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Posted By: Bingley interpersonal and people skills - 07/28/05 04:34 AM
I'm translating a job description. Since I am notoriously deficient in both, could someone explain to me the difference between interpersonal skills and people skills.

Bingley
Posted By: Wordwind Re: interpersonal and people skills - 07/28/05 08:55 AM
Interpersonal skills are nothing to laugh at, but who's laughing. In Gardner's writings on the various types of intelligence, interpersonal intelligence gets its own throne. Included in such a type of intelligence would be the ability to ascertain people's wants and needs, the aptitude for knowing how to speak to people in such a way that these wants and needs are addressed comfortably, the ability to change one's style of language to suit a situation. More simply, not regularly making a fool of oneself but being a regular leader or able encourager of people would be a benefit of possessing interpersonal intelligence. A person might be a capable organizer, but if interpersonal skills were lacking, she could end up creating a highly organized and finally offensive nightmare. Those with interpersonal skills have high ability to get along with people of all types. Such people come in all sizes and shapes, introverts and extroverts, but they all share certain traits and aptitudes in being able to work very well with people intelligently.

A person may not have very good interpersonal skills, but could have high intrapersonal ones. And vice versa. Intrapersonal intelligence, according to Gardner, is that innate ability to understand oneself. This type of intelligence he places on its own throne as being a quality that some people possess to a high degree. He additionally includes linguistic, mathematical, natural science, physical, musical, and visually artistic as separate types of intelligence in his battery. I would think that his list is short, but at least he's moved us away from the horror of confinement of verbal, mathematical, and abstract reasoning as measures of intelligence. It's interesting to note that Gardner, in fact, does not include abstract reasoning in his list.

Unfortunately, Gardner's theory of intelligence has not been embraced by the mainstream, so we generally refer to these types of intelligence as skills and abilities, which shortchanges their importance.

I hope this is the kind of thing you were looking for, Bingley.



Posted By: Faldage Re: interpersonal and people skills - 07/28/05 09:43 AM
Welcome home, Dub Dub'!

And "people skills?"

Posted By: Wordwind Re: interpersonal and people skills - 07/28/05 10:34 AM
Thanks, Faldage. Just here for the morning at my brother's computer in FL.

Interpersonal = people skills. One and the same. Interpersonal just sounds more high-falutin'.

Posted By: plutarch Re: interpersonal and people skills - 07/28/05 11:00 AM
Sounds like Gardner and Goleman, of "emotional intelligence" fame, are on the same wave length, Wordwind.

One of the major missing parts in the success equation is emotional intelligence, a concept made popular by the groundbreaking book by Daniel Goleman, which is based on years of research by numerous scientists such as Peter Salovey, John Meyer, Howard Gardner, Robert Sternberg and Jack Block, just to name a few. For various reasons and thanks to a wide range of abilities, people with high emotional intelligence tend to be more successful in life than those with lower EIQ even if their classical IQ is average.

There is an "Emotional Intelligence Test" at this link:

http://www.queendom.com/tests/iq/emotional_iq_r2_access.html



Posted By: Bingley Re: interpersonal and people skills - 07/28/05 02:04 PM
In reply to:

Interpersonal = people skills. One and the same. Interpersonal just sounds more high-falutin'.


They're the same. OK. [sigh] I can deal with this.

Bingley

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