Let’s Talk Human Skills
In a world of fast-paced work and rising automation, one thing remains essential: human connection. Dr. Hayley Dawson, founder of Let’s Talk Human Skills, is on a mission to bring connection and collaboration into the workplace. With a background spanning education, translation and research, she’s developed a practical, research-backed curriculum that helps people build the skills we’re rarely taught—like confidence, communication, and collaboration. In this conversation, Hayley shares:
What most workplaces get wrong about connection
How small, everyday actions build genuine relationships
Why emotional and relational skills are just as critical as technical ones
How she’s using her experience to build a new kind of human skills education
If you’ve ever felt like your workplace could use more humanity and better communication skills this one’s for you.
What is Let’s Talk Human Skills and why did you start it?
Let's Talk Human Skills is a workplace training company with a mission to get people working well together and futureproofing their careers. I combine research-backed ideas, real stories, and practical tools to build the 7 essential human skills that make work, and working together, better. Most of my time is spent delivering workplace training to companies like ASOS, The King's Trust, and Manchester Metropolitan University. I also host Let's Talk... which is our career-focussed conversation series that helps people experience the human connection we're all craving.
You’ve had a career as an educator, translator and researcher. How has it impacted your approach to Let’s Talk Human Skills?
My career has been full of work that required technical ability. Lesson planning as an English teacher, command of language as a Spanish translator, timing and accuracy as a subtitler and data analysis as a researcher. I’ve had 16 jobs across 4 sectors, held 2 leadership positions, and collaborated with hundreds of people.
Two years ago, I noticed a pattern… The people who did well at work, who were well respected, who had influence, who were listened to, who got stuff done, who created a positive impact, and who were promoted, all had strong human skills.
And I thought, “I can do something with this”.
Because I’d experienced this myself too. What made a difference in my career wasn’t what I knew. It was how I connected, communicated and influenced others.
I did well as an educator, translator and researcher not only because I had the technical skills, but also because I knew how to work well with other people. Now, helping other people work well together is a core outcome of my work.
Let’s Talk Human Skills has become a research-backed curriculum so that definitely ticks the educator and researcher boxes. And I might translate it into Spanish one day to tick that translator box!
You note how we’re craving workplaces where we understand each other and work well together. What’s one mistake you keep seeing within workplaces you support?
Recently, I’ve been seeing that we don’t set aside time to think carefully about how we communicate or build relationships with people. But I think AI has given us an opportunity to do so. I like to ask people, “If AI saves you time, how are you spending your extra time?”
People usually say they’re smashing through more fast-paced work. I think we could use the time more wisely to connect with others instead.
This doesn’t mean not working, it means having the difficult conversation you’ve been putting off. It means carefully reviewing someone’s work and giving them honest feedback. It means going for a walk with your coworkers in the sun while you chat about work.
If we use AI to make room for considered human connection at work, our days could feel a lot brighter. As a side note to my work, I encourage people to create that kind of space in the workplace. It works well.
How do you run your workshops?
It’s no good me standing in front of a group of people and talking for hours on end. It’s boring and many of us don’t enjoy learning in that way.
Instead, I like to share an idea, then lead an activity to put it into practise, then facilitate a discussion around that topic.
I believe that we can use science and research to learn human skills, so the majority of ideas I share are backed by fascinating research.
Stories also form an important part of the workshops I run because we learn best through stories, especially when they’re based on experiences from the people around us. Hearing people’s wins, mistakes and lessons when it comes to human skills works really well to build genuine connection between coworkers inside the workshop too.
At Well–Crafted we connect teams with artists to support mental health within the workplace. How useful is it to participate in craft–based workshops that doesn’t involve alcohol, etc?
People have different interests. I’m sure one person would love the paintballing, and another would love the crafting. I think crafting offers a space of silence that we’re all craving right now. It’s an opportunity to slow down, to let your creativity shine through and to interact with your thoughts and ideas in a different way. Crafting with conversation starters would be a great idea to connect with both your mind and other people.
How do employees build genuine workplace relationships? Where does it all start?
It starts with a willingness to want to connect with your coworkers. Six years ago, I used to manage someone who didn’t want to talk about her work. She was rude, didn’t engage in conversation with others and made it quite clear how she felt about our team. Whenever I’d address the way she showed up to work, she’d say, “I don’t come to work to make friends, Hayley”. I'd feel sad hearing this because why would you pay the least attention to the people you spend the most time with?
Once you’re willing to connect with your coworkers, it comes down to things like: taking an interest in a project someone is working on, inviting someone to a coffee catch up, sparking engaging conversations, sharing your mistakes and learnings, mentoring someone more junior, or seeking mentorship from someone more senior.
Genuine relationships aren’t built overnight, they’re built from the small moves we make to connect with people.
Let’s Talk Human Skills places a strong emphasis on relational and emotional intelligence. In your view, what differentiates a relationally intelligent workplace from one that’s simply functioning?
