Essential People Skills for the Leaders
People skills are the different attributes and competencies that give allowance to an individual to play well with others. These skills define how people interact with each other and communicate ideas effectively to tackle conflicts and achieve various personal and business goals. The people skills are important for not only the business domains such as sales, marketing, customer service but also for all the employees in the organization to ensure smooth and easy functioning of the organization.
Good People Skills
Some of the good people skills that one needs to have in order to succeed in the workplace include:
Ability to Relate to Others
It is essential in the working environment for an individual to carry the ability to relate to the viewpoint of co-workers. In order to relate effectively among others one must have a versatile personality and some set of experiences.
Strong Communication Skills
It is one of the most important skills that show a person’s ability to get along with the other counterparts. In fact being articulate is the most vital and highly prized thing that one must have in today’s era where time is short and technology requires consistent communication.
Patience with Others
Being patient and keeping a level head in the most stressful situations is necessary in the working environment and is perceived as a strong asset in the business area.
The Ability to Trust Others
One can only accelerate his career if one is trustworthy. A person who is not able to win the trust of other people can never get the cooperation of others. In addition, it is not possible to get the job done in an effective way without the presence of trust, as no one can operate in vacuum for a long time.
To Know How and When to Show Empathy
One of the most important people skills involves placing yourself in the other person’s shoes and trying to understand his or her position. This allows building good relationships with other people and providing insight into other person’s motives.
Genuine Interest in Others
People come to know when you are genuinely showing interest in them or not. One of the best ways to show the other person that you are interested in the interaction is by asking thoughtful questions in the conversation. This is a sign that the person acquires good people skills.
Flexibility
Having a good personality is highly appreciated in many aspects of life. Supreme communicators have the ability to shift gears when the context calls for it. In addition, this way, they are able to respond in accordance to the requirement of the current situation.
Ability to Persuade Others
There is a mighty chance that a situation comes in your life, when you will have to sell your ideas, products and services. Whether a person is thinking about a promotion, pitching for a project or any such circumstance, it is important that he or she form a strong and convincing opinion. Moreover, you must affirm your opinion, which is why the product that you are placing is best.
Negotiation Skills
Good negotiation skills are better for both internal and external discussions. The internal discussion involves the job offers and the salary discussions that require solid negotiations. In addition, externally, both the vendors and customers need negotiations and one can always become the leader among others when he is successful in either of the scenarios.
Ability to Keep an Open Mind
To have trust and respect for others, people need to know that their feedback and response will be considered and used. A person with an open mind is more approachable and easy to work with.
The most vital and essential formula to succeed in life is to know how to get along well with others. The people skills help in improving the quality of our work as well as our social life. It is important to improve on our people skills for self-improvement, confidence building, learning new skills, preparing for the job enhancement, personal or professional advancement and in improving relationship with others.
Ways to improve people skills
The ways to improve on your people skills include:
Acknowledge the Areas of Improvement
When the person accepts the fact that he has some weaknesses, which is actually the first step towards improvement. Without this confession, one cannot become better in his interactions with the other people. This is in fact the first and the hardest move for improving one’s people skills.
Commit to Improving People Skills
Once a person admits his flaws in a certain area, he needs to change his performance. However, some people are not willing to take time out to bring about the change. Change is not easy, so once a person makes commitment it becomes easier to make the change.
Attend Quality Management Training Seminars
Quality training can help the person by giving them the critical knowledge that they need to develop for improving their people skills. Effective training gives opportunities within the seminar to practice the key skills. Moreover, going for the training process outside the workplace provides confidentiality also. As the person can experiment and be more open about his drawbacks without any fear of accountancy like it happens in the workplace.
Taking a Behavioral Assessment
The behavioral assessments like the emotional intelligence, conflict mode instruments and multiple others are the effective tools for improving the people skills. These kinds of assessments provide an insight in the areas like communications, conflict resolution, motivation, team building and some other areas. In the business environment, there are various professionals who are not accessed or administered properly and this is what adds to the confusion and thereby they deliver less productivity.
Find and Adopt a Business Mentor
Finding a mentor who can exemplify the people skill management, which is extremely necessary for self-improvement efforts. An additional benefit of this approach is that it allows the person to get feedback from some other person who has proven abilities in the desired area. The most efficient way is to go to work with your mentor and observe them in action.
