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Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills

By OptimistMinds
Page last updated: 08/28/2022 | Next review date: 08/28/2024

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The Optimistminds editorial team is made up of psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health professionals. Each article is written by a team member with exposure to and experience in the subject matter.  The article then gets reviewed by a more senior editorial member. This is someone with extensive knowledge of the…

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This blog explains in detail the interpersonal effectiveness skills. In this blog, you will be told about how you can enhance your interpersonal effectiveness skills using strategies based on dialectical behavior therapy.

The blog mentions the importance of interpersonal effectiveness skills to motivate you to work on developing these skills.

So let’s not delay and find out what are interpersonal effectiveness skills and how we can develop them.

What are Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills?

According to DBT, interpersonal effectiveness skills are the skills that help individuals communicate and interact with their relationships, balance their priorities versus demand, balance their needs and wishes, and add in building a sense of self-mastery and self-respect. 

Importance of Interpersonal Skills

Interpersonal effectiveness skills hold great importance in our lives. Interpersonal effectiveness skills affect the quality of our relationships and the consequences of our interactions with others.

This is because of the way we communicate with others influence our relationships with them and their behavior with us. It is very important to learn the essential skills for effective communication.

Dialectical behavior therapy helps us learn effective communication skills so we can communicate with others in the most effective and meaningful way, the way in which our stressful or distressing emotions do not affect our communication style. 

There are two main aspects of interpersonal effectiveness.

These include the ability to communicate assertively by expressing our needs assertively and being able to say no assertively. 

Interpersonal effectiveness skills aim to help individuals build up positive, strong, healthy, and meaningful relationships.

Dialectical behavior therapy has introduced four main skills that can help develop interpersonal effectiveness.

These four main skills include THINK, FAST, GIVE, and DEARMAN.

These four acronyms help individuals learn how to use this for skills effectively to develop healthy relationships and maintain positivity in relationships.

Let’s discuss all four of these in detail.

THINK 

DBT skill, THINK, is relatively a new skill introduced by dialectical behavior therapy.

This skill helps individuals manage their negative emotions while interacting with others.

The skill is very helpful for individuals when they experience negative emotions such as stress and anxiety, or when they are facing problems in their interpersonal relationships. 

The acronym, THINK allows individuals to think about the situation from the other person’s perspective (T), have empathy and feel what the other person might be feeling in response to this situation (H), interpret the other person’s behavior by finding out realistic, possible reasons for that person’s particular action (I), notice the other person’s efforts for correcting his mistakes or trying to compensate his behavior (N) and show kindness towards the other person even if you do not forgive him.

Being kind would help you manage your emotions and give you enough time to analyze the situation closely. 

THINK it is a very effective distress tolerance skill. It helps individuals manage their emotions effectively without bursting out and ruining their relationships. It gives them time to understand the prevents instant reaction.

FAST 

The acronym, FAST helps individuals maintain their self-respect during an ongoing conflict.

The FAST skill enables individuals to remain fair to themselves and others while thinking and behaving non-judgmentally (F), refrain from apologizing when it is not their fault (A), sticking to their values after careful recognition of values considering their needs, desires, and aims (S) and staying truthful to themselves and others about the situation and their feelings on the situation (T). 

The FAST skill aid individuals in maintaining their dignity by being honest to feel good about themselves and avoiding regrets.

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GIVE

The third DBT based skill, GIVE helps individuals maintain interpersonal effectiveness.

GIVE skills help individuals maintain a positive and healthy relationship with others. 

The Acronym GIVE direct individuals to be gentle in case of the relationships, observe the emotions of other people mindfully and then communicate with the other person with love (G), show interest what the other person is saying by listening to his words actively and observing his body language to let him know that the individual is listening and understanding him (I), validate the words of the other person by reflecting what he had just said to understand him better and let him know that the individual is actively listening to that person (V) and taking everything in an easy manner by being comfortable to ensure the situation is under control (E). 

GIVE skill help helps build-up interpersonal effectiveness by allowing the individual to focus on both verbal and nonverbal communication.

This helps maintain good and healthy relations with others.

