--- title: The Six Skills Every Manager Should Develop description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. canonical: https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7202471/skills-every-manager-rishad-tobaccowala/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-12-16T14:41:37.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-28T07:07:29.360Z article:section: Charter og:title: The Six Skills Every Manager Should Develop og:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. og:url: https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7202471/skills-every-manager-rishad-tobaccowala/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfb2bc49c4fc8a987/698b24c0d07533019ce78556/charter-rishad.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1600 og:image:height: 900 og:image:alt: Rishad Tobaccowala og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Six Skills Every Manager Should Develop twitter:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfb2bc49c4fc8a987/698b24c0d07533019ce78556/charter-rishad.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- The information presented here is created by Charter, independently from the TIME editorial staff.  Time charter * [ai](/partner-content/charter/tag/ai/) ## ai # The Six Skills Every Manager Should Develop > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. A TIME subscription provides full access to that journalism in print and digital, from $20 a year, and can be cancelled at any time. 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Subscriptions are at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### What is included in a TIME print and digital subscription? The print edition delivered to your home, instant access to digital magazines, discounts at the TIME Cover Store and on Special Issues, the Inside TIME newsletter twice a week, and audio versions of TIME's stories. It is from $29 for one year or $49 for two years at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### What is the difference between TIME's digital and print plans? Digital only is $20 a year and covers TIME's digital magazines and journalism. Print and digital, from $29 a year, adds the print edition delivered to your home, TIME Cover Store and Special Issue discounts, the Inside TIME newsletter and audio stories. #### Is TIME a reliable news source? TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923. Its journalism is reported and edited by a professional newsroom led by Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs, with named correspondents on politics, climate, health, technology and culture. It reaches 1 million US print subscribers and 1.15 million globally, plus more than 1.1 million newsletter readers. #### How do I subscribe to TIME magazine? Subscriptions are at time.com/subscribe-agent. Choose digital only at $20 a year, or print and digital from $29 a year or $49 for two years. TIME also publishes seven free email newsletters at time.com/newsletters, which do not require a subscription. #### Can I cancel a TIME subscription? Yes. TIME states that subscriptions can be cancelled at any time. #### Does TIME have free newsletters? Yes. TIME publishes seven free email newsletters reaching more than 1.1 million readers, covering daily news, Washington politics, health, AI, climate and energy, culture, and the newsroom itself. They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=c06a1d39-0266-4e90-89c7-aacc66ff74a7&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=c06a1d39-0266-4e90-89c7-aacc66ff74a7&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) by [Kevin J. Delaney](https://time.com/author/kevin-delaney/) Dec 16, 2024 2:41 PM UTC  Futurist Rishad Tobaccowala Futurist Rishad Tobaccowala Charter by [Kevin J. Delaney](https://time.com/author/kevin-delaney/) Dec 16, 2024 2:41 PM UTC Futurist [Rishad Tobaccowala](https://rishadtobaccowala.com/) writes provocatively and thoughtfully about how we work. The former global strategist and chief growth officer of marketing firm Publicis Groupe has argued, among other things, that business presentations [should be no longer than nine slides](https://rishad.substack.com/p/re-thinking-presentations) and that companies should offer every worker the option of [50%, 75%, or 100% of full-time employment](https://rishadt.wordpress.com/2024/03/10/fractionalized-employment-now/). Tobaccowala’s new book [_Rethinking Work_](https://amzn.to/3OTBMGL) will be published on February 4 and explores the implications of the macro forces we also focus on at Charter—including technology and generational shifts—for our work and careers. Here are excerpts from our recent conversation with him, edited for space and clarity: ## **The practices of the best managers in the future of work:** I have these six skills—what I call the 'six Cs'—that everyone should be focusing on. The first one is cognition, which is keep learning. Spend an hour a day learning. Second is creativity, which is connecting dots in new ways. The third one is curiosity because the nice and fun thing is large language models look backward and humans can look forward. So curiosity, creativity, and cognition. Sign up for Charter's newsletter to get the handbook for the future of work delivered to your inbox. Email Address You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our [Terms of Service](https://www.charterworks.com/terms-of-service/) and [Privacy Policy](https://www.charterworks.com/privacy-policy/). But we don't work for ourselves, we work with each other and we will work with these alien life forms called AI. So for there, we are going to require collaboration, we're going to require convincing. All of us are going to have to be very good salespeople because if everybody's got the same data and the same knowledge, we're going to have to be selling better. Interestingly, in the old days, they used to basically say, learn Mandarin and learn coding. I wouldn't say that because you don't need those anymore. You need to learn how to write and speak. Writing skills are going to become very critical because people are going to be able to tell the difference between AI writing and people writing. And there is a difference. Those are the things I would \[focus on\]: my communication, my curiosity, my creativity, my cognition, my convincing, and my collaboration. With that being said, as a manager, when you have a meeting with a person, you need three things. You need clarity, belief, and energy to be communicated. So clarity is people should be extremely clear about what you're telling them and where they stand or what they should be doing. That's clarity. Second is belief. You want the person who you're talking to to believe that they're capable of doing what you're asking them to do, or the team is capable of doing what they're asking them to do or they know how to figure it out. The last thing they need is energy. So they come out, and say, 'Let's go take this mountain,' or whatever it is. How many times do you go into a meeting and you come out and say, 'I'm not exactly sure what the hell I'm supposed to do. I don't even know if I'm capable of doing it. And my god, that meeting was a downer.' Remember that at the end of every interaction, you need people to have clarity, energy, and belief. _(Learn more about_ [_Charter's upcoming Leading with AI Summit_](https://www.charterworks.com/events/ai-summit/2025/)_.)