Bernard Salt: Young workers need a different set of skills to succeed

They need empathy and maturity to know precisely when to push and when to parry. Some call this the ability to “read the room”. But, how do you acquire it?

The skills required of modern workers include the self-confidence to present ideas to a room filled with more experienced people.

When I was growing up in the 1960s, I was taught by the Sisters of Mercy. This was back when nuns wore full habits. It was a time when teachers had unquestioned authority in the classroom. It was a time when the times tables were chanted by rote to commit “knowledge” to memory.

Almost everything about that era has changed, and thankfully so. I was always a bit jealous of my younger sister whose “new wave” lay teacher encouraged kids to show and tell, which was, for the time, a revolutionary idea in education. Or at least that’s what I recall my parents saying. Plus, I wanted to show and tell!

Every generation does their best to equip young people with the necessary skills to make their way in the world. But this thinking often comes down to an understanding of what is and what is not possible.

In our town at that time what was possible was a job on the railways, in a shop, or in a bank (as a teller); these were better options than working as a labourer on a farm, which was my father’s first job.

By the mid-1970s, when I left school for university, the world-view of young Australians like me had changed: the Whitlam government made access to university fee-free. This wasn’t sustainable long-term but for more than a decade it opened up a world of new possibilities – like living in a capital city and doing a job that hadn’t been considered.

These changes helped set Australia on a new course that would deliver knowledge workers into the workplace. Australia’s cities, culture and standard of living transformed.

Globalisation created new markets in the 1990s. The nature of work changed. Critical thinking and presentation skills gained currency. PowerPoint inveigled its way throughout corporate Australia in the 2000s.

Here is the revolutionary idea that the future direction of a business or of a government enterprise can be shaped by anyone bold enough, gutsy enough, skilled enough to assemble evidence and to present and to defend an argument. And in so doing change their prospects in a single meeting.

The skills thus required of modern workers include the self-confidence to present ideas to a room filled with more experienced people. This is a trait that isn’t so much learnt at university but rather from the home where parents encourage kids to discuss ideas.

The role of leadership in this brave new world is to enable the young to put forward their ideas in a safe and supportive space. Today’s workers need social skills to build support networks. They need empathy and maturity to know precisely when to push and when to parry. Some call this the ability to “read the room”. Perhaps most importantly, they need the skill of not being fazed by change.

In some ways, acquiring the skills required to do a job is just the beginning. The enabling skill of transformative workers, I think, is the depth and range of people skills that sets these workers apart. It is ambition and drive, as it has always been, but it is also the self-confidence and the abilities to seize the moment.

It’s a long way from the old way of teaching and of preparing the next generation for success in the workplace and in life.