Activities to Support Building Soft Skills & Interpersonal Skills

The increasingly interpersonal nature of the modern workplace has been widely written about. Sometimes referred to as “people skills”, soft skills and interpersonal skills are vital in a business environment. The effective typical knowledge worker works in collaborative teams, multitasks, and uses soft skills such as critical and creative thinking.

Soft skills relate to how people work and include interpersonal skills for managing relationships with other people in an organisation. These include communication and collaboration, working effectively as a team, utilising feedback constructively, and using skills to manage conflict, among others. Developing soft skills are also important to the success of most employers, and can always be improved upon. After all, nearly every job requires employees to engage with others in some way, and our activities and tools can improve their interpersonal skills in these areas!

Using experiential learning tools is an ideal way to build soft skills and interpersonal skills - it offers the opportunity to highlight how particular interpersonal skills are currently being used and where they are lacking, as well as an opportunity to rehearse the application of newly developed or existing skills, building confidence, communication skills and capability among employees and team members.