The Empathy Advantage: Why Emotional Intelligence is the Key for You to Thrive in an AI World
The Unexpected Skills That Will Keep You Ahead of AI
How do you keep up with AI and prepare yourself for the future of work?
This is a challenging task. I've worked as an AI professional at an AI startup, and I can tell you, that things are moving so fast with AI that, it is a real struggle for any AI professional to keep up with learning new skills & the latest developments.
So if AI professionals struggle to keep up with AI, what chance do you have to keep up? Well, I believe you have a very good chance to keep up so your skills continue to have value and be relevant even with increasing automation and job disruption by AI.
But not if you do nothing, and keep thinking the same way.
If you are prepared to develop a couple of key skills, this will give you a significant advantage in the workplace of tomorrow even with all the disruptions of AI.
The thing is, these skills are probably the last skills you might imagine you need in the age of AI. So what are these skills? To get to that, we first need to revisit how we think about work.
Soft Skills v Hard Skills
Soft skills and hard skills are two distinct categories of abilities that play crucial roles in your personal and professional development.
Hard skills refer to the specific, technical knowledge and proficiencies required for you to perform a particular job or task, whereas soft skills encompass the interpersonal, communicative, and problem-solving abilities that enable you to navigate social and collaborative environments effectively.
So your hard skills are typically acquired through formal education, training, or certification programs, and they are often easily quantifiable and demonstrable. For example, proficiency in coding languages, mastery of financial accounting principles, or expertise in operating specialised machinery are all examples of hard skills.
These skills are essential for helping you execute the core functions of your job and are often the primary criteria used in evaluating your suitability for a particular role.
In contrast, soft skills are more subjective and challenging to assess, as they are developed through your personal experience, observation, and growth.
Effective communication, critical thinking, adaptability, empathy, and leadership are all examples of soft skills. Soft skills enable you to collaborate with colleagues, navigate complex situations, and adapt to changing environments, making them crucial for success in the modern workplace.
The distinction between soft skills and hard skills is not always clear-cut, as many roles require a combination of both. For example, a successful project manager might need technical expertise in project management software (a hard skill) as well as the ability to effectively delegate tasks, resolve conflicts, and motivate team members (soft skills).
Unfortunately, soft skills are generally undervalued compared to hard skills both by employers and workers, despite their obvious benefits. In an article by Forbes Why No One Cares About Soft Skills they highlighted:
In today's job market, it's all about the hard skills bosses want to see that you have to do the job. As a result, soft skills are often seen as less important than hard skills. However, this view overlooks the fact that soft skills are essential for successful leadership.
They went on to speculate as to the reasons why soft skills are often ignored which were:
They are difficult to quantify and measure
They are rarely taught in education or work
They are rarely considered when hiring or promoting employees over hard skills
They went on to highlight the dangers of ignoring soft skills and the advantages of those who do develop them:
Think about it this way: No matter what industry you're in, you will always deal with people. Whether you're working with clients, vendors, customers or colleagues, your ability to build strong relationships plays a significant factor in your success. Those who can master the art of networking, persuasion and conflict resolution will likely have a bigger advantage...although soft skills are often seen as less important than hard skills, they're essential for personal and professional success. They may be difficult to quantify and measure, but that doesn't make them any less critical.
Why Soft Skills Beat Hard Skills in the Age of AI
So soft skills are already very useful now, even if they tend to be undervalued and ignored by many employers and employees. So what do soft skills mean for you in the age of AI? Are they still relevant and useful?
The answer is yes absolutely - soft skills are even more valuable than they have ever been, as I'll explain.
I've written previously about the potential for AI to disrupt the world of work in Will AI Take our jobs or give us new purpose? Navigating the future of work.
In this article some of the key things I highlighted were:
It's hard to predict exactly how AI will disrupt work in the future
Simplistic beliefs such as 'AI will never do my job' or 'AI take everyone's jobs' are unlikely to be true and are not likely to be helpful for adapting to the actual changes AI will bring in the future
Given AI's current and near-term expected abilities, a more likely scenario for the future is that AI will take over some roles, and not others, but that this balance is likely to continue to change over time
This would suggest the common belief that you develop skills in one profession, with one set of 'hard' skills that doesn't change that much for your whole life, is not likely to be true or useful in the future.
More likely in the age of AI, businesses, organisations and employees will need to continue to develop their hard skills to stay relevant and useful, perhaps even dramatically changing & evolving their hard skills, as AI takes over more roles.
In this hybrid new world, where we have a mixture of both humans and AI working together, this is where soft skills will become even more valuable than they have been before.
I would even go as far as to say, that soft skills are likely to become even more valuable than hard skills for a few key reasons.
Why?
Firstly, because soft skills are skills much harder for AI to develop and learn, so are less likely to be replaced by automation any time soon. Soft skills such as effective communication, critical thinking, adaptability, and empathy - are going to be much harder for AI to achieve.
Secondly, soft skills are going to be even more valuable in human-AI hybrid workplaces, where roles are not as fixed as before, and who is in a particular role, human or AI - will require the kind of adaptability only soft skills can bring.
Soft skills will be critical for helping hybrid workplaces achieve their maximum potential. Humans who can use effective communication, critical thinking, adaptability, and empathy with AI systems as well as other humans, are going to be the essential glue to helping hybrid companies work successfully.
