Have you always wanted to build your people skills?
Do you want to learn how to create and maintain a good rapport with people in your professional or social life?
People skills are an essential skill that cuts across every aspect of life, business, professional, and social.
For instance, it’s an essential skill to possess in any organization, occupy a leadership role, or form any meaningful interpersonal relationship.
Hence, the need to know how to build people skills to develop yourself and become the best person you can be.
Fortunately, like every other skill, you can develop people skills.
So join us as we walk you through how to develop people skills.
How To Build People Skills
People skills is a soft skill.
It involves different training and characteristics that teach you to tolerate and rapport with different people.
It also involves skills that enable you to communicate effectively with people and understand their emotions and individual differences.
Thereby helping you interact with people easily and work towards achieving common goals.
In all, some of the things that make up great people skills include;
- Empathy
- Ability to relate with others
- Strong communication skills
- Patience
- The ability to trust others
- Active listening skills
- Genuine interest in others
- Flexibility
- Assertiveness
- Being persuasive
- Strong negotiation skills
- Being open-minded
- Teamwork
- Leaderships skills
- Understanding body language
- Good judgment
- Being honest
- Becoming more decisive
- Conflict resolution
- Critical thinking, etc.
All these skills have one thing in common.
They work together to make your personal relationship with others pleasant.
Hence, building people skills is all about honing your abilities in one or more of these areas.
Tips On How To Build People Skills
People skills have the ability to enhance productivity levels and the achievement of set goals.
This is why it is of great value in most corporate organizations, leadership positions, professional and personal relationships.
We have put together some useful tips on how to build people skills.
Here’s how.
To Build People Skills, Develop Good Communication Skills
Good communication skills are essential for proper rapport between individuals.
Good communication is a two-way thing; there will be someone listening and another person talking.
To develop this skill, avoid talking when another person is talking to you at the same time.
It can make you miss an intended message.
Also, avoid interrupting a speaker; it’d make them forget their speech.
Even if you have a question to ask, write it down somewhere and wait to be allowed to talk.
More so, while conversing with someone, keep an open mind.
Do allow your ideas or perspectives to cloud your thinking/judgment.
This will prevent you from learning anything from the speaker.
Imbibe the habit of really listening to people as they speak.
It will help you fully participate in the conversation and contribute meaningfully when the time is right.
This will enhance your communication skill and improve your rapport with people.
Consequently, helping you help to build great people skills.
Work on Your Emotional Intelligence; It Can Help You Build Your People Skills
Emotional intelligence is the part of you that helps you become aware of your emotions and control them.
When properly sharpened, emotional intelligence can help to keep your emotions under control.
To do this, you need to understand why you react the way you do in different situations.
When you do that, it will help you control your emotions better.
Emotional intelligence is all about understanding and being aware of other people’s emotions.
With this skill, you’re able to understand people’s emotions, temperaments, and behavioral tendencies.
This, in turn, will help you know how best to interact with them under certain circumstances.
Consequently, honing your people skills.
Master The Art Of Conflict Resolution
Either in a professional or social setting, conflict cannot be avoided.
This is because you are dealing with different individuals with different levels of understanding and principles.
However, you need to come up with a way to manage conflict and resolve it positively.
Conflict resolution is all about preventing a grievance or disagreement from escalating.
Also, bear in mind that the essence of resolving a conflict is to find a way for everyone to adapt to each other and not to control others.
When you become good at resolving conflict, you’ll master the art of managing emotions and looking for a better way to resolve differences.
This is a good skill that can come in handy, especially when you become a leader.
Hence, master how to resolve conflict amicably without bias and preferential treatment.
Also, when resolving conflict, do not try to impose your views or opinions on others.
You can rather make them understand your point of view while you also understand and put theirs into consideration.
Moreover, avoid trying to win a case in conflict resolution.
This will make the conflict easy to resolve positively.
