Interpersonal Skills-Key to successful career

Employers often seek to hire staff with 'strong interpersonal skills' - they want people who will work well in a team and be able to communicate effectively with colleagues, customersand clients. There are a variety of skills that can help you to succeed in different areas of life and SkillsYouNeed has sections covering many of these.

However, the foundations for many other skills are built on strong interpersonal skills since these are relevant to our personal relationships, social affairs and professional lives. Without good interpersonal skills it is often more difficult to develop other important life skills. Unlike specialised and technical skills (hard skills), interpersonal skills (soft skills) are used every day and in every area of our lives.

Interpersonal skills are sometimes also referred to as people skills or communication skills. Interpersonal skills are the skills a person uses to communicate and interact with others. The term "interpersonal skills" is used often in business contexts to refer to the measure of a person's ability to operate within business organizations through social communication and interactions. Interpersonal skills are how people relate to one another. The skills used by a person to properly interact with others. In the business domain, the term generally refers to an employee's ability to get along with others while getting the job done. Interpersonal skills include everything from communication and listening skills to attitude and deportment.

The set of abilities enabling a person to interact positively and work effectively with others. Development of the interpersonal skills of employees is a key goal of training and development initiatives for many companies, and is considered a constructive manner in which to handle office disputes and other personnel issues.

Following is a list of the most important interpersonal skills an employee can possess:

Verbal Communication - What we say and how we say it. Effective verbal communication begins with clarity. This often requires nothing more than slowing down and speaking more thoughtfully. Many people feel rushed to respond to questions and conversations immediately, but it is better to pause for a moment in consideration, especially if the question merits it. No one expects, or wants, a gun-slinging attitude in important conversations. A thoughtful person is generally taken more seriously.

Non-Verbal Communication - What we communicate without words, body language is an example. Non-verbal communication is something that other people notice whether you are aware of your actions or not. Your body language is constantly speaking. Everything you do or don’t do says something about you and how you are feeling. Your facial expressions (especially eye contact), your posture, your voice, your gestures with your extremities and even the way you position yourself physically in a room or amongst colleagues is constantly revealing your true attitude, for better or for worse.

Listening Skills - How we interpret both the verbal and non-verbal messages sent by others. This is the only appropriate way to follow two topics on communication. If non-verbal communication is underrated, then listening isn’t even on the charts. And yet without listening effectively, how can we interpret and respond appropriately?

Questioning : Questioning is a great way to initiate a conversation. It demonstrates interest and can instantaneously draw someone into your desire to listen. Smart questions show that you know how to approach problems and how to get the answers you need. Fortunately, questioning can be learned more easily than other skills on this list.

Problem Solving - Working with others to identify, define and solve problems. The key aspects of successful problem solving are being able to identify exactly what the problem is, dissecting the problem so that it is fully understood, examining all options pertaining to solutions, setting up a system of strategies and objectives to solve the problem, and finally putting this plan into effect and monitoring its progress.

Assertiveness – It also means standing up for what you believe it, defending your ideas with confidence, instructing others on what needs to be done, etc. etc. etc. I’m sure we are all familiar with the fact that most people who ask for raises receive them; and yet very few of us are assertive enough to make it happen. When used tactfully, assertiveness can gain you a kind of respect that you won’t be able to attain by other means.

Having a well-balanced repertoire of interpersonal skills will allow you to handle any situation more gracefully. You need listening skills to balance assertiveness, non-verbal communication to balance questioning, etc. Nobody is perfect and learning these skills will forever be a work in progress. Still, you can get there faster with a little help:

The author of this article is Asst. Professor Pioneer Institute of Professional Studies Indore