Essay: What skills are most important for success in the 21st century? and Why?

Compare and contrast the arguments of Gardner (2008) to those of Fernández-Aráoz (2014).
What skills are most important for success in the 21st century? and Why?
Howard Gardner, author of the book Five minds for the future has been researching in psychology and human minds for several years, believes there are 5 types of mind that should be developed in the future to achieve success and add value to the enterprise. According to the author’s with these ‘minds’ a person will be able to deal with what is expected as well as what cannot be anticipated [1]. The five kinds of mind are as follows: the discipline mind, the synthesizing mind, the creating mind, the respectful mind and the ethical mind. Further the author emphasis on the importance of education, science technology and globalization. According to Gardner fostering our mind on education as to constantly develop our skills, knowledge and minds is very important in order to develop the sense of responsibility. Leaders and managers should invariably develop all five kinds of minds within themselves to achieve optimum success. In the modern world science and technology plays a very important role in day to day life for example in today’s generation nothing can be done without the help of computers. Technology has made it easy for the citizens to gain knowledge and create new demand in the working nature. If we look into globalization, which has brought four types, trends within the society which is 1) movement of capital 2) migration of people 3) movement of information 4) movement of culture. According to the author thinking globally is good, but with that we should also act locally, nationally and regionally, thus with the globalization we should not sacrifice the local to the global.
Whereas in contrast to Gardner, Claudio Fernandez-Araoz states that in order to achieve success the person should have potential: the ability to adapt to and grow into increasingly complex roles and environments [2]. While hiring any employee the manager should keep in mind five key guideline: the right motivation, curiosity, insight, engagement, and determination. According to Fernandez it is very important to focus on potential while appointing any employee in the organization, especially the top level. The scrupulous assessment of the CEO or board member’s motivation, curiosity, insight, engagement, and determination is very vital for the organization and the employees working under them. A leader can only bring success to his company and attract good employees if he has the potential to learn, grow and adapt to new environments. Fernandez further talks about the scarcity of top talent and steps to prevent it. The potential talent has become scarcer due to three forces-globalization, demographics, and pipelines. Due to globalization companies reach beyond their home markets and take help from emerging markets, leaving the firms in the developing nations grapple for talent and customers. Demographics are causing a decline in the senior leader candidate group and making more number of people retire than enter the work place. The pipeline system is not able to develop potential future leaders who cause problem to fill the gap between senior roles in the coming future. The first step to get the right people in the organization is through better hiring. Setting-up high potential program helps attract promising managers. Right kind of motivation is the first key indicator of potential employee who actually want to succeed and leave a mark. According to the research the other four qualities are curiosity, insight, engagement, and determination.
Keeping the high potential employee is the next important step. According to Mike Foster, founder and CEO of the Foster Institute, in order to create an environment that motivates and stimulates employees, managers need to develop motivation-building activities into their corporate culture[3]. There few factors which help incorporate such practices and improve their performance as well, providing them an environment where they feel free to interact and give their views, giving rewards on the bases of their performance, providing proper feedback and training time to time, provide growth opportunities. In the case study, Fernandez also states that pay plays a very important factor as employees expect return out of their hard work, therefore unfair pay often disappoint and demotivate them.
The final step is providing the high potential employee development opportunities that help them work out of their comfort zone. Bersin and Associates states that a stretch assignment as a project or task given to employees, which is beyond their current knowledge or skill level in order to “stretch” employees developmentally[4]. If staff will keep on working within their comfort there won’t be any growth, thus complex and uncomfortable situations and roles will make them accelerate. According to one survey when asked what helped them retain their potential out of 823 international executives, 71%cited stretch assignments.
After comparing both the case studies it shows that Howard Gardner research is more conceptual where as
Claudio Fernandez-Araoz case study shows a more practical approach.
21st century is very complex and constantly changing, therefore in order achieve success the top level management needs to flexible and adaptive to constant change. According to a survey by Gallup, with Microsoft partners in Learning and the Parson Foundation there are 7 skills: collaboration, knowledge construction, skilled communication, global awareness, self-regulation, real-world problem-solving, and technology used in learning[5]. These seven skills checks the ability of the employees and help evaluate that they posses the skills required in todays fast paced industry These skills are important in 21st century to stay updated with the ever growing and globalized environment. Apart from the above skills we cannot forget the basic criteria of evaluating people as stated by Fernandez in his case study: intelligence, values and leadership abilities. In order to achieve optimum growth and achieve challenging goals of the organization along with the above skills the individual should also have personal humility to invest himself without any selfish goals but collective goals of the firm.