Disclaimer: These are all suggestions. Many people have multiple intelligences, some of which might cancel out each other’s deficiencies. Each intelligence type could be present but express itself differently in your character and behavior. We are not here to restrict but to guide. In the end, you can do whatever you enjoy.
Hey, do you need that new super high-tech fancy blending machine 13000 super food maker delicious wow thing? No? Well, if you’re talking to one of these individuals, you’ll buy it anyway. We are talking about interpersonally intelligent people, masters at manipulating — I mean, communicating and interacting effectively with others.
Let’s have a look at these individuals’ strengths and areas for improvement, fitting jobs and hobbies, as well as the everyday, personal, and broader impacts of this intelligence type on one’s life and society.
1. Strengths
Your number one skill: communication. Whether it’s discussing solutions to different problems, exchanging opinions, selling ideas or things, or simply making small talk, every form of communication is a way for you to express yourself. As we live in a society, as a unit if you will, this strength is crucial and extremely important. It has the ability to lead to great success in life.
Besides that, individuals with high scores in interpersonal intelligence, just like those with intrapersonal intelligence, hold the great power of empathy. Empathy overall is the ability to understand others. This can arise, one, from understanding someone else’s circumstances through your own experience or imagination, or two, from great listening and communication skills. Great communication skills not only include knowing what to say in certain situations but also being capable of listening to and understanding what others say.
A rather negatively connoted strength is these individuals’ ability to manipulate situations to their liking. This does not necessarily mean that they have bad intentions, but your high interpersonal intelligence enables you to shape and influence your surroundings.
Lastly, these individuals work great in groups or teams. They can navigate groups very effectively, making them great team players or leaders. This is especially useful considering that we, as humans, are always reliant on others. There are very few things — or at least very few societally impactful things — we are capable of doing alone. We depend on teams, on others, on different strengths, opinions, and techniques. Being able to work in those teams efficiently is key to moving forward, not just personally, but we as a society need those individuals’ skills.
2. Areas for Improvement
In contrast to these individuals blooming in social interactions, tasks requiring solitary work can be challenging and lead to ineffective or unfocused working. If you’re used to managing large groups of people, you are most likely often surrounded by noise and used to receiving different opinions. Valuing different opinions is definitely not a bad thing but can nonetheless lead to this deficiency.
Interpersonally intelligent individuals are likely to get bored easily in situations that don’t involve a lot of social contact or focus on themselves. In some situations, these individuals can feel the need to go out with others. This can possibly lead to fears of being left behind or neglecting other tasks to stay involved. Social media can fuel this fear.
Are you recognizing yourself or some parts of you? Then congratulations on identifying one of your intelligence types. With that, you’ve accomplished step one of your journey: determining your intelligence. But even if that’s wonderful to hear, you may be asking, what should I do now? Let’s head over to step two: how to embrace your strengths and work on your weak spots.
3. How to Refine and Embrace Strengths:
Your number one tip is: practice effective and constructive communication with others. There are various exercises to do so:
Number one, practice active listening. Whether you actually talk to someone nearby and listen to a story, or something they’ve been working on, or you listen to audiobooks and try to pay attention, listening is the first step to efficient communication. Therefore, start here.
Number two could be to take courses. Very straightforward, but very effective as well. These can be simply in communication or, depending on your goal, in communication within a specific area such as leadership. When taking courses, you’ll also continuously work with others, which will enhance your skill at the same time.
Overall, participating in group activities is a great way to train your interpersonal intelligence skills. Analyzing group dynamics is important for navigating them effectively. When engaging in team activities, you’ll learn to identify certain outcomes by shifts in a group’s dynamic, which will help you direct and prevent unwanted results while maintaining harmonious cooperation.
Lastly, seek feedback. This way, you’ll not only have a direct answer on what to improve, but you’ll experience different ways to express positive and negative qualities. Realize that everything, every interaction, and every word is an opportunity for you to understand language and communication a bit better and a possibility to enhance your own way of interacting.
4. How to Work on Areas for Improvement:
To work on your deficiencies, it is important you engage in solitary activities. Try meditation, journaling, solo sports like jogging, or maybe even drawing. This way, you’ll learn to spend time on your own once again, which is important if times that force solo time into your life occur.
Next, many of these practices can lead to greater self-reflection, another thing you can work on to enhance your relationship with yourself and your actions. As well, you’ll get to know yourself better, which will help you interact with others even more effectively and navigate social interactions with more insight. A better understanding of your own qualities is key to involving yourself efficiently in a social situation as well.
