Tweet

Interpersonal Competence

Written by: Bud Bilanich

Article Overview: Interpersonal competence is the fifth key of career and life success. No matter how self confident and how good at creating positive personal impact or how great a performer and dynamic a communicator you are, you will not achieve life success without interpersonal competence. By taking the time to understand yourself and others, build strong relationships and resolve conflict positively you are well on your way to achieving life success. The greatest life success is found by those who truly seek these things.

Interpersonal Competence

Interpersonal competence is the fifth key of career and life success. No matter how self confident and how good at creating positive personal impact or how great a performer and dynamic a communicator you are, you will not achieve life success without interpersonal competence. By taking the time to understand yourself and others, build strong relationships and resolve conflict positively you are well on your way to achieving life success. The greatest life success is found by those who truly seek after these things.

Understand Yourself - and Others

When it comes to finding life success it is vital that people with interpersonal competence understand themselves. Understanding themselves helps them understand others which allows them to build stronger, more beneficial relationships and resolve conflicts in a positive manner which is key to creating life success.

You have to understand yourself if you want to understand others and achieve life success. Take a few minutes and analyze your life success strategy with these questions:

• Do I like to spend time with people, or do I prefer to be by myself?

• Do I learn best with a step-by-step method, or by getting all the information at once and finding the connections myself?

• Do I make decisions with my heart or with my head?

• Do I resolve things quickly, or wait until the last minute to commit to a course of action?

Understand the answers to the above questions can help you examine the similarities and differences between you and the people around you to help you communicate more effectively as part of your quest for life success.

For example, if your life success strategy is to make decisions with your heart, you will have a difficult time convincing someone whose life success strategy involves making decisions with his head to do something that is "the right thing to do." Instead, you'll need to present a rational argument. The more you understand how you are similar and different from others, the more influence you have over others and the closer you are to achieving life success.

Build Strong Relationships

As part of achieving life success, interpersonally competent people are also good at building strong, lasting relationships. My best advice for attaining life success through relationship building is to "give with no expectation of anything in return." It seems that the world has come to expect quid pro quo. That's why when you do something nice and unexpected for others without expecting anything in return; you build stronger relationships which, again, are key for life success.

Here's an example. In a recent ezine, I featured a book by Valerie Sokolosky called "Do It Right" because I thought it was a book that my readers would benefit from on their personal journeys for life success. I also hoped that it would give her some additional exposure for her book. She was thrilled and emailed to thank me. My readers, Valerie and I all benefited-because I took a little step without expecting anything in return and I gained a good friend out of the deal. Interpersonally competent people build relationships by doing for others without keeping score. They know that in the long run, life success will come back to them if they do good things for others.

Resolve Conflict Positively

Finally, interpersonally competent people resolve conflict in a positive manner. In your quest for life success, no matter how interpersonally competent you are you will inevitably find yourself in conflict. People will not always agree with you nor you with them.

My favorite method for dealing with conflict to achieve life success may seem counter intuitive. Instead of focusing on where another person and I disagree, I focus on where we agree by looking for a small point of agreement and building on it. Most people get caught up in proving their point and hold onto it more strongly when attacked. By turning the discussion around with, "Let's focus where we agree and see if we can build from there," you make the situation less personal and both parties can let their guard down and work together towards a solution that promotes life success.

By taking the time to understand yourself and others, build strong relationships and resolve conflict positively you are well on your way to achieving life success. The greatest life success is found by those who truly seek these things.

Related Articles
  The Art of Communicating
  Self Awareness and Interpersonal Competence
  Cary Grant, Interpersonal Competence and Success
  Great Leadership Is Admitting What You Do Not Know and Thus Avoid Becoming A Victim
  What Kind of Sales Manager Are You?

Article Tags: Build strong relationships, business success, career success, focus on points of agreement, life success, professional success, resolve conflict positively, success, understand yourself
Referred by: http://www.jimbouchard.org



Related Forum Posts


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Entrepreneurs and the “Oh! No!” Trap

The Pure FUN of Learning & Using NLP

LISTENING SKILLS IN COACHING

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.