Interpersonal skills are often referred to as people kills or social skills. Sometimes, they are pointed directly as communication skills. In general terms, they are also called life skills and fall under the category of “soft skills.” Unless you have developed anthropophobia or social phobia growing up, you actually possess innate interpersonal skills from the time you were born.

Yes, you had it in you all along. Interpersonal skills include verbal and non-verbal communication, listening skills, negotiation skills, problem solving and decision-making, and your level of assertiveness. What you say, how you say it, and how you interpret the message using both verbal and body language largely comprises the communication skills set of interpersonal skills. How you act upon challenges, find a win-win solution, and decide according to the opportunities presented as well as how you assert a stand also fall in the broad concept of interpersonal skills. All these, however, are crucial to your productiveness and effectiveness in the workforce.

While there are a broad range of skills set for you to be successful in your chosen field, it cannot be denied that having strong interpersonal skills will serve as a foundation for your success. Experts continually prove that without such, developing other life skills may be difficult.

Luckily, interpersonal skills can be honed to cohesively work with your hard skills. Here are some ways to develop them:

Indeed, developing strong personal skills can be a challenge. You need to recognize and accept your limitations and mistakes to fully grasp how far you can achieve. Maintain a positive attitude and, if possible, find a trusted coach who can guide you through.

Millennial workers can do a lot of good as well as harm to a product, service or brand even when not directly involved in the company’s social marketing team. They can also make a lot of difference with their personal tweets, updates, and posts related to the business. This is where you must find ways to create an internal campaign that points to this untapped leverage for your brand. By doing it right, you can guarantee creating an astounding social media presence that will create wave upon wave of success for your brand.

Social media solutions like all other marketing strategies for your brand require some deep thinking, planning, and practice. Content production, for instance, requires certain level of research to know precisely how to position a message. In the hopes of bringing utmost effectiveness to your campaign, training and guidance for your millennial workforce are essential factors to ensure that a clear-cut, unique and consistent brand voice be heard.

Without a doubt, your brand identity had been through a lot of successes and failures over the years. That somehow makes it easier to establish the right voice for your brand. For startups and businesses that wish to carve a new identity in the market, however, such concept may not be the case. The need to establish the right voice is crucial for them to make their social media presence felt and reverberated.

To develop such a challenging feat, certain aspects must be considered. One is to carefully identify what the company and its products or services truly stand for. Do you have a unique sales or service philosophy that differs from the rest? Methods of communication between customers or clients and the company must also be identified. So are your goals and objectives as well as expectations. Most importantly, it is also imperative to delineate what benefits customers are to enjoy from your brand.

Creating a solid brand voice must be infused along with these tenets. While a millennial workforce may have great advantage in utilizing social media, only by knowing what and how you want the brand to be perceived by your target audience or prospects will mark the difference.

The efforts in building a solid voice does not stop in generating a solid voice for your brand though. It requires a certain level of commitment to deliver something in a consistent manner. One challenge to this is the perceived unpredictability of millennials when it comes to marketing. Finding a way to ensure that they effectively infuse their individual personalities into the brand’s voice without restraining their creativity as well as enthusiasm will be of great help in creating a consistent brand voice. Add to that the real-time feedback of customers to make things go full circle.

All in all, gearing your millennial workforce with the right knowledge and unwavering loyalty will help amplify your brand’s social media leverage. Engage them. Train them to become brand ambassadors for your business. With their creativity and zeal for achievement– and social media savvy, you can finally guarantee delivering a brand voice that will echo the nucleus of your brand.

To ensure that you get to easily move from one job to another, you need to have versatile or adaptable skills set. This particular skills set should not only be focused on one career path but must be broad-spectrum in a sense that it can fit to most, if not all, employment sectors. Employers are looking for people who have “employ-ability” skills or skills set that can fit to various job roles. So, what are these skills?

Communication Skills. Be prepared to have both excellent written and oral skills. Your own resume and its cover letter will deliver the “first impression” on your written capabilities while your interview will sound off that of your oral skills. Make sure to demonstrate articulateness when speaking while writing succinctly and with clarity. Employers look for these as it helps to carve a growth mindset, creativity, and aptitude.

