The Interpersonal Skills You Need at Work (+ How to Grow Them Today)

Employers are increasingly interested in skills that demonstrate a high level of emotional intelligence, especially when it comes to communicating and collaborating with colleagues. 

Unlike technical skills, which are typically taught in a classroom or by hands-on tactile learning, soft skills are learned through a combination of experience, empathetic listening, and gut intuition.

Employers want good team players who can keep a cool temperature when faced with tough emotions or stressful situations in the workplace. Interpersonal skills is an umbrella term for all of your people skills—from active listening to collaboration; from public speaking to eye contact.

Often, it’s easier to understand the benefits of a certain skill set by examining situations involving people who lack it. So, before we talk about what interpersonal skills are, let’s talk about what they are not. 

Bad Interpersonal Skills + Their Impact 

Have you ever had a coworker—or worse, a boss—who seemed unable to communicate, demonstrate empathy, or show any understanding?

Maybe she wasn’t detail-oriented, saved all of her critiques for curt emails, or maybe she expected you to magically intuit what she wanted next. These are all examples of underdeveloped interpersonal skills. 

There's another type of coworker too. They're the one who cannot deal with elevated stress levels. As a result, they frantically communicate, causing confusion among all employees.

To put it bluntly, people with bad interpersonal skills can be really difficult to work with. Sometimes it's because they have flawed personality traits. Other times, it's just that they haven't fully developed their interpersonal skills.

Since interpersonal skills are an umbrella-like skill set, they involve everything from what you say to how you approach problems. Let’s dive in. 

What Are Interpersonal Skills?

Interpersonal skills are the social skills people use to interact with others.

They include the ability to communicate, build, and nurture relationships with others. In this people-filled world, interpersonal skills help you to navigate daily interactions, communications, and conflicts with other people. 

Strong interpersonal skills will help you through life—but they are especially important when it comes to networking, interviewing, and working with others.

For better or for worse, your interpersonal skills are on display when you first meet someone—and they determine that ever-so-important first impression.

16 Types of Interpersonal Skills

Like we mentioned earlier, interpersonal skills are sort of a giant umbrella containing multitudes of skills. Don’t be overwhelmed, though. Some people are naturally more inclined to have strengths and weaknesses within their interpersonal skill set. 

For example, if you are not a great verbal communicator—like, when you are communicating with a larger group of people—you might employ a different interpersonal skill set, such as written communication.

If you are not great at problem-solving, maybe work on your listening and communication skills so that problems potentially don’t arise as much. We are all imperfect humans, so play to your strengths—but also test your own comfort boundaries when building on your own interpersonal skillset.

Here are a few examples of some of the most important interpersonal skills:

How important are interpersonal skills at work? Well, they are also commonly known as “employability skills”—so the answer is that they are pretty important. 

Whether you work remotely and rely solely on digital communication or you work face-to-face with a huge team, interpersonal skills are always at play in the workplace. In fact, when employers are looking to hire, it's one of their top criteria in considering a candidate.

Can Interpersonal Skills Be Learned?

Our answer is a resounding YES!

Many people learn their interpersonal skills from a very young age from—you guessed it—their parents. Chances are, that if you have parents with great interpersonal skills, you learned them alongside your ABCs and 123s. 

If not, interpersonal skills are some of the first skills you learn in pre-school or kindergarten. Sharing? Yep, you guessed it! That’s one helluva interpersonal skill—and it’s best learned in your formative years. 

If you struggle with some interpersonal skills, don't fret. Interpersonal skills can be learned, improved, and grown throughout your lifetime. For example, listening is a big one. Next time you're having a conversation or sitting in a meeting, consider this—are you just waiting for your chance to speak? Or are you really listening?

Improving your interpersonal communication skills will greenlight the development of other soft skills—almost without effort! When you employ really strong listening skills in the workplace, you are going to be equipped to solve problems, make decisions, and act empathetically—all because you were paying close attention the whole time. 

Taking the time to develop just one aspect of interpersonal skills is likely to cause an amazing ripple effect. 

Still confused? Here are a few examples of how you could develop a certain interpersonal skill set that you struggle with. 

How to Develop Your Compassion

Some would argue that you can't teach compassion, but I'd argue that you can; that to believe compassion can't be learned is a bleak way to regard other humans. 

According to MindBodyGreen, the most effective way to learn how to be compassionate is to direct your compassion inwards at first. 

