What Are Interpersonal Skills?

 Importance & Examples

What Are Interpersonal Skills?

Interpersonal skills are the traits and behaviours you are born with or develop along the way that help you effectively connect, interact and communicate with other people. These sets of skills allow you to make new relationships with others or maintain old ones.

Importance of Interpersonal Skills

In your professional life, your interpersonal skills determine how well you can work with your colleagues, clients or customers. Here are some of the reasons why interpersonal skills are important:

1. Hiring managers and recruiters look for candidates who will be able to communicate effectively with others to get the job done. So, skills such as teamwork and communication skills are often the deciding factor in job interviews.
2. Interpersonal skills allow people to function well in society.
3. People skills allow employees to empathise with customers and resolve complaints and queries more efficiently.
4. People with interpersonal skills such as emotional intelligence, reliability and positivity are known to be professional and decent.
5. With interpersonal skills, a team can function well as there are hardly any miscommunications or misunderstandings.

Examples Of Interpersonal Skills

Interpersonal skills are soft skills that you are born with or develop gradually. They are transferable from one person to another, often influenced by your environment or the people around you. Following are interpersonal skills examples:

Communication Skills

Among interpersonal skills, being able to communicate effectively with others is one of the most important traits. To complete an assignment on time and without any errors, there should be no miscommunication as it can lead to misunderstanding, which can further hamper the workflow and outcome. 

Emotional Intelligence

Without understanding and empathy, communication can be received as insincere and ineffective altogether. Employees with emotional intelligence can often create a positive work environment, improving job satisfaction and the productivity of others around them. Moreover, such people can attract more clients or customers for the company.

Positivity

The work environment of a company plays an important role in whether or not employees are productive and happy. So, employers often look for people who have a positive attitude, as they will be able to brighten up the workplace even in the midst of crises. 

Reliability

From reaching the office on time to meeting deadlines to being trustworthy, employers prefer their employees to be dependable. They are the ones they can trust with even sensitive information or big projects. 

Active Listening

More often than not, we hear what people are saying, but we don’t always pay attention. Through active listening, employees not only listen to the person speaking but also pay close attention to them and engage with them. Additionally, their body language and facial expressions are also observed to understand the tone of the conversation. An active listener is able to absorb all information and pass it on to others in the team or company accordingly without error. 

Conflict Resolution

In a place where people with different personalities come together every working day, there are bound to be conflicts every once in a while, and how well the employees handle them is important. Through conflict resolution, team members can find peaceful solutions and can even easily resolve customer complaints. 

Leadership Skills

When one has exemplary leadership skills, it means that he also has emotional intelligence, such as compassion, patience and strong decision-making skills. Employers look for candidates who possess strong leadership skills, especially in managerial positions, as they will be able to perform their job well while creating a positive work environment for all.

What Jobs Require Interpersonal Skills?

You may notice that some JDs specifically mention “Interpersonal skills” under the required skills. While not many professions require candidates to possess soft skills, there are others where they are preferred over hard skills. Here are some of them:

Customer/ Sales Executives

For those whose professions involve dealing with customers on a daily basis, having people skills is a must. Customer/Sales executives have to deal with different kinds of people, and there are times when most of them are hard to handle, especially when the customers have complaints or queries. So, they need to be able to deal with a calm, patient, and understanding approach. 

Teachers

To be a teacher, one must have good interpersonal skills such as emotional intelligence, active listening, patience and problem-solving. They will not only have to deal with their students but also the parents and school administrators. So, they must have people skills in order to communicate with everyone efficiently. 

Medical Professionals

Medical professionals, especially nurses and caregivers need a high level of interpersonal skills. To provide the best care for their patients, they must have patience, empathy and a spirit of humanitarianism. 

Marketing Professionals

Marketing professionals have to work with their teams and their clients collaboratively to ideate marketing campaigns. With people presenting different ideas and clients constantly pressuring them, they need to have strong interpersonal skills. 

Office Assistants

The roles and responsibilities of office assistants include answering phone calls, sorting emails, creating schedules, and other clerical and administrative tasks. Basically, they have to communicate with different people, including their superiors and clients, daily. So, they need to have strong people skills to perform their tasks.

How To Improve Interpersonal Skills

Some people can naturally connect and communicate with people. But there are also others who feel they lack certain interpersonal skills. If you are among the latter, here are some tips to improve interpersonal skills:

Start By Thinking Positively:

Reminding yourself to be positive even in the tensest situation is the first step to improving your interpersonal skills. Focus on the positive things in your life and what you have rather than what you do not. Manifesting positivity will eventually teach you to perform well even in stressful situations.

Become Self-Aware:

Being self-aware of your actions, emotions, strengths, and weaknesses will help you understand which areas you need to work on. For instance, let’s say your team is not responding well to you. It could be because you lack leadership or communication skills. Once you identify the area, you can go from there.

Utilise Online Interpersonal Skills Assessments:

There are many online interpersonal skills questionnaires and tests you can take for free. After completing these assessments, you will be able to identify the skills you need to develop.

Ask Feedback:

Ask your colleagues, friends and family members to give you feedback on your soft skills. Their constructive criticism will help you understand the ears in which you need to improve.

Join Workshops:

There are many workshops and online classes you can join where you can practice developing your interpersonal skills. If you are looking for something that’s free of cost, YouTube has got you covered.