Today we learned about Interpersonal Skills and their importance to Quality Customer Service as well as Negotiation Skills. Students were shown pictures and asked to answer questions about them. If you missed this activity, don't worry, you can still have a go.
What are Interpersonal Skills?
Simply put interpersonal skills are the skills we use to interact or deal with others. Interpersonal skills are sometimes also referred to as communication skills, people skills and/or soft skills. How we deal with others can greatly influence our professional and personal lives, improving these skills builds confidence and enhances our relationships with others.
We all have interpersonal skills. We've been learning them, usually subconsciously, since birth. We learn how people are likely to react to what we say and do. How these actions are likely to make them, and us, feel. People with good interpersonal skills have learnt to identify which are the best ways of interacting with others in different situations. Interpersonal skills are easily developed, a little time and effort spent working and practicing your interpersonal skills will pay huge rewards in your professional and personal lives.
Here is a list of some important Interpersonal Skills:
• Personal Appearance
Keeping our personal appearance tidy and inoffensive is a basic interpersonal skill which is easy to overlook, but is so vital to every interaction we have with others. Keeping breath fresh, hair and clothes clean and tidy, refraining from any extreme styles will help us to make a good first impression.
• Smile Often
A interpersonal skills list would be incomplete without a smile. Few people would like to be around someone who is always down in the abandons. Do your best to be friendly and upbeat with your coworkers. Keep up a positive, cheerful attitude about work and about life.
• Pay attention to others
View what is going on in other people’s lives. Make eye contact and address people by their first names. Recognize their happy milestones, and express concern and sympathy for difficult situations such as a sickness or death.
• Be appreciative
Discover one positive thing about everyone you work with and let them hear it. Say thank you when someone helps you. Have a bighearted with praise and kind words of encouragement. Make coworkers feel welcome when they call or stop by your office. If you let others know that they are appreciated, they will want to give you their best.
• Perform active listening
To actively listen is to show that you are willing to hear and understand another’s approach. It means repeat, in your own words, what the other person has said. In this way, you know that you understood their meaning and they know that your answers are more than lip service.
• Humor them
Don’t be afraid to be funny. Most people are drawn to a person that can make them laugh. Use your sense of humor as an effective instrument to lower dividers and gain people’s love.
• Resolve arguments
Take a step further than just bringing people together, and become someone who resolves conflicts when they arise. Learn how to be an effective mediator, if coworkers quarrel for something arrange it immediately. By taking on such a leadership role, you will harvest respect and admiration from those around you.
• Do not complain
There is nothing worse than a continual complainer or objector. If you must put into words your complaints, voice out to your personal friends and family, and keep it short. Spare those around you, or else you will get a bad reputation.
• Put yourself in their shoes
Empathy means being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and realize how they feel. Try to view conditions and responses from another person’s view. This can be accomplished through staying in touch with your own emotions; those who are bringing to an end from their own feelings are often incapable to empathize with others.
The interpersonal skills list may vary from person to person but note that the points listed above also make an enormous difference to anyone’s personality. Let your light shine!
The Activity:
Instructions: On a piece of paper, write your name and today's date. Also write, "Interpersonal Skills" Look at the following pictures and answer the questions for each one:
Picture 1) Mechanic
1. How important are interpersonal skills for this line of work?
2.What will happen if this person has poor interpersonal skills?
3.Would the education and training this person had in preparing for their career help them improve interpersonal skills?
Picture 2) Judge
1. Are interpersonal skills important in the careers that this person is practicing?
2.What happens if interpersonal skills are lacking?
3.If you were going to employ this person, what kind of interpersonal skills would you want him to have?
Picture 3) Salesman
1. Do you think this salesperson has good interpersonal skills?
2. What kinds of interpersonal skills would be important in his work?
3. What happens if interpersonal skills are lacking?
Picture 4) Doctor
1. List some of the kinds of interpersonal skills that are needed in a health care professional.
2. Have you ever visited someone in this occupation who did not have good interpersonal skills? If so, what was it like?
3. Are interpersonal skills in this work optional or do they play a role in the actual success of the job being performed?
Picture 5) Police Officer
1. Is this police officer likely to have good interpersonal skills?
2. What opportunities have you had to observe the interpersonal skills of someone in this line of work?
3. Based on what is shown on television, how are good interpersonal skills helpful in this job? Does television provide an accurate portrayal of this job?
Please complete this assignment and hand it to me at your very first opportunity so I can give you credit for your work.
See you next week,
Elizabeth
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