Soft skills.

Power skills.

Human skills.

No one can really decide what to call these non-technical, ‘developed capacities’ to learn, interact with others, and manage one’s work.

But leaders do agree on one thing: these skills are becoming the differentiators in the AI era.

Josh Bersin, a leading HR analyst, prefers the term "power skills" over "soft skills." He argues these non-routine cognitive and social abilities deserve the upgrade in terminology because they're the most difficult capabilities for technology to automate.

​He emphasizes the point, saying, “We are becoming a Powerskills economy: driven not by technical skills, but even more by empathy, design, communications, and management.”

The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2025 survey of over 1,000 leading global employers agrees. It shows that ‘core’ or human skills remain the most sought-after among employers.

While these skills matter across all professions, they're especially critical for HR professionals who sit at the intersection of people, technology, and organizational strategy.

Let's explore the top 5 non-technical or human skills HR professionals will need for the next 4-5 years (and why it’s fair to say that all of us will need them to some extent).

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1/ Mental flexibility

What it is: This skill combines taking new perspectives, switching between mental models, modifying strategies, and being open to change in the workplace.

In other words, mental flexibility is the ability to match your approach to the situation.

The WEF combines mental flexibility with ‘resilience’ in its list of core skills, and I can see why.

Studying long-distance runners, psychologists have found that mental flexibility strongly influences how well someone can persist through challenges. It’s likely this skill goes hand in hand with a resilient ‘bend, don’t break’ approach to work.

Why it’s important: According to the WEF survey, employers rank 'resilience, flexibility, and agility' as the second most important core skill, just after 'analytical thinking' (which I classified as a technical skill in Part 1).

Later in the report, employers ranked this same skill behind creative thinking in the ‘skills on the rise’ list. The report noted that flexibility is important to in-demand job families such as Big Data, FinTech, and AI/ML specialists.

Not only is this a desirable and growing skill requirement from employers, it’s also less likely that gen AI will replace it, based on WEF’s analysis of thousands of tasks in an Indeed database.

As workplaces get more complicated, mental flexibility is becoming a key human strength that helps HR professionals connect new tech tools with what people actually need.

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2/ Talent management

What it is: Like our first skill, talent management isn't just one thing - it's really a collection of related abilities: giving clear instructions, setting performance standards, monitoring progress, coaching team members, and teaching new skills.

At its core, talent management involves aligning what and how work gets done with organizational goals.

Why it’s important: We’ve all heard the predictions that agentic workforces are coming.

This will make every employee a manager who will need to understand talent management’s core components (providing guidance and direction, monitoring, and coaching).

Although these activities will look different with AI colleagues, Microsoft’s Frontier Firm report predicts we will all ‘become bosses’ to an AI team.

The data support this view as well. WEF includes 'talent management' as the highest-rated management skill among all core skills.

I’ve seen this skill’s importance myself when training HR folks on building and using AI assistants.

To help them conceptualize how to properly break down jobs into tasks, I often use the analogy that AI assistants function like interns who require clear roles, specific instructions, and consistent feedback throughout their work process.

Thankfully, understanding and managing work comes naturally to most HR pros. But acquiring and embedding this new digital workforce requires new ways of workforce planning, employee engagement, and leadership development.

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3/ Self-awareness (motivation)

What it is: Self-awareness involves recognizing your own emotions, thoughts, and motivations so that you apply the right effort at the right time to get stuff done.

This one’s a bit tricky, so let’s look at an example: an HR manager notices they procrastinate on difficult performance conversations because they fear conflict (been there).

With self-awareness, they can acknowledge this pattern, understand its root cause, and consciously develop strategies to prepare for these discussions more effectively, perhaps by role-playing the conversation first or scheduling it earlier in the day when their energy is highest.

Why it’s important: The WEF report sings this skill’s praises. Employers across the globe rank it highly and expect it to increase in use. Over 50% of employers say self-awareness skills will be core to their workforce over the next 5 years.

Not only that, generative AI skills interact with self-awareness.

Take AI coaching for example. AI coaches can help users reflect on their own thoughts, emotions, and motivations, identifying where they might flag and providing strategies for managing them.

In this way, HR professionals who combine self-awareness with gen AI skills create a powerful feedback loop: the tools enhance their self-understanding, which in turn helps them adapt more effectively to workplace changes.

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4/ Creative thinking

What it is: There are two components of creative thinking: originality and fluency of ideas.

Originality is the skill of coming up with unusual or clever ideas or solutions.

Fluency of ideas is the skill in generating a number of ideas about a topic.

Creative thinking requires generating many ideas (quantity) and ensuring some are truly innovative (quality).

Why it’s important: We know that creative thinking impacts important job functions such as problem-solving, planning, product/service development. And, WEF-surveyed employers agree.

Creative thinking ranked 4th out of 26 core skills and skills expected to increase in use. WEF also found that industries such as insurance, education, healthcare, advanced manufacturing, telecom, and IT all ranked creative thinking highly.

This matters especially for HR professionals who bridge company goals and people's needs.

While AI takes over routine paperwork, HR's real value will come from their creativity: imagining better ways to build teams, creating meaningful learning opportunities, and developing workplace cultures that make people want to stay. These human-centered innovations are something no algorithm can truly duplicate.

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5/ Emotional intelligence

What it is: Psychologists debate whether emotional intelligence EQ is its own thing or a combination of things under a new label. I’ll be annoying and say “it’s both.”

Like how bronze isn't just copper and tin side by side but an alloy with new properties, EQ combines skills, including self-awareness (like what we mentioned earlier), self-regulation, empathy, and social skills into something different than its parts.

EQ captures a couple of the remaining highly-ranked skills in the WEF report, including ‘leadership and social influence’ and ‘empathy and active listening.’

Why it’s important: Proponents of EQ, such as Daniel Goleman, have long argued that it’s more important than IQ.

The 2024 WEF ranking revealed something telling: leadership and social influence have surpassed traditionally valued traits like dependability, attention to detail, and quality control in both importance and projected growth during the AI era.

What does this look like in practice? Imagine an HR director navigating a challenging company reorganization. An emotionally intelligent leader does more than handle the technical elements (new reporting structures, compensation adjustments, role realignments). They go deeper by:

• Scheduling one-on-one conversations with department heads to hear concerns
• Creating psychological safety for honest dialogue about team anxieties
• Helping managers process their own emotions before guiding their teams
• Building trust through transparent communication at every step

This emotional intelligence transforms what could be a solely administrative process into an opportunity for organizational growth and stronger relationships—something AI simply cannot replicate.

Wrapping Up

For many HR pros, skills like self-awareness and emotional intelligence come naturally (they're often why people are drawn to human-focused work in the first place). And talent management has always been central to the HR toolkit.

But anyone working in HR will need to develop all of these skills and consider what changes are needed post-AI transformation.

• Mental flexibility will help HR professionals adapt to rapid technological change.
• Talent management will expand to include guiding both human and AI colleagues.
• Self-awareness will become even more crucial as we navigate new workplace dynamics.
• Creative thinking will differentiate human value as routine tasks get automated.
• Emotional intelligence will remain the foundation that technology simply cannot replicate.

These human skills don't exist in isolation from the technical capabilities we discussed in Part 1.

The future belongs to those who can blend both worlds. Companies that invest in developing these combined skillsets will see better business outcomes, stronger cultures, and more resilient organizations.

And for individuals, this balanced approach creates not just job security, but meaningful career growth in a rapidly evolving workplace.

The AI revolution isn't about technical OR human skills. It's about technical AND human skills, working together to create something greater than either could achieve alone.

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