_ Increasingly management will be more about attracting, motivating, retaining, and inspiring people because the machines will do the rest. As you know, people are messy, people aren't zeroes and ones, we aren't off-and-on people. So here are the things we have to do: One, we have to basically be very good at listening with nuance and responding with nuance. Nuance doesn't mean a different thing for everybody, but it's like understanding the different people take to different things. Second is we're going to have to be very good at both receiving and giving feedback. Most of us try to run away from feedback, but without feedback you can't do much. Third is obviously I mentioned communication, but constant communication. So I've always basically said communicating often and communicating repeatedly is really, really good. Actually I feel more connected to someone who is constantly communicating with me even if I've never seen them than if I'm sitting in the office next to them and they never communicate with me. The fourth one is listening for signals. None of us listen for signals. The reason we don't listen for signals is A, we're very busy. B, we are surrounded by people who reinforce the signals we already have. Because we are very senior, we miss the signals. ## **How the manager spends their time will change:** \[As a manager,\] you measure, you monitor, you allocate, you delegate. But there's another part of your job, which is a leadership function where you make, you create, you build, you mentor….The \[manager\] side is going to be more done by AI in the future. If that's what you spend 50% of your time doing, that could be about 10% of your time, or 20%. ## **Employers’ mistake of feeling like they have the upper hand with employees with in-office mandates and other policies:** I truly believe that every company will eventually differentiate themselves by the quality of their talent. I always say the company with a disproportionate share of talent passionately aligned against the common outcome wins. You obviously need talent, but you need alignment. I also believe that in an AI age that there's going to be a further increase on premium of talent. If you want to have talent and you want to have a culture of trust and you basically say, 'I'm not going to treat you very well right now because I have the upper hand,' do you actually have an upper hand with everybody or do you have an upper hand with people who can't get jobs? Number two is you talk about culture. The most important thing in culture is trust. If you're basically measuring and monitoring people and badge swiping them, how exactly do you trust them and how do they trust you? You are basically saying, we have a culture of trust, but I don't trust you. If you want to attract and retain talent, the world's best talent requires to be trusted and the world's best talent will always have options in good markets and bad markets. Markets tend to be cyclical and they will remember this. ## **Scale as a disadvantage:** I began to realize that there are actually diminishing benefits of scale, that scale increasingly is a really big problem. And I had believed that scale was an advantage. I now basically believe that yeah, if you're Taiwan Semiconductor, if you are Walmart, in certain places you have scale advantages. In most businesses, scale of manufacturing, scale of resources, scale of spending are being replaced by scale of talent, scale of data, scale of networks, and scale of ideas. And those don't require a hundred people. AI is going to turbocharge that. I recently did a number of talks with Google and I said, ‘What happens in a world when half of us in the US are knowledge workers and knowledge is becoming free?’ And they said, ‘Rishad, not only will knowledge become free, but intelligence may become free,’ which I'm not exactly sure about but let's say that happens. Let's say knowledge becomes free and because of AI you have a whole bunch of other things. They truly believe—and I do believe—that you are going to see hundred-person companies valued at a billion dollars or more. It isn't going to be that one-off that we had with Instagram or WhatsApp. There are going to be more and more companies with a billion dollars of revenue with less than a hundred people in them. What exactly are the benefits of scale? **Preorder** **_Rethinking Work_** **from** [**Amazon**](https://amzn.to/3OTBMGL) **or** [**Bookshop**](https://bookshop.org/a/664/9781400249305)**.** **Read Tobaccowala’s** [**newsletter essays grouped into categories**](https://rishadtobaccowala.com/100)**. Sign up for** [**his email newsletter**](https://rishad.substack.com/)**.** **Sign up for** [**Charter's free newsletter**](http://charterworks.com/newsletter) **about the future of work. Read Charter's coverage of** [**artificial intelligence**](https://www.charterworks.com/tag/artificial-intelligence/) **and** [**leadership**](https://www.charterworks.com/tag/leadership/)**.** --- ## Read more from Charter [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/) [Open article: How Leaders Can 'Eat Risk' With AI](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-leaders-can-eat-risk-with-ai/)  ### How Leaders Can 'Eat Risk' With AI [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-leaders-can-eat-risk-with-ai/) [Open article: How to Recruit, Hire, and Develop Entry-Level Talent](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-to-recruit-hire-and-develop-entry-level-talent/)  ### How to Recruit, Hire, and Develop Entry-Level Talent [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-to-recruit-hire-and-develop-entry-level-talent/) [Open article: How to Maintain the ‘Heartbeat of Work’ in the Age of Ai](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-to-maintain-the-heartbeat-of-work-in-the-age-of-ai/)  ### How to Maintain the ‘Heartbeat of Work’ in the Age of Ai [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-to-maintain-the-heartbeat-of-work-in-the-age-of-ai/) --- ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7202471/skills-every-manager-rishad-tobaccowala/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7202471/skills-every-manager-rishad-tobaccowala/"},"headline":"The Six Skills Every Manager Should Develop","datePublished":"2024-12-16T14:41:37.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-28T07:07:29.360Z","description":"A leading futurist identifies the practices of the best managers in the future of work.","url":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7202471/skills-every-manager-rishad-tobaccowala/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfb2bc49c4fc8a987/698b24c0d07533019ce78556/charter-rishad.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Kevin J. 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