Top 10 Skills To Develop In Kids Now To Raise Leaders For The Future

People need to adjust to the needs of the time, while professions arise and disappear. For example, at the end of the last century, the professions of an engineer or a driver were pretty exotic. It is quite possible that drivers will become unnecessary in its traditional way in the foreseeable future because humanity has invented self-driving cars, and it is just the beginning.  

However, the total robotization of everything is still doubtful. At least because robots need to be continuously enhanced and developed. The second reason is that the jobs related to creativity and human communication will remain. The future disturbs many people, especially parents who are looking to align their parenting strategies to raise the leaders of the future. It is important to take a look at the education of a child in a complex way, making sure you help your kids develop useful skills and mindset.

Let’s take a look at the 10 most sought skills for the leaders of our future. 

1. Complex problem solving or the ability to anticipate the cause and get rid of it prior to dealing with consequences. For instance, the store is not gaining the expected profit. You might superficially think that the sales department is not doing a great job and endlessly change them, or you can analyze the entire chain, location of the store, marketing solutions, and work ethics. Future leaders need to seek the root of the problem, analyzing it as a whole.  

2. Critical Thinking. The ability to pick out only valuable and truthful information in the era of data overload from all the sources. Also, the ability to evaluate and analyze data is a part of critical thinking which makes it an essential skill in any professional field.

Critical thinking defines the depth of thought, the ability to effectively analyze complex information, correctly establish cause-and-effect relationships in ambiguous conditions, and the presence of multiple solutions. 

A true leader can effectively analyze complex information: to find hidden relationships, to prioritize main things from less important using consistent criteria. 

Note that critical thinking is not related to criticism of anyone, including oneself - it is the ability to think objectively, to think impartially. 

3. The ability to process large amounts of data, highlight the most important ones and conclude. The ability to make sense of information, to summarize it is a very important skill in the career of the future. But at the same time, you should not learn to rely only on numbers and data. You need to retain the ability to make decisions based on the inner sense and act when there is no data or information to do so. 

4. Media literacy. Blogs, social networks, podcasts, forums - all these important platforms for creating one's image and interacting with the consumer in the future will fully penetrate professional communications as well. Employees of the future will have to work freely in audio, video and other virtual formats, to develop content for modern forms of mass communication. 

5. Flexibility of mind or cognitive flexibility is the ability to quickly switch from one thought to another and to think about several things at once. 

6. Creativity. Anti-formulaic thinking and the ability to see missing things and create opportunities out of it. It is a mistake to think that creativity is needed only in the creative professions. In business it is vital. For example, by suggesting an unconventional project to your partners, it is possible to outbid your competitors. Also, feeling the trend or the need of the society and using the moment in business helps people become innovators or to harness the trend before it goes out to the masses.  

Sometimes creativity is not about solving a problem yourself, but about finding a correct and timely solution to your issue. If you are an MBA student looking to write a business plan, but you understand that there is no way you can make it on time, the sign of creativity will be to order a business plan writing service.  

7. Emotional or social intelligence is the ability to understand the emotions, intentions, and motivation of other people and your own, as well as the ability to manage your emotions and the emotions of other people, to adjust to the tone of the people you are speaking to, to feel their mood. You can take this social intelligence quiz that helps you to quickly understand these often misunderstood but very important concepts.

8. People management. This concept can include a set of different skills needed for a leader.  For example, the ability to seamlessly get out of conflict situations, inner feeling that lets you promote the one who deserves it most, tactfulness, ability to create the atmosphere in the team where employees are willing to work without external motivation. It is a huge part of any leader. Kids need to learn to collaborate and respect each other’s limits, but still manage to finish the project or organize themselves to work effectively. Teachers need to simulate the situations where kids can practice these vital skills.   

9. The ability to make decisions quickly. This skill can be called a consequence of all the above. Plus, the ability to shape their own opinions and not be afraid of responsibility. This skill can be practiced a lot at school and university by playing in situations and debating in class.  

10. Interdisciplinarity. Many of the problems and tasks both in life and at work require interdisciplinary solutions. Based on that, the ideal leader of the future is the one who has a specialization, plus good general knowledge in related areas, in order to have the common ground with specialists from other fields.

Erudition widens the outlook of people and it is a perfect addition to the leadership skills for people in the future, where people have to learn new things continuously and be able to differentiate good work from mediocre without consulting a specialist every time. It is a handy skill in the arsenal of the future leader.