6 soft skills IT leaders need in the AI age
As IT leaders deploy more cognitive capabilities both within IT and throughout the enterprise, certain roles and tasks will be automated away and new opportunities to innovate and add value will emerge. It’s a time of great excitement for some in the organization – and painful change and worry for others.
As IT leaders help their teams and companies navigate this new terrain, their uniquely human capabilities will become even more important.
“With the age of AI upon us, the switch back to human skills should be a critical focus for organizations,” says Jen Kelchner, co-founder of consultancy LDR21, which helps companies and individuals navigate change initiatives and develop more open organizational cultures. “These emerging technologies help to take the routine tasks off of humans and allows us to get back to the creative, adaptable creatures we are known to be.”
[ Culture change is the hardest part of digital transformation. Get the digital transformation eBook: Teaching an elephant to dance. ]
As the use of artificial intelligence grows, so too will the need for certain so-called soft skills like adaptability, communication – all part of your emotional intelligence skillset. In fact, these types of competencies will become so important in the AI era that Kelchner suggests abandoning the term soft skills altogether and calling them core capabilities instead. (That’s the second person to suggest this to us recently: Read Goodbye soft skills, hello core skills: Why IT must rebrand this critical competency.)
Whether you choose to call them soft skills or core skills, note these key proficiencies that will serve CIOs (and their teams) well:
Also called psychological safety, emotional safety is that feeling of being secure enough to bring your full self to the workplace. This is particularly important in fast-changing, highly charged environments.
How do you create a safe space for your organization? “Increase your restraint and make sure you have a measure of control over your own emotions, so people don’t feel like they are walking on eggshells,” says Margery Myers, a principal consultant and coach with Bates Communications, who works with CIOs and other corporate leaders on executive communication.
