Last Updated on September 18, 2026 by Fly High Coaching
Upskilling is one of the most talked about topics in today’s workplace, but many professionals still struggle to know where to start and what skills actually matter for the future. With technology and AI changing faster than most careers can keep up with, the gap between knowing you need to grow and knowing how to grow is getting wider. Are you clear on which skills will protect your career over the next five years, and are you actively building them?
In this episode, you will learn more about upskilling and why it goes far beyond learning new software or tools. Our host Porschia, alongside guest Yadira Caro, will share their insight on why the skills most professionals overlook, the ones we call “soft,” are actually the skills that make everything else work.
They will also discuss the 3 power skills needed most for the future of work, including communication and listening, adaptability, and emotion management, and why each one matters more now than it did five years ago. The conversation covers why reserving leadership development for the C-suite is a mistake, and what happens when organizations start equipping everyone to think strategically rather than waiting for top-down direction.
Yadira Caro is an organizational psychology practitioner who has spent over 15 years working with teams of developers and engineers in U.S. military organizations. She is the author of Hardcore Soft Skills: A Guide to Working with Humans, and her courses are available on multiple platforms, including LinkedIn Learning.
What you’ll learn:
- What upskilling actually means and why it matters for every stage of your career
- Why soft skills are the foundation that makes technical skills work, and how to reframe them as power skills
- The 3 essential soft skills professionals need most to prepare for the future of work
- How to run a strengths-based self-assessment to identify which skills to build on first
- Why the biggest upskilling mistake is learning without applying, and what to do instead
Resources:
- Episode Transcript
Porschia: [00:00:00] Today, we are talking about upskilling for the future with Yadi Cero. Yadi is an organizational psychology practitioner and has been working with teams of developers and engineers for over 15 years within US military organizations. She is enthusiastic about launching high-performing teams and transforming organizations to break silos, improve collaboration, and innovate.
To do so, she combines an approach of integrating organizational psychology [00:01:00] and agile practices. She is the author of Hard Core Soft Skills: A Guide to Working with Humans, and her courses are available on multiple platforms, including LinkedIn Learning. Hi, Yadi. How are you today?
Yadi: I’m so happy to be here.
Thank you so much for having me, Portia.
Porschia: Yes. I am excited to have you today. A lot of our audience knows that I am also an IO, organiz- industrial and organizational- Yes … psychology nerd super excited to dig in today. And we are going to be discussing upskilling for the future. But first, we wanna know a little more about you.
So tell me about seven-year-old Yadi.
Yadi: Wow. Absolutely. So yeah, I was in Puerto Rico at that time. I’m born and raised in Puerto Rico. A small town in, in, in the island. And seven year old, I was very quiet person, and even throughout school I was always the quiet one. I think I got out of my [00:02:00] shell because I had to when I went to college away from home.
But throughout my life I was always very studious, like very quiet and shy and always enjoyed reading. And in, at the time, in the ’90s early ’80 late ’80s early ’90s, we didn’t really have either internet or cable TV, at my home at least, so I would read a lot of the, like, newspapers, magazines that my parents were subscribed to.
I remember it was in Spanish, Reader’s Digest. So that kind of- in instigated, I guess it, it prompted me to continue learning a lot, and my passion to become a, have a career in communications or in the area of psychology as well, ’cause I wanted to s- to study the humans more as well. So yeah, that’s where I was at, particularly at that age, at seven years old.
Porschia: I love it. I was a nerd, too, Yadi, [00:03:00] doing- … all the reading and living in the books, so we could have been friends.
Yadi: Yes, absolutely.
Porschia: So tell us about some highlights or pivotal moments in your career before you started your podcast.
Yadi: Yeah, so I started in a a college in Puerto Rico studying communications, and I was a journalist for a few years, but then I transitioned into working into communications area with the Department of Defense, with military organizations, working in different projects.
And then from there, I transitioned into the area of tech. Even though I’m not an engineer myself or I am not a developer, I really enjoyed working with smart people to help them build applications showcase the products for the customers in terms of the different applications that they were using for important missions in the mil- in the Department of Defense at the time.
And I’ve always was intrigued by the fact that we have so many different people, brilliant people working together in teams, and at times, the [00:04:00] projects or fascinating products will not see the light because of breakouts in communication between the teams, or the message was not delivered correctly, or the teams just didn’t work well properly.
