The Power of Human Skills

In this episode, we explore human skills — communication, teamwork, empathy, creativity, and other so-called “soft skills” — that are proving just as essential as technical and professional knowledge in both everyday life and the workplace. Together with two experienced Award leaders, we discuss how to develop these skills, why they matter, and their impact on personal and professional growth.

This episode opens a wider conversation on human skills.

Guests:

Gabriella Grech is a Bronze, Silver and Gold Award holder from Gibraltar. She works as a secondary school Physics and Maths teacher and volunteers as an Award Leader and Supervisor at a local centre. In 2025, she represented Gibraltar at the International Gold Event and Forum in Nigeria.

John Vincent teaches IGCSE and IB Biology at the Edron Academy in Mexico. He restarted the Duke of Edinburgh's Award at Edron and supports students on their Adventurous Journeys. Prior to Mexico, John worked in Peru for 8 years, running the Duke of Edinburgh's Award, the Outdoor Education programme, and teaching Biology. 

Mariana Roa is the Award’s Global Advocacy Manager. She built her career representing her home country, Mexico, at the United Nations and other International Organisations in Geneva - experience that now shapes her work championing the Award at the world stage

Hosted by Oksana Dobrovolska, Communications Officer at The Duke of Edinburgh's International Award Foundation

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Welcome back to Beyond the Award. Today we are talking about human skills, what they are, why they matter more than ever in the age of tech and AI, and how we can develop them. I'm joined by two award leaders and school teachers, John Vincent and Gabi Greg. Also with us today, Mariana Roa, Global Advocacy Manager at the Duke of Edinburgh's International Award Foundation. Hi, thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Hi, great to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Hi all, and thank you so much for hosting us here today.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

So, what are human skills? Communication, teamwork, empathy, creativity, and more. All of this used to be labeled as soft skills, which made them sound secondary. But now we understand that at work and in everyday life as well, they are as important as professional skills. John, from your experience working with young people in different countries, do you think human skills are still underestimated when preparing young people for their future jobs and life in general?

SPEAKER_00 1:02

I think one trap we fall into in teaching is that we teach towards an exam. I teach science, and really my dream is my my uh desire is to teach people to be scientists and to understand the scientific method and the process rather than answer specific questions in exams. But because of time constraints and pressures, we end up sort of pushing towards teaching to the exam rather than teaching how to be scientists. I think there's something similar there with uh learning these soft skills. We there's so many pressures on young people at the moment to perform well and to go through this process of gaining particular grades, they can go successfully to the next step. Uh the there feels to me like there's a focus on that, uh, and there's less time available to be able to spend teaching these soft skills, like you say, with uh teamwork and with empathy and with creativity. Uh, I think regarding the award, a lot of time has to be spent teaching these sort of more hard specific skills, navigation, timekeeping. What are we going to take with us when we go on the adventurous journey? Uh, lots of these hard skills that need to be taught, otherwise, the students are going to arrive late and underprepared for their journey without the correct food. Uh, maybe they're going to not understand how to use the equipment, the cookers, the tents. So, we do need to spend time teaching those skills.

SPEAKER_03 2:30

I'm also a science teacher, and I think recently there is a lot of academic pressure on students driven to exams at the end of the day here in Gibraltar, at least we follow the national curriculum like in the UK. So, they at the end of their formal education they sit GCSE's A levels, and there is very little room within the specification to venture out of these um the constraints of what we mean by um the curriculum, etc. So, within these soft skills, so things like critical thinking, um, etc., you try and embed within problem solving, etc., but there's not really enough time if you need to cover so much content. So I think that's where the award really does come in, and the importance of it to build this resilience, um, the work ethic, the leadership, something like flexibility. And that I think I know what you mentioned, John, in terms of um developing the map reading skills and navigation, etc. But I think a lot of these soft skills are partly self-discovery within the participants, you know, when they're out on an AJ and they face an unfamiliar scenario, how do they overcome this? Because ultimately they're just there with themselves and their team. So I think these soft skills are really important and developed a lot of the time within the participants, or if they go um and they're volunteering, you know, they need to keep track of what they have to do week in, week out. So I think that's the real um importance of it all as well.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

