Interpersonal skills

Interpersonal skills are sometimes also referred to as people skills or communication skills.^[1] Interpersonal skills involve using skills such as active listening and tone of voice, this include delegation and leadership. It is how well you communicate with someone and how well you behave or carry yourself.

Interpersonal skills refer to mental and communicative algorithms applied during social communications and interaction to reach certain effects or results. The term "interpersonal skills" is used often in business contexts to refer to the measure of a person's ability to operate within business organizations through social communication and interactions. Interpersonal skills are how people relate to one another.

As an illustration, it is generally understood that communicating respect for other people or professionals within will enable one to reduce conflict and increase participation or assistance in obtaining information or completing tasks. For instance, to interrupt someone who is currently preoccupied with the task of obtaining information needed immediately, it is recommended that a professional use a deferential approach with language such as, "Excuse me, are you busy? I have an urgent matter to discuss with you if you have the time at the moment." This allows the receiving professional to make their own judgment regarding the importance of their current task versus entering into a discussion with their colleague. While it is generally understood that interrupting someone with an "urgent" request will often take priority, allowing the receiver of the message to judge independently the request and agree to further interaction will likely result in a higher quality interaction. Following these kinds of heuristics to achieve better professional results generally results in a professional being ranked as one with 'good interpersonal skills.' Often these evaluations occur in formal and informal settings.

Having positive interpersonal skills increases the productivity in the organization since the number of conflicts is reduced. In informal situations, it allows communication to be easy and comfortable. People with good interpersonal skills can generally control the feelings that emerge in difficult situations and respond appropriately, instead of being overwhelmed by emotion.

Sumber : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_skills

Interpersonal Skills Books

As part of the Great Books to Read Collection, I put together a collection of the best books on Interpersonal Skills.

When it comes to building software, shipping stuff, or just plain making things happen, interpersonal skills are a key to success. With interpersonal skills, you can better deal with the following scenarios:
Dealing with different communication styles and needs
Coping with difficult bosses or dealing with difficult people
Surviving personality clashes
Appreciating and understanding different motivation patterns and drivers
Reflecting on your own personal patterns and using for growth
Creating lenses to understand difficult behaviors and tough situations
Dealing with conflict in terms of values or goals or styles
Fostering effective teamwork and collaboration in the toughest scenarios
Having the tough conversations that count

What makes these the best books on interpersonal skills? They are books you can use to solve real problems. They are ones that have made an actual difference for many people in tough scenarios. (Of course, best is all relative, so only you know which books are best for you, by testing what works for your specific scenarios.)

While there are so many books that are truly useful, there is one in particular that I know many people have found to be insanely useful. It’s the book, Dealing with People You Can’t Stand, by Dr. Rick Brinkman and Dr. Rick Kirschner. Here’s why … the book gives you a “lens of human understanding” that helps you see what drives people to act a certain way. Once you understand this, it’s like knowing how the magic trick was done … all is revealed. The other reason why people like this book so much is because it gives you a language for bad behaviors. Having a language for bad behaviors makes it easy to identify them, understand them, and deal with them, in an actionable way.

Sumber : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jmeier/archive/2011/07/07/interpersonal-skills-books.aspx

The Importance of Interpersonal Skills

Employee Development Until the late 1980s, business school curricula emphasized the technical aspects of management, focusing on economics, accounting, finance, and quantitative techniques. Course work in human behavior and people skills received relatively less attention. However, over the past three decades business faculty have come to realize the role that understanding human behavior plays in determining a manager’s effectiveness, and required courses on people skills have been added to many curricula.

As the director of leadership at MIT’s Sloan School of Management put it, “MBA. students may get by on their technical and quantitative skills the first couple of years out of school. But soon, leadership and communication skills come to the fore in distinguishing the managers whose careers really take off.” Developing managers’ interpersonal skills also helps organizations attract and keep high-performing employees. Regardless of labor market conditions, outstanding employees are always in short supply. Companies known as good places to work—such as Starbucks, Adobe Systems, Cisco, Whole Foods, Google, American Express, Amgen, Pfizer, and Marriott—have a big advantage. A recent survey of hundreds of workplaces, with over 200,000 respondents, showed the social relationships among co-workers and supervisors were strongly related to overall job satisfaction. Positive social relationships also were associated with lower stress at work and lower intentions to quit. So having managers with good interpersonal skills is likely to make the workplace more pleasant, which in turn makes it easier to hire and keep qualified people. Creating a pleasant workplace also appears to make good economic sense. Companies with reputations as good places to work (such as the “100 Best Companies to Work for in America”) have been found to generate superior financial performance.

