Interpersonal Skills to Develop/Highlight

• Ability to listen
• Ability to give proper recognition
• Ability to share—whether it’s information or credit for a success
• Ability to stay calm when others panic
• Ability to make midcourse corrections
• Ability to accept responsibility
• Ability to admit a mistake
• Ability to defer to others, even (especially) those of lesser rank
• Ability to let someone else be right some of the time
• Ability to say thank you
• Ability to resist playing favorites

This quick list of attributes, while attractive in a junior employee, is not the sort of thing that junior employees get lauded for. But further along in your career curve, when it’s time to step up into a leadership position, you’re going to need these qualities in spades. Stripped of your technical mastery and your hall-of-fame-quality lifetime batting average, what are the interpersonal skills that will make you rise above the leadership pack? Pick one, any skill that you feel you’re lacking. And start developing it . . . now.

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