Latest / Hope + Possibilities: Trust, Leadership + Strategic Foresight / Discernment: The Skill We'll Need Most in 2036

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Discernment: The Skill We'll Need Most in 2036 · Hope + Possibilities: Trust, Leadership + Strategic Foresight

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Hi, I'm Nola Simon.
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I'm the host of the Hope and Possibilities podcast, and today I want to talk about
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Practice, which the Institute for the Future, which is where I took
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my futurist training, does, and they look at 10-year forecast.
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One of the scenarios that they've created for 2036 involves discernment.
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And
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The title is "In 2036, discernment is the most essential human skill."
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And so this is relevant for us as members of society, members of
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culture, and people who live and work
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Because you don't separate who you are at work from who you are at home.
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Discernment is actually a skill that allows you to adapt and
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adjust to all aspects of life.
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So I'm gonna read this to you because I do think it's a really cool way
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of thinking about where we are currently and where it is we maybe
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need to steer ourselves toward.
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The era of seeing is believing is over.
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You can no longer provide the receipts because receipts are
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easily generated by AI and faked.
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A new skill set is required to make sense of the world and decide what is right,
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what is real, what is good, what is wise.
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This skill is discernment, the ability to judge what is trustworthy,
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relevant, and meaningful when evidence alone is insufficient and
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facts are unstable or contested.
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It combines critical thinking, contextual awareness, social sense-making, taste,
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and moral judgment to determine what is real enough, right enough, good enough,
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and ultimately wise enough to act on.
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There's also a component of neighborism, prioritizing human local truths,
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first-hand judgment, and accountability to the people we interact with every day
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over national media or online discourse.
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By twenty thirty-six, discernment has replaced empathy as the most
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widely considered essential scop- soft skill to teach in school-
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schools, train for in workplaces, and cultivate in our personal lives.
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Major drivers of this change, the collapse of evidentiary authority as photos, video,
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audio, and data become easily faked, failure of technological fixes such as
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AI-generated watermarks, the persistent human need to know what is real and true
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in order to act and make good decisions.
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So this really is an adaptive skill that fits into all aspects of our lives,
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and it'll impact relationships, how we work, how we trust, and, really how we
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make future-focused decisions and how we assess the impact of the past as well.
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So it's incredibly far-reaching, and that's why it really caught
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my eye because I've been talking an awful lot about the skills that
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we need for the future of work.
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And soft skills are, as many people have pointed out, are anything but soft.
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They're really complex, and as you can see the way they've defined discernment
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is a combination of heavy-hitting skills.
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It's critical thinking, contextual awareness, social sense making,
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taste, and moral judgment.
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And so the way that we practice discernment now
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is setting us up for success in the future.
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And I've done a few podcasts and I've written a few posts lately,
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which is about, how can you demonstrate the human skills that are
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The skills that AR is bad at, right?
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So taste and judgment, how do you demonstrate that on an ongoing basis?
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And on a low-stakes way, we can look at art, at culture, at literature,
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at movies and TV, how we talk about that, who we talk about that to, how
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we use it to make sense of the world.
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And a lot of times it is low stakes, right?
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On Threads last few weeks we've been talking about slow horses and the
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diplomat, and I've been writing about spoilers and the art of anticipation and
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why we hate spoilers but hate Easter eggs.
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These are all examples of displaying taste and judgment and discernment, but
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also critical thinking about what that actually means if you change the stakes.
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So an example of how you change the stakes, Ed Sheeran earlier this
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year told the world that he had a Letterboxd account, and it was cute.
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It was a way of him being relatable to fans who wanna perceive
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him as just another person.
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So yes, he's famous, yes, he's got lots of money, but he's really
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just like us because, he watches TV and he wants to write about his
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experience and share his thoughts.
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And people found his account really quickly, and I think he ended up shutting
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it down just because it got overrun.
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But those stakes are low.
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Fast-forward to the summer when the Macklemore situation arose where
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he declared support for Palestine and then got kicked off the tour
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by the owners of the stadiums.
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And Ed basically mishandled the PR by not wanting to get involved.
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That lack of discernment, the critical thinking, the sense making,
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understanding what the stakes were
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really impacted him because he didn't have that final decision.
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He's not the owner of the stadiums and, he was risking something
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by not actually taking a stance.
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Staying silent though is actually a stance and
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It blew up in his face, right?
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Because although probably no one in the world expected him to be able
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to resolve a conflict like Gaza
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What he fails to misunderstand is the fact that he has such a platform.
