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Communication Skills Verbal Communication Non-Verbal Communication

Interpersonal skills are the skills we use to communicate and interact with other people, both verbally and non-verbally. They include communication skills like listening, speaking, and managing emotions. Developing strong interpersonal skills is important for success in both personal and professional relationships. At work, interpersonal skills are especially important for jobs involving customer service, healthcare, financial advising, and computer programming.

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40 views3 pages

Communication Skills Verbal Communication Non-Verbal Communication

Interpersonal skills are the skills we use to communicate and interact with other people, both verbally and non-verbally. They include communication skills like listening, speaking, and managing emotions. Developing strong interpersonal skills is important for success in both personal and professional relationships. At work, interpersonal skills are especially important for jobs involving customer service, healthcare, financial advising, and computer programming.

Uploaded by

Bojo Fama
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Interpersonal skills are the skills we use every day when we communicate and interact with other people,

both individually and in groups. They include a wide range of skills, but particularly communication
skills such as listening and effective speaking. They also include the ability to control and manage your
emotions.

It is no exaggeration to say that interpersonal skills are the foundation for success in life. People with
strong interpersonal skills tend to be able to work well with other people, including in teams or groups,
formally and informally. They communicate effectively with others, whether family, friends, colleagues,
customers or clients. They also have better relationships at home and at work.

You can improve your interpersonal skills by developing your awareness of how you interact with others
and practising your skills.

This page provides an overview of interpersonal skills and how they are developed and used. It explains
where these skills are important, including particular jobs that may require very good interpersonal skills.
Finally, it discusses how you can start to develop your interpersonal skills further.

What are Interpersonal Skills?

Interpersonal skills are sometimes referred to as social skills, people skills, soft skills, or life skills.

However, these terms can be used both more narrowly and more broadly than ‘interpersonal skills’. On
this website, we define interpersonal skills as:

“The skills you need and use to communicate and interact with other people.”

This definition means that interpersonal skills therefore include:

Communication skills, which in turn covers:

Verbal Communication – what we say and how we say it;

Non-Verbal Communication – what we communicate without words, for example through body language,
or tone of voice; and

Listening Skills – how we interpret both the verbal and non-verbal messages sent by others.

Emotional intelligence – being able to understand and manage your own and others’ emotions.

Team-working – being able to work with others in groups and teams, both formal and informal.
Negotiation, persuasion and influencing skills – working with others to find a mutually agreeable
(Win/Win) outcome. This may be considered a subset of communication, but it is often treated separately.

Conflict resolution and mediation – working with others to resolve interpersonal conflict and
disagreements in a positive way, which again may be considered a subset of communication.

Problem solving and decision-making – working with others to identify, define and solve problems,
which includes making decisions about the best course of action.

The Importance of Interpersonal Skills

Interpersonal skills matter because none of us lives in a bubble.

In the course of our lives, we have to communicate with and interact with other people on a daily if not
hourly basis, and sometimes more often. Good interpersonal skills ‘oil the wheels’ of these interactions,
making them smoother and pleasanter for all those involved. They allow us to build better and longer-
lasting relationships, both at home and at work.

Interpersonal skills at home

Good interpersonal skills help you to communicate more effectively with family and friends.

This is likely to be particularly important with your partner. For example, being able to give and receive
feedback effectively with your partner can help to resolve small problems between you before they
become big issues.

There is more about this, and other aspects of using interpersonal skills at home, in our pages on Personal
and Romantic Relationship Skills and Parenting Skills.

Interpersonal skills at work

You may not like to think about it in these terms, but you almost certainly spend more time with your
colleagues than your partner.

At work, you are required to communicate with and interact with a wide range of people, from suppliers
and customers through to your immediate colleagues, colleagues further afield, your team and your
manager. Your ability to do so effectively can make the difference between a successful working life, and
one spent wondering what went wrong.

There are, of course, some jobs in which interpersonal skills are particularly important.
Customer-facing roles, such as sales and customer relations management, are likely to specify good
interpersonal skills as a prerequisite. However, there are a number of other less obvious jobs and careers
where interpersonal skills are also vitally important. These include:

Healthcare provision, including doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals. Being able to listen to,
and talk to, patients and their families is an essential skill, as is being able to give bad news in a sensitive
way. We almost take these skills for granted in healthcare professionals—but we also know how
devastating the situation can be when these professionals have poor skills and fail to communicate
effectively.

Financial advice and brokerage. Financial advisers and brokers need to be able to listen carefully to their
customers, and understand both what they are saying, and what they are not articulating. This enables
them to provide recommendations that match their clients’ needs. Poor interpersonal skills mean that they
will find it harder to build good customer relationships, and to understand customer needs.

Computer programming and development. This area is often thought of as the ultimate territory for
‘geeks’, with the assumption that interpersonal skills are not essential. However, technical developers
increasingly need good interpersonal skills to understand their customers, and to be able to ‘translate’
between the technical and the practical.

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