A skill is the learned or innate

ability Abilities are powers an agent has to perform various Action (philosophy), actions. They include common abilities, like walking, and rare abilities, like performing a double backflip. Abilities are intelligent powers: they are guided by the person ...

to act with determined results with good execution often within a given amount of time, energy, or both. Skills can often be divided into domain-general and domain-specific skills. Some examples of general skills include

time management Time management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control of time spent on specific activities—especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency and productivity. Time management involves demands relating to work, social ...

teamwork Teamwork is the collaborative effort of a group to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in an effective and efficient way. Teamwork is seen within the framework of a team, which is a group of interdependent individuals who work toge ...

and

leadership Leadership, is defined as the ability of an individual, group, or organization to "", influence, or guide other individuals, teams, or organizations. "Leadership" is a contested term. Specialist literature debates various viewpoints on the co ...

, and self-

motivation Motivation is an mental state, internal state that propels individuals to engage in goal-directed behavior. It is often understood as a force that explains why people or animals initiate, continue, or terminate a certain behavior at a particul ...

. In contrast, domain-specific skills would be used only for a certain job, e.g. operating a sand blaster. Skill usually requires certain environmental stimuli and situations to assess the level of skill being shown and used. A skill may be called an art when it represents a body of knowledge or branch of learning, as in ''the art of medicine'' or ''the art of war''. Although

the arts The arts or creative arts are a vast range of human practices involving creative expression, storytelling, and cultural participation. The arts encompass diverse and plural modes of thought, deeds, and existence in an extensive range of m ...

are also skills, there are many skills that form an art but have no connection to the

fine art In European academic traditions, fine art (or, fine arts) is made primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from popular art, decorative art or applied art, which also either serve some practical function (such as ...

s. People need a broad range of skills to contribute to the modern economy. A joint ASTD and

U.S. Department of Labor The United States Department of Labor (DOL) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is responsible for the administration of federal laws governing occupational safety and health, wage and hour standards, unem ...

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. Three broad categories of skills are suggested: technical, human, and conceptual. The first two can be substituted with hard and soft skills, respectively.

Hard skills

Hard skills, also called technical 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. These skills are easily quantifiable unlike ''

soft skills Soft skills, also known as power skills, common skills, essential skills, or core skills, are psychosocial skills generally applicable to all professions. These include critical thinking, problem solving, public speaking, professional writing, t ...

'', which are related to one's personality. These are also skills that can be or have been tested and may entail some professional, technical, or academic qualification.

Holistic competency

Holistic competencies is an umbrella term for different types of generic skills (e.g.,

critical thinking Critical thinking is the process of analyzing available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments to make sound conclusions or informed choices. It involves recognizing underlying assumptions, providing justifications for ideas and actions, ...

problem-solving Problem solving is the process of achieving a goal by overcoming obstacles, a frequent part of most activities. Problems in need of solutions range from simple personal tasks (e.g. how to turn on an appliance) to complex issues in business an ...

skills, positive values, and attitudes (e.g., resilience, appreciation for others) which are essential for life-long learning and whole-person development.

Labor skills

Skilled workers have long had historical import (''see''

division of labour The division of labour is the separation of the tasks in any economic system or organisation so that participants may specialise ( specialisation). Individuals, organisations, and nations are endowed with or acquire specialised capabilities, a ...

) as

electrician An electrician is a tradesman, tradesperson specializing in electrical wiring of buildings, transmission lines, stationary machines, and related equipment. Electricians may be employed in the installation of new electrical components or the ...

s, masons,

carpenter Carpentry is a skilled trade and a craft in which the primary work performed is the cutting, shaping and installation of building materials during the construction of buildings, ships, timber bridges, concrete formwork, etc. Carpenter ...

blacksmith A blacksmith is a metalsmith who creates objects primarily from wrought iron or steel, but sometimes from #Other metals, other metals, by forging the metal, using tools to hammer, bend, and cut (cf. tinsmith). Blacksmiths produce objects such ...

