Interpersonal communication skills in the workplace are as vital to your company's success as how much money the business earns and how talented your employees are. A company can't thrive if its employees can't understand each other, or worse, are often in conflict. So, by improving interpersonal communication skills among your staff, you may also improve your company's productivity, performance and bottom line.

As you're planning training for interpersonal communication skills, take an inventory of your staff's strengths and weaknesses. Interpersonal communication skills include:

1. How to listen effectively.
2. How to disagree without arguing.
3. How to offer constructive criticism without embarrassing or offending.
4. How to negotiate.
5. Any behavioral and interpersonal skills that affect relationships with people inside or outside the company, including clients / customers, coworkers or vendors.
   

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Assess your employees' behavioral and interpersonal skills

Before implementing employee interpersonal skills training, it's important to evaluate how knowledgeable and adept they are in this area. Some employees maybe interpersonal communication superstars--they'll likely need little training, and can even serve as a role model for their colleagues. Others may intensive coaching just to feel comfortable interacting with a wide variety of people.

I recommend: Employees can take an online interpersonal communication skills assessment at Optimal Thinking, Queendom.com, or at the Portland Community College website.

Send employees to interpersonal communication classes

If you find that there's room for improvement, interpersonal communication courses can help your employees develop better interpersonal communication skills. Many colleges and technical skills offer training in interpersonal communications in business. You can also order educational videos and lead your own training, or sign up for online courses that employees can complete individually and on their own time.

I recommend: CDi Communications offers an interpersonal communication skills business training video program that covers everything from how to listen to how to identify and clear up mistaken assumptions. Training videos from Employee University cover both verbal and nonverbal communication skills. Learning Tree International offers three-day communication skills classes around the country.

Hire a consultant to conduct on-site interpersonal skills training

If you want to conduct company-wide interpersonal skills training, a consultant can provide intensive coaching to small groups or your entire staff, right at your workplace. Some consultants also include an assessment as part of their services.

I recommend: Ridge Training offers coaching for managers and leaders, staff, teams, sales professionals, service professionals and trainers. Topics covered include candor, listening skills, managing difficult conversations and straight talk. Booher Consultants offers on-site coaching in interpersonal communication skills for making presentations, and also offers course materials for a wide variety of other communication skills training programs.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  If you use assessments as part of your interpersonal communication skills training, share and explain employee results individually. By showing employees what their tests reveal about their communication skills, you help them play a more active and educated role in their personal and professional development.

Think of a leader as a coach - he or she must have the ethics, the grit, the enthusiasm, and the knowledge to prod your team to victory. To groom a fantastic leader for your business, you must be committed to training continually. Supervisors are your right hand in helping you grow your business. The moment your business grows beyond what you can manage effectively by yourself, you will need other people to help.

Creating effective supervisors or managers includes three key steps:

1. Hire those with true leadership qualities.
2. Mentor and teach by example.
3. Cultivate leaders from your existing staff.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Screen new hires for leadership skills

Before you hire a supervisor for your small business, look at his experience in managing others, or in leading teams to success. Ask focused interview questions to shed light on his sense of responsibility, respect for his supervisees, and personal integrity.

I recommend: The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) offers great insight into the qualities of a true leader. Sign up for a free e-course about hiring at About: Recruit and Hire the Best.

Be a role model and mentor yourself

A business mentor is a more experienced professional who gives significant career guidance to a less-experienced professional (the protégé). By mentoring your supervisors, you offer them invaluable, ongoing coaching, and in turn, teach them to follow your example, which can make your job easier.

I recommend: The SBA's resource, "Mentoring: What Goes Around, Comes Around," offers individual assessments for a potential mentor or protégé to determine his ability to succeed in a mentoring relationship.

Walk the Walk

Leaders who make their employees to follow the rules, but don't do it themselves set a bad example and get little respect. Leaders who 'walk the walk' are the ones their staff will want to follow.

I recommend: Go to About Human Resources for great tips about setting a positive example for your supervisors, so they, in turn, will set positive examples for their employees.

Grow Your Leaders

Many business executives believe it best to grow their leaders rather than hire them from outside of your business. What better way to assess the person's abilities and potentials than to observe them at work as a supervisee? Do they show uncompromising standards and responsibility in completing their work? If so, your next supervisor is probably right in front of your eyes.

I recommend: Go to Monster, Inc.'s Hiring Center to learn how you can groom exceptional employees into superior supervisors.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Apologize: Everyone makes mistakes, but a good leader will acknowledge his and admit when he's wrong.
• •  Manage: But do NOT micromanage. Guiding is good. Smothering? Not so good.
• •  Consider what you delegate: An employee is not the supervisor's personal errand boy. The supervisor should not send them to the dry cleaners, to fetch lunch, or anything else that is non-work-related.
• •  Give a helping hand: A good supervisor works at the counter when help is needed. This goes a long way toward earning employees' respect.
• •  Be friendly, but not their best friend: A friend isn't expected to discipline another about being late for work, ignoring the dress code, or breaking a rule.

