In 2024, we asked our network what the most important skills for an L&D professional are in today’s world.

One thing stood out — the L&D role is becoming more complex as time goes on.

Gone are the days of “just training design” or “only facilitation.” Technology advancements like AI, combined with the realization that old methods no longer work, are reshaping the way we think about learning.

So, after gathering input from over 200 L&D professionals, we built a model of 55 essential skills. But which of these matter most? In this article, we’ll explore the L&D skills of the future, highlight 9 must-haves, and share how you can start developing them. Let’s dive in!

The L&D skills of the future model

The first thing our research showed is that technical skills alone are no longer enough. This trend isn’t unique to L&D—other disciplines are seeing it too. Behavioral skills (sometimes called “soft skills”) have become equally, if not more, important. And for those leading teams, the skillset expands even further.

Our model identifies 3 key skills verticals: Self Skills, Learning & Development Skills, and Team Development Skills. To succeed and make an impact, L&D professionals need skills from all three areas, with the right balance depending on their specific role.

Self Skills

Self Skills are personal skills that lay the foundation for success in any role. They focus on self-awareness, relationship-building, and personal growth, helping you thrive both professionally and personally.

To define this area, we drew inspiration from the Inner Development Goals (IDGs) framework, and adapted it to our context. The IDGs complement the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals by emphasizing the inner work needed for systemic change. They’re divided into five dimensions, each highlighting essential skills:

• Being: presence, self-awareness, integrity & authenticity, and openness & learning drive
• Thinking: long-term vision, sense-making, complexity awareness, and critical thinking
• Relating: empathy & compassion, humility, connectedness, and appreciation
• Collaborating: trust, inclusivity, co-creation, and communication
• Acting: perseverance, optimism, creativity, and courage

All of these are vital, but if we had to choose three foundational skills for L&D professionals, they’d be Openness & Learning Drive, Sense-Making, and Co-Creation.

Openness & Learning Drive

“Put your mask on first.”

As L&Ds, we must model the curiosity and adaptability we seek to inspire in others. Asking for feedback, being open to new ideas, looking for different perspectives, and having the patience and resilience to understand them was never optional, but is probably a survival mechanism today.

We’re in L&D because we love learning, and we should love learning if we’re in L&D. 

Sense Making

The world is getting more complex every day. We’re surrounded by huge amounts of information and deal with big data sets. Our organizations are intricate systems with many moving parts.

To create a learning architecture that truly makes a difference, we need the ability to spot patterns and understand what we’re working with.

Co-Creation

For too long, L&D worked in a silo, rarely collaborating with others. While it might have felt like a safe space—no extra challenges from outside input—it often resulted in ineffective designs and low engagement.

Modern L&D professionals actively involve others early and often in their processes. It’s not the easiest path, but it leads to greater empathy, deeper understanding of learners, and higher engagement. Think of the IKEA effect: people are more connected to things they help create!

Learning & Development Skills

These are the technical skills crucial for being an impactful in L&D. We chose the skills we truly believe are the future of our industry, and left aside skills that might have been useful in the past but will no longer sustain you in your role.

The 6 areas we’ve considered are Strategizing, Consulting, Designing, Developing, Implementing, and Measuring, each of them with their particular skills. Out of a list of 21 technical skills, we extracted 4 that are important to develop right now: problem solving, behavioral/ neuroscience literacy, experience design literacy, and AI literacy.

Problem-Solving

“Why?”

This is one of the most powerful questions we can ask. We can no longer afford to invest time and energy into things that just sound nice. When organizations make tough decisions about who stays and who goes, "nice" isn’t enough.

We need to solve real problems and address real needs. Problem-solving starts by understanding the actual issue—not just what it appears to be—through gathering information and piecing together the full picture.

This ties directly to Sense-Making, as these two skills work hand in hand. To identify problems, you need to make sense of the situation.