baker A baker is a tradesperson who baking, bakes and sometimes Sales, sells breads and other products made of flour by using an oven or other concentrated heat source. The place where a baker works is called a bakery. History Ancient histo ...

brewer Brewing is the production of beer by steeping a starch source (commonly cereal grains, the most popular of which is barley) in water and fermenting the resulting sweet liquid with yeast. It may be done in a brewery by a commercial brewer, ...

s, coopers, printers and other occupations that are economically productive. Skilled workers were often politically active through their

craft guild A guild ( ) is an association of artisans and merchants who oversee the practice of their craft/trade in a particular territory. The earliest types of guild formed as organizations of tradespeople belonging to a professional association. They so ...

Life skills

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).

People skills

According to the ''

Portland Business Journal American City Business Journals, Inc. (ACBJ) is an American newspaper publisher based in Charlotte, North Carolina. ACBJ publishes ''The Business Journals'', which contains local business news for 44 markets in the United States with each market ...

'', people skills are described as: * understanding ourselves and moderating our responses * talking effectively and empathizing accurately * building relationships of trust, respect and productive interactions. A British definition is "the ability to communicate effectively with people in a friendly way, especially in business." The term is already listed in major US dictionaries. The term ''people skills'' is used to include both psychological skills and

social skills A social skill is any competence facilitating interaction and communication with others where social rules and relations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways. The process of learning these skills is called socia ...

but is less inclusive than

life skills Life skills are abilities for adaptive and positive behavior that enable humans to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of life. This concept is also termed as psychosocial competency. The subject varies greatly depending on social no ...

Social skills

Social skills are any skills facilitating interaction and

communication Communication is commonly defined as the transmission of information. Its precise definition is disputed and there are disagreements about whether Intention, unintentional or failed transmissions are included and whether communication not onl ...

with others. Social rules and relations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways. The process of learning such skills is called

socialization In sociology, socialization (also socialisation – see American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), spelling differences) is the process of Internalisation (sociology), internalizing the Norm (social), norm ...

.Clausen, John A. (ed.) (1968) ''Socialisation and Society'', Boston: Little Brown and Company

Soft skills

Soft skills are a combination of interpersonal people skills, social skills, communication skills, character traits, attitudes, career attributes and

emotional intelligence Emotional intelligence (EI), also known as emotional quotient (EQ), is the ability to perceive, use, understand, manage, and handle emotions. High emotional intelligence includes emotional recognition of emotions of the self and others, using ...

quotient (EQ) among others.

Development and maintenance

Development of a very high level of skill is often desirable for economic, social, or personal reasons. In his 2008 book ''

Outliers In statistics, an outlier is a data point that differs significantly from other observations. An outlier may be due to a variability in the measurement, an indication of novel data, or it may be the result of experimental error; the latter ar ...

'',

Malcolm Gladwell Malcolm Timothy Gladwell (born 3 September 1963) is a Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker. He has been a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' since 1996. He has published eight books. He is also the host of the podcast ''Revisionist ...

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 book '' Range: 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 a

polymath A polymath or polyhistor is an individual whose knowledge spans many different subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems. Polymaths often prefer a specific context in which to explain their knowledge, ...

, or in musical performance, a

multi-instrumentalist A multi-instrumentalist is a musician who plays two or more musical instruments, often but not exclusively at a professional level of proficiency. Also known as woodwind doubler, doubling, the practice allows greater ensemble flexibility and mor ...

. 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 to high-performance sport in his 2013 book '' The Sports Gene''. For thinking tasks, the

heritability of IQ Research on the heritability of intelligence quotient (IQ) inquires into the degree of variation in IQ within a population that is due to genetic variation between individuals in that population. There has been significant controversy in the academ ...

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 master tenpin bowlers found that average scores declined less than 10% from age 20 to age 70. 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''.

References

External links

American Society for Training & Development
(archived 29 October 1996)
Australian National Training Authority
(archived 11 June 2009)
NCVER's Review of generic skills for the new economy
(PDF) {{Authority control Learning Knowledge