The third skill is collaborative intelligence. This might sound like something from the future, but learning how to work alongside AI agents and automated robots to get the most out of emerging technology will be a core competency employers will hire for.
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This growing area of AI with ‘humans in the loop’ will separate workers who can take advantage of it from those whose jobs will be on the line. It’s also an acknowledgement that there are parts of our work that robots can do better, and areas where humans excel.
The fourth much-needed skill is to learn how to get better at conflict. I’m writing my next book on this important topic right now, speaking to dozens of experts, and am amazed at how bad most of us are at this.
Learning how to embrace and sit with tension instead of instinctively running from it can transform your career, and your personal life. Even more data from LinkedIn found that, outside AI literacy, conflict management is the fastest-growing skill that professionals should be investing in to get ahead.
The final skill for 2026 is perhaps the hardest: unlearning. This is the art of deliberately letting go of habits, processes, frameworks and ways of thinking that no longer fit the current environment.
This can be difficult as we’re wired to repeat behaviours that worked in the past, but as technology and society shifts faster than traditional careers can keep up, the workers who get ahead will be those that adapt to where we are going.
These five interconnected skills – judgment, storytelling, collaborative intelligence, conflict management and unlearning – are the new building blocks that future workforces will be built on.
You might not need all of them today, but if you start upskilling in just one of these areas, you’ll be in a better position to deal with some of the changes to how we work that are marching your way.
Tim Duggan is author of Work Backwards: The Revolutionary Method to Work Smarter and Live Better. He writes a regular newsletter at timduggan.substack.com
