Soft Skills, Hard Results: How Coaching Builds Measurably Better Leaders

We've long known that "soft skills" aren't soft at all. Skills like active listening, clear communication, emotional intelligence, and inclusive leadership are fundamental. They help teams communicate clearly, navigate uncertainty, and build trust across differences. Yet proving their impact with hard data has remained an enduring challenge.

Now, a new paper from Harvard Kennedy School researchers (Ben Weidmann, Yixian Xu, and David Deming) helps validate what many leaders and coaches have long observed: these human skills truly matter and demonstrably impact results.

The study put leaders through two challenges. First, they led a team of AI agents in problem-solving tasks, then they led human teams through similar exercises (or vice versa). What emerged was a powerful insight: success in leading AI teams predicted success with human teams with remarkable consistency. This reveals that core leadership skills translate across both contexts.

When the measurements came to soft skills, the study found that the leaders who got better results asked more questions and used more inclusive language. These weren't just surface-level behaviors; they reflected deeper habits of collaborative leadership.

Among the most effective leaders, certain behaviors stood out, especially those tied to communication and inclusion:

“Good leaders ask more questions and their teams engage in more conversational turn-taking. Good leaders tend to use plural pronouns, referring to ‘we’ and ‘us’.”

— Weidmann et al., 2025

These habits of asking powerful questions, fostering dialogue, and building inclusion are exactly what coaching develops. Coaching helps leaders sharpen both their skills and their awareness of team interactions. How you show up matters.

But here's where it gets really interesting. This study didn't just use AI as a research tool. It offers a preview of tomorrow's workplace. As AI becomes more integrated into organizations, leaders face a new challenge. When, not if, teams include both humans and AI agents, how will leadership need to evolve?

The study reveals why this matters: the same skills that make leaders effective with humans also work with AI teams. In hybrid environments, these skills become even more vital. Leaders must understand both human dynamics and AI capabilities, translating between analytical outputs and human insights, and ensuring their teams leverage the strengths of both. The future doesn't demand less human leadership. It demands stronger, more nuanced, more intentional leadership.

That’s why coaching remains essential, even in the age of AI. Especially in the age of AI.

Emerging research confirms what experienced leaders and coaches have observed: leadership skills that enable clear communication and effective collaboration create measurable results, whether your team is made up of people, agents, or a mix of both. And in an increasingly hybrid world, mastering these skills becomes more crucial than ever.

The future belongs to leaders who recognize that soft skills drive hard outcomes. And the best leaders will be those who never stop developing them.