The Top 10 Life Skills and How to Develop Them

What are the most important life skills? How should we navigate work, survive challenges, and thrive in our relationships? This is a question that United Nations organisations UNICEF and UNESCO, along with the World Health Organisation (WHO), sought to answer. The subsequent study identified 10 essential life skills, strategies, and techniques, common to the well-being of everyone, no matter their age, sex, colour, creed, or nationality. Therefore, we should all seek to develop these abilities in ourselves, our teams, and our children.

But what do we mean by life skills? How do these differ from academic learning? The WHO has defined life skills as,

“The abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life”.

In other words, these are attributes we need to navigate and thrive in life. They promote mental health and well-being, setting us up for success in the fullest sense of the word.

The Top 10 life skills according to the WHO, UNICEF, and UNESCO

This is the list of the ten most important life skills, as per the WHO, UNICEF, and UNESCO research:

  1. Self-awareness
  2. Empathy
  3. Critical thinking
  4. Creative thinking
  5. Decision-making
  6. Problem-solving
  7. Effective communication
  8. Interpersonal relationships
  9. Coping with stress
  10. Coping with emotions

This list is not all that surprising. These are generally skills we recognise as important and the same ones that many people pursue with their life coaches. As a leadership coach, I spend a lot of time working with people on these exact proficiencies. Again, there is little surprise that this list overlaps with skills lists for leaders such as those developed by Robert Katz.

These skills can also be grouped into three broad areas, referred to as components by the WHO. These three areas are:

  • Critical thinking and decision-making skills
  • Interpersonal and communication skills
  • Coping and self-management skills

Now let’s look at a short explanation of each component area and individual skill and some pointers for personal development.

Critical thinking and decision-making skills

The first component area includes the foundational cognitive skills of critical thinking, creative thinking, decision making and problem skills. In neurological terms these deal with thinking dominated by the pre-frontal cortex.

Critical thinking

Critical thinking is the ability to think objectively and logically about things. This reflects the need to be able to analyse data, understand an argument and come to a judgement about information. Knowing how to ask effective questions is also an important aspect of critical thinking.

Creative thinking

Creative thinking is taking the initiative, generating new ideas, and developing original perspectives. Creativity is frequently linked to the quality of the thinking environment. There needs to be time and space allocated to creation. Given the correct environment, developing associated skills such as lateral thinking can help with thinking outside the box and inventing novel solutions.

Decision-making

Being able to choose from alternative options is crucial for safety, productivity and taking responsibility for our lives. Knowing an effective process is important if we want to make better decisions. Equally, if you want to really develop your decision-making ability then it is helpful to understand some of the psychology relating to heuristics (the quick rules of thumb we employ to make choices) and the cognitive biases that impact our decisions.

Problem-solving

Problem-solving involves understanding a problem (knowing the sort of problem you are facing) and then coming up with a workable solution, with an appropriate strategy or set of steps to overcome the issue.

People often fall at the first hurdle in problem-solving; that being problem identification. Problem typology models such as the Cynefin Framework or Keith Grint’s problem classification can help with this.

Interpersonal and communication skills

The second component includes skills vital to establishing and maintaining successful relationships. These are empathy, interpersonal skills, and effective communication.

Empathy

Empathy allows us to build rapport with people and build relationships. Empathising is being able to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; it is critical to understanding other people’s feelings, accepting their differences and overcoming conflict. Empathy is a vital component of Emotional Intelligence or EQ.

Interpersonal relationships

As noted above, having empathy is the start of building interpersonal relationships. To deepen our ability to have meaningful relationships, work in teams and influence others, we can layer on capabilities such as social skills, negotiation skills, and managing difficult conversations.

Effective communication

Effective communication is the ability to convey our needs, thoughts, and feelings. This includes verbal and non-verbal communication. People often forget that constructive communication often starts with quality listening, which – as you will notice – makes listening an essential element of empathy, interpersonal relationships and effective communication. So, be sure you know how to improve your listening skills! Other forms of communication such as writing and public speaking can also be added here. The Rule of 3 is a good tool for both of these.

Coping and self-management skills

The third component area deals with managing ourselves, particularly our feelings. Whereas the first component was dealing with the pre-frontal cortex, here we are concerned with how we manage our limbic system; the emotional centre of the brain.

Self-awareness

Self-awareness is being cognisant of one’s own interests, feelings, strengths, and weaknesses. Doing a personal SWOT analysis is a great way to quickly assess your strengths and weaknesses. If you want a deeper delve into self then exploring your personal values (your core principles, priorities, and passions), is a very worthwhile exercise. This will also help inform your decision-making.

Coping with stress

Being able to cope with stress is vital. Stress is a natural part of life, but it can be overwhelming unless managed. We can build our resilience by facing and overcoming challenges, but understanding the neuroscience behind stress (and particularly amygdala hijack) can be very beneficial to creating effective coping strategies. Breathing techniques are one of the simplest and most effective ways of dealing with stress. Knowing and practising controlled breathing is a proven way to manage moments of anxiety.

Coping with emotions

Emotions, similarly to stress, can be overwhelming. Poor emotional management can lead to mental health problems and negatively impact our relationships. Emotional management strategies start with being able to identify and label emotions. Next, once the emotion is identified, it can be managed through exercise (such as going for a walk), distraction, expression (for example writing a journal) and improving self-talk (such as using positive affirmations to build self-confidence).

Setting your life skills coaching goals

To take this theory into practice we can set a personal life skills development goal. When it comes to goal setting, habit creation or behaviour change it is worth focussing on one thing at a time, so we need to make a choice as well as a plan. We can do this in four steps:

1. Choose the skill

Which skill do you most want to work on? What would help you the most? When choosing something it could be a weakness that is holding you back. Equally, it could be a strength you want to hone. Thus, looking at the list below, which would you choose to develop?

  • Self-awareness
  • Empathy
  • Critical thinking
  • Creative thinking
  • Decision-making
  • Problem-solving
  • Effective communication
  • Interpersonal relationships
  • Coping with stress
  • Coping with emotions

2. Score your existing ability

Once you have identified the attribute you want to prioritise, ask yourself a question. How would you score yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 (a one being having no skill in that area, a ten being mastery of that competency)? Write your score down.

3. Identify what good looks like

Now, given your score (and assuming you are not a 10), think about what you might need to do to increase your score by 1 or 2 points. What would be different about your behaviour? What does better look like for you? If you are unsure, use the links in the related section above to do a little more reading and research on the area.

4. Plan small actions to help you improve

Finally, set yourself some small actions to experiment with and help you improve. These can be little things at first, just enough to nudge your confidence in these competencies.

For example, if you are wanting to improve your listening skills you might commit not to interrupting anyone in your next meeting. If you want to improve your ability to cope with stress, you could set aside 5 minutes a day to practice breathing techniques. Whatever you choose, make it achievable. You can then work on making it scalable, but the small steps will help to change behaviour and build new habits in your chosen area.

So, if you have not done it already, why not take a few minutes now to identify the life skill that you want to work on? After all, what are a few minutes when the impact could be a boost in happiness and effectiveness in your life, work, and relationships?

If you want the right answers you have to start with the right questions

About The Right Questions

The Right Questions is for people who want greater clarity, purpose and success. There is a wealth of resources to boost your effectiveness in achieving goals, your leadership of yourself and others, and your decision-making.

Wherever you are on your journey, I hope that you find information on this site to help you on the next leg of your quest. Even if that is just the inspiration to take one small step in the right direction, then that is a success. If you can take pleasure in learning and travelling as you go, then so much the better.

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