The strength of your employees' interpersonal communication skills can determine how well they work as a team, how many sales they make and how your company is viewed by potential customers and by the rest of the public. Interpersonal communication skills in the workplace include everything from effective listening to negotiation skills, and are no longer seen as just "soft skills."

Today, many companies acknowledge that improving interpersonal communication skills among employees is key to promoting the growth of the entire company. Interpersonal communication skills basics include:

1. The kinds of interpersonal communication skills necessary for specific job roles
2. How behavioral and interpersonal skills affect sales and your bottom line
3. How communication skills can improve customer relationships
4. The effect of technology on interpersonal communication skills
   

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Encourage employees at all levels to develop better interpersonal communication skills

Everyone from administrative assistants to upper management can benefit from employee interpersonal skills training, because it teaches them how to cooperate across all levels of the organization. Spend some time outlining which interpersonal communication skills are essential to specific job roles. For example, a manager may need instruction in how to provide constructive criticism, while staff members may need guidance in respectful communication.

I recommend: Speak for Success offers communication training specifically for managers. The program covers both written and spoken communication, and focuses on how managers can use even tough conversations to build morale and strengthen the team. Employee University offers communication training videos for employees at every level of the organization.

Examine how behavioral and interpersonal skills affect sales

Often, making the sale depends not only on the product, but also on a sales rep's ability to connect with a potential customer. Interpersonal communications in business can directly impact a company's bottom line, because if employees can't effectively communicate the advantages of a product or service, or if they alienate or offend prospective customers, it can be difficult to undo the damage.

I recommend: PeopleSavvy offers interpersonal communication classes specifically for sales professionals, and The Learning Key offers its "Consultative Selling" class, which focuses on enhancing interpersonal skills and building a relationship with the prospective customer.

Learn how technology affects interpersonal communication skills

Thanks to email, it's easier to communicate, but more difficult to communicate effectively. You don't have the advantage of body language or the tone of someone's voice to help you decipher what they mean. People are also more casual about email, spending less time on composition than they would with a written memo or even in conversation.

I recommend: Work911 includes a section on the differences between the various mediums used for communication, including telephone and email, and addresses how you should alter your communication style for these mediums. CareerTrak offers a one-hour webinar covering proper email communication and etiquette.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Interpersonal skills training is an important part of improving customer relations. Winning a customer is just the beginning; it takes just as much effort to keep them. Effective communication skills can help build positive--and profitable--longterm customer relationships.
• •  Interpersonal communication skills include both verbal and nonverbal language. Make sure your employees know how to send out the proper physical signals, and that they're adept on picking up on the body language of others.

It's almost impossible to overestimate the significance of interpersonal communication skills in the business world. What human resources manager has never had to rely on interpersonal negotiations to handle hostility between two or more employees? Or what sales representative would minimize the importance of effective listening strategies at a company sales meeting? Successful businesses, whether they're employment advertising agencies or bio pharmaceutical manufacturers, pay top dollar to employees who can effectively communicate with clients, business partners and senior management. Knowing some key terms related to interpersonal communication skills is a clever way to learn these strategies.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Optimal thinking

Optimal thinking is a mental strategy based on what used to be called positive thinking. When you rely on optimal thinking, you are making the most of any situation.

I recommend: The Community for Optimal Thinkers explains the kinds of choices optimal thinkers make and the thoughts they should be focusing on. See also how optimal thinking compares with negative thinking.

Effective listening

When you practice effective listening, you are using the highest form of listening skills. You retain more data and send nonverbal messages to the speaker.

I recommend: Wright State University puts effective listening into the context of interpersonal communications. It explains the relationship between receiving information and giving feedback to the sender. It also explains how the most skilled communicators depend on effective listening techniques.

Feedback

As an interpersonal skill in the workplace, feedback refers to any responses you receive to your behavior and work from both managers and coworkers. Feedback can be constructive or negative.

I recommend: Read suggestions for constructive feedback at Human Nature At Work. Find out why the ability to give your staff positive feedback remains one of the most defining skills of a manager.

Verbal communication

When people use verbal communication, they speak or write to one or more individuals. Experts agree that verbal communication is the foundation of interpersonal skills.

I recommend: The University of Louisville explains the origin of verbal communication and its main purposes. Also find out how etiquette plays an essential role when people verbally communicate and how public speaking fits into the verbal communication model.

Nonverbal communication

When you give other people messages that you don't communicate with your voice or written words, you are using nonverbal communication techniques.

I recommend: Go to Fort Hays State University to learn how body posture, tone of voice and even facial expressions constitute nonverbal messages that you send to others, whether intentionally or not.

Interpersonal negotiations

Interpersonal negotiations come into play when you are in a situation requiring you to handle difficult people or to deal with a potentially hostile individual.

I recommend: Go to Global Development Research Center and find out how you can follow a proven technique for using interpersonal negotiations to handle sticky workplace situations.