Why we need to treat happiness as a high-performance skill

For decades, the corporate world has been obsessed with “soft skills”. But as we sit firmly in the era of advanced AI and machine learning, a major shift is occurring, writes Declan Edwards.

We’ve spent millions of dollars trying to teach our teams how to communicate better, resolve conflicts, and show empathy. Year after year, global indices confirm this demand: the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report consistently ranks attributes like creative thinking, resilience, and curiosity among the most critical assets for the modern workforce.

But as we sit firmly in the era of advanced AI and machine learning, a major shift is occurring. Because algorithms can now draft our memos and write our code, uniquely human attributes have skyrocketed in value. As a result, the term “soft skills” is undergoing a rebrand. Today, we often call them human skills.

As a happiness researcher and workplace consultant, I call them happiness skills. Because the core human capabilities that organisations spend time building are the exact same competencies that correlate with higher levels of wellbeing, satisfaction, and happiness. The problem is that most leaders still treat happiness as a fleeting, arbitrary feeling.

After a decade of studying, practising, and teaching the science of wellbeing and the skills of happiness, I can tell you that treating happiness this way is a common mistake. Happiness, and the skills that uphold it, is a competency – much like learning a language, a musical instrument, or how to write code.

Thankfully, all skill development follows the exact same four-stage framework. When leaders understand this process, they can better support the development of their people.

Stage 1: Unconscious incompetence (ignorance is bliss)

This initial stage is defined by total naivety. You don’t know what you don’t know. You have never tried the skill and have no baseline for how good or bad you might be at it. Personally, I have no idea how adept I would be at Python programming. I’ve never looked at a line of code, let alone tried to write it.

In a workplace setting, this stage manifests in two extremes: misinformed overconfidence or intense self-doubt. An employee might think they are a great listener simply because they don’t interrupt, completely unaware that their actual active listening leaves a lot to be desired. They are blind to their own deficits because the skill has never been measured or intentionally practised.

Stage 2: Conscious incompetence (the valley of friction)

This is the hardest stage of learning any new skill. It is the point where you become painfully aware of your shortcomings. You are making a lot of mistakes and receiving very little reward. If you’re learning a language, you’re stumbling over vocabulary. If you’re learning an instrument, you’re hitting the wrong notes.

When training happiness skills (like setting boundaries, managing emotional reactions, or practising radical candour), this stage feels clunky. You try to practice a mindfulness technique or an active-listening framework, and it feels forced, awkward, and unnatural. The longer an employee stays stuck in this uncomfortable friction point, the more likely they are to give up.

To accelerate your people through this valley as quickly as possible, you have three options:

1. Don’t reinvent the wheel: Remind your people that they aren’t the first human beings to learn these skills. Provide guidance such as books, targeted courses, or structured learning paths so they don’t have to blindly guess their way through.
2. Leverage social contagion: The fastest way to learn conversational French is to move to Paris. Behavioural science shows that skills are socially contagious. If you want to build emotional intelligence or decisiveness in an employee, embed them in teams where those behaviours are already culturally dominant.
3. Provide tailored guidance: A coach or mentor is the ultimate skill accelerator. They see your blind spots, hold you accountable through the awkward phase, and customise the training to fit your context.

Stage 3: Conscious competence (the focused effort)

This is the breakthrough phase. The skill is clicking, but it still requires significant mental bandwidth and deliberate focus. In language learning, you can hold a small conversation, but your brain is working hard to translate each word. On an instrument, you can play a full song seamlessly, but only if you are looking at the music.

In terms of happiness skills, this is where the commercial ROI becomes apparent. An employee in this stage can successfully de-escalate a high-stress conflict or choose curiosity over anger during a setback – but it takes a moment of intentional pause. The rewards are there, but the behaviour is not yet automatic.

Stage 4: Unconscious competence (true mastery)

This final stage is the holy grail of learning: mastery. You have repeated the behaviour so many times and built such strong neural pathways that the skill has been baked into your identity. Speaking your native language requires zero conscious thought. Walking doesn’t require a strategy. Imagine the immense organisational resilience we would achieve if workplace happiness skills such as empathy, psychological safety, and humanistic leadership were practised to the point of becoming second nature.

Over my career, I’ve seen the ripple effect this spreads. When leaders and teams prioritise happiness as a skill set, and develop it like they would any other technical competency, they reap the rewards. Their organisations benefit from higher productivity and performance, their customers benefit from more capable customer service, and the employees benefit because these skills enhance their wellbeing and overall happiness.

My hope is that we are at the beginning of a new era of learning and development – one that values and prioritises the skills that not only create better employees, but also create happier and better human beings.

Declan Edwards is an author and a happiness researcher, educator, and philosopher. He is the founder of BU Happiness College.

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