I agree with Gabby that many of these human skills are part of self-discovery, but I also think Gabby and John make a great point about the complementarity of formal education and formal education, which I think on a deeper level is really about the complementarity of human skills, such as the ones Gabby and John mentioned, critical thinking, flexibility, resilience, but also empathy, creativity, acting as key enablers that allow to build cognitive skills such as numeracy literacy further. Um I think that having a spaces where it is through experiential learning that human skills are developed is really important as it allows to build on that you know critical foundation and what was Gabi was mentioning at the end of words, self-discovery, self-belief, um, and allow everyone that allow everyone to achieve their goals and thrive.

SPEAKER_02 5:14

Gabriella, you teach physics and maths. So I can assume that many young people, they're probably interested in maybe career in tech, if they're interested in those subjects. Do you think they realize that alongside professional knowledge, which is obviously very important, they also do need to develop human skills to future-proof their careers?

SPEAKER_03 5:38

Yeah, for sure. I think it's a big thing as well when they are um 16, 17 years old applying to university and they have to write something, a personal statement. And you know, when they're applying for certain courses, the actual entry requirements they'll have to get certain amount of grades. But nowadays, as well, I think universities and employers are looking for what other skills do you have to offer for the institution? What can you provide? So it's all this um critical thinking, being able to adapt to different scenarios, and a lot of that they need to do within their own time. So that's where the award I think comes in to give them a path, a structured pathway almost of how to develop these um skills to help them when they go off to university or for employment, etc.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

Yeah, the award is definitely a great point of difference on a CV. Students are going to come out of this school here in Mexico with their IB grades, and it sort of becomes somewhat binary to distill students down into just a number, their final number grade. So having something like the International Award or the Juca Veterans Award, uh, which is well known, it's got good uh exposure worldwide. Employers and universities understand what is required of the kids in order to achieve it, and it's a really great talking point in uh interviews as well.

SPEAKER_03 7:03

I think back as well to my interview for university, which was now 10 years ago. I went to university to do a degree in maths and physics, and I got there, and the first thing they asked me was about my gold award, and I spent about 20 minutes talking about the award and five minutes talking about physics. So they were really interested in that and what I'd learned from the award, what skills I had to offer in terms of confidence, problem solving, etc.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

And do you have examples maybe from your former students or young people you supported through awards about their journeys after the school with universities or colleges or maybe their first jobs? Have they shared how the award and the skills, the human skills they learned through it, helped them?

SPEAKER_03 7:48

So I actually had a participant who went off to study marine biology. Um he started doing his bronze award and he was quite shy, lacked confidence quite a lot, and he started volunteering with a local marine conservation group here in Gibraltar, and he gained many skills and diving, and they did lots of beach cleanups, he learned about the different mammals, etc. And when he came back after his first year of university, he was saying how much the award had helped him in terms of confidence, being able to present his findings to a group and all the skills he learned on the way through his skills section, through his voluntary section, how they'd actually helped him and he'd stood out once he'd got there to university.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

There's two particular students that spring to mind from Peru, where I worked before Mexico, uh, and they follow the silver Duke of Edinburgh's ward. I actually took them on a separate trip that wasn't linked to Duke of Edinburgh to go and climb one of the mountains in the Andes at five and a half thousand metres over a week-long expedition. Uh, and it was these two particular students, you could see them grow closer and closer through this shared experience of both doing the Duke of Edinburgh together and also climbing this mountain in the Andes. Uh, and you could just see them approaching these challenges, feeling overwhelmed by what was happening, and then together working through and working out what they needed uh in order to overcome these issues, the strategies they were going to employ, uh, encouraging each other in the face of the real adversity they were uh they were undertaking. Uh but these two students ended up being the co-school captains in their final year of the school, so they were the student leaders of the entire school. And I know that one of them, now that she's at university, has become the ambassador at the university. Uh so you could sort of track her progress, this confidence growing and growing and growing, and this sensation that she has that if she puts her mind to it, she will be able to achieve whatever it is that she's aiming towards.

