| 21st Century Skills

ADAPTABILITY

As a citizen of the 21st century,
you should be able to

adapt to change effectively and
be willing and motivated to readjust, adapt and relearn
deal strategically with new,
unfamiliar, or different situations
solve problems that arise at work or school, dealing effectively with
fatigue, stress, the new, the unexpected and uncertainty
react positively to changes without allowing them to greatly affect your performance, acting effectively despite pressures and stress
be creative and keep an open mind to new situations
work in teams with a high level of diversity (multidisciplinary, cultural, with different levels of skills, training, and experience; people with disabilities)

Competence
Area

Skills

Maintaining focus during emergencies
Handling emotions in the face of an emergency
Having a clear mind, or being objective in times of emergencies
Taking actions during a crisis
Ability to make good decisions in times of crisis

Handling stress or stressful situations
Being able to deal with a large workload without feeling overwhelmed
Being positive and energetic, and to cope with stress

Ability to analyze, synthetize, evaluate, and persuade
Using a variety of problem solving strategies
Being a innovative person, developing innovative solutions
Ability to connect unrelated information
Actively seeking out new ways of doing things
Having confidence to improvise or experiment

Reading and acting upon signals
Ability to handle unpredictable situations and environments
Making effective decisions without all relevant information
Ability to deal with those changes needed in your own behaviour to respond to a dynamic environment (the environment affects you, but it is also affected by you)
Reacting to new tasks and maintain performance

Learninability
Ability to develop and improve skills constantly
Ability to stay current in your profession, domain or expertise area
Learning new approaches for conducting work
Taking action to improve work performance deficiencies
Learning new methods to solve problems
Willingness to adapt or make changes in personal identities or behavior
Ability to self-assess, and being open to criticism
Ability to internally change and adapt by adopting new attitudes, attributes and self-perception (receptiveness)
Ability to grow and modify your personal identity

Being flexible, open to new ideas and people
Ability to understand how people feel at any particular moment
Being open-minded
Being perceptive of others
Adapting my behavior to get along with others
Being able to communicate, and accept a diverse perspective

Learning about cultures other than my own
Ability to work efficiently in a diverse team or environment
Ability to respect others' culture
Learning from working with people of different backgrounds, values, customs, etc

Ability to perform well in different environments (e.g., clean and non-clean, orderly and non-orderly, hot or cold)
Being able to physically push yourself to complete important tasks
Ability to work effectively even when tired or exhausted

Sources: Based on I-ADAPT framework
(Ployhart & Bliese, 2006; Morrison & Douglas, 2002).

SKILLS IN ACTION

3 ways to measure your adaptability

La importancia de adaptarse al cambio

How Adaptability Will Help You Deal With Chang

Habilidades digitales

RESOURCES

#SKILLS21

21st century skills help individuals of all ages to reinvent themselves throughout life, adapt to changing and diverse circumstances, and identify opportunities for growth amid differences.