Moment: The Top 4 Skills Women Think They Need

The Women's Agenda Ambition Report reveals women want to develop communication, empathy, resilience and adaptability in 2023, but these are skills women already excel at. What women truly need isn't more skills but permission—permission to set boundaries, focus on themselves, rest without guilt, and anchor in their authentic identity.

• Communication: women need directness, not diplomacy—learning to speak up without apologising for taking space
• People-pleasing dampens our ability to communicate effectively, despite women being incredibly articulate
• Empathy: women already bleed empathy as emotional barometers—they actually want to be understood themselves
• Women need to develop discernment and stop taking on excessive responsibility for others' emotions
• Resilience: women don't lack resilience, they're exhausted from demonstrating it constantly
• Learning to rest without guilt and put down emotional burdens is the real skill needed
• Adaptability: women are tired of shapeshifting to meet everyone's expectations
• True adaptability comes from anchoring into your authentic self, not reactive changing
• The future of female leadership needs women who are unapologetically whole
• Reclaiming your energy, rediscovering your voice, and trusting yourself are the real skills

The real skill under all of this is you need to come back home to yourself. You need to reclaim your energy. You need to rediscover your voice, learn to trust in yourself. The future of female leadership does not need more polished perfection. We are not broken and we do not need fixing. What we really need is women who are unapologetically whole.

Thank you for joining us today on the Balance and Beyond Podcast. We're so glad you carved out this time for yourself!

If you’re keen to dive deeper into our world, here are our socials where you can discover more about the toolkit that has helped thousands of women create a life of balance.

Website: www.balanceinstitute.com
Podcast Website: https://www.balanceinstitute.com/podcast
Email: jo@balanceinstitute.com
LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/stonejoanne
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/betterbalanceinstitute/
Instagram: @betterbalanceinstitute

Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on the Balance & Beyond Podcast!

Chapters

• 0:00 Women's ambition report findings
• 1:11 Communication: directness over diplomacy
• 2:57 Empathy: shifting focus to ourselves
• 4:37 Resilience: learning to put down
• 6:34 Adaptability: anchoring in your truth
• 8:09 Coming back home to yourself

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

When I read the latest Women's Agenda, women's Ambition Report, one thing jumped out at me the top skills women want to develop in 2025? Communication, empathy, resilience, adaptability. At first glance logical, right, useful, of course, in an era of AI and all the things, but I couldn't help think aren't these the exact skills women already over index in? So what is really going on underneath and what is it that women are really looking for? Women do not need more skills, ladies. We have so many Ladies. We have so many.

Speaker 1: 0:43

What this report actually reveals is women want more permission. We don't need more tools to survive. We are very, very well loaded for how we stop shape-shifting, how we stop peacekeeping and over-functioning just to stay afloat. So let's talk about each of these four top skills. And what is it that women are actually saying they really want?

Speaker 1: 1:21

When we talk about communication, what women are really saying is I want to be able to say about boundary setting, speaking up in meetings, navigating conflict, saying no without spiraling, not taking everything on, living our life in fear of letting everyone down. The real upskilling here we need is in more directness, not diplomacy, not apologising for ourselves, constantly apologising for saying no, apologising for asking for an update, apologising for taking up space. Our inner people pleaser, which is present in so many ambitious women, is what is dampening our ability to communicate. We step in and we understand our people pleaser and we tame that part of ourselves and now communication unlocks. We know what to say. Most women are incredibly capable, incredibly articulate, so better communication skills are actually not going to fix this. What women need is to tame their people pleaser and to really learn how to be direct and to speak without shrinking.

Speaker 1: 2:57

Next up, empathy. My goodness, what a loaded word. Women already bleed empathy. We're the emotional barometers of the household and we carry so much. What I see under this drive for more empathy is actually not empathy at all. Women want to be understood. They want to be seen. They want others to care the way they care. In my burnout quiz, women just want to be taken care of is one of our most popular responses. So we don't want more empathy. We don't want to learn how to be more empathetic for others. We need to learn discernment. We need to stop taking on so much responsibility. Stop taking decisions personally. Don't stop having an overemphasized sense of personal responsibility. We have to learn to hold our own space without holding everyone else's chaos. This is all we do at the moment. We are just bleeding. We care so much, we are so attuned to the emotions of others and yet completely numb to our own. So if there's any place that we need to actually build our empathy skills, it's toward ourselves. So this is a really interesting one. The second skill and I know we talk about the art of being human in an era of AI. However, we need to start being human first and foremost, with ourselves.

Speaker 1: 4:37

Third skill that came up here is resilience. Ah, the glorified hustle badge, the. I'm not coping well enough. I don't cope with change. I'm not able to handle so much. Women don't lack resilience. We're exhausted by it. We are holding so many balls at home, at work, in life.

Speaker 1: 5:03

What we are actually looking for here, what women are actually saying, is I don't need to learn to hold more, I don't need to learn to pick myself back up. I actually need to learn to put down. I actually need to learn to rest. So, instead of picking up more, instead of holding more, instead of bouncing back, actually we need to finally break the cycle. We have to learn to rest without guilt. We have to learn to put our emotions down, the worries that we have, the fear of others. If we put that down, then we don't need to worry about bouncing back because we're not weighed down by everything that we are holding. So, yes, resilience is a wonderful trait. However, you already have a lot. You process your emotions, you put it all down and suddenly resilience magically reappears, especially when combined with more empathy for ourselves, a much less developed sense of personal responsibility and learning how to navigate conflict and put our people-pleaser down. Oh, the energy that women would unlock is amazing.

Speaker 1: 6:22

And finally, the fourth skill women said they needed was adaptability, which, in an era where change is brutal, where the pace is only going to increase. What I hear under this is women are exhausted, shapeshifting, trying to be everything to everyone. And now you add in tech change, you add in industry change, you add in role change, restructures. It's exhausting. Women can't shapeshift anymore. So many women tell me they're chameleons, and yet a chameleon who is completely disconnected from who she is.

Speaker 1: 7:04

So what if the most powerful skill you need isn't to actually adapt to your external environment anymore? What if it was to actually anchor into who you really are, into who you really are, to know what you stand for, to know your truth so that you're not swept away every time the next tornado passes through town. Because true adaptability isn't reactive, it's not being on the back foot, it's not living in survival mode. True adaptability is knowing who you are and then being able to bend and sway so much more elegantly, but from a really, really solid base. If you are nodding along and think, wow, yes, I either tick those boxes and I'm saying that's the thing I want.

Speaker 1: 7:56

But oh my gosh, jo, actually what you said is the real thing under here. I really need boundaries, more empathy for myself, learning to rest without guilt, anchoring in the truth of who I am. The real skill under all of this is you need to come back home to yourself. You need to reclaim your energy. You need to rediscover your voice, learn to trust in yourself. The future of female leadership does not need more polished perfection. We are not broken and we do not need fixing. What we really need is women who are unapologetically whole.