# Interpersonal Skills and Communication Skills: What Each Covers and How to Build Both Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication/interpersonal-skills-and-communication-skills/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication/interpersonal-skills-and-communication-skills.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving communication at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Interpersonal skills and communication skills are paired in every job posting yet rarely explained. What each covers, how they differ, and how to build both. ## Key facts - Title: Interpersonal Skills and Communication Skills: What Each Covers and How to Build Both - Category: Communication - Primary skill: Communication - Related skills: Teamwork, Professional Behaviors - Primary keyword: interpersonal skills and communication skills - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication/interpersonal-skills-and-communication-skills/ ## What this page covers - Interpersonal skills and communication skills are paired in every job posting yet rarely explained. What each covers, how they differ, and how to build both. - Practical guidance for interpersonal skills and communication skills - How this topic connects to Communication ## Detailed explanation Interpersonal skills and communication skills appear side by side in almost every job posting — usually without a word about what either one means. Untangled, the pair is simpler than it looks. Communication skills are your ability to convey and receive messages clearly: speaking, writing, and listening. Interpersonal skills are broader — everything involved in building and maintaining working relationships, which includes communication but also your conduct, the trust you build, and how you handle friction. If you've been asked to demonstrate both and quietly wondered what, exactly, you would point to, that isn't a gap in you — almost no one is formally taught this. And both terms break down into specific, learnable behaviors; once they're broken down, improving them stops being a vague ambition and becomes ordinary practice. ## What's the difference between communication skills and interpersonal skills? The clearest line comes from the people who train both. Two UK training providers, MTD Training and Making Business Matter, draw it the same way: communication skills operate at the level of the message — how reliably an idea gets from your head into someone else's, spoken or written, and how well you take in what comes back. Interpersonal skills operate at the level of the relationship — how those messages land and what they add up to over time, covering not only what you say but the attitude behind it. The two nest rather than compete: communication is the most visible member of the wider interpersonal family. That's why the terms travel together, and why neither carries a working relationship alone. A perfectly clear message delivered coldly still damages the relationship; the warmest intentions, expressed murkily, still leave a colleague confused. When an employer asks for both, they are really asking two questions: will your messages be clear, and will working with you — day after day, disagreement after disagreement — be something colleagues come to rely on? ## The five types of interpersonal skills and communication skills Educational overviews, from Study.com to the University of the People, converge on a small, stable set of communication types: verbal, nonverbal, and written, with visual communication — charts and slides — as a fourth, and listening increasingly treated as a type in its own right. At work, one more layer sits on top of the message types: the relational skills your messages accumulate into. That gives the pair of terms five working parts. ### Verbal communication Verbal communication is the real-time channel: conversations, meetings, presentations, phone and video calls. Because it's live and two-way, meaning gets negotiated on the spot — you can watch understanding form or fail and adjust within seconds, which is exactly what makes it the right channel for anything sensitive, complex, or negotiable. The skills are concrete: state your main point first, be clear and direct rather than exhaustive, keep it brief, and adapt to how the other person takes in information. And because the channel runs both ways at once, speaking well in real time is inseparable from listening well — half the skill is knowing when to stop transmitting. ### Nonverbal communication Alongside every word you say runs a second channel: [eye contact](/knowledge/communication/nonverbal-communication/), posture, gestures, physical distance, and the tone and pace of your voice. It's continuous and largely unconscious — you're communicating even while silent — and when your words and your delivery disagree, colleagues tend to believe the delivery. The practical skill is less about performance than about noticing: whether your face and posture match what you mean to say, and what the other person's are telling you before they say it. On video calls the channel narrows to your face, your camera habits, and your visible attention, which is why remote work makes this type harder, not optional. ### Written communication Email, chat, reports, documentation — writing is asynchronous and permanent. The reader can't raise an eyebrow to signal confusion, and the record outlives the moment, so the discipline is compensating in advance: lead with the main message instead of building up to it, let the subject line carry the point, send to the people who actually need it, and proofread — errors read as carelessness regardless of their cause. Writing rewards the same clarity as speech but forgives less, because a [misunderstood email](/knowledge/communication/email-writing/) keeps being misunderstood every time it's re-read. ### Listening Several of the educational taxonomies now list listening as its own communication type rather than a passive byproduct of conversation — and the career guides agree: across skill lists from Indeed to Zippia, [active listening](/knowledge/communication/active-listening-workplace/) is the single most-cited interpersonal skill. The mechanics are unglamorous: give full attention, let people finish, resist composing your reply while they're still talking, and confirm what you understood before adding your view. It's also where the two halves of this topic visibly meet — listening is a communication skill in form and an interpersonal skill in effect, because little builds a working relationship faster than the experience of