Maybe engage in independent projects. Now and then, start to develop something on your own — planning, preparing, and executing. If you get stuck, obviously you can ask for help. The idea is to overall work on your own project. When working in a group setting most often, accomplishing something on your own will also lead to pride and enhance your self-respect and trust in your own abilities.
Don’t let unexpected events or turns, which lead to the inevitable consequences of working alone, catch you off guard and leave you stressing over your own abilities. You are very well capable of working on your own as well.
Now that we’ve evaluated your strengths and areas for improvement, let’s apply all that to the real world. First of all, want to make money? Want to have fun? Here are some jobs and hobbies that align very well with this type of intelligence.
5. Jobs Aligning with This Intelligence Type:
As you might have guessed, any job that requires social interactions suits this type of intelligence perfectly. You can engage in jobs related to helping others, such as a counselor, teacher, or social worker, just as well as jobs that require you to lead others, such as a manager or selling products as a salesperson. Your skills open doors to a variety of fields with incomes in various currencies.
6. Hobbies Aligning with This Intelligence Type:
For hobbies, if you enjoy helping others, you could do volunteering. This would not only be fulfilling but useful as well.
As an interpersonally intelligent person, you most likely excel in and enjoy team sports such as football, hockey, basketball, cheerleading, or anything else. You’ll have a set schedule of meeting others multiple times a week and probably make a lot of good, important friends there.
Social clubs or attending networking events can be sources of joy and quite rewarding as well. In social clubs, you’ll instantly find others with the same interests as you, and while attending networking events or events in general, you’ll most likely be surrounded by large groups of people from a variety of origins. This has the potential to be an inspiring and rewarding activity, with the opportunity to meet different people every time.
Now you have a complete guide on what defines your intelligence, your strengths and areas you can improve, the jobs and hobbies you can engage in – but, what now? You can refine your strengths, but for what, a job you need to train for for years. You can improve areas you might have some deficiencies in, but how is that helpful? What benefit does this knowledge provide just here and now? Let’s have a look at the effect of interpersonal intelligence in everyday life and its personal and societal impact.
7. Interpersonal Intelligence in Everyday Life
In everyday life, your strong social skills lead to extensive networking. Knowing many people in various areas means never having an unsolvable problem. ‘My shower broke? Well, I have a friend who’s a plumber. My car is making weird noises? I know someone who’s a mechanic, so he might have an idea. Let’s go to that event everyone’s talking about; I know the host.’ The list goes on.
This strong network will help you to cooperate on projects as well. Many of us might come up with ideas but lack the contacts and resources to execute them. You, as an interpersonally intelligent person, either already know someone to call or won’t have trouble meeting someone.
Harmony starts with you. Communication is something a lot of people lack; it is key to healthy relationships. This means you can develop healthy relationships and mediate between others’ miscommunications. This way, you are capable of fostering effective work ethics and harmony.
One word: experience. Knowing a lot of different people, getting out, engaging in team sports, attending social events—all of these are experiences with valuable lessons. Experiences that create memories, leave you feeling free and happy.
8. Societal and Personal Impact
To society, you are the glue that holds everyone together. We’ve said numerous times that no one can really achieve something impactful completely on their own. You are the one bringing everyone together, pairing up the ones that will change everything, coordinating group dynamics, and making sure we move forward. We need you to move forward. You give direction — direction into the future.
Personally, high scores in interpersonal intelligence will lead to better relationships. As we’ve said, communication is key to healthy relationships. It is important to make sure that the individuals you invite into your life provide the same respect and effort toward communicating effectively as you do. Set boundaries, protect yourself, and don’t let just anyone into your personal space.
Ultimately, effectively using this intelligence type will create a powerful and impactful network. You are capable of creating because you hold the power to collect and connect all kinds of abilities. This creates an infinite repertoire of skills. Use that power and create.
Communicate and collaborate, use these natural skills of yours, and they’ll fill you with joy while helping everyone around you as well. You are capable of reaching the top of the mountain, the place where you’ll see all of your connections at once.
We as humans are the ones setting boundaries for ourselves. These refer to us as individuals. When working together, there are no boundaries — nothing we can’t do. Well, realize that you are the one who can lead us, the one who enables us to effectively work together and truly surpass our limits.