A workplace that’s simply functioning is likely focused on the technical and operational sides of work. Technical skills are needed to make the work correct, and operational skills are needed to ship the work on time.
A relationally intelligent workplace also understands that human skills are needed to work well together. These workplaces prioritise hearing ideas from the most junior person, transparent communication, giving and receiving honest feedback, and encouraging time to connect on non-work related topics.
Building all three types of skills leads to a high-functioning and relationally intelligent workplace.
📸 Loved Studios
What are the first steps towards achieving human connection in the workplace?
It starts with acknowledging that a shift has taken place. Previously, we’ve seen our coworker relationships as transactional and contained to specific jobs or projects, but when done right they can last much longer and contribute to more than just our career success. We all need a sense of “We’re in this together” at work.
Second, it’s deciding on how we choose to work with people. This is one of the most important work-related decisions we’ll ever make. Our reputation, our happiness, and our income depend on it. We can choose to be inflexible and demanding or we can choose to be collaborative and understanding.
Third, it’s not just about getting the work done and shipping it. For every project we work on we also need to think about how we’re working with others. How can you be an easy person to work with on this project? How can you help someone else achieve their goals? How can you provide helpful and honest feedback?
You recently started building Human Skill School. How have your 12 years of education and research helped you build modules teaching the science, frameworks and tools to build human skills?
I spent 16 years observing people in the workplace and 12 of those were spent in education and research roles. Every job I had there were people who lacked confidence to share ideas, couldn’t manage their emotions, avoided difficult conversations, struggled to build relationships, and freaked out during change.
I documented why my interactions and other people’s interactions were going wrong and I created frameworks and practical tools to make them go right.
There’s lots of research on human skills like confidence, emotional intelligence and relationship building. I take the research and create education that we can use to make working with others easy, to make our workday easy, to make career progression easy.
We tend to think there’s no way to teach these skills, that we just learn them on the job. And we can do it that way, but it takes decades and leaves lots of room for error. Instead, I think we can build our human skills with the help of existing research and a well-thought-out curriculum. If anything, my previous experience opened my eyes to a clear path of helping people develop strong human skills.
How is your curriculum taking shape? What are the modules and what are you covering?
Hayley with Alexandra Lunn and Kasia Dutch at Let’s Talk…. in July.
It’s coming along well! I’ve been building Human Skill School in public, so I’ve had lots of help from the community. They’ve been sharing their workplace challenges with me, their stories and what they’d like to see from human skills education.
The curriculum is designed to take people from feeling undervalued and overlooked to being an essential person to work with.
It covers 7 modules, one for each of the 7 essential human skills: confidence, emotional intelligence, communication, collaboration, relationship building, ideation, and adaptability.
For each human skill, I teach the science, frameworks, and practical tools you need to develop the skill and actually use it at work. We’re all guilty of doing a course with the intention of implementing what we’ve learned, but we never quite make it happen. Having the tools to implement the skills is one of the most important parts of the curriculum.
Have you heard of the dead internet theory? We want to live in a human world which isn’t dominated by all this AI nonsense. Since things are running so fast, do you see AI as a threat or a support? Is it killing our brain cells?
AI is brilliant in many ways, and I don’t think AI itself is the problem – the way we use it is. AI allows us to produce huge amounts of information which means expertise is no longer the information you know, it’s being able to synthesise the information you know and connect the dots between ideas.
If we rely on AI too much, we risk losing our ability to think for ourselves, and that ability is more valuable than we realise.
The only reason I can deliver human skills education with such ease is because I went through the pain of thinking, ideating, refining my ideas and implementing feedback from actual people.
We’re at a stage where we need to think carefully about the tasks we're asking AI to do and whether we could benefit more from doing them ourselves. And I think we need to ask ourselves this question: Is it more important that I (a) get this task done quickly, or (b) use this task to develop a skill?
If AI can save you time on a task that doesn't build critical skills you need, great, use it. But if a task helps you build a skill you still need, do it yourself.
Let’s take writing as the most basic application of AI… If you use AI to write a short email to a coworker, or your LinkedIn posts, or your entire university essay without much thought, you're not developing your ability to think and write. You're developing AI's ability to think and write.
I think we need to put ourselves first.
Feedback from the public is playing a role within building Human Skill School; how much is it shaping the course content and how can people contribute to what you’re building?
That’s right! I’m building Human Skill School with people so that it’s helpful for people. I have an understanding of the challenges people experience in the workplace because I’ve lived through them myself. But I’m just one person and I won’t have the same challenges as everyone else out there. There’s a lot that I haven’t experienced myself.
I’ve structured the curriculum around seven essential human skills and there’s so much to be learned within each one. Every Monday, I update the community on what my focus is for the week and I give them ways to interact and give feedback. Sometimes it’s poll questions in an email, other times it’s joining a live online discussion group to talk through a topic they struggle with, or providing feedback on a lesson I’ve created. I love listening to what people want to see and incorporating it into the build.
There’s still time to get involved. Join this list and I’ll be in touch.
