AI Gave Us What We Wanted. Now What?

For years, there has been a consistent desire at work for more meaningful, substantive responsibilities versus repetitive tasks. AI has taken on the routine work, and that moment has arrived.

There's now a 50/50 split between technical and human capabilities required in almost every role. The human skills getting the most attention right now, judgment, leadership, communication, resilience, adaptability, aren't single skills built directly. Here's the twist: they're outcomes, what happens when several foundational human skills come together in a specific moment.

This episode takes apart two of them, judgment and leadership, to see exactly what they're built from. Resilience and adaptability get the same treatment in the next episode.

Transcript

Welcome to The Career Edge, where we unpack how work actually works. I'm Leslie Ferry. For years there's been a consistent desire at work for more meaningful, substantive responsibilities versus repetitive tasks. And the great news is that that moment has arrived. AI has taken on our routine, maybe somewhat boring work, giving us the opportunity to do something we've been desiring, more substantive.

Thought-focused work. The question of this raise is where to focus our career growth now to capitalize on this opportunity. Research shows that there's a 50-50 split between technical and human skills required in almost every role today. So knowing which human skills deliver on these new responsibilities matters as much as any technical skill we build. Human skills, most referred to as in high demand right now, include things like.

Judgment, leadership, communication, resilience, and adaptability, among others. But here's the twist. These aren't single skills built directly. They're what happens when several foundational human skills come together and are applied in our specific work situations, including the work itself and our teammates. So today we're going to look deeper at two of these outcomes: judgment and leadership.

And explore the human skills that lead to strong results for each. We'll do the same for resilience and adaptability next time.

The most essential human skills powering judgment are problem solving, critical thinking, and intellectual humility. Problem solving starts by ensuring we've identified the true root cause of the issue. That requires an analytical approach to gathering as much relevant detail as possible before deciding anything. Then, before finalizing the decision, we look at it critically by overlaying critical thinking.

Where we question what we've analyzed and look at the situation and data from a different perspective to pressure test our analysis. One technique is to assume we're wrong and build the strongest argument we can against our own decision. And the ability to openly consider a different perspective, especially one that runs against where we are already leaning, is fueled by intellectual humility.

Say the data points one way, but a colleague raises a concern that doesn't fit your current pattern. Intellectual humility is what lets us take that concern seriously instead of setting it aside because it's inconvenient. It's what helps us test the feasibility of a decision that might already feel comfortable before we commit to it. So judgment as an outcome is problem solving and critical thinking.

Held open by intellectual humility, applied to a specific decision. Leadership builds on everything we just walked through. Setting a strategic direction starts with that same sound judgment, the clarity that comes from problem solving, critical thinking, and staying open to more than one perspective. Judgment is just the first attribute of leadership. Once a direction is set, leadership means.

Bring our team members along with it, helping them to believe in the direction, not just moving through the motions towards it. And what moves someone toward a shared goal can look different for each person, based on several things. What someone values most, recognition, autonomy, certainty, connection. How someone processes information quickly out loud or slowly in private before they're ready to respond.

What they're currently carrying, a personal stretch, a past experience that makes them thoughtful about a similar decision. Even career stage where a new team member might benefit from the full reasoning behind the decision. While someone more senior is already thinking about the downstream impacts on customers, on process, on their own team. There's no single key. Leadership means building enough human knowledge about each individual.

To know which of these or something else is true for the person in front of us.

That knowledge starts with active listening, not just hearing a question, but genuinely understanding why someone is asking it, rather than dismissing it as pushback or a lack of buy-in. Making sense of that, why, draws on the same critical thinking and intellectual humility we just walked through, now applied to a person instead of a decision. From there, communication carries it forward, sharing the specific details that

This person needs to move forward, not a generic version of the message. And empathy makes sure what we share actually meets them where they are, not just what we think they need to know. That's leadership, sound judgment about where to go, human knowledge about each person to know what will move them there with us, and enough openness to let their input make that direction even stronger.

We are in the middle of a real evolution at work. The repetitive tasks are moving on, freeing us to deliver strategies, recommendations, and decisions that genuinely move organizations forward. Evolution asks something of us too. As the work evolves, so do we, and the specific human skills that now define how well we do it. That's where a career edge comes from now, not from doing more of the same thing.

but from understanding what these outcomes are made of and building them with purpose. Thanks for listening to The Career Edge. I'll see you next time.