6 Essential Human Skills That Will Differentiate You in Today’s Tech-Driven Workplace

6 Essential Human Skills That Will Differentiate You in Today’s Tech-Driven Workplace

Technology is shaping the business landscape at a faster pace and in ways unforeseen just a few years ago, and it is only accelerating. Advances in robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) disrupt more jobs and require humans to adopt new skills to cope and compete. A McKinsey study estimated that about 60 percent of all occupations have about one-third of activities that are technically automatable—and not just factory jobs, but everything from lab technicians to fashion designers and even CEOs. In the knowledge economy, the rise of robots and AI in analysis will mean every role will expand to focus on value that humans add.

Given that the level of ambiguity is amplifying and the rate of change is increasing, there are six essential skills for success in today’s workplace: critical thinking, influencing others, team collaboration, empathy, storytelling and learning how to learn. These skills cut across industry and profession – holding critical importance for everyone from a nurse to a product manager, investment banker or C-suite leader. The next generation of technology-steeped leaders, for whom the Internet and cell phone have always been a way of life, will need to hone and deepen these human-centric, interpersonal skills to differentiate themselves.

1.    Critical thinking: Greater ambiguity combined with an unfathomable volume of data that is expected to double every 12 hours in the near future is making issues even more complex. Aggregating, synthesizing and parsing apart the real data from the noise are critical elements to learn and practice. AI is driving significant productivity improvement where the problems can be disaggregated to a series of rules or “if-then” statements. People are required when problems are unstructured – when the outcome is not known in advance. These problems require creativity, experimentation and human connection to confront the ambiguity to ask and explore the right questions.

2.    Influencing others: The ability to influence others is a valuable skill that takes finesse and experience, especially when the people being influenced are not direct reports. In an influence skills workshop I teach, Kellogg students learn influencing skills to overcome resistance and gain cooperation to achieve goals and have impact. Students experience how successfully influencing with integrity requires an ongoing bilateral relationship built on trust, a deep understanding of the situational context, and a willingness to determine and invest in the techniques that will influence the other person.

3.    Team collaboration: No major problem is ever solved independently; it takes a team of people representing different points of view to get to an answer. Learning to collaborate and coordinate in order to deliver results is critical in many industries – making it the backbone of business school education. As we see in the cutting-edge research being conducted, machines and AI are becoming more integral to work teams to make them more productive – the machines will be our team members. And the better humans know how to build, manage and work in teams, the more they will be able to make the most of human-machine partnerships.

4.    Empathy: Successful interactions require an element of empathy. Leaders need to have the ability to see another person’s perspective and understand their viewpoint. Social behavior cues and discernment of others’ feelings are beyond machine algorithms. That’s not to diminish the potential of AI, but empathy has long been recognized as a key leadership skill that is often guided by face-to-face communication.

5.    Storytelling and communication: The ability to communicate clearly, present ideas and tell compelling stories is ever more critical to one’s success. People get energy from other people, they can hear and feel the passion and commitment in the spoken word. In the era of chatbots—sophisticated machines being developed that may one day converse as convincingly as humans—technology may make yet another inroad. But beyond simple informative exchanges among machines or between machines and humans, human-to-human interaction will retain the upper hand. It takes people to engage in active listening and difficult conversations. Anyone who has ever received challenging news, whether being laid off from a job or hearing a medical diagnosis, knows that the compassion of the delivery is as important as the content of the communication.

6.    Learning how to learn: Graduates of our program are expected to hold as many as 20 jobs throughout a single career. The jobs and futures we are educating for today may not exist in the future. Our job is to educate and equip our students with the skills that will be highly transferrable in whatever their reality becomes over time. Often students believe that once they cross the graduation stage, they are done – they have reached the finish line. In today’s world this is an impossible end point – they can not stand still, they must have the confidence and persistence to assess their skills, understand their gaps and seek help in closing them.

In an uncertain and changing world, there is still a competitive advantage to being human. Technological advancements will continue to change every business and industry, from health care to finance and manufacturing. For the next generation of business leaders, learning to harness technology while also honing these six skills is a winning combination.


Joan Clotet Sulé

#DigitalHumanist || Digital Talent Advisor · Facilitator · Coach · Podcaster || I combine business, talent and technology purpose & skills to help my customers advance to the talent management of the future 🚀

5y

Humans closers to heart vs brain will shine in an AI world

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Ilya Tchaplia P.Eng.

MW and MMW technology for Space, wireless, SatCom and Defence.

6y

What about creativity?

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Wayne Johnson

Senior Buyer Stamping Tooling at Whirlpool Corporation

6y

These are all important and when a manager lacks these skills good people will not follow them. It is easy to see in today's work environments where these six skills will play an even greater role in achieving results in the future.

Truong Dang Nghia

New Equipment Business Director at KONE VietNam

6y

Thanks for sharing. Empathy is very...very important!

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