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People skills are the social techniques people use to develop their relationships, negotiate compromises, communicate with other people, and understand the demands of people around. Once you have good interpersonal communication skills, then you will make managing and working with other people much easier as well as more productive. If you find that you lack people skills, then this article will provide you with the complete list of 20 interpersonal communication skills, activities and strategies that you need to be more perfect.

20 Interpersonal Communication Skills, Activities And Strategies

1. The Ability To Relate To Other People

When you have the ability to relate to other people and their position as well as viewpoint, then you have the crucial technique in business. By having a well-rounded personality and set of experiences, it is often possible to relate to most people. Sometimes, the ability to relate to other people is just simply the sense of being willing to agree or disagree with mutual respect. Just let other people know that you understand their position.

2. Honest

Honesty is necessary in building trust among people. Once you lose it, it is nearly impossible to regain. Actually, honesty is the basic foundation of every relationship, especially in business.

3. Communication Skills

This is considered as the most basic people skill as it includes your ability to get along with other people, persuade them to listen to your ideas and more. Articulation is necessary for good communication. Your communication skills will determine how people will perceive you, of course after your outlook. You could easily look like a million bucks, yet if you cannot to stitch together words to create an adequate sentence, you will lose main points. Effective communicators will be very careful to understand the systematic violations and avoid them or accommodate them when necessary.

Check out: ways to improve communication skills fast.

In other words, communicate clearly and carefully. Strong communication involves expressing yourself clearly, listening closely and carefully in written communications or over the phone. The following are some tips for you to practice strong interpersonal communication skills:

Speak as clearly as possible, especially in business meetings. When you speak concisely, clearly and get straight to the point, plus provide example or elaborate on feelings, you can get more attention of listeners, you can show your skillful communication, impress them and even make them breathe away.

Listen carefully. Why do you have to listen carefully? Simply, many conflicts can rise from small misunderstandings in communication. Listening carefully and seriously can help clear up miscommunications. Because when people are talking, concentrating on their tone, words, and body language can glean true messages.

Make good judgments in written communications. Actually, humor does not always come clearly in some written communications and it sometimes leads to hurt feelings and misunderstandings. In addition, without a certain context or tone of voice, words in written communications seem to be cold, especially in regards to sensitive situations.

4. Patience With Others

If you are patient enough with other people and could keep a calm mind in stressful situations, then it will be noticed by management and perceived as a strong asset. In the workplace, when the boss is forced to handle a certain situation where people have lost their normal cool, he or she will remember the troublemakers when the promotion comes available.

5. The Ability To Understand And Trust People

It is important to understand that people have different upbringings and backgrounds. So, we need to comprehend that we are different from each other and should not judge other based on a simple glance. You have to be able to disagree with someone while still working together to be productive.

6. Know How And When To Show Your Empathy

In simple words, this means you should have the ability to put yourself in other’s shoes. This is a key to create a long lasting relationship with others, supplies insights into people’s motives and allows us to predict responses.

In fact, things are not always black and white, and in order to have effective relationships with other people, you need to show your compassion and appreciation when appropriate.

To learn more about interpersonal communication, you should read The Interpersonal Communication Book.



7. Listening Skills

Hearing someone and actively listening to them are two different things. Most people hear other people speak and begin to form a response in their mind even before the other person finishes their sayings. In fact, active listen might take more time from you but bring better results. It means that you listen without interruption and then spend time on thinking and forming a response before replying. Though it takes practice, but what you will receive will not let you down. However keep in mind that practice makes perfect.

Try to be a good listener and remain the sensation to the demands of other people. Once you can hone this skill, you will be able to see a huge different in the positive reaction of those around you.

8. Interest In Other People Genuinely

People know if your action is true or just fake. They know when you are truly interested in them. Once you do not show your genuine interest, then your current interaction might have an opposite effect to the one intended.

9. Tolerance

Tolerance means that you can accept the idea of practices or beliefs which might not coincide with your own. Each of us has special traits and different point of view. Opportunities are good that you can work around people who engage in different practices or have various beliefs. That will help you improve your tolerance ability.

10. Stress Management

In modern life, stress is so common and we seem to cope with daily stress continually. There are a variety of things that could be done to de-stress, such as Tai Chi, yoga, meditating, and practicing breathing exercises. Find out what works perfectly for you and use it when you feel stress of daily life as well as the job.

For good stress management, you can refer:

11. Good Judgment

Good judgment is the fundamental skill in the list of interpersonal communication skills, activities and strategies that comes directly from listening, learning and observing the world around you. It can allow people to wisely choose friends and associates, determine responses and reactions, and make wise decisions.

