What Are Interpersonal Skills? 80+ Examples
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Your interpersonal skills are one of the main factors an employer considers for any job requiring teamwork or business interactions. So, ensure you showcase your strongest skills with our examples and guidance!
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What Are Interpersonal Skills?
Interpersonal skills are specific soft skills that focus on your ability to relate, communicate and work with others. Think of it as the traits you use to interact with others: communication, teamwork, leadership, following directions and cross-collaboration. These innate and learned skills help you during the hiring process and positively impact your career advancement.
Why are interpersonal skills important?
Effective interpersonal skills are essential in any workplace and are transferable skills that can be carried from one job to another. Employees with strong interpersonal communication skills can cooperate to solve problems, establish solid relationships with their peers, address client needs and concerns, and adapt to a person’s communication style. Interpersonal skills in the workplace help teams achieve their goals and finish projects efficiently while promoting a healthy and pleasant environment.
Top Interpersonal Skills Examples
Here is a list of interpersonal skills to include when writing your resume.
Communication
Excellent communication skills are the backbone of a collaborative work environment by promoting healthy sharing of ideas and feedback.
Communication skills include:
- Written communication
- Oral communication
- Non-verbal communication
- Active listening
Conflict management
Conflict management prevents problems from disrupting work, keeps employee morale up, and avoids turnover.
Conflict management skills include:
- Active listening
- Mediation
- Problem-solving
- Patience
Empathy
Empathy is an essential tool that helps people relate to each other and understand different viewpoints. Greater empathy can reduce conflict and stress, all necessary things companies seek.
Empathy skills include:
- Self-awareness
- Emotional intelligence
- Curiosity
- Open-mindedness
Leadership
Leadership skills are vital when applying for a managerial role at any company. Good leaders must keep employees happy and motivated while driving progress toward company goals.
Leadership skills include:
- Delegation
- Adaptability
- Critical thinking
- Time management
Negotiation
Negotiation is crucial for business, financial and sales-related roles because your ability to strike a deal in those fields directly translates to how much money a company makes.
Negotiation skills include:
- Adaptability
- Value creation
- Strategy
- Expectation management
Teamwork
Most jobs are going to require some level of teamwork or collaboration. So, this is a quintessential interpersonal skill that will benefit you and should be included somewhere on your resume.
Teamwork skills include:
- Accountability
- Delegation
- Problem-solving
- Conflict resolution
Dependability
A dependable employee can be trusted with important assignments, punctuality, and transparency, among other valuable traits for employers.
Dependability skills include:
- Accountability
- Strong work ethic
- Honesty
- Self-discipline
Decision-making
Strong decision-makers have excellent interpersonal skills because they consider the implications of their decisions, how to communicate said decisions and hold themselves accountable.
Decision-making skills include:
- Time management
- Creativity
- Intuition
- Leadership
Emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence encourages people to consider the impact of their words and work to regulate their emotions healthily.
Emotional intelligence skills include:
- Self-awareness
- Self-regulation
- Empathy
- Active listening
Adaptability
Adapting to change and people’s communication styles makes for a better team member and employee, especially in client-facing roles.
Adaptability skills include:
- Flexibility
- Creativity
- Open-mindedness
- Resilience
48 Additional Interpersonal Skills
- Active listening
- Behavioral skills
- Caring
- Collaboration
- Comforting
- Communication
- Conflict management
- Conflict resolution
- Constructive criticism
- Consulting
- Counseling
- Creative thinking
- Customer service
- Developing rapport
- Diplomacy
- Diversity
- Encouraging
- Flexibility
- Group facilitating
- Helping others
- Humor
- Inquiry
- Inspiring trust
- Instructing
- Interviewing
- Leadership
- Listening
- Mediating
- Mentoring
- Motivation
- Negotiating
- Networking
- Nonverbal communication
- Persuasion
- Patience
- Positive reinforcement
- Problem-solving
- Public speaking
- Relationship management
- Respect
- Responsibility
- Sensitivity
- Social skills
- Sympathy
- Teamwork
- Tolerance
- Verbal communication
Key Takeaways
We covered what are interpersonal skills in the workplace and provided examples to include in your skills section. Let’s wrap it up with a few key points:
- Interpersonal skills allow you to collaborate with team members effectively and build strong work relationships.
- These soft skills are vital in any workplace because they help teams easily solve problems and achieve their goals.
- Skills like communication, teamwork, emotional intelligence and adaptability, among others, are critical interpersonal skills to add to your resume.
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Interpersonal Skills
Last edited by: Ami Icanberry - August 01, 2024
