.png?width=1280&name=Helix%20PD%20Track%20-%20Week%201%20Blog%20(2).png "How AI can help leaders unlock the soft skills they need")
Soft skills are often viewed as a ‘nice to have’ – but in 2025, what’s crystal clear is that soft skills are essential to business success.
While technical skills evolve and change rapidly (such as coding languages, machinery or the current wave of new AI tools), soft skills are evergreen and transferable – they help people thrive long term. After all, when will accountability, communication or strategic vision not matter at work?
Developing soft skills is vital at all levels of an organisation, but where it really matters is the leadership team. Leaders set the tone for the business culture, keep employees focused and motivated and keep things running both day-to-day and longer term, so strengthening the soft skills of business leaders should be a priority for every single organisation.
If soft skills haven’t been a priority for your leaders until now, it’s time to change that – and the good news is that with AI, soft skills development for leaders has never been easier.
We’ve talked a lot about why soft skills are so hard to measure in recent months. From the nightmare of manual skills tracking spreadsheets to the nebulous nature of soft skills themselves, measuring these crucial, yet intangible, skills isn’t easy.
That’s why the vast majority of businesses just… don’t measure them at all, instead relying on biased self-assessments, vague feedback or inconsistent manager observations.
To be clear, many organisations recognise the importance of soft skills for business leaders – but there’s a big gap between knowing they matter and having the right tools to measure them. Closing this gap is key to helping leaders master the soft skills they need to succeed in the long term.
One of the key ways in which our customers have expressed an interest in using Helix is for personal development – particularly for leadership teams.
The cost of leadership training courses can vary wildly, from hundreds to thousands of pounds per leader. Multiply this across all the leaders in your business, and it’s suddenly a huge investment – not just in terms of money, but also time, which is already hard to come by for busy leaders. Many of these leadership courses will focus primarily on hard skills, such as data analysis, leaving leaders lacking in those all-important soft skills.
AI skills intelligence platforms, like Helix, change all that. Instead of relying solely on expensive, time-consuming leadership courses, solutions like Helix analyse leaders’ soft skills in the flow of work, before giving them real-time feedback. This highlights their strengths and growth opportunities, empowering them with data they can actually use, when it’s actually useful – not six months down the line as part of their annual review.
We’re often asked for examples of what this looks like in real life. It’s especially important to know how this works for leaders, who are typically more expensive to hire and train, and who have a big influence over the workplace culture.
So, let’s take a look at some examples of how Helix works in practice:
Not all leaders are naturally good communicators, which can be a problem when managing people, building relationships or maintaining morale through unpopular changes.
The Helix AI bot can join your leaders’ virtual meetings on Microsoft Teams, Google Meet or Zoom. It will then silently transcribe and analyse the leader’s contributions throughout the meeting to produce a ‘score’ reflecting their display of communication skills.
Helix will pick up on things like clarity of speech, level of detail, acknowledgement of others’ points and the ability to balance speaking and listening. It will also listen out for things like use of jargon, unstructured conversation and a lack of next steps, offering up clear development opportunities and guidance to put into practice as soon as their next meeting.
Strategic vision isn’t only apparent in ‘strategic meetings’ or planning sessions – in strong strategic thinkers, it’s always visible, in everything from one-to-ones with direct reports to big, cross-departmental brainstorming sessions.
Helix will look out for indicators such as references to overarching goals, high-level framing and future-thinking, rather than getting too hung up on the day-to-day operations. If Helix picks up on a lot of behaviours like a lack of external awareness, no evidence of contingency plans or omission of clear instructions, it can offer up guidance, resources or tailored AI coaching to improve strategic thinking skills without the need for a time-consuming, formal training course.
Coaching is a crucial skill for business leaders. Leaders can’t achieve success alone, and the ability to get the best out of your employees is the secret to securing the best outcomes. Inviting Helix to one-to-one sessions between managers and their employees will help uncover a manager’s key coaching behaviours, as well as their main growth areas.
When assessing coaching skills, Helix will look out for reflective questioning, supportive language and phrases that guide, rather than tell. It will also check if the manager connects feedback to growth goals, and balances supporting and stretching employees. If Helix detects that the manager tends to dictate solutions, avoids giving feedback or sticks to a one-size-fits-all approach, it will suggest ways to improve coaching skills going forward.
Most leaders understand the importance of keeping their skills sharp and fresh, but they’re often too busy to make it a priority. They may like the idea of training workshops, but taking a few days out of their packed schedules to focus on skills is often unrealistic – especially for the most senior leaders in an organisation, who are under immense pressure to get results.
Some of the key benefits of choosing AI-powered skills development for business leaders include:
It doesn’t even need to be an either/or – AI skills development doesn’t have to replace formal leadership training programmes. Instead, it can act as a trusted sidekick to provide in-the-moment feedback and nudge leaders towards handy performance support resources and activities, keeping their skills sharp between formal training sessions.
Of course, while the focus is on developing better-skilled leaders who feel supported and empowered to perform at their best, it can never hurt to explore the business benefits of a new approach to personal development!
If you’re looking to build a business case to get started with AI skills intelligence for personal development, some of the main benefits include:
Personal development is very rarely a top priority for L&D teams, because it’s often thought that it takes too much time and effort for minimal payoff. But AI is changing that – and fast.
Helix, our AI skills intelligence solution, has been built with personal development in mind. Our Core 9 skills, available right now, were curated with business leaders in mind, but soft skills like coaching, growth mindset and active listening are valuable at all levels of the business.
Personal growth today creates stronger, more resilient organisations tomorrow, and equipping your people with essential soft skills will set them up for success as your business grows.
If you’re curious about how Helix helps leaders (or employees) with their personal development, the good news is that you can get your first month on us with our exclusive free trial for new users.
Communication is one of the most important workplace soft skills. So how can you tell if your communication skills are good, and how can you improve?
Looking to improve your coaching skills, but don't know where to start? Check out our top tips, as well as how to use AI to track your soft skills.
Customers have shared four ways they're using Helix, 5app's AI skills intelligence platform, for QA, ROI, personal development and more. Explore them...