So here is today’s Daily HR Tip: Hire and train for interpersonal skills as well as technical skills. Using pre-hire assessments can help to identify people who may be derailed by their inability to get along with others. If you are unsure where to go to find out more about pre-hire assessments contact The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology at http://www.siop.org/ and they will be able to put you in touch with a reputable organizational psychologist.

Sumber : http://www.dailyhrtips.com/2011/01/12/hr-blog-importance-interpersonal-skills/

Positive Thinking – Part 3 – Obstacles

There are bound to be obstacles that you will face on your journey to building a positive mental attitude. These obstacles and challenges may effectively slow you down, but it is entirely down to you as to whether or not they will actually stop you from moving forward. Some of these obstacles and challenges you will have absolutely no control over, and others you will.

It is now time to address these obstacles and challenges, so that you can be prepared for them and equipped to be able to push them aside when you encounter them.

Obstacle #1

The dream stealers – a dream stealer normally has your best interests at heart, but they unfortunately do little more than steal your dream, hence the name. They may tell you that what you are doing is risky and that you shouldn’t do it, and they will usually have a hard luck story to tell about someone who is trying to do what you are trying to do.

The key to overcoming this obstacle is to either not tell them what you are trying to achieve (until after the fact), or by thanking them for their advice and, at the same time, telling yourself that you don’t need it.

Obstacle #2

Negative people – similar to dream stealers, negative people may have your best interests at heart or they may not.

They think that what you’re doing is bad or wrong and they believe that you will fail. Negative people are difficult to ignore, and if you take on board what they are saying, it can truly sabotage your progress. These people will usually put you down, or even ridicule you for wanting more in your life.

It is important to understand that a person such as this is saying what they are saying for a reason. In most cases, anybody putting you down for wanting to achieve your dreams is feeling somewhat threatened or even just envious of your willingness to get out there and try something new.

It is important to understand that with negative people, it is never about you – it is just about them and their insecurities. Once you understand and believe this, it will be a lot easier to ignore them and move towards your own goals.

Obstacle #3

Setbacks – we all have them, and even the most successful people in the world have experienced them at some stage of their lives. That is not to say that we should all give up trying to live a positive and fulfilling life, but we should understand that setbacks are usually a learning experience and should be perceived that way and not as something negative.

For example, you may start off a business venture that eventually fails. But rather for than focusing on that failure, try focusing on what you can learn from the failure. How will you prevent the same mistakes being made next time? What did you do right? What did you do wrong? There are so many positives that could come out of a setback because you will go into the next challenge with that additional knowledge on board, knowing that if you do things differently this time, the chances of success are much higher.

Obstacle #4

Tragic events – maintaining a positive mental attitude is difficult in the event of a tragedy.

However, we often hear of a person faced with an illness such as cancer for example, but they somehow find a way to maintain a positive mental attitude. In fact, there are even documented cases of people who have somehow apparently cured themselves of cancer by maintaining a positive mental attitude and the unwavering belief that they will beat the illness.

It is these people who offer inspiration to all around them. Here they are facing death, but yet they refuse to believe that cancer is going to beat them and they live their lives, enjoying them as much as they possibly can. Such people, even if they do die, will do so knowing that they have lived their lives to the full, and isn’t that what we all want to do?

So how do these people maintain a positive mental attitude when faced with such tragedy? Again, it is a choice. Such people choose to remain positive, and not let things get them down because they know that if they do so, they might as well not go on. What they have done is chosen to live a happy, fulfilling life over one that is fraught with misery and sadness as they face the biggest battle of their lives.

These people choose to look at all of the good things they have in their lives, and choose to enjoy them as much as they possibly can. The focus on their illness or any other tragedies around them is minimised because they know this will only cause them anxiety. It is not difficult to understand why they choose a positive attitude over the negative.

Obstacle #5

Depression or other mental illnesses – depression, in particular, is a mental illness that is probably much more widespread than many people realize and, in fact, many people don’t even realize they are suffering. There are many causes behind illnesses such as depression including hormonal imbalances, tragic events, or unresolved issues from the past. The good news is that these illnesses can usually be treated with the right care.

A person with a positive mental attitude is very much in tune with their thought processes and can usually pick themselves up when things are not right and they will be naturally inclined to do something about it sooner rather than later. A person with a positive mental attitude really does not like how it feels when they are mentally down, and they will want to do whatever it takes to get themselves out from under the dark cloud.

Depression and other mental illnesses can be treated through the use of drugs or therapy, but the key is to get the help you need as soon as you need it. So many tragedies could be avoided if everybody did this as soon as they realised things just weren’t right in their mind.

Sumber : http://www.whitedovebooks.co.uk/blog/2011/positive-thinking-part-3-obstacles