SPEAKER_03 9:54

I also had another student who started his bronze award, and actually I was teaching him in school, and he was one of these who was struggled academically, found it really difficult to focus in class, and would often mess about in the classroom. And I remember going on a weekend for the bronze and seeing him out in during the adventurous journey, and he was thriving, like leading the team, problem solving, and in a completely different light to how I'd seen him in the classroom. So I had that conversation with him and I said, What's the difference? And I think he really had that sense of belonging within the award and that atmosphere to be able to thrive. So we then tried to implement some of those strategies in the classroom and it actually helped his academic performance as well.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Yes, and I believe what um Gabi mentioned here about the end and her interview really resonates, but we're seeing it is important for employers nowadays. Um there's some data about the white paper by the World Economic Forum that was that was released in 2025 regarding future jobs and employability, and it says that tasks tied to empathy, creativity, leadership, and curiosity only have a 13% potential for AI transformations since they depend on human and not machine judgment, context, and lived experiences. I believe this also touches upon what Gabby was saying before. And it's a very important point, which is the demand by young people. I believe we're seeing an increase of this demand by young people who are seeking to have the opportunity to train and develop their human skills. They are the ones growing up with these new technologies and realizing how important it is to have these human skills for employability, but also for their own well-being and are constantly seeking out spaces where they can do so.

SPEAKER_02 11:52

I feel like for a very long time it's been like you are either good on this or not. Uh, we never had the classes, we never had the opportunity to learn these soft skills, human skills, because it was just considered something that comes naturally or not. And I don't believe that it's true. And I think that any other skill, human skills can be and should be learned and practiced and improved. So, what do you think? How young people can get the opportunity to develop the skills and what are the ways that they can work on them, practice them, and maybe also share some examples of how you see the changes in young people you work with in their everyday lives once they actually start working on these skills, once they start developing the skills.

SPEAKER_03 12:43

I think confidence is a big one, and confidence is something that often people think you're either born confident or you're not. It's not something that you can work on. Whereas I wouldn't consider myself before doing the award or anything a very confident person. I was quite shy, but you know, you keep going at it and you put yourself in unfamiliar situations, unfamiliar scenarios, and you can improve on that. It's the very first presentation you do might be a bit more daunting than the third, but that's the whole point. You practice and you make the improvements. So I think that's a big one, really.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Yeah, I think there's many opportunities with Duke of Venebro to sort of throw these kids into the deep end with these situations. Uh, one thing that I I have done throughout my time as an award leader is once the qualifying journey has been completed, the week after we invite all of the parents in and the students in their groups do a presentation about their experiences, a little bit about the training, a little bit about the actual hike, uh, but mostly about the purpose of their journey. But it's these amazing moments where you see their personalities really come through, and you can see during those presentations their confidence growing. Because initially it is quite daunting. All the parents are there, the other students from the other groups are there. It's quite a full-on experience to stand up in front of that big group of people. But as because they know what they are talking about, because they have gone through the experience, you can see them being like, Oh, I can actually do this, and they start speaking with more and more clarity and confidence. There's really, really beautiful moments in those final presentations that we do.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

I think another big one is communication because the award brings young people together, they have so much more opportunities to work in teams, communicate with each other, develop those connections because some kids they might feel a bit more solitary naturally, they might be a bit less um extroverted as other children. And I think this is also important to give this opportunities for young people to communicate and form some group connections.

SPEAKER_03 14:49

Yeah, I think that's a good point that you mentioned that ultimately, when especially for the adventurous journey, when they go out there, they are walking or whatever other form of transport they might be using, themselves within that group. So they really have to make those connections with each other and bond really to work as a team together to solve different problems. It might be um a straightforward path, it might be one that they need to discuss which way are we going, um, is this something that they'd planned for? Is it something that's popped up that they need to deal with?

