Interpersonal Skills
Lesson 1 taught us about the importance of developing yourself. This included knowledge about differentiation, core values, and emotional regulation. We also learned a bit about financial literacy and mental health. Now we will move on to our interactions with others.
Interpersonal skills refer to your ability to interact with other people in positive and healthy ways. When we interact in positive and healthy ways, we help to form a good relationship and “create an atmosphere of trust and security (Alipour et al., 2020).”
Communication is the key to building relationships.
We are always communicating things about ourselves to other people, through verbal, nonverbal, and inactive forms of communication. The words we choose to use and the tone things are said in can build our relationships or be destructive. We can “clearly convey ideas, build trust, solve conflicts, or motivate individuals (Baier & Dima-Laza, 2025)” through our verbal interactions with them.
Our non-verbal communication is impactful also. Non-verbal communication includes things like hand gestures, eye contact, facial expressions, and how close we are standing or sitting next to someone (Bair & Dima-Laza, 2025). Being silent or choosing not to verbally communicate also gives information to others. In fact, people listening to us will believe our non-verbal communication over our verbal communication if they feel the two do not match up.
In this lesson we will learn about the importance of self and other awareness and the role of extending true empathy in building a close relationship. We will also learn about conflict styles and ways to resolve conflicts with healthy communication styles.