Why Human Skills Are More Essential Than Ever In A Virtual World By Paul Hesselschwerdt, Global Partners Training In his 2015 book, Humans are Underrated, author Geoff Colvin argues that the most essential skill for 21 st-century employees is the ability to create empathy. Colvin writes; “Empathy is the foundation of all other abilities that increasingly make people valuable as technology advances.” Colvin goes on to define empathy as “Discerning what some other person is thinking and feeling and responding in some appropriate way.” Colvin wrote that back in 2015 when most of the time service people interacted with customers face-to-face or at least on the telephone. Although emails and texts were increasingly used as standard forms of communication, most people knew that to understand the difficulties a customer might be experiencing, you had to be able to interact with them directly. Things like their body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice could provide valuable clues as to what someone was thinking and feeling.