Be Receptive to all the Feedback, Specially the Negative Feedback
A person needs to listen to the organization for the feedback and performance. The feedback is always available if the person is willing to listen to it. The feedback can come through the formal sources like the company’s climate surveys, 360-degree performance appraisal feedback, the use of internal or external consultants and various other methods. It is possible that a person will get negative feedback at times. A person with good people skills will act optimistic in such situation and act in a positive manner.
Thus, people skills can be learned and once a person knows how to improve on his people skills, he or she should not have a problem in getting along well with others. It is essential that a person is efficient in both verbal and non-verbal skills. The verbal skill includes having the ability to know what is to be spoken at what time. A person with good verbal people skills is thought to speak with a clear voice, have an inflection and ensure confidence in what they say.
The other aspect is the non-verbal skills, which include body language, standing up straight, making eye contact, making appropriate gestures, smiling and nodding the head that ensures the person is listening carefully. Besides these, there are some other kinds or examples of people skills, which are explained below:
Sensitivity to Others
This skill shows the ability to keep a deep interest in the feeling and concerns of the other person and identifying the ways to help people.
Insight into Others
It displays an understanding of what makes people do what they do and tolerating the actions of others. This makes a person capable in reading the mood of others.
Openness to Others
A person having good skills is open to the other people in conversation with him, shares his personal experiences, and above all trusts others.
Respect
It exhibits the consideration of the feelings, thoughts, needs, wishes and the preferences of others, irrespective of the cultures and races.
Speaking or Presenting
This presents the information precisely and confidently to other people. So that the person can make a necessary amount of eye contact and pay the required amount of attention towards the audience and the individuals.
Active Listening
It involves paying complete attention on what the other person is saying, taking some time to understand the points or the opinions made by others, asking the questions as and when needed and most importantly not interrupting inappropriately.
Conversation
The conversation means not just speaking clearly but also listening actively. Moreover, an important part of this skill is to attend to others and seek the clarification wherever necessary.
Persuasion
This depicts the ability of a person to influence the other person’s beliefs and actions. Moreover, it also involves the ability to win the other person’s cooperation and support for the ideas and activities.
Team Membership
A person with this skill works comfortably with all the people and groups in an organization. In addition, it displays a person’s commitment towards the team’s objectives and concerns.
Team Participation
A person who participates well in a team has good people skills in a manner that, the person openly expresses the views and the opinions within the team. Moreover, the person shows willingness to take upon the work and responsibilities in accordance with his or her experience.
Leadership
This is one of the most important people skills. It exhibits the ability of a person to communicate a vision or an aim to the other people and lead them towards achieving the same. In addition, it pushes the person to perform the desired actions and get the results by winning the support of others.
Therefore, these are the different people skills that a person must have in order to grow well in the social and professional vicious circle of life. As the economy today is in a state of transition, people skills play a crucial role also in the changing of economic scenario.
Some of the areas where the people skills play a vital role in shaping the economy include:
To Develop New Industries
The economy has wider fields of work like big industries that make products for the comfort of people. To make it reach to the public, it is necessary to have good people skills.
Dealing with the Healthcare
Providing safe and necessary healthcare is one of the issues, which are a matter of concern for various economies. To address such things as coverage for all citizens, it is essential to have good people skills. The people, who can speak and write in an efficient manner, have a better chance of convincing people to support their point of view.
The Real Estate Market
The real estate market is unpredictable since sometimes it is low and other times it is high. Furthermore, crashes have also been identified in the real estate market. The people investing here need to speak clearly and succinctly to place their opinion. Any bad conversation here can lead to bad circumstances later. Henceforth, it is vital to have good people skills in this area to be able to persuade others, which is the most important task in this sector.
Changing Professions
Viewing the present downturn in society and the changes in the professional landscape, many people are facing a problem in finding a job. For that matter, it is necessary that the individual possesses adequate people skills that will land him or her in the most appropriate place for a better career.
Higher Education
With the changing scenarios, the new technological aspects are also evolving. Having the right sort of education is very much important for a good economic future. Thus, if a person has good people skills he can himself inculcate good education and impart it to his counterparts.
Henceforth, whether it is a professional or social scenario, it is important to have good people skills. Moreover, it is never too late to take education on the best people skills or to learn these skills.