Building and maintaining relationships with colleagues, clients and all stakeholders is vital to business success.

As organisations get flatter and teams with their own unique expertise, insights and perspectives are brought together, building high performance work relationships require not just technical skills and hard work but also interpersonal skills. Whether at work, in business or even in life in general, we need to interact in person, get to know people and issues to get around more effectively.

We use interpersonal skills all the time and have been developing them ever since we were born. Whether you’re getting to know someone, making a request, giving instructions, dealing with conflict…every interaction with another person requires some level of interpersonal skill.

At the workplace, to be able to deal with all such different personalities and be accepted by all of them is what makes a person known for his or her interpersonal skills. We come up against challenging situations and people who don’t necessarily communicate or act in the same way as us.

We all have our own way of communicating. We also have our own personalities, beliefs and values. These make it easier for us to relate to some people than others. Strong interpersonal skills come from having an awareness of how you come across to others and how to adapt the way you communicate to different people and different situations.

So what are interpersonal skills? It is the skills used by a person to properly interact with others. In business, the term generally refers to an individual’s ability to get along with others while getting the job done. It can also be defined as the skills involved in understanding the relations between the people.

Interpersonal skills include everything from communication and listening skills to attitude and deportment. Good interpersonal skills are a prerequisite for most positions in an organisation. Interpersonal skills are “soft skills” but if it is inadequate it impacts negatively on the bottom line.

Here are 6 great tips you to improve your interpersonal skills:

1. Awareness of your own interaction with other people is the first step in improving your interpersonal skills. Learn to identify which types of situations make you uncomfortable and then modify your behaviour to achieve positive results is a critical step in improving your social skills. You can learn to become aware of behaviours in other people that prompt you to respond in negative ways and modify your own behaviour to turn the situation into a positive experience.
   
   
2. You must accept responsibility for your own behaviour and do not fear apologising for errors in judgment or insensitive actions.Asking others for honest feedback about the way you interact with others can be very helpful. Accept the negative feedback along with the positive and make changes accordingly. 
   
   
3. Your non-verbal communication is equally as important as the things that you say. Positive body language is extremely important in your interactions with other people.If your words and your actions do not match, you will have a difficult time succeeding in social situations.
   
   
4. You must become and great listener. You must fight the urge to respond immediately and really listen to what the other person is trying to communicate.Offering suggestions or criticism before you are certain of the other person's intent can only lead to frustration for both parties. It is generally said that we should spend 80% of our energy in Listening and rest 20% in speaking.
   
   
5. Improving your interpersonal skills is a process and cannot be accomplished overnight. Trying to improve or change too many things at once will be counter-productive. You will become discouraged and overwhelmed if you attempt to change your entire personality all at once. Choose one or two traits at a time and work on those over a period of time. Learn to take advantage of your personal strengths and make a positive impact on others.
   
   
6. Maximize your positive personality traits and use them in your interactions with others. Good communication and great listening skills are the most important tools you can use in improving your interpersonal skills. You can learn how to improve your interpersonal skills by developing excellent listening skills, learning to resolve problems and conflicts, understanding body language, and accepting responsibility for your own negative behaviour. Determination and self-awareness will make your desire to improve your interpersonal skills a reality.

Finally, with some training, practice and feedback, we can discover how other people see us, develop our weaker areas and learn tools and techniques for dealing with different personality types and situations, as well as our own emotions. Everyone is capable of developing their interpersonal skills. And the rewards are worthwhile.

Whether it’s working more productively in your team, networking more effectively, being able to negotiate better deals, getting buy-in to your ideas or getting the promotion you want, interpersonal skills will play a massive part in your success.

Copyright 2007 by Karl Smith