Interpersonal skills
Behaviours used in face-to-face situations that succeed in making progress to a useful outcome.
Interpersonal skills are behaviours, used face-to-face, that succeed in helping progress towards a useful outcome. That’s a bit of a mouthful, so let’s separate the ingredients and examine them more carefully.
These are everything you say and do. They are important because they are so immediately apparent to everyone you come face-to-face with, and therefore have a direct effect on other people.
This covers a whole multitude of different interactions between people. It might be a matter of an informal chat with someone, or a formal meeting with a group of people. The point is that it is only during face-to-face encounters that your behaviour is totally evident. During phone calls, by contrast, only what you say counts. Written communications are different because, although what you write represents your behaviour, even though you are not present, it isn’t happening ‘in flight’, as is the case with face-to-face behaviours.
A useful outcome
This is the third ingredient, for what would be the point of skills that led you to a useless outcome? The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the proof of people skills is that they make it as likely as possible that we achieve our objectives with people.
The trick is to get all three ingredients to come together in smooth and easy symmetry. Face-to-face situations provide the context, objectives spell out the desirable end, and behaviours are the means.
There are just six fundamental interpersonal skills that give us a process that is equally applicable in all situations. This is preferable to having a ‘shopping list’ of skills where the items on the list inevitably vary in importance depending upon the situation. If, for example, you are discussing how to solve a problem with a person who has more experience than you, then listening would be high on your list. If, on the other hand, you knew much more about what had to be done to solve the problem than the other person, then communicating clearly and testing the other person’s understanding would be higher priorities.
We avoid this ‘it all depends’ qualification if we have a few fundamental skills that apply in all situations. They are:
- Analysing the situation
- Establishing a realistic objective
- Selecting appropriate ways of behaving
- Controlling our behaviour
- Shaping other people’s behaviour
- Monitoring our own and others’ behaviour.
The first three skills are essentially about thinking, the last three are about doing. It is the combination of both that is vital, for there is no point in thinking without doing, or in doing without thinking.
Notice also how these skills provide us with a timeless wisdom, applicable to all people-situations anywhere. Analysing the situation helps us to detect the circumstances that need to be heeded when setting an objective that is realistic. The objective, in turn, provides a backcloth against which to make choices about how best to behave. Each thinking skill cascades into the next, and the three combined help us to be aware of the situation and to have worked out what to do about it. By consciously controlling our behaviour we are more likely to do things that need to be done to achieve the objective. In so doing we influence other people’s behaviour in the only way possible - via our own behaviour. And all the while we monitor to keep tabs on what is happening and to get the feedback we need to make in-flight adjustments.
There is no doubt that improving your interpersonal skills by extending your repertoire of behaviours is not easy. As with the acquisition of any skill it requires conscious effort as each skill is practised to the point where it becomes effortless. Since an investment of time and effort is required it is important to be sure that it will all be worthwhile. Some of the advantages of improved interpersonal skills are that you will be better at:
- quickly assessing and understanding face-to-face situations. You will thus benefit from fewer misunderstandings.
- setting specific and realistic objectives for face-to-face encounters with people. You will thus benefit from being clear about what you are aiming for and successfully achieving it more often than not.
- choosing and using behaviours that complement the circumstances and are appropriate to the objective. You will thus benefit by having an easier, and pleasanter, interaction en route to achieving your objective.
- being aware of other people’s behaviour and influencing it. You will thus benefit from being able to use your own behaviour as a powerful influence.
These are just some of the potential benefits of enhanced interpersonal skills. Of course, you will have already acquired some people skills through an ad hoc process of learning from experience. There will undoubtedly be things you already do well that no longer require any conscious effort on your part. The problem is that, quite understandably, we all tend to stick to the tried and true and therefore repeat over and over again the same skills. In effect, therefore, we stop acquiring any new skills which may mean we risk having too narrow a repertoire of skills to equip us adequately for the variety of people-situations we are likely to encounter.