Soft skills—or as we like to call them, human skills—are more in-demand than ever. Just look at the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Future of Jobs Report, where capabilities like creative thinking, resilience, flexibility, and curiosity top the list of in-demand skills—with their importance expected to rise over the next five years.
"The organizations that thrive in the next decade will be those that prioritize human skills development alongside technical training." –Sergio Rosas, CEO, Next Shift Learning
Most L&D folks we speak with find this exciting! There’s a huge opportunity here to really impact the broader organization and employees’ careers. But at the same time, helping employees grow and deepen these skills presents particular challenges.
How do you choose which skills to focus on? How do you get buy-in when measuring the ROI of human skill development can feel…squishy? And how do you decide when to customize content and when off-the-shelf content will work just fine?
Is Your Organization Ready for the Soft Skills Revolution?
Take our quick self-assessment:
- Does your leadership development program explicitly address adaptability, EQ, and trust?
- Can your leaders clearly articulate how they apply these skills in daily decision-making?
- Have you measured improvements in team performance tied to these human skills?
If you answered "no" to any of these questions, we've got you covered! Here, we're sharing our best resources to help you build impactful programs that will elevate your employees' human skills and focus on the leadership capabilities they need most. Bookmark this for when you need some inspiration. And for an in-depth guide to building a world-class leadership program with any size team, fill out our quick form here to receive your free copy.
Real Results: Our programs consistently deliver measurable impact across organizations. At Lionsgate, 85% of participants reported feeling valued and supported by their employer after completing our workshops. One Street Level Strategy leader noted that the program provided "improved communication, stronger team connection, and an increased commitment to team members." Looking to build similar results at your organization? Check out our Emerging Leaders Program.
Start Here: Identifying the Most Critical Soft Skills for Your Organization
We hear from learning leaders every day who know that human skills gaps exist in their organization but aren’t quite sure where to start. This isn’t the same as needing more developers proficient in a certain programming language or getting your HR team more comfortable with a new piece of the tech stack.
Figuring out which human skills to focus on takes nuance and a deep understanding of how these skills work in action. Then, you need to build a learning program that allows employees to test-run these skills and put them into practice.
Here are a few resources that explore key human skills and offer a guide for implementing them into your program.
Adaptability: The Foundation of Future Leadership
The Missing Soft Skills in Your Leadership Development: Adaptability
In our programs with both Lionsgate and Street Level Strategy, participants initially showed varied confidence levels in adaptability—but after training, they reported significant improvements. As one participant noted, adaptability training helped them "view challenges as growth opportunities rather than setbacks," while another committed to "focusing on flexibility by re-prioritizing as situations progress."
Emotional Intelligence: The Team Performance Multiplier
The Missing Soft Skills in Your Leadership Development: EQ
Emotional intelligence was consistently highlighted as an area of significant growth across organizations. At Lionsgate, EQ workshops earned an 89% satisfaction rating—the highest of any module. Nearly all participants reported improvement in self-regulation and empathy, with practical applications like "pausing to reflect during high-stress moments" and "handling complex interpersonal dynamics."
Trust: The Critical Currency of High-Performing Organizations
The Missing Soft Skills in Your Leadership Development: Trust
Trust emerged as a leading concept, with 90% of Lionsgate cohort members (up from just 27% initially) feeling highly confident in their ability to assess, build, and maintain trust after our workshops. The "trust audit" framework proved particularly valuable, with one participant sharing, "I did a trust audit before yesterday's performance management conversation with my boss, and it was incredibly helpful."
Maximize Your Limited Resources: When to Customize and When to Use Off-the-Shelf Content
Great leadership looks the same at every organization…or does it?
Most L&D leaders we speak with are stretched pretty thin, with shoestring teams and a mandate to do more with less. Off-the-shelf content can make launching a program much more efficient—but (strategic, targeted) customization can drive engagement with content that feels relevant and tailored to your employees.
"These days, flourishing organizations are the ones figuring out how to invest in leadership development—even if that means being strategic with a shoestring budget!" –Tina Hosaain, COO, Next Shift Learning
Cost-Effective Customization Strategies
In these posts, we share ideas for making human skills content feel fully customized…without hiring an entire team of content specialists!
When Ready-Made Content Makes Sense
Off-the-shelf or custom content for leadership development?
When working with Street Level Strategy, our toolkit helped them "implement and practice what they learned as well as seeing team members utilize the lessons learned in real-world situations." Customized case studies significantly increased engagement across all our partner organizations.
Smart Personalization that Scales
How to Customize Your Leadership Development Content
Our approach includes providing individualized toolkits with frameworks, resources, and personal commitments from each participant. At Lionsgate, we collected over 70 individual commitments for growth across workshops, creating personal accountability for behavior change that participants could reference in performance conversations.
Implementation Strategies: Proven Tactics from Successful L&D Leaders
We love talking to innovative learning professionals who are thinking about their roles in new and interesting ways. Here, we share some conversations and insights from great voices in this field, including an interview that touches on the importance of helping employees build communication skills; a webinar with L&D leaders on building adaptability; and a roundup of the best ideas we’ve seen for getting buy-in for leadership development.
Lessons from Cross-Functional Collaboration
Always Learning: Interview with Sony Das, VP of Learning and Organizational Development at Lionsgate
Building Organizational Resilience
How to Build Adaptability for HR, People, and L&D Leaders: A Webinar Recording (and Highlights!)
Securing Executive Support
7 Strategies for L&D to Get Buy-In for Leadership Development
Your Roadmap to Human Skills Excellence
We hope you found these resources useful! 💪But we know resource hubs are just the starting point. Ready to take your soft skills development to the next level?
What soft skills is your organization focusing on in 2025?
Tag us on social media with #NextShiftSoftSkills to join the conversation!
Get Your Comprehensive Implementation Guide
To receive our in-depth guide to building a world-class leadership program with any size team—including proven strategies and guidance on budgets, stakeholder communication, and measurement—fill out our form, and we'll send you a free copy.
Ready for Expert Guidance?
Get in touch today to bring Next Shift Learning’s Emerging Leaders Program to your organization.
Our founders, Tina and Sergio, are eager to discuss how we can tailor our approach to fit your specific organizational needs and budget realities. As one Street Level Strategy leader eloquently expressed after our collaboration: "Expanding and opening my mind to what could be the new way of work where we take into consideration the whole person and not just the professional persona."
We can't wait to connect with you!