12. Persuasion

The ability of persuading others is necessary in business and working. There is a good chance for your career when you have to sell other people on your own ideas, products, services, or anything else. Regardless of your intention, you need to be able to create a convincing, strong argument for why your ideas, products are the “right”, or the best one.

To learn more about interpersonal communication, you should read The Interpersonal Communication Book.

13. Negotiation Skills

Actually, negotiating skills are helpful with internal and external discussions. Being able to negotiate with other people, whether it is colleagues, the public, or for business-to-business transactions, could be a skill that can save your life. For instance, when it comes to negotiation in job searching, job offers and salary discussions strongly benefit from solid negotiating. Externally, both vendors and clients often require negotiations and you could actually become the pro when you are successful in either scenario.

14. Sense Of Humor

I bet that most of us enjoy laughing. It is an effective tension and conflict reliever. If you can make use of your sense of humor, you can drive your work, life as the way you wish.

15. Anger Management

This is also a great and efficient people skill that is invaluable at the workplace. It is critical to know that being angry at work might result in various problems and could possibly make you lose your job if you could not appropriately control those emotions. Also, it is necessary to know what kinds of situations you might get angry to deal with the negative feelings beforehand. You had better not direct anger at others in your workplace as it might cause intimidation and result in hostility in workplace.

When you feel you might get angry, then take deep breaths to calm down and if that does not work, just walk away. Before getting angry, you should learn the proper methods that you can stay calm down. Anger management, particularly workplace anger management is a great people skill that will help you communicate your thoughts and feelings with people around you in a proper, reasonable manner.

16. Conflict Resolution

This is something that comes with anger management and is one of good people skills to have in the workplace as well as daily life. Conflict resolution includes knowing what the conflict is and how it impacts you and knowing the reasons why the conflict matters to you. When handling the conflicts, you should be respectful to the other person and ask their opinion about proper solutions for the conflict. This is an important people skill to have in the workplace as in most jobs, there is often going to have conflicts and different opinions about a certain subject. Knowing how to approach the conflict and being respectful to other people involved will help you maintain good relationships.

17. Self-Awareness About Body Language

The role of body language could not be emphasized enough, because it creates the majority of how people communicate with others. The fact is, we communicate with people all the time when we do not speak. So, be careful of your gestures, expressions, voice, and appearance because communicating might greatly help or harm your people skills, in particular, and your career and life, in general.

To learn more about interpersonal communication, you should read The Interpersonal Communication Book.

18. Write And Write Some More

Writing can help you express yourself more confidently and carefully. This is a preparation making you have natural speeches. You also develop the ability of keeping your control in communication. Remember that internal communication often precede interpersonal communication, so practicing the art of writing will help you develop your interpersonal communication skills effectively.

Read on: How To Improve Writing Skills

19. Build Harmonious Relationships

If your personal or work relationships are short-lived, distant or cold, you should focus on the quality of certain relationships to create healthy and harmonious relationships. There are different ways to practice. Here are some recommended tips for you:

– Putting yourself in another person’s position that let you see things from other different perspectives. When you can understand others, you will be less combative that lead to a better unity and understanding.

– Be inclusive. At work, home, social events or community gatherings, help people and support them feeling included. But, avoid behaviors which make them feel that they are outsiders or exclude them.

– Practice fairness. If you are prone to take more than you can give in a relationship, learn to become a generous person. For instance, if your friends often accompany you to interesting events you like, you should play fair to by doing the same to them.

– Be trustworthy. Keep in mind that your relationships will be more stable if people trust each other. So, keep confidences and commitments to create and increase trust.

Read: Magic Relationship Words

20. Take An Acting Class

If you are aware of the importance of interpersonal communication skills for your success in life, do not hesitate to take an acting class. There, you can learn well-designed communication skills that boost your language command and your confidence.

Or in another way, take a speech course where you can learn to communicate coherently, to watch and observe effective communicators, to get positive lasting impression whenever you interact with each other and a lot more. Take action to become a good interpersonal communicator and get successful in life soon.

Perhaps it might seem like it takes a large amount of time to focus on these above good people skills at once. Thus, it is better for you to pick one or two of these 20 interpersonal communication skills, activities and strategies to begin with and make a point of working on them while at work. Do not try to become a superstar just overnight.

If you are interested in this topic and want to contribute your idea to this list, drop your words at the end of this post to let us know your thoughts. We will respond all soon!

To learn more about interpersonal communication, you should read The Interpersonal Communication Book.

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Brown Last Updated: August 11, 2017 by

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