DEARMAN

DEARMAN skill help individuals express their needs assertively. It helps individuals mention their needs and demands effectively to others.

This ensures their needs are communicated to the other person effectively and interpersonal effectiveness is also maintained. 

DEARMAN skill allows individuals to describe the situation in the most effective and understandable way (D), express their needs in such a way that the needs are communicated to the other person without the person being disrespected (E), assertively expressing why the individual needs a certain thing to happen (A), reinforce the needs to ensure the other person didn’t forget about them (R), staying mindful by focusing on the present moment only rather than thinking about the past or the future (M), appearing confident (A) and negotiating when the individual does not get his needs fulfilled due to some reason (N). 

These four skills, THINK, GIVE, FAST, and DEARMAN, based on dialectical behavior therapy, ensure interpersonal effectiveness when used correctly.

They allow effective communication of one needs to others.

They help in maintaining healthy relationships and interacting effectively with others. These skills help maintain self-respect and assertive communication.

Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills Worksheets

DBT Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills worksheet is a useful source for learning about how to develop different interpersonal effectiveness skills.

This worksheet gives a detailed description of the DBT skill, DEARMAN, GIVE and FAST that help individuals learn how to develop objective effectiveness,  relationship effectiveness, and self-respect effectiveness respectively.

You can access this worksheet by clicking here. 

DBT Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills DEARMAN Worksheet is a very effective and easy worksheet that allows individuals to develop interpersonal effectiveness by observing the situation closely.

This worksheet teaches individuals how to be assertive and how they can deal with their conflicts in the most effective way.

You can access this worksheet from here.

DBT Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills: FAST Worksheet is another interesting and effective worksheet that helps individuals build-up interpersonal effectiveness by using the DBT skill, FAST. this worksheet can be downloaded from this page. 

The following are some books based on interpersonal effectiveness skills.

These books would help you find out more about interpersonal effectiveness skills and teach you how to develop them to maintain healthy relationships.

The Amazon tool, the dialectical behavior skills card deck is a useful tool for practicing interpersonal effectiveness skills and making them a part of your life.

What are examples of good interpersonal skills?

Some examples of interpersonal effectiveness skills include active listening, empathy, teamwork, responsibility, leadership, motivation, patience, effective communication, and flexibility.

What are the interpersonal skills at work?

Interpersonal effectiveness skills are the tactics used by individuals for communicating and interacting with others in the most effective way.

At work, interpersonal skills can be referred to as the ability of an employee to work skillfully with others.

Interpersonal effectiveness skills used at work include leadership, teamwork, active listening, and effective communication.

What is the importance of interpersonal skills?

Interpersonal effectiveness skills hold great importance.

These skills ensure that individual needs are communicated to the other person the most appropriate way. Interpersonal effectiveness skills ensure effective communication with others.

It helps in maintaining positive and healthy relationships. These skills help in shaping personality too. 

How would you describe your interpersonal skills?

Interpersonal effectiveness skills are the skills used by an individual to communicate and interact effectively with others to maintain positive and healthy relationships with them.

These skills help build-up strong and effective relationships.

How do you build interpersonal skills?

Interpersonal effectiveness skills can be built in various ways including cultivating a positive outlook, managing emotions, being empathetic, finding positive traits of others rather than focusing on their negative points, practicing active listening, and being assertive.

How do you build interpersonal relationships?

Interpersonal relationships can be built by establishing boundaries, practicing active listening, being respectful, maintaining a positive attitude, and open to constructive criticism without letting your emotions control you.

This blog gave you information about interpersonal effectiveness skills.

The block mention four components of DBT that are helpful in maintaining healthy relationships.

The block also mentioned some worksheets that can help you develop interpersonal effectiveness skills, followed by some recommended books and tools that can help you increase your knowledge about interpersonal effectiveness skills.

We hope this blog will help you in one way or the other. Your reviews for this blog are welcome.

If you have any queries, let us know your comments. We will be glad to assist you.

References 

Interpersonal Effectiveness – Get Self Help 

DBT Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills: The Guide to Healthy Relationships Interpersonal Effectiveness in Dialectical Behavior Therapy 

Google books

Amazon.com 

Unsplash.com