How to Improve Interpersonal and Communication Skills?
Have you ever wondered what the secret to being successful in life is? Its effective interpersonal and communication skills. Most jobs today require having strong interpersonal or people and communication skills. And that’s not all – people with these skills end up having better relationships with family as well as friends.
Well, that being said, most of us do need to improve our interpersonal and communication skills. Hopefully, the 5 tips mentioned in this article will help you refine your communication and interpersonal skills.
What Are Communication and Interpersonal Skills?
Now, are you thinking about what communication and interpersonal skills are? Well, simply put, these skill set focuses on how well one individual can communicate with other people. These skill sets are also called “social skills” and “people skills.” These sets of skills are extremely important when it comes to being successful in the workplace.
5 Steps That Will Help Improve Your Communication and Interpersonal Skills
A lot of people struggle hard to integrate these soft skills into their habits and daily lives. Below are mentioned 5 steps that will help anyone to grow their communication and interpersonal skills and ultimately have a better professional as well as personal life:
1. Being Empathetic and Respectful Towards Everyone
As separate individuals, we all have different opinions and thoughts. And this, in most cases, is going to differ from yours. Always Remember to be respectful and give others space and opportunity to express themselves freely without you jumping the gun. Listen to them and then express your opinion on the topic in a non-aggressive way.
2. Avoid Speaking Over Others
Always remember that it is a bad idea to cut someone offs mid-sentence. It is especially bad if this happens regularly. It might come off as you lack the listening skills and not valuing others’ opinions. So let the people in front of you finish their thought and don’t just presume you know everything they want to say.
Always remember that it is a bad idea to cut someone offs mid-sentence. It is especially bad if this happens regularly. It might come off as you lack the listening skills and not valuing others’ opinions. So let the people in front of you finish their thought and don’t just presume you know everything they want to say.
3. Be Self-Aware
Self-awareness is an extremely important practice of being aware of your feelings, actions, and thoughts. Being aware of your thoughts and actions helps improve a person’s non-verbal communication. And this can significantly improve your interpersonal skills too. A complete lack of awareness of the self can prove to be detrimental to your productivity and success.
4. Say “Yes.”
Achieving a collaborative and a much more positive mindset is going to help improve your communication and interpersonal skills. Because at the end of the day, it’s all about having a positive mentality and about saying “yes” and building the conversation from there rather than saying “no” and shutting it down.
5. Listen and Pay Attention to Others
Listening attentively to what the other person is saying is a skill that takes time to develop. And if you are wondering how to improve your listening skills, then the good news is every conversation provides you with the opportunity of improving your listening skills. Simply be reflective, embrace the truth and pause while talking instead of rushing to reply.
Nearly every job description these days requires you to have excellent written, verbal, communication, and interpersonal skills. The five tips will not only help you improve your communication and interpersonal skills but also land you your dream job.
There is an old saying that” manners and respect will take you through the world” and that is so true because in order to get ahead we must know how to communicate effectively which requires some skills. We must know how to listen to people and how to communicate with them in such ways where they will understand. Thanks so much for these effective interpersonal and communication skills.
My pleasure, thanks for your comments.
These skills require that we work on them. Paying attention to what others express seems easy. But it really is not. So much of our attitude towards others is based on preconceived ideas. We need to bonder what we think and always leave the door open for new and fresh imput about others.
Thank you for your comments, i do not think there is a human being that has mastered communication skills.
Some great communication tips here. I have a bad habit of cutting people off and I need to really work at not doing it, but sometimes I still forget. Learning to be a good listener is definitely a process that you need to actively practice.
Do you have any exercises one can do to work more on communication skills? Something that one can practise at home on your own?
You may practice your listening skills on your own, you can try listening to an entire program without commenting, allow the program to end before you conclude, get the entire message.
As a child we practiced a listening game, we stood in a circle and the first person whispered something to the second person, the second would whisper the message heard to the third person and continued this pattern to the end of the line. Most times the last person would receive a completely different message.
I agree that what most of us need in order to improve our communication and social skills is to practice listening and being respectful of others’ views. That is probably the one area that many of us are systematically failing at. It is also clear that some people are naturally inclined toward verbal communication while others communicate better in writing.
Do you think it is equally important to work on improving our writing skills as on our verbal skills? Thanks, Andy
I believe that both verbal and writing skills are of equal importance. Education is a key and with education comes growth. Once you have learnt something, no one can steal that knowledge from you.
When it comes to communication skills I’m not that good, sometimes I say things that tend to hurt a lot of people especially when I try to correct them no matter how respectively I say it. Is there any advice you can give me on how exactly I should correct people when they are wrong or maybe I should simply leave them be?
Communication gets better with practice, it not always what we say, sometimes it is how we say certain . Treat others in the same manner you would like to be treated. You have to be attentive and honest.