Andrew Badham 2023-04-19 15:32:41
When it comes to leadership, collaboration or just getting along with other humans, we need a whole bunch of skills. Some of those skills relate to ourselves and how we manage our lives and responses to the world around us. The rest are about how we interact with everyone else. These are called Interpersonal Skills. Interpersonal skills are the tools we use to build relationships, communicate effectively, and work collaboratively with others.
Interpersonal skills can be broken down into several key categories:
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Communication: This includes verbal and nonverbal communication skills, such as active listening, empathy, clarity of speech, and effective body language.
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Collaboration: This involves working with others to achieve common goals, including teamwork, conflict resolution, negotiation, and compromise.
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Leadership: This involves motivating and inspiring others, providing feedback, and delegating tasks effectively.
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Adaptability: This involves being flexible and adaptable in a variety of situations, including problem-solving, decision-making, and managing change.
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Emotional intelligence: This includes emotional awareness, empathy, and social skills, and it enables individuals to manage their own emotions and understand and respond effectively to the emotions of others.
Developing strong interpersonal skills can have many benefits, including improved communication and relationships, greater job satisfaction, and increased productivity and efficiency in the workplace. But, how do we improve them? Improving these skills, like anything else, takes time, effort, and a little bit of knowledge. So, the best approach for something broad and complex like interpersonal skills is to choose a focus and work on that.
For example, you might choose to improve your emotional intelligence. This would mean that you need to learn a little about how to recognise and be sensitive to others' emotions. Once you know what to do, you need to do it. Repeatedly. You would need to find your colleagues, pay attention to their words, ask them questions and see if you're improving. Only once you're comfortable in that skill, should you try building another.
The great thing is that each one of these skills is useful immediately. The better we are able to interact with colleagues and clients, the better we will do business with them. So, which skill will you choose to learn?