Personal and Interpersonal skills

Personal and Interpersonal skills 

This may be a time when many people are thinking about the future and asking if they are on the right path or in the right job. So a quick review of their personal and interpersonal skills can really help to identify their strengths that can then be added to a CV or Resume. This is a great way to help your client stand out when a hiring manager is shortlisting candidates for a role.

The difference between personal and interpersonal skills:

• Personal skills – seen as our ‘soft skills’ or those intangible qualities and traits that enhance our everyday interactions
• Interpersonal skills – seen as our ‘people skills’ and relate to how we communicate with others

We know many employers are now looking for people who have a balanced combination of both personal and interpersonal skills, because it is felt that this can really help an individual contribute to the working environment in a more positive way. But it can also help to signal the people who find it easier to communicate effectively or find it easier to work well with others.

One way you can help your clients identify their own balance between personal and interpersonal skills, is to review a list of each during a coaching session. Talk through a list of skills one at a time and then using a simple coaching tool like our skills compass, you can work with your client to give each skill a score from 1 to 5. This score is then plotted onto a compass and used to identify their strengths and natural talents or flag any areas they may want to look at or focus on. The scores on the compass can also be used as a benchmark so you can track progress as your client works on or develops each skill.

When completing the skills compass, ask your client what…

• Would they like to focus on most?
• Are their goals?
• Do they hope to achieve now or in the future?
• Changes can they make unaided and what help do they need from others?
• Examples can they think of to support the score they have for each skill?

When working through the skills compass, it can be helpful to ask your client to think of a situation they have been in and use that experience to support the score they gave themselves. Then ask them to consider what they could do differently if they are ever in the same situation again and use role-play to practice their response in the safety of the coaching session. And if helpful, get them to consider asking friends or family members to score their skills and then look for any differences between these scores and the score they gave themselves.

To fully support you in reviewing both personal and interpersonal skills, we have published an ebook that specifically looks at skills and includes a simple skills compass you can complete during the review with your client.

Plus a virtual card game you can use in your coaching sessions as a creative life coaching tool when coaching personal development.

• Ebook – Coaching Personal and Interpersonal Skills
• Virtual Card Game – Coaching Personal Development