being genuinely heard. ### Relational skills The final type is the relationship layer itself: showing respect and genuine interest, [building trust](/knowledge/teamwork/build-trust-at-work/) by doing what you said you would, expressing appreciation, and handling disagreement without making it personal. These skills operate across interactions rather than within one message — they're about what all your messages add up to. The career-guide staples live here: negotiation, conflict resolution, teamwork. Tellingly, Indeed's overview describes teamwork as itself bundling other interpersonal skills — communication, active listening, flexibility, responsibility — which is the clearest evidence that these skills nest and reinforce one another rather than sitting in separate boxes. ## Why employers keep asking for both Two currents keep the pair at the top of job postings. The first is advancement: Washington State University's HR guidance treats interpersonal skills as a key indicator of who is ready to move up, precisely because the further you go, the more of your work happens through other people. Technical skill may get you hired; these skills shape what happens after. The second is remote and hybrid work: guidance from Wellhub and others points out that with fewer spontaneous in-person interactions, interpersonal skill has to become deliberate — choosing the right channel, communicating warmth in writing, staying connected without being in the room. The demand is rising, not fading. The catch is that "strong interpersonal and communication skills" stays an abstraction until you can see it in terms of your own specific skills. That's a solvable problem rather than a fair worry: a free way to [see your own skills mapped](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) turns the job-posting phrase into a concrete picture of where you're already strong and where practice would show first. ## How to build both — one behavior at a time Nearly every source agrees these skills are learnable with conscious effort; almost none says how. The how is smaller than you might expect: pick one behavior, practice it in ordinary workdays, and let it settle before adding the next. Put the main point first in every email for a week. In one meeting a day, let someone finish completely and summarize their point before answering. Before sending anything sensitive, ask whether it belongs in a conversation instead. Express appreciation once a day, specifically, to the person it belongs to. None of this requires becoming more outgoing or a different person — these are behaviors, not personality traits, and they respond to practice the way any behavior does. What the definitional articles call two skill families is, up close, a set of small moves you can start making tomorrow. ## The skills behind the job-posting phrase Strip away the category labels, and what employers are actually pointing at is a handful of specific, practicable skills. **Communication** is the message-level half made trainable. Its core is compact: a genuine desire to understand the other person, the main point first, clarity and brevity, and a deliberate choice between conversation and writing. The five types above are this one core meeting different channels — strengthen it and every channel improves together. **Teamwork** is where interpersonal skill becomes visible to others. Trust between colleagues is built out of consistent behaviors — meaning what you say, doing what you committed to, sharing what you know — and kept through disagreement handled on the issue rather than the person. If interpersonal skills are about what interactions add up to, the team is where the sum gets read. **Professional Behaviors** covers the attitude half of the pair: showing respect and genuine interest, expressing appreciation, using humor that lands, and avoiding the conduct — passive, aggressive, manipulative — that quietly erodes relationships. These are the unwritten rules colleagues experience as your interpersonal skill, and having them named makes them practicable instead of mysterious. None of the three stands alone, and none of them has to be guesswork to assess: the free Work Skills Test measures them together with nine other skills of the same kind, so instead of wondering how strong your communication or teamwork actually is, you can [get a structured read on all three](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) — and see them in the context of the full set. Some of the five types probably read like things you already do without thinking; one or two may have landed closer to home. Both reactions are worth trusting — noticing the difference is exactly the attention these skills grow from, and the fact that you wanted the two terms untangled at all puts you further along than the postings assume. Whatever gaps you noticed are practice, not personality: you can close them and still sound entirely like yourself. It's worth starting sooner rather than later, because these skills compound — every meeting, email, and disagreement is a repetition — and as your responsibilities grow, more of your work will travel through exactly these channels. The only thing missing is a clear view of where you stand. ## Put names on your own skills You now know what the two terms cover; the natural next step is seeing what they look like in you. The Work Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of twelve work skills — communication, teamwork, and professional behaviors among them. Answer honestly, and it shows where each skill stands today and which one would repay practice first. No preparation, no pressure — take it when you have a quiet moment. **[Take the skills test](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Free, and about 7 minutes at your own pace.* ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? Interpersonal skills and communication skills are paired in every job posting yet rarely explained. What each covers, how they differ, and how to build both. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Communication. It also relates to Teamwork, Professional Behaviors. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/teamwork.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/professional-behaviors.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication/interpersonal-skills-and-communication-skills/ Preferred summary: "Interpersonal skills and communication skills are paired in every job posting yet rarely explained. What each covers, how they differ, and how to build both." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.