Being called 'The Essential Skillset for the Age of AI" - Emotional Intelligence

Our society, economy, and workforce are in a transition period. Technologies have, for the past couple decades in particular, been improving and advancing at rates at which an average human being has had difficulty adapting. In schools and in the workplace, the ability to include and work with so many new technologies has not kept up with the technologies themselves. And in the workplace, technologies have continuously been forcing human job descriptions to change and modify while requiring new training of workers, and often certain types of jobs have been eliminated all together as robotic technologies have taken over (particularly the more repetitive jobs found in manufacturing and mass production). This change and upheaval in education and the workforce has created new challenges to the mental, social, and emotional health of many workers in all fields. And now there is great concern about the effects to human health the next mass inclusion of a new technology will be: widespread use of artificial intelligence in the workplace. How will human beings adapt to working with smart, 'thinking' machines? And what happens in about a decade when the machines will be smarter and better problem solvers and thinkers than human beings?

It has gotten to a point where employers have said the most important skillset their employees must have is strong Emotional Intelligence. This result is described in a Capgemini study that interviewed 750 employers and 1500 employees. Three-quarters of the employers said emotional intelligence is a skillset they need their employees to have now, and not five or ten years from now. Anxiety, depression, increased stress, declines in morale, and other mental health concerns of employees have been on the rise in recent years, as jobs change or become automated, and artificial intelligence will only accelerate changes in the workplace.

But how can an entire workforce be transformed to develop such a skillset? This would be accomplished with the inclusion and teaching of SECD in all grade levels of our education system. SECD training should be happening in our teacher certification programs in colleges across the country. And we should remember that including SECD into our classrooms and teaching practice is not just one more thing on a teacher's plate...SECD IS the plate!

Our students need SECD and skills to become healthier, happier and safer in school, which improves their academic achievement, and these life-skills will prepare them as much for college and the workplace as the content we teach them.