Develop Effective People Skills For Yourself and Your Team

Is there any greater skill to possess that effective people skills? It can totally transform your career and your personal life.

For some, relating and cooperating with others comes naturally, even easily. To these folks who struggle to relate to others, developing the right skills is difficult, sometimes it even feels impossible.

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First Step: Set a Goal To Improve Your People Skills 

Maybe you've come to a point in your life where your stuck in your career. Maybe you lack the communication skills to get ahead in your current position. Perhaps the mere thought of presenting in front of an audience makes your stomach churn.

Maybe you lack social skill because you struggle with low self-esteem? Whatever the root of your struggles, be confident you can work through and overcome them

The Capacity For Discipline and Dedication

It takes dedication to overcome these deeply-rooted not-so-great aspects of ourselves. The rewards from momentary discomfort exceed the everyday feeling of not breaking through these barriers.

By clearly looking at our behaviors we can see where your effective people skills are lacking.

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For Effective People Skills, Communication Lies In the Heart

Whether you care to admit it or not, your level of people skills are about how you communicate with others. This can be:

• verbal
• body language
• written communication
• procrastination
• Lack of Creative Problem Solving
• aggressiveness
• passivity

By working through these roadblocks you can revolutionize your team and organization

Empathy Translates Into People Skills

How people relate to the people around them lies at the heart of truly finding alignment on your team.

This means being empathetic (perceiving your team members as living, breathing, sentient beings). Be inclusive rather than exclusive between leadership and "the team." All of these people skills help create a nurturing and safe environment on your team.

So how do you set up a blueprint to develop your effective communication skills?

• Target areas or experiences in your life (personal and professional) where your communication skills let you down.
• Examine your motives (fear, mistrust, anger, pride) for communicating the way you did.
• Lay out a framework with details targeting why you want to improve your communication skills.
• Set milestones with dates to test your improvement
• Write detailed notes (with dates) marking your successes and setbacks.

Most people resist the idea of writing anything down. At first it seems like a burden. You'll say things like: "I don't have time." or "I don't want to carry a notepad around with me." Any type of excuse is purely resistance to improvement on your part.

Setting Goals to Fight Deeply Rooted Resistance

By writing down your goals, your successes and your slipups, especially if you resist the thought, retrains your mind and sets the intention for improvement. This is the first step toward developing effective people skills.

If you can't commit to writing down your intention to improve, how do you expect to establish the dedication and discipline it takes to reach your goal?

Writing down your intention is like planting the seeds in your mind. The framework you set, and the continued journaling is the water that allows them to grow.

As a leader you're obviously invested in building a great team. Developing effective people skills importantly builds a well-rounded and successful life.

Here's why: Your team emulates your actions. How you communicate directly determines how your team communicates. When you develop effective communication skills you substantially invest into the betterment of your business.