When you start out in your career, your technical skills in your chosen field are very important. You’re likely working hands-on, using the training and knowledge that got you to this point. For example, a junior procurement specialist might spend their day analysing supplier bids, managing purchase orders, and ensuring compliance with procurement policies.
As you start to move up in the organisation and into a leadership role, you’ll rely on your technical skills less – and your interpersonal and intrapersonal skills become extremely important.
What’s the difference between interpersonal skills and intrapersonal skills?
Interpersonal skills are those we use for communication and managing relationships, such as effective communication, active listening, giving and receiving feedback effectively, leadership and the ability to motivate others.
Intrapersonal skills are what we use for self-management: resilience and the ability to manage stress, time management, confidence, self-regulation and emotional intelligence.
Why do interpersonal and intrapersonal skills matter more as you progress?
As you move up your organisation, your role becomes more strategic. It’s not just your output that matters – it’s your ability to manage the output of your team, keeping them happy, motivated and skilled at the same time. You’ll spend less time on day-to-day operations, and more time on interactions that require a high level of interpersonal skills, building relationships and negotiating with clients or suppliers.
Of course, intrapersonal skills like good time management and an ability to manage stress are important for everyone, wherever you are in your career – but when you’re in a strategic and leadership role, your inter- and intra-personal skills have a greater effect on an organisation’s bottom line, and with increased pressure that comes with more responsibility, it’s important that you can self-manage – and manage those around you.
From negotiation to motivation, here’s why these inter- and intrapersonal skills matter more as you progress.
Negotiation
Negotiation skills are critical for any leadership role, whether you’re in sales, procurement, or HR. Interpersonal skills like clear communication and active listening help you understand the needs and perspectives of suppliers and partners (which in turn helps you build good relationships with those partners) while intrapersonal skills like confidence and emotional intelligence help you stay composed and strategic during tough negotiations or difficult conversations.
Managing and motivating your team
As a leader, your ability to effectively motivate your team and keep the lines of communication open will directly correlate to your team’s success. Interpersonal skills are essential for building trust, giving constructive feedback, and creating a culture of civility and inclusivity. Intrapersonal skills, such as emotional intelligence, help you understand your team’s dynamics and address any issues proactively. By fostering a positive work environment, you can keep your team engaged and productive.
Managing your own increased workload
With leadership comes a heavier workload and more complex responsibilities. Effective time management is crucial to help you handle the increased demands on your time. Setting priorities, delegating tasks, and maintaining a work-life balance are all intrapersonal skills that help you manage your workload efficiently. This ensures you can focus on strategic initiatives without becoming overwhelmed.
Handling high-pressure situations
Leadership roles often involve high-pressure situations that require quick decision-making and problem-solving. Intrapersonal skills like resilience and stress management help you stay calm and focused under pressure. These skills enable you to make well-considered decisions, maintain your composure, and lead your team effectively through challenging times.
Both interpersonal and intrapersonal skills are critical as you advance in your career. While technical skills lay the foundation, it’s your ability to manage yourself and your relationships with others that will determine your long-term success. By developing these skills, you can unlock your leadership capabilities, drive organisational success, and create a positive, productive work environment.
I developed the Developing Procurement Talent programme to help procurement teams build these interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, and maximise their procurement power. You can find out more about the Developing Procurement Talent programme here – or feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.
Years ago, during an internal interview for a training role, I had to give a presentation. While I was speaking, one of the managers in the room closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and remained that way for the whole presentation. It threw me off a bit – thankfully, there were other people in the room and I directed my presentation towards them.
A few weeks later, I passed the manager in the corridor – and he stopped me and thanked me for my presentation, going into detail about how valuable he found it. He had listened intently to every word I had said and remembered it. And yet, when I was watching him, I had no idea that he was listening; I thought he was asleep!
It was a great example of the effect that passive listening – as opposed to active listening – can have on someone, and highlighted the value of active listening, whether you’re watching a presentation, negotiating, having an important conversation, or just want to build better relationships with the people around you.
Passive vs. Active Listening
Passive listening, as I found during my presentation, can lead speakers to falter or withdraw. When we feel unheard, we’re less inclined to share our thoughts openly. On the other hand, when you demonstrate active listening, you build trust with the person you’re interacting with, encouraging them to be more open and less defensive.
The Art of Active Listening
Want to master the skill of active listening? Here are five ways to show you’re really listening.
