The world is changing and so are the people! With the advancement of technology and the birth of automation, people around the world are collaborating better and fixing problems faster.

Four years from now, over one-third of skills that are considered important in today’s workforce would have changed. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is coming and is changing things fast. By the year 2020, we will see rapid growth in the field of advanced robotics, autonomous transport, artificial intelligence, machine learning, advanced materials, biotechnology and genomics.

So what is it that we need to survive in this advanced workforce of the future?

Here are the top 5 skills of the future workforce:

1. Emotional Intelligence: Emotional intelligence or (EI) is the ability of individuals to recognize their own, and other people’s emotions, to discriminate between different feelings and label them correctly, and to use this information to guide thinking and behavior. A manager or a leader who is good at understanding his and his teams’ behaviors and emotions is in a better position to manage people more effectively.

2. Cognitive Flexibility: This is the mental ability to switch between thinking about two different concepts, and to think about multiple concepts simultaneously. A manager’s cognitive flexibility is the fundamental for effective decision-making and consequently an important determinant of the organizational ability to learn and adapt to change. A manager should always have an open mind to think, analyze different opinions, concepts and ideologies and bring it all together while making decisions.

3. Critical Thinking: As the phrase signifies is critically analyzing of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion. Smart companies around the world are dependent upon active critical thinkers in order to plan, develop and strategize their business objectives. Managers in a position of creating change within their organizations need to learn, exhibit and teach critical thinking skills to their workforce.

4. People Management: By far the most important skill needed to exist in the future workforce. A manager’s most important, and most difficult, job is to manage people and the way to go is to first accept the fact that people management is an inherently complex and difficult job, and not to fight it. Managers and leaders should have the knack to lead, motivate, inspire, and encourage their workforce. This also means that managers should be able to hire, fire, discipline or evaluate employees as and when needed.

5. Creativity: Last but not the least, in the modern competitive world of business, creativity is essential to success. Managers often kill creative and ground-breaking concepts because they refuse to consider challenging and apparently impossible ideas. Creativity and businesses have a simple correlation: higher creativity leads to greater innovation within the organization and thus, greater success over the long run. Stimulating creativity and exploring completely new and unknown territories lead to new result that can increase productivity of the organization. Encouraging the employees to think outside of the box and giving them time and resources to explore new areas for innovative ideas is the key to cost-effective business solutions.