Interpersonal Skills
The Goal: If you can’t connect with the people around you, your personal, academic, and future professional life will suffer. How you are perceived by those around you plays a large role in things as minor as your day-to-day happiness at home and in class, and as major as the future of your career. One way to build your interpersonal skills is to carefully observe those around you whose skills you particularly admire.
Skills
Step 1: Make a point of observing people in your in your class who are particularly good at gaining support and agreement from others. Chose two classmates or people you know well whose interpersonal skills you admire. Notice what strategies and techniques they use and record these in response to the questions using the format of the chart below.
| Questions | Person #1 | Person #2 |
|---|---|---|
| 1. What technique does each person use to persuade people? | ||
| 2. How do they present themselves? | ||
| 3. How do they present their ideas? | ||
| 4. How do they handle disagreements and conflict? | ||
| 5. What do you like best about how they present new ideas? |
Step 2: Based on your observations of your classmates, above, what is one goal you would like to set for further development of your own interpersonal skills?
*Adapted with permission from TTI International, Ltd. 2010.