One of the things I personally believe in incredibly important, a skill that everyone should have and cultivate, above all others, is the skill to problem solve.
Sure, public speaking is important. So is Language Arts, Math, Science etc. But if you ask me, once you have problem solving skills, then everything else falls out of that.
Here’s an example: a number of years ago, I hired an intern to work on our IT dept at the company I was working at. The guys resume looked great, he had a certification in the type of network software we were using, and his credentials looked awesome. We interviewed him and he seemed to know his stuff. So we hired him and brought him in to work.