Interpersonal skills and the Examples

Interpersonal skills are life skills we used daily to communicate and interact with other people, both individually and in groups.

People who have worked on developing strong interpersonal skills are usually more successfully in both their professional and personal lives.

Employers often seek to appoint staff who will work well in a team and able to communicate effectively with colleagues, customers and clients.

Interpersonal skills are  not just important in the workplace, our personal and social lives can also benefit from better interpersonal skills.

People with good interpersonal skills are usually perceived as calm, confident and charismatic. These are qualities that are often endearing or appealing to others.

Example of interpersonal skills are sometimes referred to as social skills, people skills, soft skills, communication skills or life skills. The components of interpersonal skills is the non-verbal communication. The non-verbal communication or bodily communication usually means a range of non-verbal signals which are: Facial expression, Gaze, Gestures, Posture, Bodily contact, Spatial behaviour, Clothes and appearance and Non-verbal vocalization.

The following are the ways to improve your interpersonal skills:

• Take time to listen painstakingly to what others are saying verbally and non-verbally.
• Be conscious of your diction.
• Encourage others to engage in communication and use appropriate questioning to develop your understanding.
• Through awareness of how you interact with others
• Through constant practice.
• By developing oneself through an extensive library of quality content.

Why are interpersonal skills important? Interpersonal skills can help you during the job interview process as interviewers look for applicants who can work well with others. They will also help you succeed in almost any job by helping you understand other people and adjusting your approach to work together effectively.

Interpersonal skills and the Examples

Interpersonal skills are traits you rely on when you interact and communicate with others. They cover a variety of scenarios where communication and cooperation are essential. Here’re some Interpersonal skills:

1. Reinforcement skill

Positive reinforcers can be words or gestures that motivate people and encourage them.

This refers to behaviours  which encourage the other person to carry  on or repeat whatever they happen to be doing.

Various experiments have shown the reinforcing influence of expressions of praise, encouragement and support, even down to the use of head nods and the ‘uh-huh.’

2. Questioning skill

A series of job interviews attended attested to the fact that some professional interviewers are much better than others at extracting information from the interviewees.

This will be due in part to their question technique. For instance, while experienced interviewers are used to asking open-ended questions that encourage people to talk and expand thereby making the interviewers to get the elaborated answers which they really  want, inexperienced interviewers are used to asking too many closed questions that provoke short and specific information.

3. Reflecting skill

This Interpersonal skill is often used by counsellors and other people who have to conduct very personal interviews and who want the other person to talk in some detail about their own attitudes and feelings.

As questions can often direct the conversation in ways which reflect the interviewer’s assumptions, it can be more revealing to use reflections which feedback to the speaker some aspects of what they have just said.

This acts as a cue for them to elaborate or extend what they have been saying. It is possible to reflect in different ways and achieve different results.

4. Opening and closing skill

This Interpersonal skill refers to the ways in which we establish the beginning and  ending of a particular interaction.

For example, the choice of opening can be very important in more formal situations such as an interview where the opening can create a positive or negative atmosphere.

Possible opening techniques include social opening, factual opening and motivational  opening. While the interviewer makes sure to give the interviewee a positive welcome and spend sometime in social conversation, factual opening allows the interviewer to start with a clear description of important facts, perhaps by explaining how they see the goals of the interview.

Motivational opening ensures that the interviewer starts with an attempt to encourage and motivate the interviewee, perhaps by introducing some visual aids or gadgets to stimulate interest.

5. Listening skill

It may seem odd to regard listening as a skill but that is because we tend to think of it as a passive activity rather than being an activity we have to concentrate on and work at.

Good listening has been described as active listening. You do not only have to absorb and process internally the information you receive but you also have to encourage the other person to talk and demonstrate clearly that you are paying attention.

No wonder some authors have subdivided listening into more specific clusters such as attending skills following skills and reflecting skills.

The behaviours which seem to be associated with effective listening involve both bodily communication and internal thinking.

Typical recommendations include being receptive to the other person, maintaining attention,  removing distractions and the need to delay evaluation of what  you have heard until you fully understand it.