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The Rising Up framework of 18 core skills, consolidated in 2026 by our scientific team after 10 years of research in cognitive science. Definitions, three families, and how we measure them.
You have probably heard about “soft skills” a thousand times. Recruiters talk about them, executive committees ask for them, schools try to teach them. And yet, if someone asked you to name the precise skills that genuinely make a difference at work, you would most likely struggle to start.
That is entirely normal. Soft skills have suffered from a deep problem for years: their definition is vague. They are variously called “non-technical”, “transferable” or “behavioural” skills, interchangeable terms that in the end say very little.
At Rising Up, our scientific team has spent more than 10 years redefining these concepts scientifically. In 2026, our framework evolved: it moved from 25 to 18 core skills. This is not a reduction. It is a scientific consolidation carried out by our researchers to produce a framework that is more rigorous, more stable, and more usable inside organisations.
In this article, you will find:
Our Rising Up framework evolved this year: it moved from 25 to 18 core skills. This is a scientific consolidation led by our team under the direction of Dr Nawal Abboub.
Several skills were grouped under more precise definitions. Others were refined to better reflect the current state of research in cognitive science. The result is a framework that is more rigorous, more stable over time, and more usable in the workplace.
This is the standard we now use across all our work: the Soft Skills Scan, certifications, training programmes, and recruitment pilot programmes. You will also find it on our official reference page.
For Rising Up’s cognitive science researchers, soft skills are neither soft, nor transferable, and certainly not “non-technical”.
What they are directly connected to are our cognitive capacities, the core skills. And in recent years, cognitive neuroscience has made enormous progress in understanding them.
The skills at the heart of human intelligence are every bit as technical as conventional technical skills. They simply are not learned in the same way.
Hence our vocabulary: core skills rather than soft skills. These skills sit at the centre of professional performance. Behavioural skills predict professional success, contribute to it causally, and can be developed (work by James Heckman, Nobel laureate in economics), unlike the hard skills listed on a CV.
We set out this approach in our Mag RH interview on core skills.
They are learned implicitly, from birth, through our professional and personal experiences. Not through lectures. Not through corporate slide decks. Not through two-day team-building sessions.
At Rising Up, we defined 3 scientific criteria for a skill to qualify as a core skill:
These 3 criteria are what separate core skills from the “personality traits” measured by conventional psychometric tests (PAPI, 16PF, Hogan, MBTI). Traits are assumed to be stable. Core skills can be trained.
This fundamental difference is why developing core skills is possible, and why measuring a personality trait (“are you more extroverted or introverted?”) has almost no operational value in a company.
This is what we put into practice with schools: see our partnership with IPAC Bachelor Factory and our MyDigitalSchool client case.
Our framework is organised into 3 families of 6 skills each. Every core skill is defined by a precise mental action and an observable behaviour, measurable in a real professional situation.
The skills that allow a person to collaborate effectively with others, make decisions under pressure, and carry a vision within a group.
The skills that allow a person to produce new ideas, reason through complexity, and communicate clearly.
The skills that allow a person to deliver within the time available, adjust their strategies, and honour their commitments.
You may be wondering: why consolidate the list from 25 to 18?
Three scientific reasons explain this evolution, carried out by our team in 2026.
Several skills in the previous list were in fact measuring very closely related dimensions. Advances in cognitive science made it possible to identify these redundancies and consolidate them under a more precise definition.
A typical example: “risk tolerance” and “anticipation” both measure the same underlying cognitive function, the ability to reason with incomplete or contradictory information. They were grouped into “reasoning under uncertainty”, which is the parent definition, more precise and more measurable.
A skill is only useful if it can be measured in context, in a real professional situation. Some skills in the previous list had definitions too general to be observed in practice. The 2026 framework refined them into precise behaviours that are measurable and trainable.
A scientific framework must be able to evolve, but not every year. The consolidation from 25 to 18 was carried out to produce a framework that is stable and will not require an annual overhaul. It is our reference standard for the years ahead.
If a core skill is a contextual cognitive skill rather than a fixed personality trait, then it cannot be measured by a conventional psychometric test. PAPI, 16PF, Hogan, MBTI: all of them rely on declarative self-assessment. You tick what you believe you are. The result? Everyone overrates themselves.
Our approach is radically different.
Rising Up’s Soft Skills Scan is recognised as a breakthrough innovation by the European Innovation Council. It combines two complementary dimensions:
The Scan takes 20 minutes, on any device, with no possible preparation. Results are presented as strengths and points of vigilance for each of the 18 core skills, readable at a glance by a manager.
The underlying scientific framework, CoreSkills, is hosted in open access on the Open Science Framework (DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/RVEHU). It was co-developed with a consortium of cognitive science researchers from CNRS, ENS-PSL, EHESS and Université Paris Cité.
This is exactly what we deployed at Google Performance Agency, at Adobe on the “Communicate From Everywhere” programme, and at Orange Cloud for Business for their management team.
For companies that want to assess candidates’ soft skills objectively before the interview, Rising Up offers the recruitment pilot programme:
🎯 150 behavioural assessments over 8 weeks, on candidates for 5 target roles
🎯 CoreSkills AI analysis of your 5 job descriptions (yours for good, even if you stop midway)
🎯 €3,000 excl. VAT paid once on signature, available until 30 September 2026 (then €4,500 excl. VAT)
🎯 Limited to 5 companies per month
The asymmetry is clear: avoiding a single bad hire covers ten times the cost of the pilot.
Send us a message 📩 at hello@risinguparis.com and we will arrange a 15-minute demonstration for you this week.
From recruitment At development skills, Rising Up provides reliable behavioral data to guide your HR and educational choices.
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