1. Eye Contact
Meeting someone’s gaze demonstrates that you’re fully present and listening to what they have to say.
2. Body Language
Lean in to show you’re engaged – don’t slump in your chair, let your gaze wander or close your eyes. Subtly mirror their body language with your own. Establishing rapport through body language builds trust.
3. Verbal Cues
Subtle affirmations like nods, “uh huh,” and “OK” indicate your attentiveness. Avoid interrupting the speaker, but small verbal cues show you’re engaging with what they have to say.
4. Summarising
Reflect back a condensed version of what was said. This shows that you not only listened but understood the essence of their message – and is also a good way to ensure you didn’t miss anything important.
5. Ask questions
When it’s appropriate (in a natural break in the conversation, or at the end of their presentation), ask questions. This is a great way to keep the conversation going, to engage the person you’re talking to, and to demonstrate that you were listening to what they had to say.
People Remember Active Listeners
Even if you find it difficult to speak up in group settings, you can still demonstrate active listening – and believe me, the speaker will notice. A delegate of one of my NLP Business Practitioner courses once told me about a group interview she attended for a sales job. The first day involved a presentation by some of the sales team followed by a group discussion and exercises for the interviewees. At the end of the day, she met with the hiring manager and was offered the job; he mentioned that even though there were other people who spoke up more during the group discussion, when the sales team were presenting she was fully engaged, clearly listening to everything they were saying, and that was why they’d chosen her.
Active Listening Helps You Build Better Relationships
We’ve all been in one of those conversations where you can tell the person you’re talking to isn’t really listening to what you’re saying; they’re just waiting until it’s their turn to speak. On the other hand, having a conversation with someone who’s fully engaged with you, making eye contact and asking great questions, is really enjoyable, often gets you to open up more than you normally would, and you’ll always remember that person positively.
Whether you’re negotiating an important deal, at a job interview or delivering difficult feedback, active listening will help you get the results you want – but it’ll also help you to build better relationships with the people around you, which has long-lasting benefits beyond whatever you hoped to achieve with one conversation.
Active listening is really simple, and it’s a great skill to practice. I challenge you to take what you’ve learned in this blog post, and use it in the interactions you have for the rest of the week – and notice the effect it has. You’ll almost certainly get more out of those interactions than you would as a passive listener.
If you’d like to develop your active listening skills further, have a look at my Active Listening microlearning course on my online academy Evolve Online Learning. It’s a short, focused 10 minute course designed to develop your active listening skills.
Do you have too many tasks to keep them all in your head?
Do you make lists?
For lots of people, the problem with lists is that is difficult to prioritise them. We tend to start at the top and work our way down, and any new tasks either get added to the bottom or we do them as they come in rather than continuing our systematic approach.
At the end of the day we turn the page and start the process again the next morning.
This is ineffective, unproductive and demotivating.
Dwight D Eisenhower said in a speech in 1954, “I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”
Urgent means that a task requires immediate attention. These are the to-dos that shout “Now!” Urgent tasks make us reactive.
Important tasks are things that contribute to our long-term objectives. Sometimes important tasks are also urgent, but typically they’re not. When we focus on important activities we are much more proactive and motivated.
Steven Covey popularised this approach to prioritising with an urgent/important matrix split into four quadrants. This helps you to decide whether a task should be done, dumped, delegated or delayed.
I’ve adapted this approach to make it more dynamic, so you can continually review and revise tasks throughout the day or week, and accurately change priorities when new tasks arrive. It also allows you to feel a sense of achievement when you have completed tasks – always a good motivator.
I teach the Eisenhower matrix in many of my online courses, including my Microlearning course ‘How to Prioritise Your Workload’, which is a short 10-minute course that focuses on the Eisenhower matrix.
I’m currently offering a free month’s Tier 1 membership to my online academy Evolve Online, which gives you access to all of the courses in Tier 1: there are microlearning courses on leadership and giving feedback, and longer, more in-depth Toolkit courses on topics like managing change, resilience and stress management.
Sign up here (you’ll need to enter your payment details to sign up for the membership, but you won’t be charged until the first month is up, and you can cancel any time before or after your free trial is up).
To chat about business training and coaching that incorporates the Eisenhower Matrix, time and task management, any anything else that would benefit your business, get in touch.
A version of this blog post was originally posted on the Evolution Development website. Read the original version here.