Interpersonal Skills. Unless it’s a one-person mission to the moon, you will most definitely be working with co-employees, customers and clients, bosses, and so on. This is why the need to have good interpersonal skills is essential. This allows you to effectively partake as a team member, negotiate, and make good decisions. It also helps in satisfying client expectations as well as customer satisfaction. Excellent interpersonal skills usually stimulate empathetic listening leading to ease in building rapport with everyone.

Critical Thinking. Employers will also be on the lookout for your problem-solving and decision-making skills. Critical thinking is the ability to gather and evaluate relevant information—and the eye to pick the best solution. Along these lines, people with good critical thinking skills are also known to be effective in terms of planning, organizing, and getting things done efficiently.

Leadership Skills. While many believe that leadership skills are mainly focused for managerial or supervisory positions, this one is virtually being deemed essential on all new hires. This ability is about influencing others to achieve goals. Often, self-confidence is the best gauge being looked at by employers.

Computer Skills. This is the information age when everything is driven by technology and the Internet. Aside from knowing basic computer skills, some employers also look for specific requirements like ability to use apps, e-mail platform, social media, or programs related to their operation will be sought out.

Creative Skills. Bring your innovative and inventive mindset when applying for a new job. This skills are no longer just limited to marketing and designing but in many aspects. Finding new ways and means to make systems and procedures more effective and efficient has always been a target of businesses.

Numeracy-Presentation Skills. These two skills set are often interrelated. Presentation often require the ability to understand certain data like statistics, surveys, graphs, demographics, and other aspects essential to decision-making and reasoning. Numeracy skills can also become irrelevant if presentation skills are lacking.

While these skills sets are often on the table for employers and headhunters to consider, it is also important to develop positive attitude towards people, work, and the company you wish to work for. Expertise may be required in some aspects particularly in highly technical jobs but, all in all, employers will always choose someone who is willing to develop, learn and grow with the company.

Health experts often reveal that exercise prevent frustrations from building up. It encourages mental clarity, release endorphin, and deliver needed energy to last throughout the day. While it is almost a daily occurrence for problems and challenges to take place in your office, store, or in your life, you can engage in an early morning workout like a jog around the block or a 30-minute run on the treadmill can be of great help. Yoga or Pilates is also an excellent choice of workout as both can strengthen the muscles, release positive, and enhance mental clarity. Don’t have time? Walk or bike to commute for work or business.

People often overthink when dealing with a difficult situation. Things can get overwhelming that it often gets the worst out of their character. Do not go down that slippery slope. Once you put yourself in the midst of it all, you tend to go down faster than you can handle. Try to pause, if not, step back and see the whole thing from another perspective. One way of doing so is to get out and rest your mind. Some topnotch entrepreneurs go for long walks or visit a nearby spa for an hour of full body massage. This helps revive the mind and let’s get a glance from an outside perspective. Often, being too engrossed in your work or business will make your imagination well run dry. Get some fresh air. Once you get back, you’ll be amazed at the results.

Too much analysis can be draining. It just does not help to feel that no matter what you do, it will not simply matter. The complex situation will still persist. It will drive you to think negative thoughts about your co-workers or your employees, your business partners, or yourself. So, why not gain full control of yourself. Accountability matters when problems start to rise. Too much finger-pointing leads to nowhere. Acknowledge there is a problem. Work out a solution. Then, delegate accordingly. The best way to address a problem is not just in finding solutions but also in ensuring that such will be applied accordingly.

When it comes to dealing with complex situations, two things usually come into play—emotion and change. Problems, uncertainties, and changes are often considered negative. By simply curving such fixed mindset into a growth mindset, you can easily see the opportunities lurking behind. Gain back control on your thoughts and actions, and spread positivity to everyone. When this happens, you can guarantee turning any complex situation into an opportunity for growth.

When going on a job interview, it is important to make employers judge you accurately. You would also want them to lean on your best side. Start on the right foot and ensure that it lasts long before the interview is over with these pointers:

1. Signify your objectives and set your goal clearly. Before going to an interview, it is imperative that you know precisely what you want. This will help ready your system to whatever will be thrown your way. Knowing that you want to be hired will maintain your focus to getting the job leading you to channel all the positive energy within.

