Emotional intelligence will be the focus of the Workforce Solutions for Tarrant County subcommittee charged with finding ways to improve the region’s workforce, its chairman said during the group’s June 3 meeting.
At the meeting, Workforce Solutions’ Workforce Improvement Committee dove into a survey conducted by the talent committee for the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce.
The highest-rated need of those surveyed reflected that soft skills such as emotional intelligence were “what employers across the board said were most important for their organization’s success and what they were lacking in both their workforce and in the broader workforce,” committee chair Mike Coffey, who owns the Fort Worth-based background screening firm Imperative, said during the meeting.
“When I get dragged into an investigation or some sort of employee relations intervention … it’s poor communication,” he said.
During the meeting, it was noted that the Texas Workforce Commission offers the Skills for Success program, administered by Texas State Technical College and containing soft skills courses.
Soft skills also are embedded into training offered by technical and community colleges, and they transcend industries and follow employees in their career paths, committee members said.
The committee also discussed promulgating the addition of soft skill coaching into job placement counseling services, with the idea of testing job seekers with scenarios that engage soft skill utilization.
Workforce Solutions for Tarrant County
Workforce Improvement Committee Meeting
Documenter: Patrick Banis
Date: June 3, 2026
Learn more about this meeting by clicking here. For the agenda, click here.
“Our main focus is figuring out what the employer community needs in their workforce, that we know what their gaps are, and then … bubbling that up through us to both staff here at Workforce Solutions and to the broader board,” Coffey said in opening the meeting.
One of the goals for the board is to help Fort Worth be “a place that people want to live and raise their kids,” Coffey said.
Members also discussed ways the committee can help small businesses.
The city of Fort Worth has “a lot of goals to support contractors, small businesses, hopefully to continue to bring them in and do business with the city,” said Jazmin Gutierrez, Fort Worth’s economic development coordinator.
“The city has agreements with the Fort Worth Chamber, the Metro Black Chamber and Hispanic Chamber to promote meeting opportunities with the city and get small businesses in there (and) help steer them to the right resources to get credentialed,” Coffey said.
Patrick Banis is a member of the Fort Worth Report Documenters crew. If you believe anything in this account is inaccurate, please email us at news@fortworthreport.org with “Correction Request” in the subject line.
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