What Are Interpersonal Skills?

What are interpersonal skills? In answering this question, it is no exaggeration to say that they are the cornerstone of personal and professional success.

As our world becomes increasingly automated, it seems there is less need for human contact. And it would be easy to assume that the value of interpersonal skills is decreasing. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

This article provides an overview of what interpersonal skills are, why they are crucial for career and life success and how you can develop them. We’ll also explore how you can showcase your interpersonal skills for recognition and advancement- no one wants their strengths to be the next kept secret!

We use interpersonal skills daily to interact and build relationships with others. They include a wide range of abilities, particularly effective communication skills such as listening, speaking clearly, and reading the signals that others send and interpreting them accurately to form effective responses. They also include self-awareness and exercising control of your emotions.

Strong interpersonal communicators can adjust their approach and communications as needed, depending on the reactions of others to their messages and meanings.

Almost all jobs require good interpersonal skills. Whether you’re communicating with colleagues, customers, or suppliers, it’s essential to understand others and adjust your approach to work together effectively to achieve common goals.

Interpersonal skills are particularly crucial for roles such as leadership, business development, customer service, healthcare, and the provision of legal or financial advisors, among others.

There is a misconception that you don’t need good interpersonal skills in roles that don’t require regular interactions with people, such as research, development, coding, and system testing. However, interpersonal skills are still needed to achieve the right results.

For example, while software developers may spend a substantial amount of time working independently, they need to collaborate with others to understand their customers’ needs and ‘translate’ between the technical and the practical aspects to ensure a successful outcome.

In fact, poor interpersonal skills are often a causal factor in organisational failings. Therefore, having strong interpersonal skills is a critical factor for success, both for individuals and organisations.

Those organisations that consist of a workforce of people with strong interpersonal skills experience the following benefits:

• Increased employee engagement and camaraderie
• Greater trust and dependability
• More and better creativity through successful collaboration
• Increased productivity and efficiency
• Greater growth and profitability
• Limited negative conflict
• Increased customer satisfaction scores and repeat customers.

Unlike technical or ‘hard’ skills, interpersonal skills are soft skills which are easily transferable across industries, positions and even careers. Employers value interpersonal skills because they contribute to positive work environments and help maintain an efficient workflow.

Here’s a list of some interpersonal skills that we feel are crucial to personal and professional success.

Communication skills are the ability to convey information clearly and compellingly, including speaking, writing, reading, and listening skills—or any combination of these things. Strong communication skills also include interpreting others’ verbal and non-verbal communication.

At a very basic level, persuading and influencing skills are the ability to convince an individual or group of something. For example, you may have a service or product ideal for the customer, but they struggle to realise it. You can use persuasion and influencing skills to demonstrate how your service or product meets customers’ needs and secure their business.

Problem-solving and decision-making skills are the ability to identify and break down an issue, generate possible solutions, evaluate those solutions, and choose one most appropriate to help solve the problem.

Throughout your career, you will face challenges and make decisions. The ability to solve problems and make logical, confident decisions will increase your prospects of success. Plus, employees who are solution orientated are highly sought after by employers.

Conflict management is one of the most important interpersonal skills for working in teams and dealing with customers. Preventing and defusing conflict through negotiation, assertiveness, and respectfulness will help you succeed in any workplace.

Conflict resolution is the process of finding a solution to a disagreement between the parties. Mediation is helping two parties reach an agreement on how they should proceed after a conflict has occurred.

Adapting and being flexible in your thoughts, actions, and attitudes allows you to adjust to changing situations and thrive in new environments.

When you are adaptable, you can change your behaviour and thinking patterns to best fit the situation at hand (or even the people around you). Adaptability is a crucial skill for success in life—it helps you not only cope with stress but also allows you to thrive when things change unexpectedly.

Good team players work well with others, especially when completing tasks or projects. They can also help other people on their teams get things done by taking on extra work or agreeing to do tasks they might not like doing themselves.

Those who demonstrate teamwork abilities are often given more responsibility and are likely to be considered good candidates for promotion.

Leadership is an essential skill that incorporates many other interpersonal skills, like decision-making, empathy and motivating people to work together towards a common goal.

Anyone can use leadership skills, regardless of whether they are in a position of authority. Regardless of your role, employers value those who show initiative and take ownership to reach common goals.

