Future Skills: These skills make you indispensable for companies

Our world is changing. Climate change, globalization, digitalization: the challenges are getting bigger and more complex. In order not to be driven, we too have to change. Future skills are needed, i.e. new abilities, resilience and forms of collaboration. If we do not get involved in the social-ecological transformation and change ourselves, we will give our own future out of our hands.

In professional contexts, future skills are needed equally by employees and managers of all types of organizations and companies. This includes a new form of dialogue and conflict skills. It makes it possible to take different positions, understand other perspectives and balance tensions. An important competence is also tolerance, called ambiguity tolerance in transformation processes. It means perceiving ambiguities and contradictions and accepting other opinions. This allows us to make decisions and resolve conflicts in uncertain situations.

Future skills must keep pace with the complexity of our world

We have to think long-term and systemically, understand the consequences and effects of our actions and take them into account today. Systemic thinking means recognizing structures, rules and processes and drawing conclusions from symptoms to causes, not just when it comes to climate change.

Profound challenges and changes unsettle people, often unconsciously. Long-term and mission-oriented thinking is important to imagine a positive future and take action together. This requires being positive and enthusiastic, being able to inspire, convince and carry other people along.

Future skills must keep pace with the complexity of our world. Collaboration across sector boundaries, i.e. between politics, business and civil society, is particularly important. Only together can we remain capable of acting and effective and master the challenges of our time for society as a whole.

Dr. Andreas Rickert, Board member of the non-profit consulting company Phineo, is an expert in social impact and strategic social engagement. Here he writes weekly, alternating with others, about the sustainable restructuring of the economy. You can find all previous contributions to the Greenformation column here.