Interpersonal skills are as important as technical skills in professional environments across all job sectors. It is also known as social or soft skills, which means building good connections with others. Having these skills helps you land your dream jobs or move your career up a corporate ladder.
Nowadays, companies use these skills as essential requirements to recruit employees and assess existing ones for promotions. Hiring people with good social skills will contribute much to the company's growth. Less conflicts and better stress management will lead to faster progress and, finally, higher profit. Hence, this can only be achieved when every staff member has solid interpersonal skills.
What are Interpersonal Skills?
Interpersonal skills are the skills that equip us to communicate well with other people, both verbally and non-verbally. Having these skills allows you to express your ideas and interact with other people effectively. This can produce a high impact when you enter adulthood and then enter the workforce. When these traits are well-trained since childhood, it will be easier to build and improve them when growing old.
At the workplace, these skills create a good character that will reward you with high respect from co-workers and even supervisors. Such a reputation can go a long way when dealing with people from outside the company for jobs such as negotiating. Meanwhile, below are eight examples of the attitudes that will foster personal and professional development:
Effective Communication
Communication is part of our daily lives. We talk to one another about almost every single aspect of our affairs. Thus, building good communication seems easy when we are still at school or as kids. But, this isn’t always the case when entering professional situations. You will encounter different people from different backgrounds, and you may have separate opinions. However, being a workmate requires having an agreement about overcoming complex situations.
To work well with others, communication is one of the interpersonal skills that must start with having empathy from the inside. This means trying to put our feet in other people’s shoes. Before you pass on judgements, you need to listen and consider what others say. If both parties have this mindset, then information exchange should run smoothly.
Active Listening
Active listening is such an underrated skill in today’s world. Several individuals seem to put more focus on talking or giving their opinions. Listening is different from hearing. The former is active because it requires us to study and grasp what the others say. You have to set aside your previous opinions that may arise during the conversation.
As one of the interpersonal skills, active listening lays the foundation for mutual understanding. If every one of us attempts to perfect the skill, then we can avoid many conflicts. One of the problems in the workplace is cutting short our peers’ statements when they explain their reasons for late submission.
If you don’t practice active listening, you will shortly blame them. When the condition persists, the whole team will get stressed. Instead, you should listen to their reasons. Perhaps they get sick or injured, delaying their work completion. After collecting the complete reasons, you should not prolong the conflict and should move forward with the situation.
Teamwork
Teamwork is one of the interpersonal skills that require all team members to respect different points of view while aiming at a specific goal. They must think all of them are at the same level. As a result, none of them will feel superior to the others. Everyone has the same voice that will contribute to the whole team's results.
Every team member should not force others to accept their opinions during meetings. They have to listen to the feedback from others and don’t get offended when their statements are not accepted. Also, they must always remind themselves that teamwork is above their interests. With this, the team will feel a positive energy that plays an important role in you as a team.
Stress management
If not properly managed, stress can affect your work performance. You will delay the work because you need more time to process everything and not panic. To improve one's interpersonal skills, calmness is the key. This trait allows you to stop the noise inside your head that will worsen the situation. When the mind is at ease, you can start to identify the source of the stress and look for ways to overcome it.
If it arises from too many revisions, then you can set more time to work on it. If you are stressed because of the problems with your co-workers, then you ask for their time to have a discussion. Don’t forget to take breaks before taking action to solve the stress problems. Trying to solve an issue with overwhelming emotions can lead you to more unwanted conflicts.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is one of the interpersonal skills that encourages individuals to master their emotional well-being. This includes self-awareness, patience, sensitivity, and emotion management. This is quite vast and depends on the work situation and job complexity. Usually, the more complex the job is, the more emotional intelligence is put into use.
For example, executive-level work is considered more difficult because it doesn’t only demand precise technical skills. However, communication skills are also needed to delegate tasks. When the two problems occur at the same time, you will have to develop some emotional skills, such as stress handling and patience with subordinates.
Negotiation
Although your job doesn’t involve business dealings, like a sales agent, you must know how to negotiate well. You have to think rationally, which means you must provide reasonable information to support your opinions. Negotiation is one of the interpersonal skills that avoid subjective statements because such statements will block the ways of achieving goals.
Let’s take an example of a business project proposal to new investors. You will need to state clearly why your project proposal is worthy of their time. For this, you will need to mention the project advantage for them. If necessary, you must underline why the project is better than the competitors.
Work Ethics
Every company has certain rules that differ from the others. The guidelines vary, from certain dress codes during weekdays to no phone calls during meetings. These might seem just a small detail, but you have to adapt to the rules. If not, you will create a bad reputation and risk your employment.
Work ethics is an example of interpersonal skills that encourage you to practice constantly. If your office is strict on arrival time, then you’ll have to take the fastest route to comply with this. You may not achieve this target on day one but can make it up on day two.
Assertive Attitude
As mentioned earlier, you will encounter different individuals with unique personalities in the workplace. This can result in clashes in several aspects of work. Sometimes, you can’t tolerate someone’s behaviour that makes you feel uncomfortable.
For example, you can’t stand working alongside those who often talk loudly while working. You can’t concentrate well, and this will delay your submission of work to the supervisor. On the other hand, your fellow worker doesn’t seem to get this. To solve this issue, you must act assertively by saying your arguments clearly. Give reasons why you can’t work in that condition while using polite language. This should be enough not to offend the other party while you can work at more ease. Moreover, others will respect you better because they know how you handle difficult situations while maintaining professional boundaries.
The importance of interpersonal skills in your career
At any workplace, you need interpersonal skills to avoid conflicts with co-workers or supervisors that may lower productivity and morale. When these are solved, you can work with a happy heart and free from stress. This can go a long way and contribute to the success of a business.
In the long run, your work efficiency will get better. As your supervisor notices the progress, you will be eligible for a job promotion or earn a higher salary. It’s quite surprising how small changes can level up your overall career.
Improve your interpersonal skills with CCM
Interpersonal skills can make a huge difference in your career. However, there are no shortcuts to excelling in these skills except through individual attempts on a regular basis. Here, at the College of Contract Management, our experts will guide you to achieve significant improvements in your soft skills.
We create courses that specifically align with your job roles, such as sales or marketing. You can directly apply the skills to the tasks so that you can see the results immediately. Come join us and let our experts guide you to make the best out of your social skills.
