If you don’t have a sense of accountability, then you cannot claim to have interpersonal skills.  Interpersonal skills mean having the ability to interact and relate to others.  If you aren’t accountable for your words and actions, then it isn’t a give and take, it’s just you talking and talking and talking.  That’s not interacting.

Interacting and having interpersonal skills are two-way streets.  Interpersonal skills aren’t about telling others what they are doing wrong or finding ways to blame others, it’s about owning up and taking responsibility for your own mistakes.  It’s about understanding where someone else is coming from.  It’s realizing that it isn’t all about you.

For example, take someone who has a profession that deals with people and maybe has multiple degrees relating to human interactions.  But theory means nothing if it’s not put into practice.  If you refuse to take responsibility for your actions, then the degrees mean nothing.  If you look for ways to condemn others for your own mistakes, then you may be creative, but you can’t claim that you have good interpersonal skills.  “Relating well to others” does not mean having the ability to blame others for everything that you did.  If nothing, not even your own mistakes, are your own fault, you are not skilled at interacting.   

Another example – someone who was promoted into a role that he was not qualified for.  He was, in fact, in over his head.  He blamed everyone else for not being successful at his job, but the truth was, he was simply not experienced enough to do it.  However, he lashed out at those who offered to help and fired those that he felt threatened by knowing that they could do his job better than he could.  He felt that if he eliminated them, then the CEO would never realize how incompetent he was.  But getting rid of the people who could help you is short sighted.  You could leverage their knowledge into something productive rather than pushing it away.  And what happens when you get rid of all of your scapegoats?  Then you are standing all alone with no one left to blame.  Then what are you going to do?  If your strategy was to blame everyone else for the problems, what happens when the only one left is you?  Then you no longer have anyone else to hide behind. Might have been a smarter idea to keep the people who could help you and allow them to help you.  Park your ego at the door because the other option is not sustainable.  Not for you and not for the organization.

Yet another example is the manager who thought nothing of gaslighting his staff.  He would say something, then later, claim that he never said it.  How can you argue with someone who lies?  It’s not easy and it’s not a good use of an employee’s time.  If your word is no good, then no one will trust you and furthermore, no one will listen.

Accountability is crucial for any interaction, business or personal as it’s how people can successfully relate and connect with each other.  It’s how we can talk “to” each other rather than “at” each other.  One easy way to improve your interpersonal skills is to strengthen your sense of accountability and responsibility.  

But why are interpersonal skills important anyway?  Because your business needs people.  It needs to work with and for people.  Without good interactions, you will not have customer retention nor employee retention. Your business operations will be a mess if no one can speak to one another let alone understand one another. Your organization won’t be able to meet customer needs because it will be so out of touch with what your customers actually need.  How can you know what someone else wants if you don’t communicate with them in some way?  You can’t.  

Interpersonal skills aren’t just for front-line employees, they’re necessary for everyone in a business. Managers need to be able to interact with not only their peers and supervisors, but also their own staff.  CEOs need to be able to interact with everyone.  This isn’t old school “plays well with others,” this is – find success by “relating well to others.”