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He has millions and millions of followers and has previously spoken out on other
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political situations like Ukraine.
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People expect him
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To have
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a level of accountability and authority
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that he took on to use
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Right?
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So yes, he has lots of money.
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He's one of the most successful musicians in the world.
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But in terms of the level of money that he has, it pales in comparison to the
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people who actually own those stadiums and, essentially run the music business
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and how that industry itself works.
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So the level of discernment to understand the l- the difference of stakes in terms
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of who actually makes the decisions, who is being coerced, who is being
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intimidated and manipulated, and who
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is demonstrating courage in the face of impossible choices while people are dying.
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'Cause you gotta understand that the stakes are not just, who's going
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to a concert and making money, but you're supporting or not supporting a
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cause where people are actually dying
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And that
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is incredibly important
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So this is where discernment can have levels.
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But the reason why it's really important to practice your skills on this
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Is because you can't always control the stakes and how they change and
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how you're perceived, and you need to practice in advance because you need
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to be able to deftly work between what is nice to have and what is essential.
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And
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Somebody that's in the public eye I actually don't envy them because
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The shift in narrative, the shift in perception, the, the way that
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your words can be perceived and misinterpreted because there's not a
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lot-- n-not sufficient context often
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That's really challenging.
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It's hard to get right, and even with the best access in the world
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The only thing you can really do is own who you are and what you
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stand for and what your values are and operate from that basis.
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So that's an example of where discernment, the way that we're practicing it
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right now, has an opportunity to become a really essential skill.
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When I actually am practicing my skills and how I wanna grow, I
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look at things that are adjacent to what I actually wanna do.
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So I practice calm.
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I practice meditation.
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I practice listening.
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I started the podcast and invited guests, not because I necessarily just
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wanted to have a platform and somebody to actually hear what I wanted to say.
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I noticed that I actually interrupted people a lot because I
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didn't feel heard, and I needed an outlet for my ideas, and so I was
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actually interrupting people a lot because I needed to express myself.
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And so in part, I started my podcast so I could actually learn how to
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listen better and then feel confident enough to trust the situation that
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I could then express myself in a way that was productive and fruitful.
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And this is how this body of work has been created.
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It's not that I started a podcast just for the heck of it.
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I practiced it to-- I started it to practice a skill that I wanted to
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improve, and I needed to actually improve my critical thinking, my s-
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Contextual awareness, the listening.
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Are you listening to actually say something, or are you listening
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deeply and learning from a situation, making people feel seen and
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heard, and then asking questions to advance the conversation.
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What are you listening for?
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There's levels of listening.
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And then the other thing I do is I'm actually part of a, a few
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groups that are focused on language.
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So I'm part of a linguistics group.
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I'm part of a PR crisis communications group.
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And I am part of a group focused on trust and leadership
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These are the skills that I look to learn more about.
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And that's discernment because I know that the majority of the work
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that I do surrounding futurism
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is mainly focused on communication, how we use language, how we understand, how we
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remember, how we anticipate how we notice.
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Meditation, a big part of why I really enjoyed meditation and integrated
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meditation, so integrating meditation into walks and whatnot, is how
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that improves my ability to notice.
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And noticing is a really essential skill and part of futurism because
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you're looking for signals and scenarios and foresight, applying foresight,
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building on all of those things that you notice and the convergence
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of how things are coming together.
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Those are all really adjacent skills.
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Of course, I'm practicing futurism, I'm consulting, I'm advising.
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A key part of that is listening.
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But a lot of it is also just even noticing and understanding
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People and how they themselves need to practice all of these skills as
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well, and that's discernment as well.
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The other part of what is right, what is good, what is wise who do you trust?
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Why?
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How are you-- if you need to know everything, that's really not trust.
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That's where this debate about transparency, if you have
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transparency, that improves trust.
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Actually it's the opposite.
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If you have transparency, you don't even need to trust
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because you can see everything.
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So trust is not required because it's being disclosed
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you're actually doing something else in that situation.
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So how do you learn to trust?
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And the, the irony is that often in order to trust, you have
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to be trustworthy yourself.
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You have to go first and behave in ways
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That other people are going to trust.
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And the more trust you give, the more trust you earn.
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That's the interesting part about trust.
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And
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What is real?
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How do you observe people?
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I-- When I'm looking at people, and I'm following people, and I'm
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researching, I'm reading their books, I'm looking for consistency
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in their behavior and their beliefs.
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And there are people that I've had actually even on the podcast where I've,
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I've followed them for a long time.