Problem-solving doesn’t end at the start of the design journey. It’s equally crucial once your solution is out there. Is it working? Is it achieving what it’s supposed to? Should we adjust? These questions should always be part of an L&D professional’s toolkit.

Behavioral/ Neuroscience Literacy

All the skills mentioned so far can easily be seen as foundational for any role. So, what’s our unique value proposition as L&D professionals? This is where Behavioral and Neuroscience Literacy come in.

Understanding how the brain works—how attention, memory, and emotions influence learning—and being able to identify behavior gaps, uncover obstacles to change, and design targeted interventions (that go beyond training) might be the answer.

As long as humans are part of the workforce, their behaviors and beliefs will determine the success of an organization. Positioning ourselves as consultants who leverage this knowledge to drive organizational success could be one of the key factors that “saves” our function and keeps us indispensable.

Experience Design

Information is everywhere, accessible at any time and in most parts of the world. So why would anyone wait two weeks for a training session to get it? Traditional content-heavy training just doesn’t cut it anymore.

The world is pushing L&D professionals toward new avenues, and Experience Design is one of them. This skill is about crafting learning experiences that are engaging, impactful, and meaningful. At its core, it combines a deep understanding of user needs with creative and psychological insights to design experiences that resonate emotionally and leave a lasting impression.

AI Literacy

You want it or not, AI is here to stay. 

Someone said that “L&Ds won’t be replaced by AI, but by L&Ds who understand AI and use it effectively”. And I couldn’t agree more.

AI is hitting us from two sides. On one hand, it’s changing how L&Ds operate by automating or improving the efficiency of many of our current processes. On the other hand, it adds some layers of complexity to how people learn.

So there’s no way we can ignore it. 

Team Development Skills

When you lead a team, things become a bit more complicated, as you need to build an environment where your team feels safe, motivated, and ready to tackle complex problems together. 

While the technical skills are covered in the Learning & Development Skills vertical, two new areas emerge for L&D leaders: People Development (the support of each individual), and Team Development (ensuring team cohesion).

Out of all the skills we associate with these 2 areas, managing team dynamics & role modeling stand out.

Managing Team Dynamics

Managing team dynamics is about building a strong, collaborative team that drives impact, and everything associated with this goal. It’s about understanding individuals, the interhuman dynamics, as well as the environment your organization and yourself are creating for them to operate and collaborate.

Role Modeling

If you want your team to act in certain ways, start with yourself. Inspire your team, and others around you by reflecting the behaviors, mindsets, attitudes you believe are right for your team. If you’re not doing it, why expect them to do it?

How can you build the L&D skills of the future?

While it’s not easy, peasy, lemon squeezy, it’s not hard either.

If your learning drive is there, all else will follow! But let’s look into some concrete ways of building these skills.

Immerse yourself in the right spaces

In the Offbeat Fellowship, we curate together with our members the discussions that are foundational to our future. We believe that by building a space where these conversations happen often we can prepare together for whatever the future of L&D is.

We’re not the only ones. Other communities, and individuals are doing the same. So make sure you join the conversations that challenge the status-quo, and show you new angles of running L&D.

Actively contribute to the conversation

Write. Draw. Record. Do

It doesn’t matter what you produce, as long as it’s a reflection of your learning journey. Don’t stop at just listening to others, but be active yourself.

Go beyond the obvious, into other disciplines

It’s surprising how many things you can learn about yourself, your profession, others, the world, where you jump into unknown territories. Follow people outside of L&D, talk to friends in other disciplines, ask for their thoughts on your challenges.

There’s nothing you can loose and so much to gain.

Keep your mental & physical health

The world is crazy. L&D is crazy.

We can either choose to be caught in useless cycles, or focus on what we can control.

Our mental and physical health are two of the things we appreciate more when we don’t have them. We should be highly aware of that and make sure we invest our energy into taking care of ourselves. Learning can take a backseat, if needed.

Outro

The future is exciting and scary at the same time.

The good thing is that we’re not alone.

Stay curious, and keep on learning, the rest will come.