What Is The Most Important Skill Of The 21st Century?

When we were little, we were asked a question dozens of times. Moreover, when it was asked to us, we always answered it with illusion and hope, as does a lover who talks about the person he loves. The question can take very different forms, but the most popular and at the same time the simplest is this: what do you want to do when you grow up? In what area are you going to use your abilities?

Of all those who asked us the question, few created in the answer we gave them. On the other hand, a good part of those who obtained a certain credibility lost it a few days later by answering in a different way  ; very different in reality.

From writers they had gone to astronauts, from entertainers to movie directors or from clowns to hotel receptionists. So many of us at four, five, six or seven years went to bed being lawyers and getting up as doctors, regardless of what others might think.

The question of others becomes personal

However, there is a moment when this question is no longer asked by others but quite simple by ourselves … and the answer is not always easy. Whether it is because it is very clear but the path difficult, or because it is not unique and unstructured or because we do not really find a profession for which our intuition can identify any vocation. Of course, there are people for whom everything is very clear very early on, even before having to make a decision, but reality tells us that these people do not correspond to the majority.

On the other hand, the fact that we give one day an idea and the next day another  no longer seems so pleasant in the eyes of “our elders”. In a way, their faces transform, their appearances become serious, and the pressure swells and swells. Their facial expressions seem to say: Hey! We are no longer in the playground for you to play !! You’ve experimented enough, or at least you should. Now it is time to choose “definitively”, to set in motion a skill and not dozens without reason and organization.

In the event that the “final” decision is not made, parents (and not only) may begin to think that they have had the “bad luck” of having a “very lost child in life”. This sensation drawn on the faces of the people who matter is not insignificant for the person who receives it. It is not uncommon that sooner or later she adopts this reasoning as her own reasoning and cuts off any intention to keep trying regardless of these abilities.

It is also possible that she does not do it but that she takes great care not to share the initiatives which deviate from the intentions previously transmitted and already approved by the relatives. Otherwise, she knows she will have to deal with comments like “With all the effort you put in to be successful in medical school, now you want to dedicate yourself to furniture restoration?” “.

It is in this situation that a paradox appears: as we age, we value stability, on the other hand in the moments when death reminds us that life has an end, we regret our adventurous character that one day and in a way we have buried.

People with one skill, and another, and another …

The people who move from one project to another, which burrow in a field and then move to another were often misunderstood and undervalued by much of society, who saw only the possibility of a kind of progress in specialization. In this good social portion we could find people who, with a clear vocation, had ended up becoming specialists in a field based on a unique competence, but above all people who had renounced their essence, restricting each of their impulses in order to to be focused on a single goal.

When we give up something: whether it is a desire, a hope, a benefit, etc., we are the most critical of those who do not. For example, those who criticize the people who copy a test the most are usually not the people who did not have the opportunity to do so, but those who had the opportunity and decided to give it up. For this, the people who manage to get out of a marginal environment are those who criticize the people who continue to be there. This situation is very frequent, unfair and advantageous.

This is how people with multiple potential (those who do not hold in place or are lost and whom we spoke about previously) end up devaluing their way of being. They act by punishing and devaluing themselves each time they do not reach the normative point which establishes the end of a project. We are actually talking about trampled self-esteem. We are actually talking about sad people.

But why ? Why can’t a person put a project aside when they realize that what they got from it is enough and it won’t hurt anyone? Are we asking a bee to stay on the same flower when it has obtained enough pollen?

Fortunately, this panorama is changing. People who have participated in very different projects, who have changed companies several times and who have many passions are increasingly valued. They are because they have three qualities:

• They are able to take advantage of intersections (between fields): knowing two fields, they are able to develop projects or make contributions that specialists could never achieve. Tell us about the people passionate about mathematics and football who gave rise to a detailed statistical analysis of what is happening on a playing field … or about the people passionate about biology and literature who have brought this science closer to society through popular books. We are talking about people specializing in robotics and having a clear vocation to take care of people, and who thanks to this synergy have been able to put technology at the service of those who needed it most.
• They are able to learn very quickly  : having changed fields many times, they have often had to live experiences from the start. So they have a lot of experience when it comes to being immersed in the unknown and breaking the surface tension that exists when we make any kind of change.

• They are able to adapt very quickly  : Fast Company magazine defines adaptability as the most important skill for development, in order to be successful in the 21st century. People with multiple abilities find it very easy to adapt. By constantly taking part in areas that are not theirs, they find it difficult to find themselves in a space that is not to their liking. In a way, with so many changes, they’ve put strategies in place to minimize impact or uncertainty. In fact, when other people are identified as in a hurry, they are seen as fish in the water.

Whether or not adaptability is the most important skill for success in the century we live in; it is clear that companies are giving more and more value to the initiative. They are looking for people who are able to do or who are able to learn. It is certain that specialization always carries a very important weight, but it begins to be the same as having experience in various fields: these people are courageous sources of ideas aimed at shifting the field of interest. of the company and allow it to develop.

Our thoughts