2. Consider your overall visual impact. Yes, people rely mostly on their sense of sight for that nanosecond of judgment. Dress appropriately for the occasion. Make-up and hairdo must not be too stiff and not too all-over-the-place. So are your choices of jewelry. Be reminded also that wearing a watch is a must. It gives the impression of being prompt and “dedicated”. Some people seek out the help of a fashion coach in this regard.

3. Your nonverbal cues will take some 40 percent of the overall first impression. The way you carry yourself in a conversation, your mannerisms, hand gestures when you talk, the way you smile or laugh—these are all taken into account. Practice in front of a mirror. Shoot a practice interview with a friend or partner and review the video footage. Or you may also seek out the help of coach to hone your communication skills both verbal and body language.

4. Practice the essence of positivity. Days can easily turn from bad to worst. At some point, you may feel bad mood, anxiety or fear creeping under your clammy skin as you prepare for an interview. Find a corner and do a short meditative technique. It is called optimism. When your mind is free from all the burden of negativity, it will shine brightly into your eyes, your smile and words.

5. Be sincere. No matter how you feign interest or make yourself interesting, if the virtue of sincerity is not there, you are wasting your time. Make your approach genuine. Do not be afraid to ask questions. Clarify points not clear to you. An interviewer or employer always appreciates conversations built upon mutual curiosity.

Building lasting impression during job-seeking can be quite challenging. You need to be at the best of your game. So, try to assess yourself, draw out your strength, and turn your weakness as an advantage. Remember, you only get that one shot—make sure to make it count.

Simply put, many businesses do not “talk” to their customers. Many failed (and are continually failing) to learn from their audience, more so listen to them at their level. There are some however, who have learned to leverage actual feedback from consumers—and these are some of the important points they shared:

1. Learn where your customers thrive. Where do they spend time online? What and who are they following on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms? What products and services appeal to them? What posts and other content pique their interest or keep them interested? Starting a conversation with your own audience and seek out these information. The more you learn about customer intricacies, the more effective engagements will be.

2. Engage in active listening. Often, the best conversations start when you engage customers to tell you their thoughts and views. Put yourself in their shoes, would you not feel important when a company asks for your inputs? Let your on-boarding initiative be customer-centric. The moment you open your ears to their concerns and views, the more you can make them work to your business’ advantage.

3. Ask customers the reason for either liking or disliking your product, service or brand. Real insights always come from real-time feedback, from real people buying your brand. Talk to them directly and infuse the reasons behind their actions. Through that, you can gain more traction on your social media growth strategy.

4. Know what your customer needs. Even with good intentions in mind, what your own perception of what the customer needs may actually be not aligned with their views. So, consider asking them what specific improvements and other quirkiness they need. When you put those commendable points, you can immediately turn customers into brand ambassadors.

5. Engage your customers. Crowd-sourcing is the trend these days. So are the use of beta testing, round-table live discussions, hashtag conversation, and hangouts. Involve them in the process. Valuing your customers’ thoughts and opinions, particularly when crafting new products or business solutions, often boomerang in a positive way.

6. Learn your audience’s lingo. Sometimes, we get so caught up in our own industry’s jargon forgetting the fact that our customers may actually have their own language. Pay close attention to that. Often, miscommunication can put your brand-building efforts on digital media astray leading to its failure.

7. Don’t forget to give thanks to those who continually embrace your brand. Sincerity is a powerful thing. When they do not, it is also essential to ask the reason behind. Be open-minded and accept both positive and negative criticisms. In both instances, always show gratitude as both encourage growth to your brand.

Customers are, indeed, shaping up the minutiae of brand-building. Talk to your customers in a language they can understand. Dissect what they deep down need. Connect with them and be sincere at that. In doing so, you can finally strengthen your social brand and make big with your goals in mind.

How many women in business have continued working even while being wheeled into labor rooms? Or have jumped back right to answering business queries a few hours after delivery? While maternity leave may sound next-to-impossible to womenpreneurs, there are actually some options in place to ensure that you do not sacrifice health and well-being while keeping the business afloat. To give you an idea, here are some key points shared by womenpreneurs across industries on how they survived the ordeal of pre- and post- partum challenges while running a business.

Maternity leave to womenpreneurs is a challenging process. Even with all the help a new mom gets, she will always find a way to exercise her entrepreneurial rights. A business is her baby, after all. But every once in a while, it is highly recommended to rest and to think of nothing but your own self. This will not only keep your health in check, it will also help keep your sanity.

