Leadership Skills Matter

LEADERSHIP SKILLS ARE MORE THAN “SOFT SKILLS”

Courage, flexibility, authenticity, resilience, self-care, relationship-building, self-compassion, growth mindset. These are a few of the soft skills that lead to success and fulfillment in academics, career and family life. I’d like to discard the term “soft skills” and replace it with “leadership skills”. These skills help young adults become leaders in their own lives, and beyond. They are critical to the success of young women as they transition into adulthood and as they face gender equity issues in the workplace and beyond.

FOUNDATIONAL SKILLS FOR FUTURE SUCCESS

I believe that some kind of personal development course should be mandatory learning for every adolescent at the cusp of transitioning into the adult world. In this course, (let’s call it: Adulting 101 - Foundational Skills for Future Success) young adults would learn tools for reslience building, stress management, tapping into their own personal strengths, boundary setting, clear communication, and mental and physical wellbeing.

Taught in the abstract, these concepts may or may not land. If experience is our greatest teacher - are adolescents able to comprehend the value of developing a leadership skillset? The reality is, despite not having yet had a full adult experience, most young women have had lived experiences that have shaped them already. They have tried something and failed. They have played on sports teams or taken on other extra curricular pursuits. They have navigated relationship uncertainty or rejection. They have experienced the pressures of performance expectations. All of those experiences are teachers, and a great teacher can help illuminate the lessons from those experiences.

DELIVERY IS KEY

In my grade 12 year, I took a mandatory career aptitute test. Likely picking up on my qualities as an empath, the test told me my best-suited occupation would be a funeral director. I remembering thinking to myself at the time that the result was silly and meaningless. I carried on without giving that test much more thought until later in my career when I started examining my personal strengths more closely. At that point, I had a much better understanding that I was indeed an empath, and that this trait showed up in all aspects of my personal and career pursuits. Sometimes I was able to use it to my advantage, and sometimes it caused me to feel drained by the emotions of people around me.

Having a sense of our own personal strengths at a young age is invaluable. But the DELIVERY of that information is critical for it to land within the brain of a young adult because 1) that brain is still developing and 2) it lacks a depth of life experience to make connections and guide decision making. The delivery of that one career aptitude test did not foster any sense of identity or purpose in me. However, delivered differently, I believe some of the underlying messages of that test could have resonated and been very valuable to me as I navitgated university and early career decisions.

FEMALE MENTORSHIP

Mentorship and coaching can serve as springboards for young women who are seeking guidance and direction in their lives. When information is delivered by someone a young woman looks up to, and is eager to learn from, the results are multiplied.

Appreciating that Adulting 101 is unlikely to make it into the public eductation system anytime soon, perhaps coaching and mentorship are the best channels to deliver lessons on leadership skill-building. Let’s pair young females with inspiring women who can empower them with the guidance, tools and support they need to navigate their early academic and career exploration with greater purpose, curiosity and excitement.