moreover, it can also entail basic graphic design skills, presentation-making skills, and the basics of WordPress or more.
People who have strong digital skills will always have a competitive advantage over others. The logic is simple: we live in a digital world and it is only getting bigger. Hence, your best chance to navigate the digital sphere is to keep working on your digital skills. Digital literacy is the cornerstone of both survival and success in contemporary times and in the context of the future.
How to Develop Digital Literacy?
Digital literacy can be developed in various ways. You can do short online courses, watch YouTube videos and more. For instance, you will easily find YouTube tutorials on Google Sheets, MS Excel, ChatGPT and so on. Besides, there are short courses on almost all the digital skills that are essential for success.
When key digital skills feature on your resume, they will certainly leave a strong impression. The bottom line is that in the contemporary world, digital literacy is essential for both academic and career success.
- Social Skills
We don’t talk about social skills or relationship-building skills much, do we? The fact of the matter is that we should talk about them and act upon them. I can tell you this from my experience, networking is cardinal to success.
You may be the most talented or the most skillful person in the room. However, if you do not know how to make connections, you will find your horizon being curtailed. Having said that, the sooner you start networking and the more you network, the better it is.
You never know which connection may give you your first internship opportunity or your first job. Even academically, you never know which connection may come in handy! Remember, smart people are quite systematic about their networking and they do associate great significance to it.
Now the real question is, how do you network effectively? The simple answer is social skills! Social skills include communication, empathy, trust building, conflict resolution, cooperation and patience. You need to keep consistently investing in these skills to keep enhancing your networking effectiveness.
How to Develop Social Skills?
Developing social skills isn’t as hard as you might think. You just need to keep working on your exposure, communication skills and your understanding of people. When you have a good understanding of people, you the art of saying the right thing to the right person. At the end of the day, that is what matters the most.
Give yourself the chance to be at social events, to participate in competitions where you are likely to meet new people and make connections.
To conclude, I will say a simple thing. In today’s world and what lies ahead in the future, you will get the maximum return on investment on your skills. The more you invest in your skills and personality development, the higher the rewards will be. Commit to learning and mastering the skills talked about above and even beyond. As you gain more and more skills through experiential learning, you will see your competence growing.