So I’ve always wanted to know more and learn more about what are those things that make teams successful. So around COVID time was definitely a, a critical time because I was in Germany working in a military organization at the time, and we were working on site, meaning in an office all together, and all of a sudden we had to move into work remote, but the product still had to go on.
We still had a deadline to deliver a particular product. So we had to shift the way in we were working together, how do we communicate it, how do we communicate the requirements, have meetings. And at the time I decided that aside from- addressing those challenges that we had as a team, that I wanted to learn more about soft skills.
So that’s [00:05:00] how I started the podcast, because first I was fascinated by the concept of soft. What is, what are these skills? And the fact that the negotiation, communication, collaboration, we call them soft, quote, unquote. And so I decided to go ahead and make, first make a list of all these soft skills, and I found like a list of 80-plus different soft skills.
And I found books about these skills, and I called the authors or experts on those skills and started calling them up, “Hey, let’s set up an interview.” So going back to my journalism days where I would call people for interviews, and that’s how it started. And at the same time, I wanted to pursue again my passion for psychology.
So that’s how at the same time I started studies in, in Harvard University ’cause they provided a, a online option. So I started another master’s in organizational psychology in Harvard. So it was fascinating to be, have the venue of learning from experts on these skills, apply what I have learned, and also learn what the organizational [00:06:00] psychology, that insight, the research that it provided to explain that those are really critical skills.
Those are not nice to have. Those can make or break an organization. And since then, I’ve been very passionate about bringing what I have learned, creating my own framework to be able to educate people on the fact that these are essential skills that we need.
Porschia: I love that. For anyone who doesn’t know, what are soft skills, Yadi?
Yadi: Great question, ’cause soft skills, we tend to… Even the concept at the beginning wasn’t quite familiar. What are the skills that are the not, the, those that we assume that are part of our personality, that the thought that we are either born a good communicator or we’re not, or a negotiator, that if it’s something inherent that we’re born with that, and that’s not the case.
Soft skills are basically the skills that we need to work with people, and also to manage the way we do the work. ‘Cause, for example, when you talk about hard skills, you talk about skills that you learn, that [00:07:00] there’s a procedure. Like learning a language is definitely a hard skill, or programming data analysis.
Those are hard skills because those are kind of things that you’ve learned, you practice, and come associated with a process. With soft skills, it’s a little bit more mushier I would say, because of the fact that they still are skills because even if we are not born great communicators, we could use tools and techniques to become better at those.
But those are the skills that depend on the situation. They’re not necessarily measurable, but we are able to use these to collaborate with others effectively, to just deal with people, and also to help us do our work better. Like time management is a soft skill, productivity. So that’s the, the contrast, that soft skills you are able to they’re applied to different scenarios while the hard skills are more black and white type of situation where it’s, they’re measurable and [00:08:00] they determine a procedure to learn them.
Porschia: So over the years as a coach and organizational consultant, I’ve seen some leaders and executives downplay the importance of soft skills. And kinda to your point that you were saying earlier, I think some of this might be subconscious because of the term soft in it. And maybe that denotes to them that it’s not important.
What do you think about the term soft skills?
Yadi: Yes, and it is interesting because when we as either managers or either when we work in different organizations, if we take a deep look at things and realize that perhaps a team did not have the right skill set to do the work, but it boils down a lot of times to the, our inability to prioritize effectively, like having a mechanism-
Having a mechanism to prioritize [00:09:00] effectively it’s something that organizations or leaders may not have. Or we think at the breakdowns in communication how we come away from, step away from a meeting, and then everybody had a different idea of what the meeting was about. So there’s so much more time wasted on these activities that have little to do with the actual work, with the actual product, with the actual outcome that we want in an organization.
And this is why we tend to assume that w- managers can come and save the day, that they are the ones who need to align everybody to work together, or that if something fails, is it could be a leadership failure. But at the same time, it is very important for organizations to understand that we need to develop the skillset, meaning the ability to prioritize, the ability to communicate effectively, clear messages, how we send the emails.
So all these things that come with the work [00:10:00] but are not necessarily directly related to the work, yet these are the skills that make the, the work succeed. And as I say soft skills is what make the hard skills work.
Porschia: I love that. And Yadi, when we spoke a few weeks ago, I loved how you reframed soft skills as power skills or essential skills because to that point, we were having a similar conversation about the terminology.
So I love that. So upskilling has become a buzzword over the last few years. What does upskilling mean?
Yadi: So upskilling basically means that how do you prepare yourself or an organization to really be prepared for the future? As we know, with not just the up- the advent of the, of AI, of artificial intelligence in workplaces, all this other digital disruption that happen, that is happening, all these different changes.
