The work environment has certainly changed and evolved over the past few years. Technology has facilitated remote working, and many professionals never, or at least less often, meet their colleagues, managers, or clients face-to-face. So, it would be easy to assume that interpersonal skills would be low on your list of priorities when writing a job description and searching for job seekers.

However, good interpersonal skills remain crucial as almost all workers still communicate with other people. In fact, with video conferencing and a raft of different technological solutions, we could argue that interpersonal communication skills are more critical if your employees are to build relationships and trust, collaborate on tasks and be part of a positive company culture.

In this article, we discuss:

• What are interpersonal skills?
• Key interpersonal skills
• All interpersonal skills

What Are Interpersonal Skills?

Interpersonal skills are the soft skills we use to communicate effectively with others and build relationships. Interpersonal skills are soft skills and are often referred to as people skills. Examples of interpersonal skills include verbal communication, body language, and active listening. They are transferable skills, so a hiring manager may focus on assessing these in a job interview if the candidate is changing their career path.

Suppose hiring managers overlook the importance of interpersonal skills. In that case, a company could end up with employees who cannot work as a team, collaborate to meet business objectives, have poor morale, low productivity, and frequent disputes and grievances between them.

We have touched on several topics here that you may want to investigate further. You can do so by visiting our interviews hub or reading our articles What Soft Skills To Include In A Job Description and What To Include In A Job Description.

Key Interpersonal Skills

When hiring employees, it is crucial to ensure the individual has strong interpersonal skills. So, what are the most important interpersonal skills? We have categorised the most sought-after interpersonal skills below: 

TEAMWORK SKILLS

Team working is vital for an individual to work well with others. Teamwork involves many abilities, and as an umbrella term, it is often used in job descriptions rather than including all its different aspects. Teamwork is a useful phrase when looking to keep your job advert compact and concise or when you need more space for listing technical skills.

LEADERSHIP SKILLS

Leadership skills incorporate many relevant interpersonal skills. It is rare to find a successful leader who hasn’t developed effective interpersonal skills to guide individuals and teams toward achieving the company’s goals and objectives.

We recently took a deep dive into the topic of leadership skills in our article What Leadership Skills To Include In A Job Description. We revealed the top ten leadership skills in our comprehensive list of 100 important skills for a hiring manager to seek when hiring a leader.

EMPATHY SKILLS

Empathy is the ability to recognise, understand, appreciate, and adapt to the emotions of others. Emotional intelligence is an important skill for many roles, particularly those responsible for providing customer service and customer satisfaction. Empathy and emotional intelligence are also needed for a company to have a good work environment where team members can support each other and have compassion for stressors and difficulties coworkers may be experiencing.

ACTIVE LISTENING SKILLS

Employees need good communication skills to express their ideas and opinion to others. On the opposite side of the table, they need listening skills to hear what a coworker, manager, or customer is trying to say or elicit more information. Actively listening doesn’t just mean to listen carefully. It also covers showing interest in what the other party is relaying and offering gestures that encourage the continuation of the conversation, leading to deeper insights or gems of information.

BODY LANGUAGE

Non-verbal communication is an important interpersonal skill that employees can use to show their intent, interest, and feelings. Examples of nonverbal communication include maintaining or breaking eye contact, smiling, and other facial expressions. Body language is a two-way street and can be used by employees to assess if a colleague or customer is open to and agreeing with or closed off and rejecting what is being said.

For example, understanding body language and non-verbal communication can prevent misunderstandings. Body language, such as keeping your shoulders back, keeping your arms uncrossed, and maintaining eye contact, can show confidence and build trust.

CONFLICT MANAGEMENT

Conflict management is another key interpersonal skill for individuals working within teams or communicating with customers. To engage in conflict resolution, an employee may need to lean on diplomacy, problem-solving, respectfulness, negotiation skills, or even assertiveness.

FEEDBACK SKILLS

Giving and receiving constructive feedback is crucial for an employee’s career success. These types of interpersonal skills may initially have you thinking about manager and subordinate relationships but they are also within teams and wherever collaboration exists.

All Interpersonal Skills

We have so far uncovered the key interpersonal skills you might include in your job description. However, there are many others you may want to consider that can be very relevant to a particular role, work environment, customer type, or team make up.

Here is a list of 100 interpersonal skills:

1. Active listening
2. Adaptability
3. Assertiveness
4. Aware
5. Awareness
6. Body language
7. Caring
8. Charisma
9. Charismatic
10. Coaching
11. Collaboration
12. Comforting
13. Communication skills
14. Compassion
15. Confidence
16. Confidentiality
17. Conflict management
18. Conflict resolution
19. Constructive criticism
20. Constructive feedback
21. Consulting
22. Conversation
23. Counselling
24. Creative
25. Creativity
26. Cultural awareness
27. Curiosity
28. Customer service
29. Decision making
30. Dependability
31. Diplomacy
32. Diversity
33. Dynamic
34. Emotional intelligence
35. Empathetic
36. Empathy
37. Encouraging
38. Eye contact
39. Facilitating
40. Flexibility
41. Focus
42. Friendliness
43. Giving feedback
44. Honesty
45. Humour
46. Influence
47. inquiring
48. Inspiring
49. Instructing
50. Interviewing
51. Investigation
52. Kindness
53. Leadership
54. Lightheartedness
55. Listening
56. Mediation
57. Mentoring
58. Mindfulness
59. Motivational
60. Negotiation skills
61. Networking
62. Non verbal communication skills
63. Openness
64. Patience
65. Personable
66. Persuasion
67. Planning
68. Politeness
69. Political awareness
70. Positive attitude
71. Positive reinforcement
72. Positivity
73. Presentable
74. Presentation skills
75. Problem-solving
76. Public speaking
77. Questioning
78. Rapport
79. Receiving feedback
80. Reflection
81. Relatable
82. Relationship building
83. Relationship management
84. Researching
85. Respectfulness
86. Responsibility
87. Self motivation
88. Self reflection
89. Sensitivity
90. Social skills
91. Speaking
92. Sympathy
93. Tact
94. Tactful
95. Teamwork
96. Team working
97. Tolerance
98. Trustfulness
99. Understanding
100. Verbal communication

Further Resources For Employers

If you are a business owner, hiring manager, or Human Resources professional, these further resources will be invaluable:

• What Are The Duties, Tasks, And Skills To Include In Job Descriptions
• What Hard Skills To Include In A Job Description
• How To Define What People Do In Their Jobs

To start advertising for the skills you need, check out our job advertising packages, starting from £199.

Interpersonal Communication Skills FAQs

Here we answer your questions on including interpersonal skills in your job descriptions.