Askill is thelearned or innate[1]ability to act with determined results and good execution often within a given amount of time, energy, or both.[2]Skills can often[quantify] be divided intodomain-general and domain-specific skills. Some examples of general skills includetime management,teamwork[3]andleadership,[4]and self-motivation.[5]In contrast, domain-specific skills would be used only for a certain job, e.g. operating asand blaster. Skill usually requires certain environmental stimuli and situations to assess the level of skill being shown and used.[6]
A skill may be called anart when it represents a body of knowledge or branch of learning, as inthe art of medicine orthe art of war.[7] Althoughthe arts are also skills, there are many skills that form an art but have no connection to thefine arts.[8]
People need a broad range of skills to contribute to the modern economy.[citation needed] A jointASTD andU.S. Department of Labor study showed that through technology, the workplace is changing, and identified 16 basic skills that employees must have to be able to change with it.[9] Three broad categories of skills are suggested: technical, human, and conceptual.[10] The first two can be substituted with hard and soft skills, respectively.[11]
Hard skills, also calledtechnical skills, are any skills relating to a specific task or situation. It involves both understanding and proficiency in such specific activity that involves methods, processes, procedures, or techniques.[12] These skills are easily quantifiable unlikesoft skills, which are related to one's personality.[13] These are also skills that can be or have been tested and may entail some professional, technical, or academic qualification.[14]
Holistic competencies is an umbrella term for different types of generic skills (e.g.,critical thinking,problem-solving skills, positive values, and attitudes (e.g.,resilience, appreciation for others)) which are essential for life-long learning and whole-person development.[15][16]
Skilled workers have long had historical import (seedivision of labour) aselectricians,masons,carpenters,blacksmiths,bakers,brewers,coopers,printers and other occupations that are economically productive. Skilled workers were often politically active through theircraft guilds.[17]
An ability and capacity acquired through deliberate, systematic, and sustained effort to smoothly and adaptively carry out complex activities or job functions involving ideas (cognitive skills), things (technical skills), and/or people (interpersonal skills).[18][19]
According to thePortland Business Journal, people skills are described as:[20]
A British definition is "the ability to communicate effectively with people in a friendly way, especially in business."[21] The term is already listed in major US dictionaries.[22]
The termpeople skills is used to include both psychological skills andsocial skills but is less inclusive thanlife skills.
Social skills are any skills facilitatinginteraction andcommunication with others.Social rules andrelations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways. The process of learning such skills is calledsocialization.[23]: 5 [24]
Soft skills are a combination of interpersonal people skills, social skills, communication skills, character traits, attitudes, career attributes andemotional intelligence quotient (EQ) among others.[25]
Development of a very high level of skill is often desirable for economic, social, or personal reasons.
In his 2008 bookOutliers, Canadian journalistMalcolm Gladwell proposed the "10,000 hour rule", that world-class skill could be developed by practicing for 10,000 hours. This principle was disputed by other commentators, pointing out feedback is necessary for improvement, and that practice is no guarantee of success.
In his 2019 bookRange: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World,David Epstein argues that a period of sampling different activities (whether musical instruments, sports, or professions) can be helpful before choosing a specialization. Epstein argues that many tasks require a variety of skills which tend to be possessed by more well-rounded people, and finding a task which is a better fit to one's personality and interests can overcome the advantage otherwise provided by having more practice earlier in life and attempting peak performance as a younger person. Someone who has demonstrated a high level of knowledge or skill in multiple disciplines is known as apolymath, or in musical performance, amulti-instrumentalist.
A long-standing question is to what extent skills can be learned versus the degree that innate talent is required for high-caliber performance. Epstein finds evidence for both sides with respect tohigh-performance sport in his 2013 bookThe Sports Gene. For thinking tasks, theheritability of IQ has been extensively studied to try to answer this question, though does not necessarily map directly onto skill level for any given thinking task.
A study of professional and mastertenpin bowlers found that average scores declined less than 10% from age 20 to age 70.[26] This decline in a sport focusing on skill and technique is considerably smaller than that of events dominated by muscular strength, cardiovascular endurance or agility—which are known to decrease about 10%per decade.[26]
Skill building is a hands-onactive learning andexperiential learningby-doing approach toeducation, in contrast tolectures androte learning where the student plays a very passive role.[27]
The skills that any given individual has can be classified into two basic types: innate and acquired. An innate skill is one which someone possesses as a natural consequence of his/her existence. Examples of innate skills include: the ability to observe one's environment using visual techniques; the recognition of pleasant and unpleasant aromas using one's sense of smell, the sensing of different acoustic stimuli; tactile sensing; and the generation of sonic utterances of various sorts.
If the emotional dynamics of a team can be considered part of teamwork as a skill, then there is strong support for teamwork as the top quality in the employability framework.
[...] six distinct ways of conceptualizing leadership are discussed, including leadership as atrait, anability, askill, abehavior, arelationship, and aninfluence process. [...] Conceptualized as a skill , leadership is acompetency developed to accomplish a task effectively. Skilled leaders are competent people who know the means and methods for carrying out their responsibilities.
Company recruiters value the skill of self-motivation and drive to succeed.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)Both technical and human skills can be substituted by hard and soft skills respectively in the present context.
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