Power skills: What AI cannot provide and therefore need to be taught in classrooms

While the world adopts artificial intelligence in almost every turf, a parallel debate is gaining traction: how important are the skills that AI cannot fully replicate? Human judgement, critical thinking, communication, cultural and social intelligence, empathy, compassion, executive presence, punctuality and staying calm under pressure are becoming increasingly important at the workplace. These are power skills.For decades, people have divided professional proficiency into hard skills and soft skills. Technical knowledge was termed hard and therefore important, while human capability was called soft and considered secondary. It is time to replace the word “soft” with “power” because these skills go beyond expertise. They make expertise relevant, credible and useful. Imagine a typical office setting.A team has data, dashboards, and AI-driven recommendations. But in the end, someone has to decide what is important, who will be affected by the choice, what risk is acceptable, and how the message will be presented. The machine can organise evidence. It is not morally responsible for making the choice. It may indicate, but requires a human to decide.Power skills are what you do not see when you are performing. We often pay attention to the presentation but not the decision-making that went into what was left out. We hear the answer that is full of confidence, but not the emotional control that kept anger from taking over. When a leader walks into a room, we may miss the preparation, punctuality, and respect that built trust before the leader even arrived. The real source of professional success is often not seen, like the bigger part of an iceberg.The human questionCritical thinking is one such skill. In a world that expects instant answers and has an average attention span of nine seconds, which is the duration of an Instagram reel, critical thinking does not merely find more information but equips one to ask better questions. What is the assumption behind a recommendation? What is missing from the data? Who gets the benefits? Who may be unintentionally excluded? AI can increase the range of possible answers, but the quality of the outcome still depends on the quality of the human question.Communication is not simply the ability to speak or write well. It is the ability to bridge intent and impact, thereby leading to shared meaning. A sentence that may signal confidence in one culture may be perceived as disrespectful in another. A concise message may appear efficient to one colleague and rushed to another. In global and virtual workplaces, cultural and social intelligence decide whether communication connects or merely transmits.Executive presence is often misunderstood as charisma, style, or a commanding voice. Presence is not performance. It is credibility created when competence, clarity, and composure come together. The person who remains calm during a crisis, admits what is not yet known, and gives direction without spreading panic demonstrates presence. So does the colleague who arrives prepared and on time. Punctuality may appear ordinary, but it says: your time matters to me.Empathy and compassion require an equally important distinction. Empathy helps us understand another person’s perspective and acknowledge diversity of thought, while compassion moves us to respond sensibly. Organisations need both. Without empathy, policies become impersonal. Without compassion, understanding is passive. These skills do not indicate avoiding difficult conversations or lowering standards. One can demonstrate compassion and empathy without being termed soft. It is just graceful demeanour.Power skills are difficult to measure and easy to broadcast. Almost every organisation claims to value communication, critical thinking and empathy. But very few stand true to the test of time in reality. Do meetings provide the psychological safety to share disagreement? Are leaders willing to change their minds when the winds change their direction? Are employees evaluated only on what they deliver, or also on how they enable others to deliver? What organisations celebrate, endorse and tolerate is what they truly value.We need to reflect on whether our education system is imbibing these power skills in our students or not. Students need to be equipped with responses to questions but also be prepared to navigate ambiguity. Human judgement decides whether students add fuel to the fire or pour oil on troubled waters. Therefore, classrooms must be fine with agreeing to disagree with poise, make mistakes and not get judged, communicate with inclusivity, and reflect on what comes next after things go wrong. Power skills cannot be developed through workshops. They need to be organically in-built through reinforcement, candid feedback and self-awareness.Individuals can begin with simple habits: pause to respond instead of reacting, listen to absorb and learn, ask questions for clarity, explain without jargon, arrive when assured, and remain calm under pressure. These habits, with consistent effort, become credibility. Credibility leads to trust, and trust becomes influence.The rise of AI does not make human capability irrelevant. It makes superficial human capability less justifiable. AI makes knowledge easily accessible and sophisticated language quickly generated. What differentiates human beings is the wisdom with which they use these tools, the judgement with which they question them, and the compassion with which they act on their outputs.The future belongs to those who use machines intelligently while remaining unmistakably human. Hard skills may help us enter the room. Power skills will determine what we do once we are there, and whether others trust us enough to stay.(Prof. Deepa Sethi is a professor of communication and executive chair of Global Linkages, Outreach, Branding & Evaluation (G.L.O.B.E.) at IIM Kozhikode. Views are personal)