Have you ever had one of those days where your colleagues or boss were driving you crazy? Ever thought, that your job would be awesome if wasn’t for the people involved? How do you deal with this? Eliminating your colleagues or the boss from the workplace (even if sometimes an attractive idea) is not an option.
However, what you can do is get better at working with people.
Having a sense of belonging and getting on well with others often ranks highly in surveys as factors that contribute to employee engagement. It’s hard to be enthusiastic, committed and focused in your work when you experience unease or conflict with others. The way you connect with others in the workplace unavoidably has an impact on workplace performance, profit and well-being. But more importantly for you, it has a direct effect on your personal well-being, including your health and happiness. For your own sake (as well as the organisation you work for), you need more than just technical or academic skills to do your job well; you also need people skills.
In the world of people skills there are some simple principles that, when understood and applied well, can make a big difference. So what are they? To start with, three types of people skills, that can be very valuable to you as an employee, are:
- knowing how to ask quality questions
- developing the habits of an active listener
- reading and responding to body language
Of course this is just a start. You need to develop these and other skills throughout your career. Employees who look for opportunities to do this not only make things easier for themselves, they also give themselves a real advantage in the workplace.
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