Ch6. Interpersonal Skills — Teamwork, Conflict Resolution, Leadership, and Followership

What Are Interpersonal Skills?

Interpersonal skills is the ability to communicate effectively and collaborate with others in a professional setting.

7 Sub-Competencies:

Teamwork: Collaborating toward team goals
Leadership: Motivating team members and providing direction
Conflict Management: Resolving conflicts constructively
Negotiation: Reaching agreements with stakeholders
Customer Service: Understanding and satisfying customer needs
Followership: Fulfilling your role as a team member
Communication: Communicating effectively

Teamwork

What Makes a Team Effective?

From 2012 to 2017, Google’s Project Aristotle studied 180 teams to identify the most important factor in team performance.

The conclusion: Psychological Safety matters most.

Psychological safety is the shared belief that you won’t be punished or humiliated for speaking up, asking questions, or admitting mistakes. Teams with high psychological safety:

Share ideas freely
Report and learn from mistakes quickly
Produce higher performance outcomes

Tuckman’s Stages of Team Development

Stage	Characteristics	Leader’s Role
Forming	Team meets for the first time; awkwardness; role exploration	Provide direction, create structure
Storming	Conflict emerges; role disputes; resistance	Mediate conflict, establish norms
Norming	Norms established; collaboration begins	Support, coach
Performing	High performance; self-directed	Delegate, remove obstacles
(Adjourning)	Project ends	Wrap up, debrief

The Storming stage is uncomfortable, but teams only become truly cohesive by working through it.

Conflict Management

Conflict at work is inevitable. The question isn’t whether conflict exists — it’s how you handle it.

Sources of Conflict

Resource scarcity (budget, personnel)
Misaligned goals and priorities
Unclear roles and responsibilities
Communication misunderstandings
Differences in values or working style

Conflict Resolution Strategies (Thomas-Kilmann Model)

Strategy	Own Interests	Other’s Interests	Best Suited For
Competing	High	Low	Urgent decisions required
Collaborating	High	High	Long-term resolution needed (ideal)
Compromising	Medium	Medium	Time pressure; temporary fix
Avoiding	Low	Low	Issue is trivial
Accommodating	Low	High	Preserving the relationship matters more than the outcome

Best option: Collaborating — a Win-Win solution that works for everyone

Negotiation

Principled Negotiation

A methodology developed by the Harvard Negotiation Project (Fisher and Ury, Getting to Yes).

4 Principles:

Separate people from the problem: Focus on the issue, not the individual. Analyze the disagreement without attacking the person.
Focus on interests, not positions: Behind “what I want” (position) is “why I want it” (interest). Find where your underlying interests overlap.
Generate options for mutual gain: Instead of dividing a fixed pie, create creative solutions that expand it.
Insist on objective criteria: Anchor agreements in market rates, industry standards, or legal precedents — not personal pressure.

BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement)

Your best course of action if negotiations fail. The stronger your BATNA, the more negotiating leverage you hold.

Leadership and Followership

Followership Matters as Much as Leadership

In workforce competency frameworks, followership receives as much attention as leadership — because every employee is always a team member, even if not always a team leader.

Traits of an Effective Team Member:

Committed to shared team goals
Understands and fulfills their own role
Shares information that benefits the team
Accepts feedback and grows from it
Supports struggling teammates

Managing Up

The ability to manage your relationship with your manager is also a professional skill.

Understand your manager’s priorities and working style
Proactively communicate status updates
Bring solutions, not just problems
Treat feedback as an opportunity to improve

Customer Service

Core Principles of Customer Service

These apply to both internal customers (colleagues, managers) and external customers (clients, consumers).

4-Step Complaint Handling Process:

Listen: Hear them out completely; don’t interrupt
Empathize: “I’m sorry for the inconvenience you’ve experienced”
Resolve: Identify the root cause; present a solution
Follow up: Confirm that the customer is satisfied

Verbal cushioning: Phrases like “I understand your concern…” or “That’s a fair point, and…” soften difficult conversations while keeping the dialogue professional.

Assessment Question Types: Interpersonal Skills

Situational Judgment: Choose the appropriate response to team conflicts, customer complaints, or disagreements with a supervisor.

Core Principles:

Avoid impulsive or emotional reactions
Resolve through rules, procedures, and rational dialogue
Focus on the issue, not the individual
Consider the interests of the team and the organization

Common trap: “Immediately escalate to your manager” is not always the right answer. Attempting resolution between the parties directly is often the expected first step.

Study Checklist

Can list the 7 sub-competencies of interpersonal skills
Can describe Tuckman’s 4 stages of team development in order
Can explain all 5 Thomas-Kilmann conflict strategies and match each to its appropriate situation
Can explain the 4 principles of principled negotiation
Can explain what BATNA means and how it functions in a negotiation

OIYO Editorial