Ever hear of interpersonal skills?

How about soft skills? Interpersonal fall under the category of soft skills.

We hear the term soft skills used pretty often. We are told to include it on our resume, share it when we network and are told that it can make or break a a deal or a relationship.

That is right. Interpersonal skills are soft skills that many employers look for.

Interpersonal skills are defined as “the behaviors and tactics a person uses to interact with others effectively. In the business world, the term refers to an employee’s ability to work well with others. Interpersonal skills range from communication and listening to attitude and deportment.” 

Soft skills are defined as a combination of people skills, social skills, communication skills, character or personality traits, attitudes, career attributes, social intelligence and emotional intelligence quotients, among others, that enable people to navigate their environment, work well with others, perform well, and achieve their goals with complementing hard skills. The Collins English Dictionary defines the term “soft skills” as “desirable qualities for certain forms of employment that do not depend on acquired knowledge: they include common sense, the ability to deal with people, and a positive flexible attitude.”

In other words both of these skills involve another person or using our inner being. It is not about what we know or any technical skills we have.

It is something we can all learn and build upon.

Let us break this down further:

What are interpersonal skills? Examples of interpersonal skills:

• Collaboration/Teamwork
• Communication
• Emotional awareness
• Responsibility and Ownership
• Motivation
• Leadership

How to build interpersonal skills:

It comes down to practice. When working with your students or child it is in your hands to teach them and show them how to interact with their friends and others, children learn by action.

Set up your classroom or home to celebrate interpersonal skills.

How do you talk about emotions? What happens when a child is upset or wants a toy another one has? How do you respond and teach the child to respond?

We have something called a friendship corner in the classroom. This is  where we get to talk, negotiate and hash out options to make sure everyone is happy.

Say Lea took away John’s toy and John hit Lea, both of them will visit the friendship corner to discuss what went wrong and how they will behave in the future, they will then discuss how they can make things better and apologize.

Children will mimic behavior and will watch you when you are interacting with them or another adult. How do you talk to one another? How do you react when you or someone is upset?

Think of clean up time, how can you motivate a class to do just that?

You can build motivation and responsibility every minute of the day, it is creating awareness and bringing it to the children’s attention.

Know this about interpersonal skills:

Skills learned when young and constantly honed is much easier to make a part of ourselves. Work with children now and know it is never too late to work with yourself too!

Know that soft skills can be taught to anyone in any language and any age, intelligence does not play a factor it is the awareness and constant practicing that makes one smart with their interpersonal skills.

Go ahead, practice today.