We know that the, what we knew as a safe work [00:11:00] or safe job, that’s no longer a thing, that we need to be able to constantly be learning, to constantly adapt to the new technologies, to the new challenges, to the new audiences. So there’s so much to adapt. The changes that are happening right now are so exponential, so therefore upskilling refers to our ability to continually improve on skills, be either the soft skills or power skills, but also any other skills, like learning data analysis or learning about how to use different tools.
So it becomes very important not just for us as individuals, but for organizations to really prepare the workforce to address the challenges of the future.
Porschia: So we’ve discussed aspects of career development on the podcast before. Back in episode 83, we talked about taking ownership of your career through career development, and I think you were alluding to this, but I [00:12:00] wanna know, how do you think upskilling supports career development?
Yadi: Yes, it is definitely all about career development because it is up to us to develop where we wanna go in our careers. And as we know the career path for some of us may not be linear in terms of we start a new role, and then we go up the, either the corporate ladder or whate- whatever ladder that may be.
We know that we, it is actually very important to take detours so we can augment the experience that we have and take of those skills that we learn in different industries or different roles to apply it to the different roles that we’re gonna assume in the future. So it’s very important for us as individuals to take really that ownership that you refer to in our careers because it is not up to a manager in a particular role because, yes, managers should be able to support that, but they also have many other responsibilities to take care of, and they [00:13:00] also need to be looking at the wellbeing of the whole team in respect to that particular organization.
And as managers, it’s very challenging to do that. We wanna be supportive, but at the same time, we understand that it is up to the individuals to really take the roadmap and help and define what is it that they wanna do. So definitely it’s something that we need to be learning constantly, and of course it’s not something that we need, we may have clear right now.
We’ll find the challenges along the way.
Porschia: Absolutely. And with technology and AI changing so fast, I see many people feeling overwhelmed by all of the technical skills or the hard skills that they could be learning. In your opinion, what are the soft skills needed in the future?
Yadi: [00:14:00] [00:15:00] So certainly the soft skills that we need or the power skills that we need are the ones that will help us do better in technology.
Like for example I have a, a friend who works in teaching people about AI, and he was describing how important it is to really learn good communication because when we learn communication about giving those prompts or giving clear directions, understanding the audiences and understanding the, the background, additional information, communication overall is very important for us to help us interact better when it comes to specific types of technology.
So communication being one, and particularly [00:16:00] listening, because listening is just such a hard thing to do as with us as humans, as, as research shows that we only listen to a certain amount, I believe it’s 100 and something words per m- that we can express per minute in as we are speaking.
But as listeners, we can listen to 900 words per minute. So you imagine that distance between while the person speaks, we have all this movie happening in the background in our heads. So it is very important to become better listeners, and that helps us really understand what are the challenges of the either customers or stakeholders that we’re dealing with.
So listening and communication. Also adaptability because it is a skill because we as humans, we tend to run to comfort, and we don’t love change. So developing that skill looks like basically that we have the ability to change our mindset to [00:17:00] determine, okay, change is coming. Let me take a step back and define what can I control of this particular change?
What can I… What skills do I have that I can apply to a new setting? How can I learn from others that are- At going through that change. So it takes… There’s tools and techniques that can help us become better at adapting to new situations, which as we know, it’s gonna continue happening all the time. And I think a third one will be the fact of emotion management is very important, too.
And emotion management, yes, of course, emotional intelligence is something that we aim to achieve. But when it comes to our day-to-day situations, the ability to stay calm, be in the… When the challenging situations comes up, I’m telling you, as a mom, I know this is very difficult to do. So it is the importance of practicing the tools that we can do to be able to no [00:18:00] matter what is going on out there, that we are able to take a step back, identify that emotion, and be able to process it in a healthier way.
So I think those are just some of the skills. There’s so many that I could continue mentioning. But when it comes to pre- helping us prepare for the future, communication and listening, adaptability, and continually tr- aiming for becoming better at adapting while also managing our emotions are gonna be critical for the future of work
Porschia: I completely agree, and I also really love the distinction that you made between emotion management and emotional intelligence.
Yadi: Yeah.
Porschia: And emotional intelligence to a lot of people is very abstract, and it seems very aspirational. And we have some, had some episodes on emotional intelligence. I think it’s super important, but I think the way you described emotion management was very practical for people who might [00:19:00] not feel like they have a handle on emotional intelligence and really understand what that means.
