Understanding interpersonal and communication skills

Interpersonal Skills including Communication Skills is a topic for CSAT (Paper 2 of Civil Service Prelims Exam). But candidates, who appear for Preliminary Exam, often seem to be unaware about this topic.

It is clear from UPSC syllabus that there is a separate topic called Interpersonal Skills. Let’s have a quick look at what are the interpersonal skills a person, especially one who aspires to become a Civil Servant, needs to have.

Those who expected sentence correction, fill up the blank – grammar/language questions or para-jumbles as there is a term called ‘communication skills’ in syllabus – were disappointed by upsc, by not including any questions from these areas at all. there were no questions in interpersonal skills section,

but questions came coupled with decision making and problem solving – as you can see these two are
also inseparable parts of interpersonal skills.

Having said that, it doesn’t mean UPSC will stick to the same type of questions in future too. They can go for language skill testing questions, but that may put students from rural background at a disadvantage, and that’s probably the main reason why UPSC has, so far, not tried those areas directly in question paper.

As of now for solving the Decision making and problem solving section, best answer is often derived by using the interpersonal skills too and that’s what UPSC expects from future Civil Servants.

Interpersonal skills
Interpersonal Skills are also known by the names soft skills or people skills. These are skills which you need while you deal with people, for better and healthy results. A master of interpersonal skills knows how to deal with different people during different situations.

Basic Interpersonal skills can be classified as:

• Communication Skills
• Listening Skills
• Stress Management Skills
• Assertiveness Skills
• Decision Making Skills
• Problem Solving Skills

Communication Skills
The purpose of communication is to get your message across to others clearly and unambiguously.

Doing this involves effort from both the sender of the message and the receiver. And it's a process that can be fraught with error, with messages often misinterpreted by the recipient. When this isn't detected, it can cause tremendous confusion, wasted effort and missed opportunity.

In fact, communication is only successful when both the sender and the receiver understand the same information as a result of the communication.

By successfully getting your message across, you convey your thoughts and ideas effectively. When not successful, the thoughts and ideas that you convey do not necessarily reflect your own, causing a communication breakdown and creating roadblocks that stand in the way of your goals – both personally and professionally.

In a recent survey of recruiters, communication skills were cited as the single most important decisive factor in choosing managers. The survey points out those communication skills including written and oral presentations, as well as an ability to work with others, are the main factors contributing to job success.

In spite of the increasing importance placed on communication skills, many individuals continue to struggle with this, unable to communicate their thoughts and ideas effectively – whether in verbal or written format. This inability makes it nearly impossible for them to compete effectively in the workplace, and stands in the way of career progression.

Listening Skills
It can be argued that listening is every bit as important as speaking. Everyone desires to be heard and understood, and we reward people who provide us with those opportunities with our trust and loyalty.
If you are finding it difficult to concentrate on what someone is saying, try repeating their words mentally as they say them. This will reinforce their message and help you stay focussed.

Stress Management Skills
The first step in managing stress is identifying the cause. This may be a major life event that has recently occurred. A recent job change, marriage, increased workload or new baby can all lead to increased personal stress.

Sometimes the causes are not obvious, such as poor time-management skills, excessive worrying and ineffective coping strategies.

Assertiveness Skills
Being assertive is not the same as being aggressive; on the contrary, assertiveness means standing up for what you believe.

Assertiveness is expressing your thoughts, emotions, beliefs and opinions in an honest and appropriate way. As assertiveness should be encouraged in others, it is also important to remember that we should always respect the thoughts, feelings, opinions and beliefs of other people.

Assertiveness allows individuals to assert their personal rights without undermining the rights of others. Assertiveness is considered a balanced response, being neither passive nor aggressive, with self-confidence playing an important part.

An assertive person responds as an equal to others and aims to be open in expressing their wishes, thoughts and feelings.

Decision Making Skills
We use our decision making skills to solve problems by selecting one course of action from several possible alternatives. Decision making skills are also a key component of time-management skills.

Decision making can be hard. Almost any decision involves some conflicts or dissatisfaction. The difficult part is to pick one solution where the positive outcome can outweigh possible losses. Avoiding decisions often seems easier.

Yet, making your own decisions and accepting the consequences are the only way to stay in control of your time, your success, and your life. A significant part of decision making skills is in knowing and practicing good decision making techniques.

Problem Solving Skills
‘Problems can also be opportunities. They allow you to see things differently and to do things in a different way, perhaps, to make a fresh start.’

We all solve problems on a daily basis, in academic situations, at work and in our day-to-day lives.

Some of the problems that are typically faced by us include:

• Putting together an argument for an essay
• Debugging a computer program
• Dealing with an awkward customer
• Thinking about how you are going to manage your budget to keep you going until the end of term
• Working out why your printer won’t respond
• Developing a strategy to reach the next level of a computer game.

Any job will also bring problems to be faced. It is important to show to a recruiter that you have the right skills to resolve these problems, and the personal resilience to handle the challenges and pressure they may bring.

You need to be able to:

• Evaluate information or situations
• Break them down into their key components
• Consider various ways of approaching and resolving them
• Decide on the most appropriate of these ways

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Sample Questions on CSAT Interpersonal Skills
Listed below are the sample questions on Interpersonal skills. The options that are in Bold are the correct answers to these questions.

In order to understand verbal and nonverbal communication which of the following things should we do?
(a) Accept cultural differences
(b) Studying your own culture
(c) Learn about other cultures
(d) All of the above

They maintain friendly, pleasant relations with you, regardless, whether you agree with them or not. Good communicators command your response and goodwill. You are willing to work with them again, despite their differences.

Match the above statement with one of the followings:
(a) Precision
(b) Credibility
(c) Control
(d) Congeniality

Leadership roles first emerge in which of the following kinds of communication?
(a) interpersonal communication
(b) small group communication
(c) face-to-face public communication
(d) media-like cell phones and instant messenger

Another name for interpersonal communication is
(a) mass communication
(b) face to face public communication
(c) dyadic communication
(d) virtual reality

When your text says that interpersonal communication can be thought of as a constellation of behaviours, it means that
(a) It is important to understand the joint actions people perform when they are together
(b) It is important to understand how people label and evaluate relationships
(c) It is important to understand the opposing forces that pull communicators in different directions
(d) None of the above; interpersonal communication is not a constellation of behaviours

This topic hasn't received much attention from UPSC, till now. In fact, there are no direct questions on this topic, so far. So is this topic to be skipped? No. UPSC may include questions on this topic in 2016 or later prelims, as it continues to be a part of the prescribed syllabus.

By:Sree Kumar G

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