Don’t panic and adapt by improving these key human skills, including emotional intelligence!
In the last couple of months, we heard more frequently about pausing the rapid development of AI given its potential “not manageable and unknown” risks posing to society and humanity as well as the danger of replacing our jobs altogether.
Although AI proved to do jobs more efficiently and more economically, can it really replace us humans in making strategic decisions or building relationships and connections with others?
What do employers have to say about this?
Fortunately, employers see the benefits of AI in assisting rather than replacing jobs done by people. They are greatly in favour of employee productivity improvement over headcount reduction according to the latest Microsoft’s annual “Work Trend Index”.
In this blog, we take a closer look at what are these key human skills that would help you grasp AI-powered workplaces and stay ahead of development. Let’s dive right in.
1. Flexibility
Your flexibility defines how you approach and adapt to new AI innovations implemented in the business processes as well as how successfully you regulate your emotions depending on the specific situation in the workplace. These are all important points, where your flexibility will dictate whether new AI-powered workplaces would overwhelm you or help you by assisting you in your daily work.
With high levels of flexibility,
- You are able to quickly spot the benefits of AI solutions and adopt them into your daily work processes.
- Connected to high emotional intelligence, you are able to flexibly use emotion regulation strategies to fit the context of the situation in the workplace
How to improve your flexibility?
- Adopt a change mindset & eagerness to learn
- Stay open to new suggestions for the improvement of business processes
- Stay curious to explore the benefits and limitations of AI solution
- Take action to test and adopt a solution, when it’s intended to alleviate you from daily manual tasks.
2. Emotional Intelligence
Your emotional intelligence is key to building lasting relationships, managing conflicts, leading with empathy as well as improving your overall well-being.
When workplaces moved into the online space during the pandemic and people went through big changes in their lives, the topics of understanding emotions and employee well-being became strategically important.
While flexible workplaces and working hours did bring a lot of comfort into our lives, allowing us to work from anywhere and prioritise our time, they do not always allow us to fully disconnect from the workflow, which can have a negative impact on us all.
For this reason, emotional intelligence became a so-called “mediator” to address these workstyle changes helping us recognize, understand and regulate emotions to take care of our well-being in the time of change.
In the time of increased AI and all the uncertainty that comes with it, emotional intelligence brings additional regulatory value. Quite often, when we rely too much on AI solutions we forget when is beneficial to leverage human capabilities instead.
Therefore, what is crucial to navigating AI-powered workplaces is to find a balance between our analytical judgment (search for ways where AI solutions can alleviate me from manual work) and emotional intelligence (when leveraging human capabilities results in better decision-making).
How to improve your Emotional Intelligence?
- Firstly, take our HROS short test to see your EQ score.
- Explore your report and see what areas of your emotional intelligence you thrive in and what needs attention.
- Here below are some tips to improve your emotional intelligence
- Emotional regulation flexibility – avoid thinking traps by labeling the feelings – shifting from “I am angry” to “I am experiencing anger”
- Emotional self-regulation – try redirection of attention to non-emotional aspects of the situation such as going for a walk
- Emotional self-awareness – try noting down thoughts and feelings to help you become more aware of your emotional state
- Emotional perception of others – try practicing active listening, by paying attention to what people say, how they say it, and what language they use
- Empathy – try to put yourself in the shoes of others. Imagine how would you feel in a certain situation.
- Relationship Management – in conflict, try to focus on win-win solutions rather than winning the argument
Want more insights on this topic, we got you covered.
By becoming aware and working on these key elements you will be able to improve your own performance, plus create a safe and productive work environment. Isn’t that something that we all should work towards?
Explore it here and see if you are an emotional genius or not.
3. Intellectual Curiosity & Creative Evaluation
Art of asking the right questions never gets old, especially in the age of AI. Although the utilisation of AI solutions across industries has begun relatively recently, it has already brought up a lot of open questions regarding fairness, security, and validity.
Rather than banning or limiting the development of AI solutions in response to these concerns, intellectual curiosity, and critical reasoning skills are the key ingredients for us users and developers of such systems to think more deeply and rationally about decisions, ask the right questions and thoroughly evaluate outputs.
How to become more intellectually curious?
- Engage with confidence – Learn to ask better questions to cut through legacy-driven points of view
- Broaden your focus – Reach out to colleagues that have different points of view that you and try to listen and learn about your biases
- Handle your creativity – Creativity can often lead to rush decisions. When developing new ideas, keep your questioning from ideation to implementation.
- Develop active listening skills – make a conscious effort to hear what is being said and aim to understand intent, content, and emotion.
Conclusion
Are you still afraid that your job will be replaced by AI or are you now more confident with knowing what skills can help you thrive in an AI-powered workplace?
Given that employers feel positive about AI’s impact in the workplace, developing your flexibility, emotional intelligence, and intellectual curiosity can help you keep up with the development of AI solutions and use it to its full potential.