But you might say, yes I can maybe understand why I might need soft skills for other humans, but why would I need them to work with AI?
Well, think about the following…
You're working with an AI at a company to solve a problem. The AI works differently from a human. Knowing what is most effective way to communicate with an AI is more likely to deliver a better result. Being able to think critically when working with an AI, can mean for example we can question and understand the responses of an AI, to know when it's doing well and not so well.
I’ve written more about why the way we treat AI matters in The Hidden Benefits of Treating AI Respectfully (That most don’t realise).
Adaptability will be crucial because AI is not a fixed thing, new AI systems will have new abilities and new ways of working, and those employees who can better adapt to them will deliver more value. And yes, even having empathy for AI could be incredibly useful for working with AI as it is for working with humans.
Soft skills will be the essential glue that enables hybrid human-AI workplaces to reach their full potential. But there are many soft skills, which might be the best if you had to pick 2 to work on?
AI Age Core Soft Skills: Empathy and Resilience
Empathy and resilience are likely to be the 2 most useful soft skills in the age of AI hybrid workplaces.
So why Empathy?
Working with an AI and didn't get the result you wanted? what would be the better response: get angry & blame the AI?
Or, would a better response be to use some empathy, consider why the AI didn't give you the result you wanted, consider how the AI seems to be working and if it has made mistakes like this before? Has it really understood what you asked for?
Did you ask for what you wanted in a way that it could understand? In the same way empathy is useful for dealing with humans, empathy is a useful skill for working with AI too.
You see a colleague struggling to use AI to get a job done? Or you see an AI struggling to get its tasks done when working with other humans?
Having empathy for both human and AI colleagues, and a better understanding of how they work, their strengths and weaknesses - will be an incredibly valuable skill employers of the future will desperately need and demand.
Empathy is going to be a critical skill in successful hybrid workplaces. In the age of AI, empathy will be a superpower.
Why Resilience?
As we covered earlier, the new age of AI hybrid workplace is likely to be one of high and ongoing disruption, to the way we work, how we work, more than ever before. Fragility is not likely to be an advantage in this future.
But much more will be going on than disruption of how we work. As I also highlighted in Will AI Take our jobs or give us new purpose? Navigating the future of work our work is not just a means to earn a living:
Work is not just a means to earn a living; it significantly shapes our identity and purpose. A recent McKinsey report highlights that nearly two-thirds of US employees see their jobs as a key part of their life’s purpose...the relationship between work and personal identity is a complex one. Our jobs give us a sense of belonging, define our social roles, and influence our self-perception...this evolution raises crucial questions: What happens to our identity when our work changes drastically? How do we adapt to a workplace where AI plays a significant role?
Dealing with the challenges to our sense of life purpose and identity, having to reevaluate these more often than we imagined, is going to require a good degree of resilience to deal with.
Resilience is a core soft skill that will enable us to develop other new skills essential for the age of AI such as:
1. Embracing Lifelong Learning: Continuously update your skills and knowledge to stay relevant in an AI-driven job market.
2. Being Agile: Adaptability is key in rapidly evolving job landscapes influenced by AI. Find and develop skills you enjoy, you are good at, that are needed and AI can’t do well.
3. Specialise: Focus on areas where AI complements human skills, increasing your value in the job market.
4. Understanding AI’s Role in Your Industry: Stay informed about how AI is reshaping your field and the opportunities it presents
5. Participating in AI Implementation: Be involved in designing AI-enhanced work processes in your organisation.
6. Adopting a Growth Mindset: Be open to change and willing to learn from AI integration experiences.
Develop Your EI to Thrive with AI
The core skills of empathy and resilience have other advantages. These core soft skills are not likely to change compared to hard skills, so are good skills to invest your time for your long-term professional development in the AI age.
Furthermore, another increasing trend has been employees demanding more meaning and purpose from their work. A recent McKinsey report had some insightful findings on the purpose people are looking for from work and life.
Developing the core skills of empathy and resilience, for both you and the organisations you work for, is likely to help lead to more fulfilling work and workplaces and lead to better outcomes.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) alone is a powerful technology, Emotional Intelligence (EI) is what will enable it to bring the most benefits to businesses and society. AI has huge potential, but AI + EI will be what will really drive progress & outcomes to the next level.
As Business EQ Research Monthly explains:
To navigate the AI-driven future successfully, leaders and managers must focus more than ever on developing their people skills. Leaders and managers who at one time were recruited or promoted on their technical skills will no longer have such a wide door of opportunity open to them...leaders/managers of the future will create success because of their ability to develop and use their own Emotional Intelligence at work to foster cultures that encourage Emotional Intelligence to deal not only with the technical changes that AI will rapidly bring but to deal with the changes in the way people work together and with AI.
By developing these two key emotional intelligence skills yourself through courses, workshops and other ongoing learning, you'll help give yourself the advantage & superpowers you need to survive and thrive in the AI future workplace.
But what’s your perspective? do you agree that emotional intelligence is the key skill we need for the age of AI? or do you have a very different perspective?
I’d love to know what you think whatever that is, let me know in the comments and let’s continue this important discussion about AI, emotional intelligence and the future of work.