So thank you for sharing that with us. So from your perspective, Yadi, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve seen professionals and executives have with upskilling in their careers?
Yadi: Yeah. When it comes to executives and managers, I think it may be in terms of identifying what are those skills that the workforce really needs to learn about, because there’s so much that they could be learning about, and sometimes we tend to focus on the technical “Hey, there’s a new system coming in.
Let me make sure that all the people in my organization are familiar with it.” But as ex- the executives, we need to figure out that it’s not just that. That’s just a tool. But the under- the upskilling is, the important aspect there is also helping people think strategically. So right now, it may… We are shifting [00:20:00] from workplaces of the doers versus the strategic thinkers, where we all need to really be strategic thinkers throughout, no matter our role.
Because, again, technology is happening and changes so quickly that we need to be ready to not wait for the CEO or the executives to tell us what’s the change, what’s gonna happen. They need to equip everyone in the organization to be able to identify, “Hey, what are some of the ways that we could use this new technology to help us address the bigger challenges that we have in the organization?”
So reserving those classes, leadership courses, and/or coaching just to the C-suite, that should not be the case anymore. It should be expanded to the rest of the organization so everybody can have more flexibility to make decisions and not have to wait from top-down approaches to make changes happen or figure out what’s the guidance on the what’s good for the business.
So think it’s that [00:21:00] mindset shift that the executives need to start thinking about and treat everybody else like an, like a, the ex- extending the su- C-suite for the rest of the organization.
Porschia: Yes. Very well said, and I love what you said about just identifying what skills need to be focused on, right?
And because there is so much, and I mentioned before and I see this with our clients, that they’re overwhelmed. Our individual clients and our organizational clients are overwhelmed. And, to your point about thinking strategically, I do think that is, one of the skills of the future, to your point.
I think a lot of people use strategic as a buzzword when they want to get to the C-suite and they think, “Oh, I’ve gotta say I’m strategic,” but they don’t necessarily really know what that means or utilize those skills and that type of thinking in practice. Love that. So Yadi, what are some tips or recommendations you would give to someone who wants to make [00:22:00] sure that they have the right skills in the future?
Yadi: Yes. So there’s various things that they can do. So for example when it comes to the career management that we were referring to earlier, we need to be able to individuals identify what is it that I want to see for my future in terms of what’s the career path that I want to follow, even if it’s not clear because we…
I had a different idea back when I went into college of what I wanted to do, and it ended up in, in a different path, yet it’s a great path. We just have to be sur- it- it’s open to new opportunities. So identifying what is the type of path that I want to follow, and then doing a self-assessment to identify what are some of the skills that are good now on, on ourselves because we tend to focus so much on our weaknesses, and we tend to assume that now, because of my weaknesses, I need to improve on those and focus on that when research [00:23:00] shows that when we focus on our strengths, we really find what we are, meant to do and find that motivation to do great things.
And in the book, I have a very quick self-assessment on some of the, the, the, like a list of 30-plus skills, but it’s a very subjective assessment because the first step is to identify you, what you think you are good at, and the next step is to at least find a couple of people, either that, that are very close to you or coworkers, so they are able to identify what are you good at because you may assume that you are not a great communicator, and they may see no, you’re amazing at explaining complex concepts in a very simple way.
So they help you identify that. So once you identify those things, it’s the, those, what are the skills that are good that you, that are strengths for you. I would say instead of focusing on the weaknesses, keep expanding on those good skills that you have. If you’re a good negotiator, continue working and developing to [00:24:00] become the best negotiator out there.
If you are a good prioritizing, continue identifying, developing your own frameworks. Yes, you can focus on those weaknesses based on the career path that you want to follow. If you want to become a speaker in a particular field of expertise for technology, then yes, you identify, hey, I need to improve on communication, so let me focus on that, too.
But always keeping in mind the strengths that we have and continuing enforcing those strengths that, that we have along the way.
Porschia: Yes. So this kind of piggybacks on that question, and you already told us about your self-assessment, so I think that’s probably a great resource. But what are some, in your opinion I’ll ask, what are some of the best tools or resources to help with upskilling in your career?
Yadi: Because there’s so many that I I think. Like podcasts like this one, that you always learn from from people in, in, in different fields when it comes to particularly the [00:25:00] career management. With what you do, I think it’s very important. So as… it’s just so many tools out there because now we have, aside from books and aside from podcasts that we can listen to, we have AI to help us.
