But what if we stopped hiring for the resume and started hiring for resilience and adaptability? Resilience buys you time and adaptability buys you a future.
In my experience—both leading organizations and curating learning experiences at midlife—I’ve seen that durable skills like adaptability, emotional intelligence, collaboration, and creative problem-solving matter more over time than any single hard skill. These human capabilities don’t expire with the next software update. AI is not going to make intuition, empathy, or values-based thinking redundant.
In an era in which technology is replacing our left-brain thinking, hard skills come and go. But the ability to navigate ambiguity, communicate across generations, or pivot a team during disruption? That’s the kind of intelligence that lasts. It’s also what helps organizations thrive when the unexpected arrives—which it always does.
If there’s one skill that is increasingly important in the modern world, it’s Transitional Intelligence. It’s part of the reason “Navigating Transitions” is MEA’s first core pillar and why we’ve trademarked the term “Transitional Quotient” (otherwise known as TQ as compared to IQ and EQ). One of the most durable skills we can develop is the ability to dance with change, whether that be personally or organizationally. This is truly a durable skill.
It’s time for us to change our business language and replace “soft” and “hard skills” with “durable” and “perishable skills.” In the era of AI, those companies that double-down their leadership training on what makes us uniquely human will likely develop better leaders and happier humans.
-Chip