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“It’s a pleasure doing business with you.” This phrase is music to every professional’s ear and probably the biggest reason people invest in interpersonal skills. Now you might be thinking, ‘What in the world are interpersonal skills?’ Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered!
Let’s start with a quick exercise.
Picture how you operate in your professional role – whether you work in the office or remotely. How do you treat peers and authorities? How do you handle a project crisis? How much effort do you put into nurturing client relationships? Are you more of a solo or team player?
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Now jot these answers down and take a moment to reflect. These are your interpersonal skills in action, and they’re, alongside technical knowledge, the best asset you can bring to any role.
Read on to understand why these skills are a deal-breaker in today’s business landscape. Plus, find some tips to help highlight interpersonal skills in resumes, cover letters, and performance reviews.
What are interpersonal skills?
Referred to as ‘soft skills’ or ‘people skills,’ interpersonal skills demonstrate a professional’s business and cultural fit – beyond their technical expertise.
In business, where communication and collaboration birth success, nurturing strong soft skills is a must. On one hand, these skills define how well employees interact and cooperate with others. But they also indicate how employees approach problems, how reliable they are, and how they carry themselves in their roles.
Interpersonal skills can belong to one of two groups: verbal and non-verbal skills.
- Verbal interpersonal skills include anything from effective communication to proficient speaking, listening, and negotiating. They also include the ability to ask questions, find answers, share knowledge, and come up with solutions.
- Non-verbal interpersonal skills include any skill that doesn’t require words to deliver a message. These skills include having proper body language, demonstrating leadership and motivation, and having a strong knack for structure.
Whether for job seekers or established professionals, a good mix of interpersonal skills will come as a huge asset in the workplace. It helps professionals easily slide into their roles, navigate tasks and teams efficiently, and easily adapt to ongoing changes.
Benefits of Building Interpersonal Skills
Technical skills show what professionals can accomplish, but interpersonal skills demonstrate how they go about it. Here are some of the key benefits interpersonal skills can deliver in the workplace.
Higher employee retention
Personal development is a driving force for employee growth. When professionals can easily communicate with clients, manage tasks, and enjoy teamwork, their job satisfaction skyrockets. In turn, they feel confident being managed, want to share ideas, and are engaged, ensuring maximum output and higher retention.
More favorable workplaces
Employees with strong interpersonal skills help build a stronger company culture. They can pick up on different cues from peers and managers, and discuss ideas without feeling held back.
Through open communication and radical candor, personable employees can help reduce stress levels in-office and remotely, mitigating employee conflict, and time-costly disruptions.
Better customer relationships
Customers have a nose for professionals with strong interpersonal skills and are drawn to them. They’re always light, cooperative, and supportive, which keeps clients wanting to do business. Cultivating strong people skills benefits everyone: companies can boost revenue and morale, employees can forge valuable relationships, and customers remain as happy as can be.
Greater EQ
Emotional intelligence, or EQ is an integral part of every solid professional. It measures how well workers process and respond to emotions–theirs and others’–be it during negotiations or daily interactions. For leaders, emotional ripeness showcases how one responds to anything from deadlines and pressure to disagreements and bonding. For 86% of employees, being managed by empathetic leaders helped them navigate demands and unlock work-life balance.
Quality relationships and connections
A key interpersonal skills benefit is that professionals can better connect with both teammates and external collaborators. Communicating politely with clients, being easy to work with, and offering assistance can nurture business relationships faster than any technical skill. At the end of the day, doing business is less about the business and more about investing in the people.
Best Interpersonal Skills Examples
Compared to “hard” skills, which require education-backed expertise, soft skills can easily apply to any industry and position. Here are some top examples of common interpersonal skills required in business environments.
Active communication
Communication is not just how you speak to others and vice versa. It’s also about speaking at the right time, offering smart solutions, asking the right questions, and being open to discuss. Listening is also huge here, enabling professionals to take notes, brainstorm individually, and show engagement in the conversation. Numbers don’t lie either – employees with top communication skills increased their productivity by 25%, great for business and staff morale.
Reliability
Everyone loves a reliable employee. They are always on top of their obligations, deliver on time, and don’t need to be handheld to get the job done. Dependable people are punctual, diligent, and can be trusted in any situation. It’s the kind of interpersonal skill that can earn you major points among leaders, teams, and managers in any industry.
Leadership
Leadership is an essential interpersonal skill, especially for higher-up positions. But, even juniors or interns with leadership affinities can leverage this skill to further their careers, earn a promotion, or switch career paths. Patience, diplomacy, and decision-making are crucial elements for growing leadership skills. They apply across any business that understands the value of a strong and determined leader who’s also a people favorite.
Teamwork
In any business scene, teamwork makes the dream work. Companies prefer professionals who can play nicely with others, respect various opinions, and bring in a sense of ‘we got this.’ Building quality teamwork skills results in being trusted with bigger responsibilities, earning faster promotions, and shaping a thriving company culture. Not to forget, seamless collaboration can also result in 34% higher product quality and 30% better product development.
