The ability to explore, understand, and appreciate diverse perspectives is a vital skill for success in both your personal and professional life. Whether in the workplace, classroom, or out in the community, embracing different viewpoints builds innovation, collaboration, and understanding.
But what skills do you develop when you explore different points of view? The Skills Builder Partnership aims to help you to develop 8 key skills that are essential for life and work:
1. Listening
Listening is more than just hearing the words someone says. It’s about understanding, empathy, and respect.
When you explore different views and perspectives, you’ll build this skill by learning to listen to others without interrupting and using your body language to show you’re paying attention. You’ll know when to ask questions to deepen your understanding and how to rephrase what you’ve heard to show you understand.
Listening is a skill that enhances your ability to connect with others and build meaningful relationships. In the workplace, listening skills are an important part of communication (an essential skill) that improves teamwork and problem-solving, which leads to a happier and healthier team environment.
For example, if there is a decision to make as a team, people in your group may have different ideas. Taking the time to listen to each person’s opinion ensures no one feels ignored and by considering everyone’s point of view, you can propose a solution that makes everybody feel heard.
You’ll also learn to look further into what people say by comparing different perspectives and where they come from, and understanding the emotion or body language behind words.
2. Speaking
Speaking is a skill that allows you to communicate effectively with other people. Speaking confidently and respectfully, even when you disagree with someone, enhances your credibility and influence both in work and in social situations.
Being able to engage your listeners and present your points clearly will be an invaluable part of communication that you can use in interviews, presentations, negotiations, and everyday interactions.
Take a moment to reflect and think about a time when you presented your ideas to a group, whether it was in school, in work, or in a conversation with friends. How did you use your voice and words to show your idea is a good one.
Exploring different views also helps you to better understand your own. It encourages you to share your thoughts effectively and express yourself clearly. This will help you learn to speak influentially to persuade; you’ll learn to think about how you can share your views by structuring your points, presenting clear reasoning, and using examples to back them up.
In discussions, you’re likely to receive or provide feedback or comments. It’s key to remember to speak respectfully, showing you’re open to different possibilities and perspectives. So if you disagree with someone’s view or response, you should present clear reasons why your views differ, instead of arguing or being unkind.
3. Problem-solving
Encountering diverse views often presents challenges, giving you plenty of opportunities to work on your problem-solving skills when finding solutions.
When you engage with diverse perspectives, you’re exposed to a broader range of ideas and approaches. This diversity fosters creativity and critical thinking, allowing you to come up with inventive solutions to complex problems.
For example, we’ve already touched on listening to everyone’s ideas to make sure they feel heard, so let’s take it further and think about what happens if people disagree. This is where your problem-solving skills are useful; this is an opportunity to find common ground when there is no simple solution and come up with something everybody can agree on (a compromise), even though it’s not exactly what they originally wanted.
By evaluating multiple viewpoints and using logical reasoning to analyse causes and effects before making a decision, you’ll become more adaptable–a crucial skill in today’s fast-paced and ever-changing world and workplaces.
4. Creativity
Most of us struggle to get out of our comfort zones, preferring to stick to what we know.
Exploring different views boosts your creativity by giving you experience of imagining different situations and concepts, and using context to understand those differing views. It challenges you to look at things from different angles, and this is an important aspect of creativity.
When you’re exposed to diverse perspectives, you’ll start to think outside the box more and you have the tools to come up with new ideas.
5. Positive thinking
Maintaining a positive attitude can be challenging, particularly during times of personal difficulty or frightening world events. However, it is important for your overall happiness as well as your professional success.
Learning more about other people and their views, even if they differ from your own, helps you to look for opportunities to learn, as well as increasing your emotional intelligence (managing and understanding your emotions, and those of others). This means instead of viewing differing views or disagreements as a source of frustration, you’ll learn to spot the opportunity for growth.
For example, athletes don’t win all their races. Someone will win first place, and this means lots of other people in the race won’t. They have to be very resilient and use their positive thinking to change their point of view. Instead of thinking about how they weren’t good enough, they learn from their performance to ensure they improve their technique for their next race.
Staying positive allows you to approach challenges with confidence, show grace under pressure, and keep trying when things go wrong, helping others to see the opportunities too.
6. Aiming high
Aiming high means setting ambitious goals and going after them. In other words, chasing the things you want even if it seems like a big challenge to achieve them.
Exploring different views helps you to build a mindset of ambition and continuous personal improvement which will help build your motivation to approach new challenges and achieve your goals. By seeking out diverse perspectives and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, you’ll learn to involve others and listen to their views (like constructive criticism).
All of these skills will allow you to approach new challenges confidently, helping you meet those high goals you’ve set for yourself and to reach your full potential.
7. Leadership
Leadership is about inspiring others and empowering your team, and great leaders are people who can embrace and harness diverse views and perspectives.
When you explore different views from a place of curiosity and open-mindedness, you’ll hone essential leadership skills such as empathy, communication, and collaboration. Good leaders know that diversity is the greatest strength their team can have and understand how to make use of everyone’s experience, knowledge, and talents.
Effective leadership involves fostering an inclusive and supportive environment where every voice is heard, valued, and respected. When you explore diverse views, you will inspire others to do the same, strengthening your entire team in the process.
8. Teamwork
“Teamwork makes the dream work,” as the saying goes. It’s a cliché, but it’s also true. Teamwork relies heavily on your ability to connect and work effectively with others, improving your ability to spot strengths and weaknesses, and to support others.
Exploring different views helps you to build teamwork skills such as cooperation, communication, and compromise. You’ll learn to work with people with diverse and different perspectives and how to use everyone’s strengths and experiences to achieve shared goals.
Effective teamwork requires mutual respect, trust, and accountability, as well as the ability to work through conflicts and come to agreements. By creating a culture of inclusivity where people can share diverse views, you’ll help your team work together more effectively.
Want to read more?
To find out more about communication and your relationships with other, why not explore other articles about this topic:
- Handling Difficult Conversations: Deciding When To Disagree And Disengage
- Having And Hearing Difficult Conversations At Work
- How To Learn More About Other People And Their Experiences
- Navigating 2024 with strength and resilience
- How To Be More Empathetic To Other People’s Views And Experiences
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