SPEAKER_00 15:25

There's also the very real flip side to that, which is when they don't work together as a team and there's genuine conflict within the groups, people are annoyed with each other, and uh you know, part of that is this unconscious background stress that's going on. You're far away from home, you're tired because you haven't slept well in the tent, everything tastes of ramen, like the whole thing isn't that uh comfortable, but these are all subconscious stresses acting in the background, and then there's one person in the group who starts whistling, you're just like, oh my god, this person's whistling is so disproportionately irritating. And if I took that person whistling um in in isolation when we were walking in the city somewhere, it wouldn't even register. I really enjoy highlighting that with the kids, and that the the trick then is to try and get them to understand how to apply that to wider life. Are they then able to identify stresses in their life and do things to to mitigate those stresses? Uh, and how well are they able to identify these moments when they are responding disproportionately to whatever it is that they're finding irritating? Resolving conflicts, recognizing that it isn't going to be plane sailing the whole way through there, you are going to have inevitably there's going to be the person you want to hang out with the most and the person who you'd rather avoid. But you're in a group, you have to work together, you're going to have to cook and navigate and share a tent. How is it that you're going to manage those situations?

SPEAKER_03 16:57

I think you've got the point exactly right as well, that in terms of these unfamiliar scenarios, they're going to be stressed, etc., that will all be applied later on for them in life. So I think it really does set you set up young people for the future world of work and just life in general. So I think that's a big point as well of how they resolve conflict within each other and how they move forward. Yeah, and I think it goes back to these soft skills that we've been talking about from the beginning, and how important the communication is, and developing that to then be able to have the space afterwards to have that open conversation of okay, this is what has been, this is what has happened, this is what has been bothering somebody, etc. How can we resolve this and how can we move forward?

SPEAKER_02 17:48

Communication and conflict resolution and stress resistance, all of that is extremely important for job environments, but also even in everyday regular personal life. You need to know how to communicate with people on an everyday basis, you need to know how to resolve a conflict, whether it's in your local shop, in your family, doesn't really matter. It's such an important skill. And again, there is not enough opportunities, I think, for young people to develop the skills in a safe environment. So I think that's where the word comes in hand, and that's where it's especially important that it gives this safe space or safe enough space to build these skills. And even if you do some mistakes, uh you learn from them.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Absolutely. I think, particularly in a world of rapid technological change, global challenges, evolving labor markets, where we need to constantly upskill and risk skill, adapting quickly. Erina, you're mentioning on collaboration, stress management, props to you, John, for all the work you're doing on this. Um, communication, confidence, artist skills are going to set up support. Only uh in the labor market, but I've said before, for really civic participation, individuals' well-being. Um I think for us, investing in human skills is investing in the foundation that allows young people to rise to the challenges and opportunities presenting. I think the defining question is not only how young people engage with emerging technologies, but whether they will develop the human skills to shape their use with judgment, purpose, and responsibility. And as we've seen throughout this conversation, it is the sort of skills that we can learn. And another point that I wanted to touch upon is something that is really important for us is the power of naming, because language shapes how we value things. When we fragment disabilities and self-skills, um, which sometimes sounds rather demeaning or transferable skills, social emotional skills, metacognitive skills, we tend to dilute their importance and confuse the conversation. But if we adapt a shared lexicon, something like human skills as an umbrella, we create alignment across educators, employers, policymakers, and communities. There's something about that shared language that makes it easier to collaborate, to design intentional spaces where young people can actually practice and develop these capabilities and to recognize that skills human skills are not secondary, they're foundational. Um, just as importantly, it I believe really helps young people themselves to understand what it is that they're building, to see this strength as real valuable and worthy of investment.

SPEAKER_02 20:44

I think you wrapped it up perfectly, Mariana. And thank you all for joining. And to everyone listening, share what you think about this topic on our socials and stay tuned for the next episode of Beyond The World.