Improve Your Interpersonal Skills for Career Success

What are Interpersonal Skills?

Interpersonal skills are life skills that we use everyday to communicate and interact with other people individually or in groups. If a person has a good interpersonal skills, he/she has more potential to have success at work or personal life. Therefore, interpersonal skills are important not only at workplace but also for personal life. Someone with good interpersonal skills will be seen as being calm, having positive thinking and confidence. Employers also would like to recruit candidates with good interpersonal skills who can work well with a team, build good relationship with colleagues and customers.

What are included in Interpersonal Skills?

1) Communication Skill

• Verbal Communication - How you speak
• Non-verbal Communication - Writing, using body language
• Listening skill - Listen actively to the others to understand

2) Team work

3) Negotiation, Persuasion and Influencing Skills

4) Conflict Resolution

5) Problem-solving and Decision-making

How to improve Interpersonal Skills?

Interpersonal skills have great impact on the relationship, personal and professional life so improving interpersonal skills help build a good relationship in these three areas. Therefore, below ways can be used to improve your interpersonal skills;

Practice how to Listen

• Listening is not the same as hearing. When someone speaks, it is important to understand what a person means by listening actively and observing the person’s body language.

Choose the Words

• Be aware of the words that you use when talking to others. Sometimes, the choice of words can make others misunderstand or angry. Hence, asking questions or choosing the right words can make others understand what you mean.

Notice the Importance of Non-Verbal Communication

• Sometimes, when we feel anxious or excited, we speak so fast that others couldn’t understand us. So we better speak calmly looking at others’ eyes which shows we are confident.

Improve Your Emotional Intelligence especially Empathy

• Emotional Intelligence is understanding ourselves and the feeling of others and managing them well. Improving emotional intelligence can also improve interpersonal skills.

Therefore, improving Interpersonal Skills can help build a successful career and personal life.

Laura Cho

www.laurachointernational.com

Laura Cho is a founder of Laura Cho Intl. developing millennial talents to build a successful career by unleashing their full potential with her HR expertise. She is a public speaker sharing HR topics at various stages in Hong Kong and Myanmar and career knowledge at Universities, Colleges, Radio shows, online platforms such as LinkedIn and Laura Cho Facebook page, journals and public seminars. She is keen on investing her time to share and develop talents volunteering to mentor young people.