COLLEGE REFORMS & TRAININGS, HED, PUNJAB

INTERPERSONAL SKILLS

Introduction

Interpersonal skills are the behaviors and tactics an individual uses to interact effectively with others. Interpersonal skills refer to a person’s social skills, people skills, and soft skills. These skills include a vast array of a person’s abilities such as leadership, responsibility, teamwork, etc. and enhance an individual’s ability to communicate, understand, and motivate other individuals.

Interpersonal skills come in handy in career perspective and personal life. In order to achieve success in both fields, it is critical to get along with others. Some people may naturally inherit these skills, but for most, these come into perfection with practice.

Learning Objectives:

To understand others and use this ability to interact, collaborate, and manage communication.
To communicate more effectively with peers.
To be more kind, confident, and help others.
To increase motivation.
To recognize the importance of interpersonal skills.

This section will facilitate educators to enlighten students on maintaining interpersonal skills as well as relationships through three sub – themes:

Motivation
Self-awareness & Self-esteem
Management

What are Interpersonal Relationships?

A community is composed of different kinds of groups. Each group has its own structure, organisation, relationship, roles and ways of communication. Different members play different roles and have different relationships, called interpersonal relationships. Each group is maintained by different interpersonal relationships. Interpersonal relationships have their positive and negative impacts on personal growth and development.

Changes of Family Relationship across Lifespan

Like the development of an individual, a family also has its life stages. A family goes through different stages of development, and changes occur at different stages:

What is Social Cohesion?

Social cohesion can be described as the glue that bonds society together, essential for achieving peace, democracy and equitable development. In cohesive society, all groups have a sense of belonging, participation, recognition and legitimacy.

A society consists of many groups that can be distinguished in terms of ethnic and socio-cultural origin, religious and political beliefs, social class or economic sector or based on interpersonal characteristics such as gender and age.

Social cohesion is made up of four key components i.e., social relationships, connectedness, orientation towards the common good and equality.

The following are the principles of social cohesion:

Mutual respect and trust (toward other groups/individuals)
Good attitude towards other members or groups of society
Group participation (at community level or individual level)
Structural equity and social justice (or perception thereof)

Empathy

Empathy is the ability to truly appreciate what others feel, see things from their point of view, and imagine yourself in their place. Fundamentally, it is envisioning someone else's point of view and feeling what they should feel. Exactly when you see another person suffering, you might actually rapidly envision yourself in the other person's place and feel empathy toward what he/she is going through.

While people are generally open to their own opinions and sentiments, getting into someone else's head can be a pinch more inconvenient. The ability to feel compassion licenses people to "walk a mile in another's shoes". It awards people to appreciate the sentiments that others are feeling.

Benefits of Empathy

Empathy permits individuals to fabricate social associations with others. By understanding people's opinion and feeling, individuals can react fittingly in friendly circumstances. Having social associations is significant for both physical and mental well-being.
Empathizing with others assists you with figuring out how to manage your own feelings. Passionate guideline is significant. It permits you to oversee what you are feeling, even in the midst of incredible pressure, without being overpowered.
Empathy advances helping practices. In addition to the fact that you are bound to participate in accommodating practices when you feel sympathy for others, however others are additionally bound to help you when they experience compassion.

How to Practice Empathy?

Fortunately, empathy is a skill that you can learn and strengthen. If you would like to build your empathy skills, there are a few things that you can do:

Work on listening to people without interrupting
Pay attention to body language and other types of nonverbal communication
Try to understand people, even when you don't agree with them
Ask people questions to learn more about them and their lives

Imagine yourself in another person's shoes While empathy might fail sometimes, most people are able to empathize with others in a variety of situations. This ability to see things from another person's perspective and sympathize with another's emotions plays an important role in our social lives. Empathy allows us to understand others and, quite often, compels us to take action to relieve another person's suffering.

Motivation

Motivation is a process that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-oriented behaviors. It is what causes a person to act, whether it is getting out of bed or picking up a book to read. Motivation is the driving force behind human actions.

There are three major components of motivation:

1. Activation involves the decision to initiate a behavior.

2. Persistence is the continued effort towards a goal, even though obstacles may exist.

3. Intensity is seen as the concentration and determination that goes into pursuing a goal.

The main aim of motivation is to create conditions in which people are willing to work with interest, initiative, enthusiasm, a sense of responsibility, discipline, and confidence.

Following are simple ideas teachers can use to help regulate motivation within students:

