How Good Are Your People Skills?

Many people spend more time working with other people than they do with processes or products. This means that they need to communicate well with others, and this makes communication skills some of the most important skills in the workplace.

Some of the key communication stumbling blocks to be aware of include:

• Message barriers: These occur when the person communicating fails to communicate clearly.

  If you find that you often confuse people, then a good starting point for fixing this is to figure out what you want to say. Do you want to persuade? Are you trying to motivate? Are you simply informing? Or are you attempting to build a relationship? The purpose of your communication will largely determine what you say and how you say it, and our article on Communications Planning   shows you how to prepare for a variety of communication exchanges.

• Receiving barriers: These barriers occur on the receiver's end of the communication, and they typically result from ineffective listening. We hear and understand faster than we speak, and this can lead to boredom and a wandering mind when on the listening end of communication.

  To combat this you should try to listen actively to what the speaker is saying. When you engage active listening you respond in a way that makes it clear that you understand the feelings and intent of the speaker. In our article Active Listening   , you'll find some useful guidelines to follow when you are on the receiving end of communication.

• Decoding barriers: Here the real message is not fully grasped or translated because of misperceptions, misinterpretations or missing information.

  The most common problem here is with mismatched non-verbal communication. A lot of non-verbal communication is unconscious – meaning that the sender isn't aware of the messages he or she is sending, yet these messages can reveal a great deal of someone's true thoughts.

  If you can learn to understand people's non-verbal communication, you can improve your people skills significantly. Our article on Body Language   will show you how to understand other people's non-verbal communication – and manage your own.

For more on improving your communication skills see the Communicate! Learning Stream, and visit our main Communication Skills page.

People can seem to disagree about almost anything – what caused a problem, how to solve it, what values are right, what values are wrong, what goals should be pursued; the list goes on! On top of this, you have the personal, non-job-related differences between people that lead to obvious differences in outlook and approach.

Because of this, respecting and managing the differences between people can be one of the most important skills you can develop! Indeed, it can be a huge advantage if you learn to celebrate and enjoy differences, and make them work to your advantage.

Key to this is recognizing that, in many cases, conflict is not "bad". In fact, conflict often causes significant, positive change. It spawns creative and novel approaches to problem solving, and can actually improve organizational performance if managed properly. In our article on Resolving Team Conflict   , we discuss how you can build stronger teams by facing and embracing personal differences. And then, with our Conflict Resolution   tool, we outline how to use the Interest-Based Relational (IBR) approach for solving interpersonal issues. Both of these articles outline how you can emerge from conflict with strong and healthy relationships.

When resolving conflict, it helps a lot if you can understand other people's needs and points of view – this can often help you find solutions that may otherwise not have occurred to you. And when you take the time to understand another person's perspective, you are demonstrating your willingness to work together to find a solution. Our articles on Empathy at Work   and Perceptual Positions   can help you develop this aspect of people skills. These help you to adopt different vantage points when resolving differences.

Finally, you need to be appropriately assertive if you're going to manage differences effectively. Aggression is clearly counter-productive if you're trying to resolve conflict, but also, if you fail to recognize your own needs in a situation, you run the risk of agreeing to a solution that works against your own interests. Again, it's important to remember that differences aren't necessarily negative, so suppressing your thoughts and ideas just to come to an easy agreement isn't effective or efficient. You can read more about assertiveness   in our article here   . And our piece Yes to the Person, No to the Task   is a useful approach to use in everyday situations where you need to manage differences assertively and effectively.

While managing differences may be an obvious application of people skills, managing agreement may not seem to be. However, helping people come to an agreement with one-another is important, and requires a great deal of skill!

"Synergy" is one of the most important things that you're looking for with teamwork. This is where the team's output is better or greater than the sum of each individual's input. To achieve synergy, you need to get people working together collaboratively.

If you've ever participated in a team decision-making process, you probably realize that reaching a decision by yourself can be much more straightforward. The problem with individual decision-making, though, is that you miss out on all of the insights that other people can give. With strong people skills, you don't need to back away from collaborative situations: you can approach team meetings with a genuinely positive attitude!

Part of this involves feeling comfortable with different kinds of questions, and with when to use them, and how. In our article on Questioning Techniques   , we look at open and closed questions, as well as other common types of question that you can use to keep conversation flowing and get the specific information you need.

As well as this, it's useful to have a good selection of problem solving tools in your arsenal. When you are confident in your ability to find solutions you will be more likely to participate in these conversations and add value to your team. In our article Opening Closed Minds   , we show you how to get your point across effectively, so that you can reach the agreement you are seeking. These types of tools will give you the confidence you need to confront differences, knowing that you can also manage the agreement side of the equation.

Another aspect of managing agreement relates to feedback. When given poorly, people reject feedback: it's viewed as destructive criticism, and it can damage relationships. Delivered well, however, feedback can lead to an improved understanding of one another's needs and perspectives, as well as improving performance and productivity. We look at this in detail in our article, Giving and Receiving Feedback   . Also, in our article looking at the Johari Window   we outline a great technique for increasing interpersonal understanding through self-disclosure.

The bottom line is that, to develop strong people skills, you need to be able to accept what others are saying and learn from this. Not only will this help you personally, it will help you relate openly and honestly with others.

Integrity is the cornerstone of people skills. Integrity means basic honesty and truthfulness when dealing with others. It also means working with people openly, and in such a way that people's interests aren't compromised for the sake of the team or the organization.

Basic courtesies like saying “thank you" often, and giving credit where it is due, are the types of people-oriented behaviors that can make all of the difference to other people. Whether you are in a leadership position or not, recognizing your teammates' contributions and acknowledging their efforts will go a long way towards creating a positive, harmonious, and productive team climate. Our articles on Rewarding Your Team   , Leading by Example   , and Ethical Leadership   are all great resources that help you learn how to behave with integrity on a daily basis.