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I've listened to their podcast.
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I usually only invite them when I start to feel that who they are on one platform
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really is who they are everywhere.
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There's consistency in the way that they think, the way that they show up,
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the way that they behave, the way that they comment, the way they engage.
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They are who they say they are.
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And then still, it can actually change once you get them
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directly in a conversation.
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I had one guy I really wanted to like because he's Canadian, he's
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written I don't know, seven books.
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We're the same age.
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We know the same music.
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I wanted to like him, and he showed up with slides and presented to me like
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it was 2010, and I was a kid in his university class, and got really upset
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with me when I actually questioned some of his data and his, the way he presented
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or didn't present some of the information
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I had another guy show up and in the middle of the podcast, which was
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actually being video recorded, he was talking but was also checking his phone
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It's an hour call.
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You couldn't wait 30 minutes to check your phone?
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Would you do that with anybody else?
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Is this who you are?
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Like, do you do this with like
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the CEOs that you consult with?
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Would you treat them like that?
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So who are you and how do you decide who's important, who's
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deserving of your attention?
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And the fact that it was being video recorded and you didn't
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even consider that might
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Come across in a certain way and you're okay with that?
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I was floored.
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And this is somebody that I had read all his books.
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I had noticed that my coach actually used him as an endorsement
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on her book and he reciprocated.
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I, I was confident
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in the productive conversations I'd had with him, and then he still showed up
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and made me feel like I didn't matter.
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You can think that you've got the best discernment in the world,
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and you can still be wrong.
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And that is where
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You really have to
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have a certain amount of self-awareness and be open to feedback and
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rethinking what it is you think that how do you unlearn what you knew?
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How do you relearn new skills?
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And how do you keep assessing
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what it is you think that and that is really where discernment comes into play.
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So I hope that this is an helpful example.
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I am really excited about the idea
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of how we integrate futures thinking, the everyday futurism concept that I
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talk about, which was how do you wake up in a future scenario, whether that's,
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six months from now, a year from now, 18 months from now, or 10 years from now?
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How do you put this in play, and what pieces do you need to
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work on to have that, that idea actually come to fruition, right?
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If you wake up 10 years from the future, like who are you living with?
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What does your breakfast look like?
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What do your habits look like?
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What does your work look like?
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Do you leave to go to work?
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Do you walk to work?
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Do you-- Like what does work mean to you?
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Even being able to imagine what the normal things that you do on an everyday basis
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now, what that looks like if certain aspects change helps you understand this.
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And Institute for the Future is actually a really good way to assess this.
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They actually talked about the possibilities of a pandemic ten
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years before COVID hit, and it was a scenario development developed by
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an expert who develops video games.
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And they knew because of the scenario development that they'd done, this
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ten-year forecast, that people were gonna have a really hard time around
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rituals, like going to church, missing church, weddings, funerals
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being present for babies being born christenings, the rituals that
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fuel our life and mark transitions.
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It was gonna be really difficult for people to not gather.
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The ritual of going to church and praying together and that community aspect
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that people-- keep people connected.
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Of course, you can move a certain amount of that online.
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That feels and looks very different for somebody who's never been online, right?
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So because they had people imagine what it would look like to wake up in those
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scenarios, and they mined all of the responses for commonalities, they were
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actually able to come in and advise governments about the responses and
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what the risks would be and how to adapt
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This is where futurism can be very powerful, and discernment
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is a huge part of that.
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We know more than we realize, and a lot of it isn't necessarily about knowing.
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It's about that sense-making part of it because we know what it is.
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We know what our lives are.
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We know how we would react.
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We are who we are.
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These are important skills.
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And this is the value of futurism.
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It's not just about little fantasy things like flying cars.
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It's these small decisions that become bigger decisions
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that snowball, that then become
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who we are as a society, and that those are big questions.
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Anyways, thanks for listening.
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I'd love to know what you think.
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I've got an experiment going to end up on the Canadian charts.
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I've realized that, a lot of times the skills that I talk about are
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deeply related to careers, and also I'm talking about society and culture.
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So I have actually changed the categories for my podcast to
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match that, and I'm attempting to end up on the Canadian charts.
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Again, it-- I think it's a civic duty to speak up as a Canadian about the signals
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and the trends and the scenarios I see playing out into the sovereignty of
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our nature and our future as a country.
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And that requires visibility, which means that I need to amplify
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Canadian voices, and this is my goal.
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So the easiest thing you can do to support that is to actually just subscribe to the
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podcast on whatever player you listen on.
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Thanks.