From there, you can practice meditating on yourself and your inner child, relaxing your judgments (by recognizing when you're being extra judgy), putting yourself in someone else's shoes, practicing regular kindness, and by healing whatever traumas might be holding you back from being outwardly compassionate. 

We know, this is a heavy one. The thing about learning how to be compassionate is that the real first step is a sincere desire to be more compassionate. It can be done. 

How to Develop Your Creative Problem Solving Skills 

Creative problem-solving is, in essence, attacking old problems with new solutions. To learn how to creatively problem-solve, you have to put yourself into a question-asking mindset. Ask questions like: 

By asking a constant stream of questions, you can literally train yourself to become a creative problem-solver through your own curiosity. 

How to Improve Your Negotiation Skills

One of our most popular articles ever is on how to negotiate your salary, so it's safe to say that many of us struggle with being a good negotiator. 

To work on negotiation skills, get your research caps on. Know everything about what you're looking to negotiate. After all, knowledge is always power. In addition, you can learn from the best, like master negotiator Chris Voss (who was on our podcast!).

How to Improve Your Non-Verbal Communication Skills 

If you're like me and you have a case of RBF, where your face absolutely betrays you of its own volition, then you know how important non-verbal communication is. A way I worked on my own was to watch video footage of myself and take notes on my facial expressions. 

In addition, I watched gestures I made that can communicate a ~certain mood~ like crossed arms or hunched shoulders. By working on my nonverbal communication, I am actively paying attention to how I am perceived by other people in other ways, too. 

How to Improve Your Interpersonal Skills 

You can work on your interpersonal skills on a daily basis. For example, if you’re someone who doesn’t tend to speak loudly, you might practice raising your voice in a meeting.

1. Create Kindness Checkpoints

If you’re someone who is known for being, err, less-than-sensitive, you might take a moment to ask a coworker about her weekend or about her dog who has been sick. 

It’s important to take small steps to constantly improve your interpersonal skills, but you can also take larger steps—and really get out of your comfort zone—to the "discomfort zone," where personal growth is imminent and inevitable. 

2. Take an Online Class

Yes, there are online classes covering all things soft skills. Soft skills are becoming increasingly important in the modern workplace, with employers placing more importance than ever on things like communication, organization, and teamwork.

Take a course to hone these skills in your own time. 

3. Get Some Outside Perspective

Having a difficult time figuring out exactly where your soft skill sets stand?

Phone a friend!

Seriously—enlist the help of a close friend or relative to assess where you excel, where you lag behind, and where you can use minimal improvement. Often, those closest to us have some of the best insights.

4. Find a Mentor 

Find a mentor with—you guessed it—a great set of interpersonal skills you are trying to build. Work on developing these together. Consider finding a mentor who recently built up her own interpersonal skills—whether through starting her first big-time leadership role or conquering her fear of large presentations. 

The right mentor can give you the tools to build and grow your own set. The best part? You can work together to track and achieve your goals.

5. Set “Interpersonal Goals”—Both Small and Large

Speaking of goals, set a few. Remember that list we shared up there? Go through it and score yourself, 1-10, on some of these skills. Make small, medium, and larger goals to work on developing the sets that could really aid in your career. You've got this. 

How to Include Interpersonal Skills on Your Resume + Cover Letter

It’s important to emphasize your interpersonal skills throughout the job hunt process.

Whether you do it on your resume or your cover letter, we have one big tip (which, coincidentally, is something else we all learned about in kindergarten).

1. Show, Don’t (Just) Tell 

Sure, you can say you have great interpersonal skills. Heck, you can format your resume so that the entire right column is filled with a list of these skills. But, you need to show how you exhibit these—and don’t make the mistake of listing any skills that you don’t actually have mastered. 

Instead of simply listing “Impeccable Decision-Making Skills,” detail how a particular project you spearheaded improved your company's bottom line. Maybe you used your interpersonal skills to start a group at your office—that’s also a huge boon to your resume. 

You get the vibe here, right? Show! Take the opportunity—at every chance—to show how you have utilized these important skills in your career. 

2. Express Interest in Further Developing Interpersonal Skills 

So, you don’t have every interpersonal skill mastered? In the words of Fred Armisen as Joy Behar, “So what? Who cares?” 

Use your cover letter as the opportunity to highlight the interpersonal soft skills you are looking to develop in the role. Emphasize why it is you want to focus on this particular skill—and what you plan to do with it. Any hiring manager is going to be dazzled by the foresight you have put forward.

And, as a bonus—it’s much more interesting to read a cover letter that outlines plans rather than one that regurgitates what your resume already says.