To Build People Skills, Be Open To Receiving Feedbacks
Feedbacks are one of the ways of gathering opinions.
It also helps you see yourself through people’s eyes.
Requesting feedbacks puts you in a position to communicate better with people.
Likewise, humans dislike being told what to do. Therefore, feedback puts you in a position to understand people’s opinions as ideas rather than a lecture on what to do.
However, when you request feedbacks, be careful of the interpretation you give to the feedback.
Do not see it as people judging you or pointing out your bad sides.
You can rather choose to see it as the areas you need to improve on.
Doing this will help you implement the feedback in good fate and help you build your people skills.
Understand And Respect Cultural Differences
The first thing you know about people skills is what you learned from your society and family.
When you practice them, they give you the expected result.
However, as you grow up, you leave your society or encounter people with a different culture from another society.
It is therefore binding on you to acknowledge and respect their cultural differences.
Most of these cultural differences could be body language and other forms of non-verbal communication.
Hence, to improve on your people skills, you can get help from one of the members of the society to better understand what their signs, symbols, and body language stand for.
Do not assume they mean the same things as in your culture.
Likewise, keep in mind that in cross-cultural communication, there is bound to be a misinterpretation.
Therefore, do not pick offense when corrected.
Always apologize and show an eagerness to learn.
It will portray you as teachable and approachable.
This, in turn, will not only help you fine-tune your communication skills but will also help you build your people skills.
Endeavor To Maintain A Good Relationship; It Will Help to Build Your People Skills
Most times, we get carried away with the tasks that we forget to observe the people around us even when they give us clues.
This mostly portrays us as insensitive and not observant.
However, while you do your task daily, take a little time to observe your colleagues and understand them and their clues.
You can begin a discussion with them and get them to open up more to you about their clues.
This will go a long way in creating a good rapport with them.
Also, it will help you build your people skills.
Give Approval To People; It’d Help You To Develop Your Soft Skills
People have a deep connection with approvals.
Most of the things most humans do, they do them to get a sense of approvals.
This is because it makes you feel appreciated and liked.
Therefore when a colleague does something good, do not hesitate to praise them.
Letting them know they have done well would inspire them to do better next time.
Also, it will make them consider you likable.
This will, in turn, influence them to find you approachable, hence helping in fostering a healthy relationship between you both.
To Build Your People Skills, Practice Self-respect
Self-respect is not just about respecting yourself.
It is more of acting right in certain circumstances.
People are mostly drawn to people that exude self-respect.
It makes you likable and charismatic.
To attain practice self-respect and hone your people skills, you should learn to analyze situations before you act.
This will ensure you act accordingly and not out of context.
Know when humor is required to lighten the seriousness of an atmosphere.
Also, do not wait to be told what to do before you do it
This portrays you as understanding and intuitive.
Thereby helping you develop a likable personality and hone your people skills.
Engage In Productive Conversation; It Would Help to Boost Your People Skills
People build rapport and relationships through conversations.
A conversation is usually one of the most difficult things to start, especially with a stranger.
Hence, to build strong people skills, avoid creating a structure for your conversation.
This will prevent the other person from contributing and following up as they wish to.
Also, do not focus on your interests, rather be open to other people’s interests and opinions.
It will get them to open up and contribute better to the conversation.
Likewise, avoid asking personal, threatening, and controversial questions.
They can turn off the zeal of the other person to communicate with you.
More so, understand that it is perfectly normal to be tensed and nervous when interacting with a stranger.
But, you can conquer that fear by starting with small and general talks about the weather, environment, and sports.
This helps to calm you down and build a less strange atmosphere before moving into bigger topics.
It will help improve your communication and conversational skills and help you build your people skills.
To Build Your People Skills, Make Others Feel Important
People like to be regarded as important and needed.
It makes them feel good about themselves.
Therefore to improve your people skills and build better relationships, make people feel important by treating them with respect and regard.
Accept them in their entirety without limitation.
