Life Skills For Business. Part 1

Half of students leaving education. And half of employers taking on those people. Big numbers, right? What do they all agree on? 

That young people leaving education are not equipped with the life skills they need to survive in the world of business and work. 

You can blame education, upbringing, all manner of causes but it doesn’t change the outcome. Half of people moving into the world of work are not going to thrive, they’re going to struggle to survive. Because they don’t have the basic skills they absolutely need. 

What Life Skills?

Life skills like: 
1.    The ability to communicate effectively – verbal and non-verbal
2.    The ability to communicate effectively – in the written word
3.    An understanding of empathy and self-awareness
4.    An ability to simply look after our minds and bodies
5.    Developing Resilience
6.    Problem solving
7.    Dealing with stress
8.    Growing self-confidence and self-belief
9.    The ability to negotiate, discuss and compromise
10.    Being organised personally and professionally

Notice something. All of those are to do with interactions with other human beings. (We’re being charitable and assuming you are at some level human.) Not one has to do with a technical skill, or the ability to operate an electronic device. 

Covid didn’t help you at all, it removed so much human interaction from your life and replaced it with fear of other people. Now, through no fault of your own, you have to play catch-up. And the game is rigged against you. 

Job interview. The other main competitor is older, better able to put their case, more confident, less likely to say something they instantly regret, less likely to freeze, less likely to misunderstand a question because they get the context better. But noting the game is rigged against you doesn’t fix the problem. 

You don’t control the game – nobody does – but you do control yourself. You don’t control what cards you’ve been dealt, but you do control 100% how you play them. So let’s focus on what we do control and make the very best version of ourselves we can. You don’t always need an ace to win the game. 

Got Life – Now Get Skills

So how well do you think you’d deal with those 10 above? Out of 10, being honest? Many of them benefit from experience but many can be learned, acquired, improved by you relatively easily. There are techniques, tricks, psychological insights, all things that can help you rapidly improve so your chances of success in whatever you do are notably improved. 

Over the next weeks we’re going to be going through them, one by one, helping you build up a toolkit you can use and rely on in your life. Life skills. Once you have them you’re in a much better position to start a business, which always depends on relationships with others, whether competitors, suppliers, staff, people in suits or people you need to convince. You can ace this.