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Interpersonal Savvy in the Workplace

You already use the skills associated with interpersonal savvy when you make friends or meet new people. Outside work, these skills might seem effortless—less like a tool set and more like an aura of friendliness and approachability you radiate to other people. After all, outside work you can generally choose the people you see and talk to each day, and they have the same freedom, so you and the people around you tend to gravitate toward people you naturally like. It’s not hard to be a good listener when you meet a famous athlete in the park downtown. He has great stories about different players he’s worked with and great matches he’s played, and you’ll naturally use interpersonal savvy to keep talking to this stranger because you’re interested in what he has to say.

The producer of a radio program realizes that the most recent episode of the program reported false information about a local amusement park. She has high standards of journalistic integrity and is very upset about the discovery. When she meets with her team after learning the news, she furiously demands to know who dropped the ball. Her attitude makes it clear that the consequences will be dire. If the producer were more inquiring, she might learn that the reporter cleared the story with the head of the park and presented it in good faith. But will the reporter speak up after the producer’s outburst? Maybe not. What kind of example does this set for the other reporters? They learn that they have to be vigilant when fact-checking a story, but they may also feel less confident about proposing risky story ideas because of the producer’s rash behavior. This will cost the producer in the long run by weakening the amount of trust and openness reporters have for her.

But what if your organization is in the middle of a broad-sweeping software rollout and the team you lead is running into problems with the new interface? In this kind of situation, it’s tempting to forgo politeness and force your way to the point. What is the problem? What is the fix? Implement it. Next!

Interpersonal savvy, however, is much more than politeness. The reality is that your interpersonal savvy before the crisis occurs could affect the team’s ability to communicate with you during a crisis like the hypothetical software rollout. Does your team perceive you as a trusting, available leader? If so, your team members may be happy to explain to you their concerns or problems with the new software and seek your advice in addressing those concerns. However, if they expect a terse or hostile response from you, or if they’re worried about looking uninformed in front of you, they may keep their problems to themselves and try to fix problems without your help or supervision. Maybe they’ll do fine without needing to ask you any questions, but if your team members don’t feel that you value them and their perceptions, you’ll be the last to know if something goes wrong.