Jobs that require interpersonal skills
Interpersonal skills exist in any job description and industry. However, depending on the role itself, certain interpersonal skills might be required more than others. Let’s go over a few different roles and compare the interpersonal skills needed for each:
- Education. Interpersonal skills in education are as vital as technical skills. Teachers need to collaborate well with colleagues, be empathetic with students, communicate ideas and knowledge clearly, and be recognized for it.
- eCommerce and Sales. Salespeople depend on good people skills. Being interactive, kind, approachable, and supportive are top traits that tick with buyers, making sales more personalized and natural, rather than just a business conversation.
- Marketing and Advertising. Emails and ads might be indirect communication but they still deliver a strong personal message. Marketing executives need a high EQ to meet client needs, efficient written communication to address their pain points, and spot-on leadership to streamline campaign success.
- Customer service agents. Customer service agents engage with happy, confused, and frustrated customers all the time. So, they need to have steel patience and problem-solving abilities, alongside great listening skills to help offer the right support.
- Human Resources (HR). For job recruiters and HR assistants, interpersonal skills are pivotal. Dealing with varying employee needs, from salaries to promotions, can require high diplomacy, lots of communication and understanding, and top negotiating abilities.
Best Tips to Improve Interpersonal Skills
Although interpersonal skills may come to some naturally, most professionals learn to grow them over time. If you need an extra hand with your skill polishing, here are some tips to help:
- Sign up for digital interpersonal skills courses. Choose a course that helps you boost communication, leadership, or decision-making skills. There’s a great resource of courses to choose from online, aiming to make you more culturally fit for a role.
- Focus on building professional relationships. Working with people, in-office or remotely, can do wonders for interpersonal skills. See how others communicate and collaborate and what makes them great at negotiations and collaboration. Attending team events, client meetings, or conferences is a great start for learning from others.
- Seek out mentorship. For those building interpersonal skills at the workplace, working with a mentor can help. Find someone you trust and respect, someone who can give you good feedback. Picking their brains will help you learn the best skills for your career, and apply them where it counts the most.
- Upscale your skills. Even with existing people skills, adding new ones to your portfolio can only benefit it. Compare your weakest and strongest soft skills and plan out specific steps to master or improve them. Focus on the skills that are most relevant to your career and role goals so they efficiently align with the relevant job requirements.
How to Highlight Interpersonal Skills When Applying for Jobs
There are various ways to shine light on your interpersonal skills. You can add them to your resume or cover letter, or discuss them during job interviews and evaluations. To do it right, we share a few easy tips to follow, plus some quick examples of how to define your best soft skills.
Interpersonal skills for resume
Your resume is the first and foremost place to mention your leading interpersonal skills. There’s a skill section for that in resumes, but you can also add them as specific job achievements.
Either way, mention the skills that can be easily vetted for or referenced. Moreover, always go through the job description to ensure your skills match what the company is after.
Here’s how to use soft skills in resume — as part of the Skill section, or as a job achievement.
- Interpersonal skills: Dedicated team player, efficient problem-solver, innovative leader
- [Job Role] at [Company Name]: “Collaborated with developers and engineers on refining existing software code to streamline client payments and make them available in every currency, boosting long-term revenue and user satisfaction.”
Interpersonal skills in a cover letter
The cover letter is more about you as a professional and your experience. Therefore, it’s best to pay attention to one major interpersonal skill only. It should be your top strength, explaining how it benefited your career development, roles, and business relationships.
E.g. “In my previous role, I was a trusted professional supporting three major teams with ongoing collaboration, ensuring proper role assignment and swift task and team management.”
During a job interview
Technical skills might be a top priority during a job interview, but many employers will also keep focus on your soft skills. Even if they don’t ask, they’ll observe – how well you listen, how much eye contact you maintain, how well-spoken you are, etc. During interviews, the good old “show-don’t tell’ might be the perfect way to let your people skills shine.
During performance assessments
Discussing your best soft skills is a great tactic to ensure a fruitful performance review. Managers will like to know which people skills helped you do better at work, how you collaborated with others, and how you’ve improved the company’s success. Mentioning skills like mentoring, leading, and brainstorming is very effective, opening discussions for promotions and salary boosts.
Invest in Yourself with the Best Soft Skills
Technical skills will always be in high demand, but there’s no world in which soft skills won’t matter. Nowadays, companies want the full employee package: practical education and expertise, plus a personality that easily connects and collaborates.
Developing interpersonal skills, like a team-oriented mindset, dependability, and empathy is crucial across industries. These skills bring more than a good vibe, helping build long-term trust, forge powerful relationships, and improve employee morale and retention.
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Interpersonal Skills for Professionals — FAQ
What is an example of interpersonal skills?
Interpersonal skills can include active listening, communication, dependability, empathy, collaboration, and teamwork. Soft skills define how a professional interacts and is with others, whether through proper body language, or leadership skills.
How to show interpersonal skills?
Interpersonal skills are best shown in practice, during a job interview or an evaluation, or in everyday work-life scenarios. In written, interpersonal skills should be featured in your resume, and partially in your cover letters.
How to improve interpersonal skills?
The best way to improve soft skills is to attend related skill-building courses, ask for mentorship and feedback at the workplace, and mingle with other business people and colleagues to get firsthand experience with using interpersonal skills.
