Why Human Skills Matter When AI Can Write the Emails and Reports
Updated: Sep 15
Written by Wayne Elsey, Founder & CEO
Wayne Elsey is the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Elsey Enterprises. He is also the founder and CEO of Funds2Orgs, one of his independent brands.
I've spent decades building teams, and if you know me, you know the one thing I keep saying: people matter. Sure, we live in a world of artificial intelligence (AI), but human judgment is still essential. AI doesn't judge, and it doesn't feel or care about your feelings and experiences. As a result, human skills and judgment are still critical in business.
Some people look great on paper and then fail when it comes time to make a decisive decision. I’ve also seen others who may have thinner resumes, yet they rise to the occasion with bold thinking because they understand that human judgment, soft skills, and critical thinking still matter, so they master knowing and influencing others.
The floor just got higher
The reality is that AI has made a lot of skills we took for granted cheap. I hate to say it, but anyone can "write" with AI. How many emails, decks, and reports have you seen written by a machine that are passable? But here's the thing: the key differentiator isn't writing any longer. It's judgment, critical thinking, and social intelligence.
PwC reported in its Global AI Jobs Barometer, which analyzed more than a billion job postings worldwide, that human skills matter. Many thought that technical AI skills and expertise would be essential, but they're not. The most sought-after skills at a time of AI slop, when everything is driven to the median and vanilla content, are people with critical human skills.
What judgment actually looks like
When AI search tossed our digital marketing efforts in the air, we made some painful decisions. Our AI strategists couldn't fix the crash in our site visits, no matter how hard they tried. What I realized we needed was a strategist who thought two and three steps ahead and had the human skills to realize that thoughtful critical thinking was essential.
While some companies focused on how to beat AI at its game, which is a fool's errand, I wanted thoughtful strategists. A few of the things that worked were a retrenchment of what we shared in our marketing. Gone were broad thought leadership articles for the industry, and we stuck to our social enterprise brands. It worked.
At a time when AI is not trusted by many, and everyone has learned not to trust what they see or hear, human judgment is an absolute. Someone needs to ask: when and how do I know what's happening before my eyes is real? The skills your company is focusing on, such as tech, may be the wrong ones to prioritize.
Where leaders are optimizing is wrong
Company leaders always care about hiring the youngest and brightest. That's just human behavior. However, when companies hire young people with digital and technical mastery but without the years of experience or developmental growth that come from failures and losses over time, they miss a way to maximize profits.
More than one-third of junior positions require AI fluency, according to a National Association of Colleges and Employers survey. We can expect that it will continue to rise in the years to come. However, many companies aren’t getting the Return on Investment (ROI) they want from AI, and they’re missing that fully cross-generational workers are the way to maximize ROI.
The knowledge transfer problem
Here’s the thing across generations and in human behavior for an AI world. Companies still need people who have absorbed losses and learned lessons that metrics alone won’t tell you. For instance, if you failed at a must-win project with a team that relied solely on AI, what do you do and how do you pivot? That comes with experience.
Workers who are aging out aren't passing those types of human skills and experiences down to younger workers because, well, they're being dismissed and not given a chance to partner with fully AI- and digital-fluent workers. That combination is unbeatable. Top companies recognize this and are telling their direct reports to create teams based on the following:
Human judgment
Collaboration
Cross-generational
Influence-driven
In short, tech skills are great, but they won't maximize ROI. Human judgment and experience will do it, and that takes a team of people who know how to pivot through losses, think deeply about issues that may have unintended consequences, and know what makes people say “yes” after hard “no’s” because they understand human behavior.
What to do about it
Avoiding AI isn’t realistic. AI tools are required for many, if not most, jobs, and that’s only going to increase. However, it's essential to realize that human skills involving judgment, critical thinking, reasoning, and experience are essential. It’s vital to sit in a room where people disagree with each other and reason why you should change your mind as a decision-maker despite what AI is telling you to do.
Leaders have to remember that ambiguity is part of business and life. That's where experience and judgment come into play. Lean into the thinking and insights of all members of your team, including seasoned workers, and have them pass down their experience and knowledge. I suspect there will be tension with AI for a long time, and as a result, balance will be key: AI fluency and tools alongside human judgment and experience.
Read more from Wayne Elsey
Wayne Elsey, Founder & CEO
Wayne Elsey is the founder and CEO of Elsey Enterprises. Among his independent brands, he is also the founder and CEO of Funds2Orgs. This social enterprise helps nonprofits, schools, churches, civic groups, individuals, and others raise funds while supporting micro-enterprise (small business) opportunities in developing nations and the environment.
