Why Conversation Skills May Become a Corporate Leadership Role

In a recent LinkedIn post, Vanessa Van Edwards discusses her prediction that companies will increasingly need a “Chief Conversation Officer” as artificial intelligence takes on more technical work and human communication skills gain importance. This article reports on Van Edwards’s ideas in that post; it was not written by her.

“As technology gets smarter, human skills become more valuable.”

Van Edwards argues that workplace communication is being neglected as people text instead of call, use AI to draft emails, and avoid difficult conversations. In her view, those habits point to a broader skills gap: employees may have fewer opportunities to practice listening, building trust and navigating disagreement.

The case for teaching conversation

To frame that concern, Van Edwards cites the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, saying it found that nearly 40% of the skills needed on the job are expected to change by 2030. She connects that shift to the continuing importance of resilience, leadership and collaboration alongside technical expertise.

As Van Edwards notes, the capabilities she sees as increasingly valuable include reading a room, handling a difficult conversation and helping another person feel understood. She contends that these skills cannot be replicated simply by making AI more capable, and that many workers have not been taught them systematically.

“The ability to read a room. To navigate a difficult conversation. To build trust fast. To make someone feel truly understood.”

Her proposed response is to make conversation development part of organizational life. Van Edwards says her goal is to have a “People Coach” in every company, with those coaches creating time and space for collaborative conversation and teaching employees how to improve it.

A new path for people-focused work

Van Edwards presents the People Coach role as both an internal resource and a possible professional direction for managers, human resources leaders, coaches and consultants. She says the first two certification classes filled and that 50 certified coaches are now working with companies or through their own consultancies around the world.

“So we built a certification around the science of how people connect and then they learn to teach it.”

According to Van Edwards, participants can add the certification to their résumés and use it to create new roles within their organizations. Her post describes this as a response to questions she has heard from professionals who want to teach connection skills to colleagues or clients.

From prediction to adoption

The CCO title remains Van Edwards’s forecast, while the People Coach program is the concrete initiative she describes in the post. Her argument rests on a practical distinction: as automation changes job tasks, organizations may need deliberate ways to develop the human skills that still shape collaboration and trust.

Van Edwards closes by inviting readers to consider becoming People Coaches and notes that registration for the next cohort is open. The post thus pairs a prediction about a future corporate role with a current training program intended to build the skills she believes that role would require.