Knowledge has never been easier to access, yet corporate training is finding it harder and harder to engage people. In this episode of Jugando en Serio (in Spanish), Soraya del Portillo, psychologist, CEO of BeChiara and international speaker, explains the relationship between soft skills and AI: how AI can measure them, why they can only be developed through practice and what motivates each person.
Assessing skills with AI: measuring what a trainer can't
Del Portillo says she has been working with AI for ten years. The turning point came in her public speaking courses: feedback meant repeating the same advice to every student, something that could be automated. And no trainer can measure speaking speed, eye contact, decibels and tonal range at the same time; her tool measures up to 25 indicators at once.
In her view, AI will strip assessment of the subjectivity evaluators used to add without meaning to: objective metrics and a far smaller margin of error. But she doesn't idealize it: AI «isn't as intelligent as we think», she warns; it's «artificial stupidity» until we train it.
Skills aren't studied, they're practiced
For years, her sales pitch was that skills could only change through face-to-face training. Discovering game-based learning made her change it, although the foundation is the same: without practice there's no improvement, just as no pilot flies without hours in a simulator. You can know the theory, but you won't lead, negotiate or communicate better without practicing.
Learning through play is also natural: as children we learn that way, and as adults we're told «now suffer». She says she didn't study psychology, she «suffered» it, because it didn't engage her. Simulators let people learn differently, with more engagement and a longer-lasting learning footprint.
We're no longer in the age of knowledge
What AI doesn't provide, according to Del Portillo, is creativity, critical thinking and inspirational leadership. Everyone will know the same things by asking ChatGPT; the difference will lie in how you tell it, apply it and interpret it. To develop these skills, she suggests working in projects tied to objectives and gamifying even the most repetitive tasks, such as calls in a contact center.
Inspirational leadership is the frontier: an AI might be able to follow a process to motivate someone, but not make them look at you with a spark in their eyes.
We're no longer in the age of knowledge. Knowledge is accessible to absolutely everyone. We're in the age of the things artificial intelligence won't give me, which are human traits and abilities.
Rankings, badges and intrinsic motivation
In sales teams, with dominant, goal-driven profiles, gamification multiplies results. Del Portillo recommends rankings, by team if your culture isn't competitive, because then you also help your colleagues; storytelling, because salespeople love living a thousand lives; and badges for «the best at something»: the fastest, the most helpful. They pull more levers than a ranking.
Because intrinsic motivation is different for each person: money, time, public recognition or exactly the opposite. A good leader needs to know what motivates their team, and the company needs to give them the tools to find out.
One-size-fits-all stopped existing many, many years ago. Shorter hours may or may not motivate you; holidays in August may or may not motivate you. It depends. The only way to know what motivates a person is to ask them.
AI risks and the engagement challenge
Del Portillo doesn't deny the risks, such as cloning an executive's voice to deceive an employee. The first step is to know them: how these models work and how much data we give away without realizing it. Her formula: the more knowledge, the less uncertainty; and the less uncertainty, the less fear.
The biggest challenge in corporate training? Engagement: we're saturated with training, and the bad kind makes us want less and less of it. That's why the superpower she'd choose is sparking each person's intrinsic motivation: whoever finds it becomes a devourer of learning.
