What Are The Important Skills In The 21st Century?

There’s a question we’ve all heard when we were little. Furthermore, when we listen to it, it is normal for us to respond with hope, the same way a person in love talks about his loved one. The question has many variants, but perhaps the most popular is the simplest:  and you… what do you want to be when you grow up? What are the important skills you will need to have?

Certainly few of those who asked us this question believed our answer. On the other hand, a good part of those who obtained some credit lost it when, a few days later, they responded differently. Very different, actually.

From writers, they wanted to be astronauts, from announcers to film directors or from clowns to hotel receptionists. So  many four, five, six or seven year olds went to bed being lawyers and waking up doctors,  regardless of what others thought.

The question of others becomes our own question

However,  there is a moment when this question is no longer asked by others for us to start asking it ourselves…  and the answer is not always easy. Either because it is very clear and the path is very difficult, because the answer is not unique or structured, or because we have not found a profession in which our intuition identifies some kind of vocation. Of course, there are people who know a lot before they have to make a decision, but reality tells us that these people are not the majority.

On the other hand, when we are adults, others don’t find it very funny if one day we give an answer and the next we give a different one. Somehow their faces change, their expressions become serious, and the pressure builds. His mime seems to say: “We’re not in the schoolyard anymore, so stop playing these games! You’ve experienced enough, or you should have. Now it’s time to decide ‘definitely’, put one skill into practice, not several without organization”.

If the “final” decision is not made, parents (and not only) may begin to think that they had the “misfortune” of having a “very lost child in life”.  This feeling drawn on the faces of the people who matter is not innocuous to the person receiving it. It is not uncommon that sooner or later a person will adopt this thought as his own and discontinue any intention to continue independently testing his abilities.

Or that you don’t, but  be very careful about sharing any initiative that strays from the intentions you’ve already communicated and that others have approved of. Otherwise, the person knows they might encounter comments like: “You’ve gone through so much to get a career in medicine, now you want to devote yourself to restoring furniture?”

And there is a paradox: over the years, people value stability more; however, in the moments when death reminds us that our lives have an end, we yearn for the adventurous character that we someday, somehow, bury.

What are the important skills we should have?

People who jump from one project to another, who dive into one terrain and then move on to another, were misunderstood and often belittled by a large part of society, which only saw the possibility of some kind of progress in specialization. In this good social portion were the people who, with a clear vocation, had ended up becoming specialists in a field based on a single skill, but above all those who had renounced its essence, restricting each of these impulses to focus on one only goal.

When we give up something, be it a desire, a hope, benefits, etc., we become more critical of those who don’t.  For example, those who most criticize people who cheat on a test are usually not those who did not have the opportunity to do the same, but those who did and did not. It’s also why people who manage to leave a marginal environment are the most critical of the people who stay in it. On many occasions, unfairly and opportunistic.

That’s why  multipotential people (those “lost people” we talked about earlier) end up despising their way of being. Punishing and despising themselves whenever they don’t reach the normative point that establishes the end of a project. We talk about self-esteem trampled on and on the ground. We are talking about sad people.

But why? Why can’t someone abandon a project when they understand that what they’ve already gotten for themselves is enough  and doesn’t hurt anyone? Did we ask a bee to stay on the same flower when it has had enough nectar?

Fortunately  this picture is changing. People who have participated in many different projects, who have changed companies so many times, and who have a huge variety of hobbies  are increasingly valued. And they are because these people have three qualities:

• They are able to take advantage of intersections : because they know two fields, they are able to develop projects or make contributions that experts could never make. We’re talking about people in love with math and football who performed a statistical analysis of what happens on a playing field… or people in love with biology and literature who brought this science to society through popular books. We are talking about people specialized in robotics and with a clear vocation to take care of people, because thanks to this synergy they were able to put technology at the service of those who need it most.
• They are able to learn very quickly : having changed fields so many times, these people also had to live many new beginnings. Therefore, they have a lot of experience when it comes to diving into the unknown and breaking out of the surface tension that exists when we make any change in the medium.

• They are able to adapt very quickly. Fast Company magazine defines adaptability as the most important development skill to thrive in the 21st century. By constantly entering areas that are not their own, these people hardly find a space that suits them. Somehow, with so much change, they created strategies to minimize impact or uncertainty.

Whether or not adaptability is the most important skill to succeed in the century we live in, what is clear is  the growing value that companies place on initiative. They are looking for people who know how to do it or who are willing to learn. It is true that specialization is still very important, but it is no less true that the fact that a person has experience in various fields is starting to matter: this means valuable sources of ideas to transfer to the field of interest and development of the company.