But I think the best thing that we can do is just take at least one of the things, not just overload ourselves with information, but take one thing that you have learned and really apply it the next day, the very next day, and take the, the, throughout the week, and take that practice. Because otherwise, we become s- we have this hunger for learning about management, about we’ve read all the books, but when it comes to application, it’s a very different picture.
So if we say, okay, for example, if we were to read the book about habit, we will say, “Okay, now I know that if I put my sneakers next to my bed, that will help me” but let’s actually take the action of putting the sneakers next to our bed. So the same with a meeting. If we learn something about a meeting, hey, I think it’s better that instead of just putting an agenda, as I [00:26:00] recommend in the book, it’s better to ask questions in the, in as, make them as part of the agenda.
Take the opportunity for the next few meetings and start doing that, and you’ll start seeing the positive, or perhaps if it didn’t work out, at least you know it didn’t work. But it’s the taking action part that we don’t do enough. So there could be many tools and the perfect books out there, but if we don’t implement at least one thing from what we read, I think it’s we haven’t done our work.
Porschia: I completely agree, and I think, from the coaching perspective to what you’re saying, the mindset to actually follow through is so important. And now to, the point that we mentioned earlier, there’s so much information with AI and just everything online, but if you’re not actually, taking something from that and executing on it, that information is meaningless.
Yadi: Exactly.
Porschia: So tell us more about your business, Yadi.
Yadi: So right now I have my Hardcore [00:27:00] Soft Skills company, which is have been focusing… It started with the podcast, but I have been focusing a lot on providing workshops for teams or speaking engagements. I’ve had some courses that were developed, and one of them about persuasion, a very short course that’s available on LinkedIn Learning that I provide you the link so you can distribute to, to your audience as well.
So it’s, the intent of Hardcore Soft Skills is to normalize the essential skills education across workplaces. So at times we think that type of education about management, leadership is, should be focused for either just managers or the C-suite. But the intent that I promote is that we need to learn as a team because as research shows, the teams that really learn together have that shared experience, and they are able to just become better regardless if they have the specific skills to do the job.
So I really enjoy doing activities where the teams are involved to [00:28:00] learn together, give them tools, and then they come up with their own tools as well of how to, how they wanna excel in their jobs. And I u- usually doing a, a framework that I have, which is a five C’s framework, to first working on those skills to connect, meaning, like, developing empathy developing the ability to assess ourselves and connect with others and just identify what are the others good at or what are the others like to do.
So connecting first, then developing the skills to communicate, meaning that we listen and we are able to ex- explain the vision that what we want to achieve as a team and how we’re gonna communicate. Those are very important. Then collaborate and create, and there’s so many skills that we can develop there.
But- Giving the teams tools to how to do proper brainstorming sessions or how to do effective prioritization. The first step of how to create a team [00:29:00] agreement, which is very critical for teams to have in order to define, hey, this is how we’re gonna work and this is how we’re gonna communicate, this is how decisions are made.
So that’s a very important step. And the last part, which is a constant, is it’s not the last thing to do, but it’s always a, a continuation. It’s the, those skills to correct, meaning that we give, receive feedback, we identify what is working on the team, what is not working, and also establishing ways to improve promote mentorships.
So follow- following that framework that I give to the teams, it’s it’s just a way that they can continually practice the skills, because we’re never gonna achieve perfection, but at least it’s making sure that the teams have a deliberate practice to really educate themselves on these other skills that are very critical for the job.
Porschia: of that. So we’ll be providing a link to your website and your social [00:30:00] channels in our show notes so people can find you online. Now, Yadi, I wanna ask you the final question that I ask all of our guests. How do you think executives or professionals can get a positive edge in their career?
Yadi: Yeah, so I think definitely the positive edge, as you’ll know the answer, is to be deliberate in their practice of the soft skills or power skills, essential skills.
Because it’s not so much about how do I become the best leader out there, but it’s also about how do I work well with others, and how do I make sure that I also bring the best on my team and giving them, think, the, as a executive and a leader, equipping others to be leaders is something very critical that they need to do and that will make them excel as well.
So I think giving, having that edge will be to educate themselves on soft skills, but [00:31:00] also making sure that their teams are educated as well.
Porschia: Yadi, you have shared a lot of insights with us today, and I’m sure our listeners can use it to be more confident in their careers. We appreciate you being with us.
Yadi: Thank you so much, Portia, and thank you for the work that you do here on this podcast, which is such a critical tool for people to have. Thank you. [00:32:00]
