Opinion
The old saying goes that there are decades where nothing happens, then weeks where decades happen. If I can take that phrase and butcher it slightly, the past few years in the workplace have seen some of the biggest upheavals to how we work in generations.
The combination of WFH, shifting consumer tastes, integration of AI, increasing flexibility and global uncertainty means the skills we need to face this new world are very different to the capabilities that most of have learnt. Data from LinkedIn last year found that 70 per cent of the skills we’re going to need at work will change within the next five years.
To help you navigate these – and yes, increase your chances of a promotion at work this year – these are the five slightly surprising skills that will help you stand out from the pack in 2026.
The first skill is judgment. This is the ability to know which problems you should focus on, what to outsource and when you need to slow things down in a workforce constantly pushing for more speed.
As AI gets integrated more heavily into our jobs, the ability to make judgment calls about the quality of work returned is more important than ever.
This includes understanding what’s missing, sensing AI hallucinations and knowing how to narrow down an almost endless amount of information. The best way to increase your judgment skills is through experience, so this is an area where older workers already have an advantage.
Learning how to work alongside AI agents and automated robots to get the most out of it will be a core competency employers will hire for.
The second skill is storytelling. Your ability to synthesise information and translate it – to your colleagues, boss or customers – is one way of simplifying an increasingly complex environment.
The Wall Street Journal recently noted that the percentage of job advertisements in America with the word “storyteller” in them doubled last year to around 70,000 listings. This isn’t just a skill just for marketers or communicators either – everyone needs the ability to look at reams of data and find ways of getting to its core.
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.
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
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Tim Duggan is the author of Work Backwards, Cult Status and Killer Thinking. He co-founded Junkee Media and writes a monthly newsletter called OUTLET.
