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What skills will be in demand in the 2012 workplace? The answer depends on whom you ask and whose skills you're talking about. But the short answer is that no one escapes the need to acquire some new ones.
At this lime of year, those who develop other people's skills tor a living turn to those who predict skill needs to anticipate what will be in demand in the near future. Most skill predictors - and they are a legion - focus on the skills of the professional groups they target with their products and services. So, for example, Deloitte, which has a strong practice helping organizations maximize talent globally, has plenty to say about the skills organizations need to do just that.
What follows is a potpourri of predictions of skills needed to he successful at work in a future that is often uncertain, chaotic, and unpredictable. Despite the variety of sources, there are some similarities among their approaches. Most base their predictions on changes wrought by the usual suspects: the economy, social media, and tliix in workforce demographics. Almost all point to the same major driver of new skill needs - the changing nature of work itself from brawn-based to brain-based and the near-ubiquitous use of technology for that kind of work. Accordingly, many new workplace skills could be classified as habits of mind, with innovation and creativity often leading the pack.
Skills every worker will need
Everyone will need learning agility - the ability to learn something in situation A and apply it in situation B - says Rebecca Ray. The Conference Board's vice president of human capital, using a definition from Lominger, a leadership development company whose work is based on competencies. "You have to maintain your footing between what you know and what you must learn. It's like bopping across a stream on a series of rocks. You stop, take your bearings, look ahead, and apply what you learned from previous hops," says Ray.
It's an irony of the present day workplace thai data are more abundant and accessible than ever, but decisions often need to be made before all the numbers are in. As a result, says Ray, "We must all learn to be comfortable with ambiguity and...