Basic skills. Functional skills. Essential skills. Soft skills. Skills for life and work. Future skills. Practical. Technical. Digital. Creative. Confused?
At its simplest, skills are the ability to do something well, learned through education or experience specific to a task or job, and often developed by training and practice. Skills can be learned, to apply knowledge effectively. They can be innate, a natural talent and aptitude honed through practice. In work, skills are the ability to solve problems and perform tasks to achieve desired outcomes, highly valued for productivity and economic growth. Transferable skills are crucial for future employability, from one job to another.
Yet in a rapidly changing world of AI and technological developments, which increasingly take over many of the tasks and work of day-to-day life, what skills are most prized?
We look to future skills, how to harness the power of technology to solve problems and counter the regressive effects of inequality and ever widening wealth disparities. Preparing young people for the known unknowns, to meet the global economic, social and environmental challenges faced and in everyday living.
There’s an ever increasing focus on personal qualities and competencies – life skills – like resilience and adaptability which underscore teamwork and socialisation, positive attitudes and creative thinking of ‘head, heart and hand’.
Young people face a churn of jobs, periods without employment and a future of increased leisure time, while supporting and caring for an ageing population. It is the population and social challenges that requires skilled and compassionate politicians to help navigate, not left to the manipulation of markets and divisive populists.
It is those political skills which will help educate, inspire and nurture democratic engagement and social leadership at all levels. Where politics is not seen as a dirty word and politicians are valued for their worth in deeds and not their words and rhetoric. Trust, hope, compassion and humanity are qualities we look for in progressive politician. Head, heart and ‘getting things done’ is the art of a skilful politician.
Citadel runs the Skills Hub in association with City & Guilds and Future Skills Coalition at the autumn party political conferences as a shared platform to explore all skills-sets and the collective impact for productivity and growth, and lifelong learning.
Citadel 