Have you ever noticed that someone wasn't paying attention to what you said during a discussion? Or maybe you might have been forced to listen to someone’s rambling monologue while wondering when they would let you speak. In these examples, interpersonal skills were lacking.
Effective social interactions are vital for our careers, personal relationships, and life satisfaction. Furthermore, meaningful social interactions keep our brains healthier and our cognitive skills sharper as we get older (Kensinger & Gutchess, 2017; Ristau, 2011). Given how essential social interactions are, you may find it strange that some individuals can effortlessly handle any social situation whereas others struggle even with the most straightforward social behaviors. These variances in how people carry themselves in social circumstances result from differences in interpersonal skills.
Interpersonal skills are the competencies that allow you to interact effectively with other people and function well as a member of society. They enable you to exchange information with others, build connections, maintain relationships, and resolve conflicts.
Communicating well is vital in all aspects of life, may it be at home, school, or the workplace. At a personal level, poor interpersonal skills and miscommunication can cause unnecessary heartache, resentment, and stress. However, they can cause delays in projects and loss of resources, customers, and income at a workplace. In contrast, effective communicators are great at exchanging information at many levels; they talk eloquently, write well, and accurately identify bodily cues and gestures. Although many great communicators naturally excel in any social setting, others become great by improving their interpersonal skills, enabling them to communicate more effectively.
There are a host of interpersonal skills in the literature. This multitude reflects that these skills can be behavioral, cognitive, judgment-oriented, or attitude-based (Koenig, 2011). Furthermore, interpersonal skills build upon many dimensions, such as traditions, customs, gender roles, social expectations, and past experiences (Koenig, 2011). In short, there are multiple ways to classify interpersonal skills. Yet, many researchers generally use between two to four categories of essential interpersonal skills. These are communication-related, relationship-building, peer leadership, and social and behavioral agility skills.
Here are a couple of fun activities you can use to build your interpersonal skills.
This is an activity you can do while watching TV. That’s right! Simply find a movie or a TV show with interacting characters that you can rewind. Then mute your TV and observe how the actors use their body language for the next few minutes. Can you guess the moods they are conveying? Next, rewind to the spot where you started your observation and unmute your TV. Listen to the conversation and see if the mood and emotions match your body language observations. You can do this activity on your own or with your friends.
This is another fun activity you can try with your friends. Each group member writes a neutral statement on a piece of paper. The statements can be about anything, and each paper shall contain only a single statement, such as “my bike has a flat tire” or “I need to buy cat food.” Fold these statement papers and put them inside a hat or a bag. Next, one person writes every emotion they can think of on individual pieces of paper, folds them, and places them inside another hat or bag. Then, two volunteers come out front. One of them pulls a piece of paper from each bag. She reads the statement aloud using the tone and body language that matches her emotional pick. The other volunteer responds as if it were a real discussion. After a few minutes of back-and-forth dialogue, the group members will guess the first volunteer’s emotion and discuss how the second volunteer reacted.