TH2014

The 21st Century Professionals

21st Century Skills (Stauffer, 2020)

Learning Skills are about the mental processes required to adapt and improve upon a modern work
environment.
 Critical Thinking – ‘finding solutions to problems.’ It is the mechanism that weeds out problems and
replaces them with fruitful endeavors.
 Creativity – ‘thinking outside the box.’ This skill empowers people to see concepts in a different light,
which leads to innovation.
 Collaboration – ‘working with others.’ The key element of collaboration is willingness. All
participants have to be willing to sacrifice parts of their own ideas and adopt others to get results for
the company.
 Communication – ‘talking to others.’ Employees must learn how to effectively convey ideas among
different personality types.
Literacy Skills focuses on how someone can discern facts, publishing outlets, and the technology behind
them. There’s a strong focus on determining trustworthy sources and factual information to separate it from
the misinformation that floods the Internet.
 Information literacy – understanding facts, figures, statistics, and data. More importantly, it teaches
employees how to separate fact from fiction.
 Media literacy – understanding the methods and outlets in which information is published. This is
how employees find trustworthy sources of information in their lives. Without it, anything that looks
credible becomes credible. But with it, they can learn which media outlets or formats to ignore. They
also learn which ones to embrace which is equally important.
 Technology literacy – understanding the machines that make the information age possible. As
computers, cloud programming, and mobile devices become more important to the world, the world
needs more people to understand those concepts.
Life Skills take a look at intangible elements of someone’s everyday life. These intangibles focus on both
personal and professional qualities.
 Flexibility – is the expression of someone’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances. Flexibility is
crucial to an employee’s long-term success in a career. Knowing when to change, how to change,
and how to react to change is a skill that will help someone to succeed.
 Leadership – motivating a team to accomplish a goal.
 Initiative – starting projects, strategies, and plans on one’s own.
 Productivity – maintaining efficiency in an age of distractions.
 Social skills – meeting and networking with others for mutual benefit.

Creative Leadership
In 2010, IBM surveyed 1,500 corporate heads and public sector leaders on what drives them in managing
their companies in today’s world. They found that creativity was ranked the most important leadership
quality for business success, outweighing integrity and global thinking. The following are the importance of
creative leadership (Miller, 2018):

Leads to new types of problem solving - Creative leadership helps companies by opening up new
opportunities for problem solving and growth that more conventional methods would not allow for. New
perspectives on problems from a creative approach can lead to new and perhaps previously unheard-of
solutions.
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Helps achieve goals and growth - When leaders approach goals from a creative point of view, they gain the
ability to reach goals more easily. A creative leader sees unique paths to reach these goals. Whether it is how
to increase profit or expand product offerings, the creative leader has the ability to map out a path to reach
new levels of success that other leaders within the company can’t see.

Fosters a positive workplace mentality - As companies grow and processes change over time, lower-level
staff can often feel ostracized or forgotten. Creative leadership presents a number of opportunities to
remedy this mindset by implementing non-traditional techniques and ideas to include people and teams into
the company’s success.

A creative leader might suggest having employees brainstorm ideas from their point of view, instead of
taking ideas from the top. Employees don’t always have the same information as management, so seeing
problems or innovating ideas from within could lead to new or profound ideas and information to help form
solutions to problems.

Helps find unlikely perspectives - In order to thrive, a company must grow, adapt, and create its own path to
success. Creative leaders embrace unlikely and unpopular viewpoints. Unlikely perspectives allow for new
and exciting avenues to be revealed, which can be used to devise new and exciting changes to help the
company thrive and grow.

For example, Fidji Simo is the vice president of product at Facebook and is responsible for developing the
global phenomenon “Facebook Live.” She found an unlikely perspective by asking her teams, “What feelings
do people want to have?” and designing the product around what makes people feel good.

Relies on the team and allows them to Grow - A team can be an extension of its creative leader by providing
their ideas and insights into day-to-day decision making and problem solving. Providing autonomy and some
decision-making power to a team allows their creative leadership skills to thrive. By relying on a team, a
creative leader has more time and energy to focus on the bigger picture goals and ideas.

Opens opportunities in problem-solving and inspires the team- Creativity is one of the most important
characteristics of an effective leader and fosters a successful and healthy workplace environment. Creativity
opens up opportunities in problem-solving, achieving goals, and inspiring teams to be creative and find
unlikely perspectives.

Employing creative leadership-building strategies, such as continuing education, relying on trusted

teammates, developing thought leadership, reflection, taking scheduled time out to develop creativity skills,
leaning on mentors, and just having fun with peers, are essential in the journey to becoming a successful
creative leader in a thriving company.

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