While it is easy to choose buying a house over leasing one, it cannot be said the same to an office space. For one, you need to understand that this means lack of flexibility in your current space. Your business will be “tied-up” to the current location making it harder to expand when the need requires so at a later time. Of course, this also entails coughing off a big chunk off your capital for the down payment, improvement, and maintenance costs.

However, buying also comes with astounding perks. For one, it allows you to have a clearer perspective on your fixed costs. Keep in mind that office rental usually increases year after year. Mortgage interest and property taxes also provide hefty tax deductions thereby, increasing your “income” potential. Take note also that real property rarely depreciates allowing you to have a solid investment for the future or as a retirement fund.

Many startup businesses and small-scale entities prefer leasing or renting an office space over buying to give them more flexibility. Not only does renting allow them to be flexible in terms of image and location, renting also allows them to covet prime property in a more affordable way. Basically, one does not have to shell out huge capital investments that only get tied up to idle asset like an office space. Subsequently, this also allows them to simply let the business grow first and then, be able to move from one prime location to another as they thrive.

But while the option may seem perfect for up and starting businesses, leasing also have notable disadvantages. Remember that lease increases annually and if your business does not take-off as planned, such cost may be too much of a burden. Leasing does not also assure you long-term hold on a strategic location. Often, some landlords tend to toughen their agreement once they see potential in their property.

So, should you lease or should you buy an office space? Again, it all depends on your long-term goals as a business entity. Often, one’s decision will involve not just strategic location but also tax, financial, and personal reasons. Do take note that the surge of rent-to-own office spaces is fast becoming the trend these days. With the help of a financial planner and broker, finding the best deal may give you the win-win situation you want.

Leadership is all about dealing from one situation to another. While the idea is to lead people to get out of the abhorrent ordeal of monotony and mediocrity, it is important to point out certain lapses that tend to push back its effectiveness. When thinking of moving a business forward, it is high time to find certain outmoded or inflexible habits that tend to curtail creativity and productivity.

As a leader, there are certain instances when your own actions rob the very effectiveness you so long to achieve. So what are they and what to do about them?

Egotism. Being a business owner, a CEO, a manager or a team leader does not mean you are the only one with the capacity to lead. It is not necessarily a position but more of a sense of trust. It is your job to enable your workforce or your team to work to the best of their capabilities in the hope that they attain goals set. Make your leadership transferable and repeatable. At best, let it be mimicked by everyone in the company to help nurture a culture of accountability and reliability in the company. Leadership is not being the alpha or the head of the pack. It is not about you per se but rather on how you can mobilize everyone to become who you are or even more.

Change-phobic. Aversion or even reluctance to change is another habit that should hold no room in leadership. There are however, those who want to maintain the status quo, mediocrity’s idiot cousin. They hate to change or verge in another direction even if it means more sound results. It is important to note that dynamism requires constant change. Today’s businesses are caught up in a highly dynamic structure brought by technology and the Internet. Having an open mindset will allow one high degree of creativity and robustness to sustain a business in a frequently-shifting market.

Fixed Methodology. Though a widely practiced concept, best practices is a seemingly fixed methodology reminiscent of the above-mentioned phobia to change. The idea of sameness or uniformity is, indeed, effective as it upholds certain company standards and policies. However, it curtails innovation and flexibility. It allows no room for mistakes and often, put a lot of creative thinkers in a choke-hold. Innovation and creativity are the very essences of smart leadership. To be more effective, it is essential to always find ways to improve such practices. The more your practices evolve with the changing time usually convert into more productive results.

Risk Averse. Many leaders delve into cost-cutting and risk management leading to opportunities lost. Instead of concentrating on the “risks” and “costs”, it is more important to shift concentration on how much ROI will be enjoyed out of such opportunities. Running a business is all about risks and costs. Not that, this will give you an excuse to overspend or risk it all but rather to give more leeway to stretch your capabilities in the industry.

In everything else, be sincere and consistent. The moment you sit on an applicant’s chair, the headhunter already has a clear grasp on everything about you. Show a positive attitude. Be cheerful without being too annoying. Be earnest and courteous but make sure to show them your worth.