Emotional intelligence is vital in leadership development because it helps you understand how others feel and respond appropriately, motivating them to work with you on your projects or tasks. Emotional intelligence also enables you to manage your own emotions so they don’t affect your ability to lead effectively.

Some people are naturally more successful at using interpersonal skills, whether it be due to their personality style or learned behaviour. However, anyone can develop new or improve existing ones.

While you can develop your interpersonal skills, it is impossible to do so solely by consuming knowledge about each skill. You must practice using them, observe and evaluate how well you use each skill, and adjust your behaviour for continuous improvement. This cultivation often happens through constant interaction with other individuals.

Good interpersonal skills are the foundation of working and social relationships, and therefore, it is worth investing your time to develop strong interpersonal skills.

Here are some tips on identifying the interpersonal skills you want to improve and then taking proactive steps to do so.

When identifying areas for improvement, there are always two steps: self-reflection and seeking feedback.

Self-reflection enables you to think about previous events and interactions to consider the interpersonal skills involved and your skill level for each.

A downfall of self-reflection is that it is subjective, and we may be overly critical of ourselves or have some blind spots. Therefore, it is crucial to seek feedback from managers; this also provides an opportunity to practise receiving feedback well.

Now that you’ve identified skills you want to develop, select two or three that are most crucial to your role. These might not necessarily be the skills that you consider your weakest. Your list may include one or two skills you already have a good level of competency in, but they are so vital that working on these areas will significantly improve your performance in your current role and promotion prospects.

Once you know what skills you want to focus on, it’s time to start planning how to improve those interpersonal skills. You may identify that you need training in some areas, find opportunities to gain greater experience or get more practice.

You may identify that you want to develop your emotional intelligence, and the first stage might be to attend a training course or work with a coach.

Suppose you want to become better and more confident at presenting. In that case, you may wish to speak with your manager about opportunities to do this in the workplace or join a speaking association.

If you want to practice your active listening skills, you can do this with family, friends, and co-workers by repeating what they’ve said to them to ensure you’re accurately listening.

There are assessment tools available such as the EQ-i 2.0 that we use at Delphinium, which can measure your emotional intelligence overall and the skills that make up your emotional intelligence, such as empathy, emotional awareness, and flexibility.

For more subjective skills such as communication and teamwork, an effective tool is to score yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being very low competence and 10 being highly skilled) in each area. You can then ask those who have provided feedback to do the same.

Both activities can be carried out at the start of your development to create a benchmark (starting point) and again after a few months to see how your interpersonal skills have developed.

Whether you attend a training course, listen to podcasts, or read books, ensure you implement what you have learnt. You won’t develop your skills by merely consuming knowledge. You need to have a go at using them.

Regularly reflect on experiences where you use these interpersonal skills, evaluate how well you did and how you can continue to improve. This may also include identifying where you need additional support.

As we use interpersonal skills daily, taking a few minutes to write in a journal at the end of each can help you get into a rhythm of self-reflection. It will also allow you to read back through the journal and see how far you have come.

Practice doesn’t make perfect- at least not on its own. Receiving continual feedback on how well you use these personal skills is crucial.

Feedback can come from various sources, such as asking meeting attendees for feedback on your presentation style or reviewing customer feedback forms.

Undertaking training and discussing your development with your manager will aid your development. However, working with a mentor or coach can help you get there quickly. Many people find that working with an objective person helps keep them motivated. They also feel more comfortable opening up and discussing areas for improvement and challenges without worrying whether it will impact how people think about them. They are also great cheerleaders to have in your corner.

Good interpersonal skills are essential at work, but many people find them hard to demonstrate when it comes to job applications, performance reviews and seeking promotions.

Set out the most vital interpersonal skills on your CV, application, and performance appraisal forms. Prioritise them by looking at job adverts, job descriptions, objectives, and your organisation’s values. The more skills you can link back to these, the stronger position you will be in to seek that new job or pay rise.

Be prepared to discuss where you have utilised your interpersonal skills and how they have contributed to a positive outcome. For example, you may discuss how you used your communication and influencing skills to resolve a customer complaint and secure further business from them.

It’s essential for success in almost every job to have good interpersonal skills. Take the opportunity to practise and perfect your interpersonal skills. It helps create a more positive and productive work environment for you and your colleagues. They also help you build more meaningful relationships outside of work.

Book your free discovery call here if you’d like to discuss how we can help you develop your interpersonal skills.