Give students a sense of control. While guidance from a teacher is important for keeping the students on track, allowing students to make choices and have some control over what happens in the classroom is one of the best ways to keep them engaged. For example, allowing students to choose the type of assignment to do or which problems to work on can give them a sense of control that may motivate them to do more.
Be clear about learning objectives. Students may feel discouraged when it comes to completing an assignment or behaving in class if there are not any clearly defined objectives. Students want and need to know what is expected of them in order for them to stay motivated. Teachers should lay out clear objectives, rules, and expectations in the beginning of the term so that no confusion arises, and students have goals to work towards.
Create a threat-free environment. While students do need to understand that there are consequences to their actions, positive reinforcements are far more motivating for students than threats. When teachers create a safe and supportive environment for students, affirming their belief in a student’s liabilities rather than laying out consequences for not doing things, students are more likely to stay motivated to work.
Offer varied experiences. Not all students will respond to a lesson in the same way. For some, hands-on experiences are better. Others may enjoy reading books quietly or working in groups. In order to keep students motivated, teachers should try mixing up their lessons so that students with different preferences will each get time to focus on the thing they like best. It will allow them to stay engaged and pay attention.
Allow students to work together. While not all students may be on board with working in groups, many will find it fun to try to solve problems, perform experiments, and work on projects with other students. Social interaction can get students excited about things in the classroom and they can motivate one another to reach a certain goal. However, teachers do need to ensure that the groups are balanced and fair such that all the students are working equally.
Give praise when earned. There may not be any other form of motivation that works quite as well as encouragement. At every age, an individual craves recognition and praise. Teachers can give students a bounty of motivation by rewarding their success publicly, praising them, and sharing their exemplary work.
Encourage self-reflection. Most kids want to succeed, and they just need help figuring out what they need to do in order to get there. One way to motivate your student is to get them to take a hard look at themselves and define their own strengths and weaknesses. Students are often more motivated by creating critiques of themselves rather than having a teacher do it for them.
Know your students. Getting to know your students is more than just memorizing their names. Students need to know that their teachers have a genuine interest in them and cares about them and their success. When students feel appreciated, it creates a safe learning environment and motivates them to work harder.
Give learning feedback and offer chances to improve. Students who struggle with classwork may sometimes feel agitated or even demotivated. In these situations, it is crucial for teachers to provide effective learning feedback to help students learn exactly where they went wrong and how they can improve next time. Figuring out a plan to get a student where they want to be will also help them to stay motivated to work hard.
Make things fun. Not all classwork needs to be a game or a good time but students who see college as a fun learning place will be more motivated to pay attention and do the work that requires their effort rather than regard it as a chore. Adding fun activities into the college day can help students who struggle to stay engaged and make the classroom a much friendlier place for all students.

Self-Awareness and Self-Esteem

Self-awareness is a reflective state of self-focused attention in which a person evaluates themselves and attempts to attain correctness and consistency in their beliefs and behaviors. This involves viewing oneself as a separate individual and acknowledging limitation. Being self-aware means that you are able to monitor yourself, your sentiments, your considerations, your mentality, your qualities, and your responses.

Self-esteem is described as a person’s opinion of himself or herself. It can be defined as how much a person appreciates themselves, regardless of the circumstances. Factors that define a person’s self-esteem are: self-confidence, feeling of security, identity, sense of belonging, and feeling of competence.

Occasionally human beings lack self-confidence, especially students. With a low self-esteem, individuals are unhappy and dissatisfied by themselves. It takes attention and daily practice to boost a person’s self-esteem.

With a healthy self-esteem, students are:

assertive in expressing their needs and opinions
confident in their ability to make decisions
able to form secure and honest relationships, and less likely to stay in unhealthy ones
realistic in their expectations and less likely to be overcritical of themselves and others
more resilient and better able to withstand stress and setbacks

Debrief

After students have completed the task, teachers must ask them to discuss their answers to the rest of the class and other students are encouraged to contribute. Teachers can also provide their opinion. This self-awareness worksheet is a great resource to help students to self-advocate. It will benefit them by making them aware of their strengths and weaknesses. Teacher can prepare such multiple activities by considering needs of their classroom and student body.

Time Management

Management is, generally, described as the act of getting one’s self to accomplish desired goals and objectives, using available resources efficiently and effectively. The three most important types of management for students are time management, money management, and anger management.

Time management is the process of organizing and planning how much time needs to be spent on specific activities. Good time management enables individual to complete more in a shorter time, leading to success.

Some benefits of managing your time include:

stress relief
more time
more opportunities
ability to realize goals

Scoring:

- 1 score for each YES except for questions 5, 6, 8, 10.

- 1 score for each NO except for questions 5, 6, 8, 10.

Total the score.

A low score indicates a need for help with time management whereas a high score indicates use of effective time management techniques.

Debrief

Once students have handed in their solutions, paste the solutions on to the whiteboard or pin on soft board. Discuss each question and their possible solutions and encourage all students to think of reasonable alternatives.

Money Management

Money management refers to the process of tracking and planning an individual’s use of capital. This could be as small as a pocket money of Rs. 1000 or a small project budget or some funds gathered through a community campaign. It is important for teenagers to value money and learn its efficient management. Money management process usually includes budgeting, spending, saving, and investing.

The idea of money management incorporates the key financial disciplines, within students, for developing wealth accumulation, protection, and preservation strategies specific to their needs, objectives, values, priorities, and risk tolerance. Being able to overcome financial management will give students a sense of focus on their behavioral influences on their decision-making, which can adversely influence the outcomes of their long-term strategies.

Try to highlight the “Financial Star” of your classroom by asking which students are working part – time or taking tuitions to manage their college fee. If there are some, ask them to come forward and share their money management skills and how they budget their month. Students who are in hostels generally get small pocket moneys to manage their day – to – day expenses: they can also shed light on budgeting.

Debrief

After students have completed this task, teachers must ask them to discuss their answers to the rest of the class and other students are encouraged to contribute. Teachers can also provide their opinion. Engagement within class will allow students to recognize other alternatives. This money management worksheet will help students to have a grip on their money saving tactics.

Anger Management

It is a process of learning to recognize signs that an individual is becoming angry and taking actions to calm down and deal with the situation in a productive way. This process does not involve holding anger inside or avoiding associated feelings. In fact, anger management involves a range of techniques that can help with recognizing signs of anger and handling triggers in a positive way.

This method is effective for all individuals, especially students, as managing anger will allow them to:

Identify the physical effects of anger on their body
View things from other people’s perspective
Know when to remove themselves from a certain scene or situation
Refrain from over-personalizing

Debrief

After students have filled in the worksheet, allow active engagement within the class so that students can recognize other student’s methodologies and strategies on anger management. Teachers can and should provide their opinion.

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