Vanessa Van Edwards says your edge in an AI workplace is micro social skills: storytelling, calming difficult clients, speed-reading people. Hire for complementary strengths, not matching personalities, so teams keep their human advantage.
I wanna talk about AI. As a society, we're in this in-between stage. We don't really know what's on the horizon. It's almost like trying to turn around the Titanic when we have no idea where the iceberg is. Just explain to us, how do we maintain our humanity? What is the sort of insurance policy that we as humans need to develop to prepare ourselves in this age of AI?
We have to think of soft skills, our career insurance against AI. And the way that I want you to think about it is that there are micro social skills. Yes, we can think about being likable or charismatic, but what's going to differentiate humans at work, work— our workplace communication is these micro skills. Being a great storyteller, being able to calm down a difficult client, being able to speed read someone, being able to psychologically interview someone so you can predict success. I think that we have to begin to think about what are the micro skills that make us human, that in the room, on video, in person, AI cannot replicate. the more we can invest in those microskills and actually tease out what are the microskills that could help me succeed in this job or this role, and also thinking about our companies as roles by strength. If we have a hiring manager, we don't want them to accidentally hire their exact same personality. Can they identify what are the social strengths in this role, both internally and externally? I think this is going to transform the way we talk about soft skills at work.
