Interpersonal Awareness
Interpersonal Awareness is the desire to understand other people. It is the ability to accurately hear and understand spoken as well as unspoken or partly expressed thoughts, feelings, and concerns of others. This competency allows the person to understand the reasons for another’s behavior, even when that behavior is subtle or complex.
Increasing Capability Levels
Level 1
- Recognizes emotions of others by reading body language, facial expressions, and/or tone of voice.
- Asks questions to understand the concerns and perspectives of others.
- Listens for what is important to others; acknowledges their perspectives.
Level 2
- Understands others’ emotions as well as the content of what they are saying.
- Understands less obvious reasons for the behavior and perspectives of others.
- Understands others’ attitudes and behavior.
Level 3
- Understands others’ poorly expressed thoughts and concerns as well as their underlying meanings.
- Makes inferences about others that go beyond explicit content and emotion.
- Recognizes different values and styles, and respects characteristics or strengths of another person.
Level 4
- Demonstrates an in-depth understanding of the ongoing reasons for a person’s behavior, styles, or responses.
- Makes an assessment of a person’s specific strengths and weaknesses based on a deeper understanding of the individual.
- Respects other perspectives and sees the value in what others bring to ASU even when their skills, styles, and approaches are different than one’s own.
Overusing Interpersonal Awareness
May spend too much time trying to analyze what others might or might not do; may generalize from his/her group appraisal to individuals letting personal impressions of a group cover individuals as well
Underusing Interpersonal Awareness
May lack good listening skills; cuts people off and finishes their sentences if they hesitate; doesn’t learn much from interactions with others. May be impatient to get on with the agenda; may only understand others similar to him or her in purpose and characteristics