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What are interpersonal skills? A clear definition, concrete workplace examples, and a science-based method to assess them objectively before you hire.
Interpersonal skills are the abilities that allow you to interact effectively with other people: communicating, listening, persuading, handling disagreement, working as a team. In the workplace, they weigh as much as technical skills in the success of a hire or a promotion. This article gives you a clear definition, concrete examples at work, and a method to assess them objectively.
An interpersonal skill is an ability used in interactions with other people: understanding what your counterpart needs, adapting your language to the situation, sharing information clearly, defusing a conflict, building trust with colleagues and clients.
So far, so good. But here is the problem.
"Interpersonal skills" is a composite term. Everyday language puts very different abilities under this one label: active listening, negotiation, leadership, team spirit, managing emotions. As a result, everyone talks about interpersonal skills, and nobody measures the same thing.
Science takes the opposite route: it breaks the term down. The CoreSkills scientific framework (openly available on OSF, co-developed with researchers from CNRS, ENS-PSL and Université Paris Cité) structures behavioral skills into 18 core skills, organized in 3 families: Leadership & Collaboration, Innovation & Communication, and Operational Efficiency. What you call "interpersonal" actually covers several of these skills, each one observable and measurable on its own.
To get the basic vocabulary right before going further, our guide on defining soft skills explains what separates a behavioral skill from a personality trait.
Job descriptions use these three words almost interchangeably. They do not mean exactly the same thing.
What do these three notions have in common? None of them is directly measurable as such. They are categories of everyday language, not units of measurement. It is the same logic as the classic triad of knowledge, know-how and interpersonal skills: useful for conversation, insufficient for decisions.
So how do you go from a catch-all word to something you can assess? By breaking it down. Among the 18 core skills in the framework, five cover most of the interpersonal field.
Empathy is the ability to understand other people's mental and emotional states, and to factor them into your decisions. It is what allows a manager to notice that a team member is disengaging before the problem blows up.
Assertive influence is the ability to defend a point of view clearly, without aggression and without backing down. Negotiating a deadline, voicing disagreement in a meeting, saying no to an unrealistic request: this is the skill at play.
Speaking up is the ability to structure and deliver a message in front of a group, adapting it to the audience. Presenting results to the executive committee and running a team meeting draw on the same skill, at different intensities.
Emotional regulation is the ability to manage your own emotions under pressure: a conflict between colleagues, a slipping deadline, an unhappy client. Everyday language calls this "emotional intelligence"; science prefers to isolate what can be observed.
Positivity is the ability to keep interactions constructive: giving feedback in a constructive way, recognizing contributions, sustaining team spirit even when results are lagging.
Five distinct skills, five observable behaviors. The same person can be excellent at empathy and fragile at assertive influence. A global label like "great people skills" erases exactly the information you need.
What do these skills look like in a real workplace? A few situations you will recognize:
Notice the pattern? Every professional situation combines several skills at once. That is why a global judgment like "they have a good rapport" predicts almost nothing: it does not tell you which skill is solid and which one needs attention.
Here is the paradox of hiring: everyone wants candidates with strong interpersonal skills, and almost everyone assesses them by gut feeling.
The problem is well documented. Daniel Kahneman described the "illusion of validity": the feeling of certainty produced by an unstructured interview says nothing about the actual quality of the prediction. A candidate who is at ease in conversation triggers all our positive signals. But being comfortable for one hour does not predict behavior in a team conflict six months later.
Add to that the social desirability bias, also well documented: in an interview, as in a self-report questionnaire, people tend to present themselves in the best possible light. Asking candidates whether they are good listeners is roughly the same as asking whether they are good people.
Companies are drawing the conclusion. According to Apec (Pratiques de recrutement de cadres, 2026), 41% of companies hiring executives now formally assess soft skills, up 9 points from 2022. Structured assessment is no longer a niche practice: it is becoming the norm.
The solution comes down to one principle: replace impressions with structured observation.
That is what the Soft Skill Scan does: a 20-minute assessment combining work simulations and a structured questionnaire on work habits. Instead of asking candidates whether they can handle disagreement, it puts them in concrete situations and observes their choices.
The output: a clear reading of each candidate's strengths and points of attention on the core skills the role requires, with a three-level conclusion: Compatible, To explore further in the interview, or Incompatible. It is a decision support for the manager: the tool never decides in their place, it gives them data where they previously had only impressions.
Companies like Google, Adobe and Orange rely on this approach to make behavioral assessment objective. Rising Up, founded in 2017, is recognized as a Deeptech by the European Innovation Council (EIC) (2023) and holds the NR1 Responsible Digital label.
To understand how this differs from classic questionnaires, the personality test for soft skills page details the method.
One last piece of good news, and not the least: these skills are not fixed. Behavioral skills predict professional success, contribute to it causally, and can be developed (the work of James Heckman, Nobel laureate in economics).
In practice, development relies on three levers:
That is the logic behind soft skills training: identify, measure, develop, on one shared framework from hiring to training.
Interpersonal skills are neither a gift nor a mystery: they are observable, measurable and developable skills, provided you break them down correctly.
Want to test the approach on your own hiring? The Soft Skill Scan pilot includes 150 assessments over 8 weeks, for EUR 3,000 excl. VAT, offer valid until September 30, 2026.
Send us a message at hello@risinguparis.com and we will set up a 15-minute demo for you within the week.
From recruitment At development skills, Rising Up provides reliable behavioral data to guide your HR and educational choices.
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