According to Forbes, as leadership teams plan their 2026 corporate training calendars, they are centering efforts on five specific human growth skills to help people work more effectively with AI. These essential skills are curiosity, critical thinking, collaboration with technology, creativity, and psychological safety during accelerated change. The goal is to address low engagement and spur greater innovation while AI capabilities expand. Organizations that build these human skills alongside technical AI knowledge will be better positioned to perform well in the coming year. This shift recognizes that as AI seems to do almost everything, strengthening the human abilities that guide its use is now a critical business imperative.
The Human Software Update
Here’s the thing: this isn’t your typical “soft skills” list. It’s a direct response to a very real problem AI is creating. When a tool can generate an answer instantly, the default human behavior is to stop thinking. We become passive consumers of output. And that’s a disaster waiting to happen. So this Forbes piece is basically arguing that for AI to be a force multiplier and not a thinking replacement, we need to proactively install a new human operating system. Curiosity is the boot-up sequence. Critical thinking is the antivirus. It’s a clever, necessary reframing.
Curiosity Isn’t Just Nice, It’s Necessary
I think the emphasis on curiosity is the most insightful part. For years, it was treated as a fixed personality trait—you either had it or you didn’t. Now? It’s a foundational business skill you can cultivate. Why? Because AI is the ultimate yes-man. It will give you an answer, any answer, with supreme confidence. Without a deeply ingrained habit of curiosity—of asking “why,” “how do we know,” and “what if we tried this other way”—teams will just cargo-cult AI outputs straight into production. The article nails it: curiosity keeps people active participants in the work. Without it, you’re just building a more efficient way to be wrong.
The Collaboration Shift
The redefinition of “collaboration” to include technology is also huge. It’s no longer just about working well with Bob in accounting. It’s about your workflow with the AI. Are you treating it like a magic 8-ball you shake for a quick answer? Or are you treating it like a junior partner, using it to brainstorm, stress-test ideas, and refine concepts? The latter requires a completely different mindset—one of dialogue and iteration. This is where that blend of curiosity and critical thinking pays off. You have to be curious enough to probe the AI’s responses and critical enough to judge their worth. It’s a new form of digital literacy.
Psychological Safety: The Unsung Hero
And then there’s psychological safety. This might be the most important one, because it underpins all the others. If people are scared—of being replaced, of looking stupid for questioning an AI’s output, of suggesting a creative but unproven use—they will shut down. They’ll accept the first AI-generated slide deck and move on, even if it smells wrong. The article points out that fear intensifies with AI’s introduction. Creating an environment where it’s safe to say, “Hey, this data analysis from the model seems off, let’s dig in,” is what allows curiosity and critical thinking to actually happen in the real world. Otherwise, these “growth skills” are just nice words on a training brochure.
Beyond The Buzzword Bingo
Look, it’s easy to see this list and play buzzword bingo. But the connection Forbes draws between them is the real value. These skills are a stack. Psychological safety enables curiosity. Curiosity fuels critical thinking. That thinking transforms your collaboration with tech from passive to active, which then unlocks real creativity in applying the tools. So for companies planning 2026 training, the lesson is clear. Don’t just buy everyone a ChatGPT Enterprise license and call it a day. You have to invest in the human infrastructure that makes that technology sing. Otherwise, you’re just paying for a very expensive way to make new and interesting mistakes faster.