Smile at them as often as possible as it would make them feel accepted and important.
The more important you make people feel in your presence, the more charming and approachable they would perceive you to be.
This helps them to loosen up and be free around you.
It doesn’t only build your people skills, but it also strengthens their rapport with you.
To Build Your People Skills, Work on Your Leadership Skills
The leadership of organizations requires a lot of both managerial and soft skills to handle, hence the reason for people skills
To improve your people skills, you’d need to develop your leadership skills.
In doing this, you have to work on developing your critical thinking as it comes in handy in exercising good judgment, which will, in turn, help you to make good decisions.
Also, cultivate the habit of motivating your others or your subordinates when they lack motivation.
This will helps them to develop some level of confidence in themselves, which will positively affect their productivity.
Above all, it would make them see you as an efficient and effective leader.
Consequently, earning you their trust and loyalty and improving your people skills.
Show Empathy; It Would Help You Build Your People Skills
People skills help to foster a healthy relationship between persons.
One of the ways it does this is by showing empathy.
Empathy is all about identifying and understanding the thoughts, feelings, and emotions of another person.
This skill puts you in a position to be humane towards other people.
Also, in building your people skills, being empathic helps to improve your listening skills as you listen not to judge but to understand.
Thus helping you understand people better and improve your people skills.
Show Appreciation
Appreciation is a way of fostering healthy relationships and communicating.
It shows how grateful you are for a favor done to you.
Therefore to build your people skills, make it a habit to always show appreciation to everyone who has ever done you a favor, no matter how small.
Say thank you even to the junior staff who offer little help around the office once in a while.
It will make them feel good about themselves and put a smile on their faces.
Overall, it makes people see you as an approachable and a people person.
Show Some Admiration
Admiration is a way of showing likeness for a person, thing, or event.
It is usually shown in the form of compliments.
When you compliment people, they feel good about themselves.
On the other hand, it portrays you as likable and approachable.
Hence, to build your people skills, imbibe the habit of genuinely complimenting people, either their dressing, achievement, looks, etc.
This will naturally endear people to you, making it easy to interact and mingle with them freely.
Master The Art of Showing Genuine Interest In Others
Showing genuine interest entails giving your full attention to people when needed.
Giving people attention is one of the most powerful ways of building rapport.
Paying rapt and close attention to people makes them feel important and valuable.
Therefore when someone wants to engage you in a discussion, pause the rest of your activities and give them your undivided attention.
Giving attention may not only be when they are discussing with you.
It could also be when they are showing your something that they consider something important to them.
Giving them your undivided attention helps you to understand them and build a healthy relationship with them.
Acquire Some Soft Skills Training; It Would Help You build Your People Skills
People skills can be acquired without official training.
However, official training doesn’t only speed up the process; it comes in handy when you need them, especially if you have plans of using these skills to boost your career.
Most times, these series of training come with a certificate of performance or completion.
The certificate will help your credentials stand out as you apply for a job or request for promotion.
Final Words On Building People Skills
Skill acquisition sets you apart and makes you independent.
However, acquiring people skills puts you in a position to maintain a healthy relationship with people.
When you maintain a good relationship with people, for instance, your co-workers, it influences the productivity of your workplace because you can communicate effectively with one another.
It will also help you to understand each other better.
Also, people skills can help you go higher in your chosen career, hence the need to build it.
To build people skills, you need to understand that communication, both verbal and non-verbal forms, holds a high place in helping people build good relationships.
Therefore, you need to work on your communication skills.
Also, another thing to look out for is your listening skills.
It’s also another form of communication that helps to foster rapport.
More so, work on your attentiveness and ability to pick up clues.
These will make you good at understanding people and situations.
Never forget to admire and thank people when they look good and assist you.
To cap it all, you can make it official by acquiring some soft skills training from the appropriate bodies or organizations, as the certificate will always come in handy in your career.
Here’s to a better you.
