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.