How to future-proof your career in an AI-powered workplace

I speak to a lot of senior professionals right now and understand why they are unsettled by AI, and not in a small way. Some are watching it change their industry from the inside; others are personally and privately navigating redundancy or restructuring.  Quite a few are wondering whether the skills that got them this far will count for anything that comes next. It’s a fair question. The answer isn’t the one most people expect.

 

My view is that AI is going to make the ‘human’ parts of their job more valuable, and real people making real decisions will always count. The professionals who thrive through this switch will be the ones who understand what those ‘human’ parts actually are and back themselves to continue to lead with them, knowing when AI delivery is useful, as well as when the human is more robust.

 

The skills nobody’s automating

When I work with clients going through a career uptick, one of the first things we do is take stock of their transferable skills; these are the ones that travel with you regardless of job title, sector, or the tools sitting on your desk. Communication. Judgement under pressure. The ability to read a room, build trust, be authentic, and navigate a conversation that a spreadsheet can’t are examples of transferable skills. Also, leadership that motivates and sets a real vision rather than instructs. Again, these are human skills; these skills form the foundation everything else sits on, including what AI brings, and they get more valuable the more the technical layers of work become automated.

 

AI is genuinely brilliant at such things as pattern recognition, drafting, summarising and processing volume at a speed no human ever can. What it can’t do is sit with a colleague who’s just been made redundant and know what to say. It can’t read the unspoken tension in a boardroom and decide when to push, when to pull, and when to hold back. It can’t build the kind of trust that makes a client stay with you for a decade or more. That’s still entirely down to us, the humans, and it always will be.

 

Find your superpowers, not just your skills

I use the word superpower deliberately with clients, because it forces a different kind of thinking than a standard skills transfer or audit. A superpower is something you do consistently well that others notice and value, even when perhaps you don’t think it’s anything special. It’s also an attribute that gives you energy rather than draining you. Your superpowers have usually been hiding in plain sight for years.

 

Here’s a simple exercise I give clients navigating exactly this kind of uncertainty. Write down your top five achievements, in work or outside it, without judging whether they sound impressive enough.  These could be a family celebration, a huge international event, a house move, an award win, becoming a parent, whatever. Next to each one, name the specific skills you used that made it happen, and be precise rather than generic. Then look at where you want to go next, whatever that looks like for you right now, and ask where those skills overlap with what’s actually needed there. Most people are surprised by how much they already have and how little is being replaced or even can be replaced by AI. The problem was never a shortage of your abilities. Instead, it was that you had never stopped to name them properly, nor assessed which of them are being replaced by AI.

 

Ownership beats waiting

Another reflection is that the professionals I see who struggle most with change of any kind, AI included, tend to be the ones waiting for someone else to hand them a plan or spend some cash on their personal growth. A line manager, an employer’s training budget, a restructuring announcement that finally forces the issue. I understand the instinct. I say with kindness, however, your career development around AI, if it depends entirely on someone else’s timeline, leaves you stuck and reactive rather than in charge of your destiny and your outcomes.  I confirm that reactive decisions by others will rarely serve you as well as ones you choose deliberately.

 

Taking ownership of your career with AI in it doesn’t mean overhauling your career overnight. It means treating your own development as something you’re actively responsible for. This could be as simple as getting properly fluent in the AI tools relevant to your field, so you’re the person who knows how to use and leverage them well rather than the one hoping nobody notices you can’t yet use anything AI-related. It could mean seeking honest feedback on how you’re actually perceived, e.g. next technology embracer or a technophobe, the latter is not the space you probably want to be regarded in! Small, consistent steps taken on your own AI skills-building: pilot some things using it; this will build your resilience for you and your future far more than waiting for permission from someone else ever will.

 

Uncertainty isn’t the enemy

There’s decent evidence that human experience is worth more than the popular narrative suggests. Research from MIT, Northwestern and the US Census Bureau, analysing millions of company founders, found that a 50-year-old founder is 1.8 times more likely to build a high-growth business than someone in their 30s. Founders in their twenties had the lowest odds of success. Judgement, networks, resilience and pattern recognition built over a career are a genuine asset, and that holds just as true inside an organisation as it does when building your own business.

 

I’d encourage anyone feeling unsettled by AI right now to treat that discomfort as information rather than a verdict. Fear tends to show up loudest exactly when you’re stepping into something unfamiliar, and that discomfort rarely means you’re on the wrong path. The professionals who lean into this technological change will come out of the transition strongest. You will have got clear on your own value, taken ownership of your development instead of waiting for it, and backed the parts of yourself that no machine can replicate.

 

You’ve built more capability than you’re giving yourself credit for. The workplace is changing – accept this. It’s time to re-engage in having a self-starter attitude, with what made you good at your job in the first place not having been lost. 

 

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Dr Claire Handby is an Executive Coach, Non-Executive Director, and author of the internationally best-selling book Uptick - Clarity, Courage and Confidence for Your Next Chapter.

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and SIphotography