Have you ever underperformed in interviews just because you couldn’t convey your ideas properly? Have your friends or colleagues misunderstood your perspective or got the wrong impression? Please know that you are not alone. This has happened to most of us. And if you are busy berating yourself for all the lost opportunities or inconveniences, just know that it’s your interpersonal skills that are at fault.

What are interpersonal skills?

Interpersonal skills or social skills are your ability to start and hold effective conversations where social relationships are concerned. In other words, it shows your ability to effectively communicate with individuals and groups in your personal as well as professional life.

Other benefits of improving your social skills mean that you can be more effective with decision-making and problem-solving. Interpersonal skills are not only important for career enhancement, but they also become an essential part of your strong personality development.

No doubt organizations try to hire employees with strong interpersonal as well as other types of communication skills. These skills not only help you effectively collaborate with teams and colleagues but also improve the ability to be a great leader by motivating others around you.

Let’s see where you can use interpersonal skills in real life.

Real-life examples of interpersonal communication

Healthcare provision:

People working in the healthcare field, including doctors, nurses, and other medical staff, should have strong interpersonal skills. These help them listen and talk to the patients and their families and sensitively convey any bad news.

Most people take communication skills for granted in the healthcare field. But think about how devastating the situation can get if these professionals have poor communication skills.

Financial brokerage and advice:

Financial advisers and brokers need to have strong social skills to listen to their customers and carefully understand what they are and aren’t saying. This helps these professionals recommend options that match their clients’ needs.

Poor interpersonal skills will make it harder to build good customer relationships and understand customer needs.

Computer programming and development:

Do you also think that this area is the ultimate territory for ‘geeks’? Well, most people have this impression, which is nothing but a myth. However, with good interpersonal skills, technical developers can easily understand their customers and ‘translate’ their needs into technical and practical applications.

These are a few real-life examples most of us come across. But more or less, every field needs you to have strong interpersonal skills.

Let’s see how you can hone skills in interpersonal communication.

Tips for developing interpersonal skills

1. Show interest in your colleagues

You work with your team for almost eight to nine hours every day, sometimes more. So, you need to know more about your colleagues’ lives. Try to know what is important to your peers as it will help strengthen your relationships with them.

2. Acknowledge others’ expertise

Appreciation and genuine praise will take you a long way in building strong relationships with your colleagues. Ask for their advice or help on projects and give credit whenever due.

3. Practice active listening.

Active listening is an essential skill to improve your communication. After all, without properly listening to others you will have a hard time understanding their needs or problems. Thus, it will have an impact on your decision-making and problem-solving skills.

Practicing some cues such as maintaining eye contact with the speaker, nodding, and making sure you’ve received the message correctly are all essential. These are small things but they will make the speaker feel respected and you can recall the important points easily afterward.

Start by practicing these tips consistently. Over time you will find that your interpersonal skills have improved tremendously. Building and maintaining team spirit and decision-making and problem-solving will get a lot easier at the workplace as well as in personal life.

Donny white