Developing Strong Interpersonal Skills

Developing Strong Interpersonal Skills

Golding and Gray (2006) elaborates Interpersonal skills are the life skills that use every day to communicate and interact with other people, both individually and in groups within organizations or personal life. People who have worked on developing strong interpersonal skills are usually more successful in both the professional and personal lives.

Employers often seek to hire staff with 'Strong Interpersonal Skills' want people who will work well in a team and be able to communicate effectively with colleagues, customers and clients. This section of Skills Someone Need is full of information and practical advice that someone can use to improve the interpersonal skills.

According to the Kendric (1998), there are a variety of skills that can help someone to succeed in different areas of life and Skills Someone Need has sections covering many of these.

• Active listening Active listening means listening to others with the purpose of gathering information and engaging with the speaker. Active listeners avoid distracting behaviors while in conversation with others (Axner, 2001). This can mean putting away or closing laptops or mobile devices while listening, and asking and answering questions when prompted.
• Dependability Dependable people can be relied on in any given situation. This can include anything from being punctual to keeping promises. Employers highly value dependable workers and trust them with important tasks and duties.
• Empathy A worker’s “emotional intelligence” is how well they understand the needs and feelings of others. Employers may hire empathetic or compassionate employees to create a positive, high-functioning workplace.
• Leadership Leadership is an important interpersonal skill that involves effective decision making. Effective leaders incorporate many other interpersonal skills, like empathy and patience, to make decisions (Collin and Hammond, 2013). Leadership skills can be used by both managers and individual contributors. In any role, employers value people who take ownership to reach common goals.

Figure 1: Interpersonal Skills (Covey, 2002)

• Teamwork The ability to work together as a team is extremely valuable in every workplace. Teamwork involves many other interpersonal skills like communication, active listening, flexibility and responsibility. Those who are good “team players” are often given important tasks in the workplace and may be seen as the good candidates for promotions (Axner, 2001).

Strong interpersonal skills can help people also during the job interview process as interviewers look for applicants who can work well with others. Those will also help to succeed in almost any job by helping that understand other people and adjusting the approach to work together effectively.

For example, while a software engineer may spend the majority of her/his time working on code independently; he/she may need to collaborate with other programmers to effectively bring a product to market.

This is especially true as more companies implement collaborative agile frameworks for getting work done. Employers will be looking for workers who can both perform technical tasks with excellence and communicate well with colleagues. Interpersonal skills are traits that rely on when interact and communicate with others. Those cover a variety of scenarios where communication and cooperation are essential.

References

Axner, M. (2001) The community leadership project curriculum. 2nd edition. CT: The Topsfield Foundation.

Collin, R. and Hammond, M. (2013) Self-directed learning: critical practice. 12th edition. London: Routledge.

Covey, S. (2002) The Seven Habits of Highly effective people. 5th edition. New York: Rosetta Book Publishers.

Golding, L. and Gray, I. (2006) Continuing professional development for clinical psychologists: A practical handbook. 7th edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Graves, N. (2013) Learner managed learning: practice, theory and policy. 15th edition. London: Routledge.

Kendric, C. (1998). Professional Education. 3rd edition. USA: Prentice Hall.