Interpersonal skills, including emotional intelligence, team working, empathy, integrity, and social boldness are crucial to both your career and life in general. High scores for all five personality traits generally indicate high interpersonal skills that will allow you to succeed in forming connections with others. Taking the Interpersonal Skills Test allowed me to better understand my skills in working with others. Although I’ve always thought that I had an accurate grasp of my strengths and weaknesses, I was still surprised by some of my results.

My strongest area of interpersonal skills is Team Working, or the ability to cooperate with others to achieve goals and objectives. This means I can both contribute and support ideas within a group which leads to increased productivity and performance for the group as a whole. While I do believe I am a good team player, I did not expect Team Working to be my highest score as I’ve always believed I was more skilled in Emotional Intelligence or Empathy. Team Working is crucial in both a classroom and professional setting. In the classroom, I would be able to use my skill of Team Working to communicate with my peers on a group project, assume responsibility for the tasks I am assigned, and support the ideas of my teammates through active listening. In a professional setting, I can maintain collaborative relationships with other branches of the company, contribute new ideas for potential products or projects, and resolve conflicts within a group of co-workers.

My second strongest area of interpersonal skills is Emotional Intelligence, which is the ability to assess, identify, and manage the emotions of myself and others. I was not surprised by my high score in Emotional Intelligence because I’ve always been attuned to emotions and can recognize and utilize them in my decision-making. In a classroom setting, my Emotional Intelligence can be utilized to understand why a classmate may be feeling sad or upset, consider the feelings of everyone in my group before making important decisions, and empathize with others that may be struggling. In the workplace, my Emotional Intelligence can be used to accept constructive criticism without taking negativity to heart, express how I feel to my co-workers to improve communication and foster an open working environment, and motivate others when completing projects.

While all my scores were high, my lowest score was in Social Boldness, which indicates I need to improve my confidence in social situations. I hope to be more assertive in my beliefs rather than turning away from any forms of confrontation and conflict. To develop my Social Boldness, I will actively seek situations where I need to voice my opinion and understand that while collaboration and harmony are important for team success, so are maintaining your beliefs and ideas.

Taking this test has been extremely helpful in allowing me to reevaluate my personality traits that relate to interpersonal skills from an unbiased lens. Although I had previously held different judgments about my strengths and weaknesses, I now realize there is a lot I can still learn about myself. I now know that while I am skilled in working in groups and understanding the emotions of others, it is also important for me to be confident in my ideas. This will better prepare me to develop and improve my interpersonal skills to be a more well-rounded and effective member of my classroom and working environment.