Skills for LIFE
What is ‘Skills for LIFE’ and why is it important?
Skills for Life is a University initiative around helping you develop key skills. Awareness of skills, strengths, values and areas for development is important to ensure you feel empowered for employment.
The four ‘Skills for Life’ are:
Global Mindset
What is a Global Mindset?
A global mindset means being able to understand and respect different cultures, communicate effectively with people from various backgrounds, and recognise how global issues affect society and individuals.
Why is it important:
- Cultural Appreciation: Learn to value and respect cultural differences.
- Effective Communication: Be able to talk and work with people from diverse backgrounds.
- Global Awareness: Understand how worldwide issues impact society and people’s lives.
Creativity
What is Creativity?
Creativity is closely linked to critical thinking. It involves using your imagination to come up with new ideas, methods, and solutions to problems. Creativity is a skill that can be learnt, including the ability to try new things, experiment and explore.
Why is it important:
- Imagination: Creativity requires you to think outside the box and develop unique ideas.
- Problem Solving: Use creative thinking to find innovative solutions to challenges.
- Learning and Experimenting: Creativity is a skill you can learn by trying new things, experimenting, and exploring different possibilities.
- Digital and Data Skills: Apply creativity in using digital tools and data in innovative ways.
By nurturing your creativity, you’ll be better equipped to tackle problems and come up with fresh, effective solutions.
Self-Awareness and Wellbeing
What is Self-Awareness and Wellbeing?
Self-awareness and well-being involve understanding yourself, reflecting on your experiences, using feedback to improve, and clearly expressing your skills and strengths. It also includes resilience, which means being able to bounce back from setbacks or failures.
Why is it important:
- Self-Awareness: Know your strengths and areas for improvement.
- Feedback: Use advice and feedback to grow and develop.
- Resilience: Stay motivated and keep a balanced perspective, even when things don’t go as planned.
Social Responsibility
What is Social Responsibility?
Social responsibility means thinking about how your actions affect others and the environment. It involves making positive contributions to society and future generations.
Why is it important:
- Ethical Impact: Consider how your decisions and actions impact people and the planet.
- Positive Contribution: Aim to benefit society through your actions.
- Influence Change: Be ready to question, challenge, and drive positive changes.
Each of these main skills includes specific attributes that will help you succeed in different areas of life, such as your education, career, relationships, and personal wellbeing.
The goal of the Skills for LIFE is to help you understand and talk about the important skills you gain at Lincoln. These skills will help you reach your goals and stay strong when facing challenges.
What are the ways I can improve my skills for LIFE?
Lincoln Award
The Lincoln Award is an employability framework designed to support you in preparing for your future. Whatever career route you decide to take, you will need to be able to communicate the skills you have developed and how these relate to the job role or opportunity.
The Lincoln Award supports students to develop and learn how to demonstrate their employability skills; as well as taking part in relevant activities, you will be supported to reflect on your experiences and learn how to apply your skills to any part of a recruitment process. By completion of the award, you will feel confident in your career direction, skills and understanding of the recruitment process.
Skills Assessment
Informed by the graduate labour market, our Skills Assessment is a great place to start thinking about your current skill set and measure your progress throughout your university journey.
- Log in to CareerLinc using your university username and password.
- Click on “Skills” on the menu bar, and you can get started.
- There are 32 definitions, and you choose the statement most relevant to each.
- You can retake the Skills Assessment as many times as you wish, and your progress is monitored for you to see.
After completing the Skills Assessment, we recommend you add some Skill Statements (within the ‘Skills’ section on CareerLinc). This will be useful for your personal development and reflection in the future when you prepare for any recruitment process. If you feel somewhat confident in a particular skill, you add a skill statement with some information about where you have developed it. An example might be teamwork skills you have developed from a part-time job or leadership skills from a position on a committee or sports team.
Academic content
As of July 2025, all undergraduate and postgraduate taught courses have been mapped against the specific skills within the Skills for Life framework. This means that your academics have identified which core modules excel in supporting you to nurture your creativity, social responsibility, global mindset and self-awareness & wellbeing.