Business Communication Quarterly
75(4) 449–452
© 2012 by the Association for
Business Communication
Reprints and permission: http://www.
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DOI: 10.1177/1080569912458966
http://bcq.sagepub.com
458966 BCQ75410.1177/108056991245896
6Business Communication QuarterlyDeKay
1St. John’s University, USA
2BNY Mellon Corporation, USA
Corresponding Author:
Sam H. DeKay, BNY Mellon Corporation, 101 Barclay Street, Floor 9E, New York, NY 10007, USA
Email: [email protected]
Interpersonal
Communication in the
Workplace: A Largely
Unexplored Region
Sam H. DeKay, Section Editor1,2
Recent research has identified interpersonal communication skills as critical attributes
for new employees and more experienced workers seeking promotion. However,
despite the significance of interpersonal communication in the workplace, our knowledge of these skills and how they may be taught is limited. The two articles comprising
this theme section are intended to extend our understanding of these skills.
Nineteenth-century maps of the African continent—at least those printed in the
United States and Europe—contain a rather strange entry in the central section of that
land mass. If you consult one of these old maps, you will notice, south of the “Mountains
of the Moon” and north of the land of Moologa, a large territory labeled the
UNEXPLORED REGION. Apparently, there yet remained a portion of the continent
unoccupied by the soldiers and merchants of colonial powers.
The topic of this themed section, Interpersonal Communication in the Workplace,
also resembles a largely “unexplored region.” The reasons for our scanty knowledge
are complex. Certainly, it is not due to a lack of research: The two articles comprising
this section offer useful bibliographies concerning numerous studies examining the
people skills, the “soft” skills, and the personal skills often associated with interpersonal communication. Yet the studies fail to provide us with clear definitions of these
skills, their interrelationships, and their relevance to communication. In fact, much of
the cited research informs us that managers and human relations professionals maintain that “interpersonal skills” and communication represent two distinct sets of behavior. It has proven difficult to explore the terrain of interpersonal communication when
we can’t agree on a common nomenclature with which to ask questions, frame hypotheses, conduct studies, and report findings.
Interpersonal Communication in the Workplace
450 Business Communication Quarterly 75(4)
Nor is our knowledge of interpersonal communication in the workplace an unexplored region because the topic is deemed trivial. In their presentation at the Association
for Business Communication’s Annual Convention in Montreal, Reinsch and Gardner
(2011) reported the results of a national survey revealing that senior business executives maintain that employees with strong interpersonal skills are most likely to be
considered for promotions. The study also indicated that writing ability—the development of which occupies considerable attention in most business communication
courses—was not viewed as a primary concern when considering executives for promotion. The articles in this theme section extend the findings of Reinsch and Gardner
by indicating that employers would rather hire employees with well-developed interpersonal skills than those with demonstrated writing ability.
I recently conducted an informal experiment to gain some sense of the significance
of interpersonal communication skills in work-related environments. For a 5-month
period—from February through June 2012—I collected every e-mail message received
from vendors of business communication training. (I work in a technical communication function.) During that period, I received 38 offers from service providers. Here
are the results, arranged by type of training offered, number of offers, and the percentage of total offers represented by each specific type:

I found the results interesting because they reveal the sorts of communication training that, to the thinking of profit-minded companies that specialize in providing
instruction to large corporations, will be most wanted.
All of the training offerings focus on speaking skills—none were concerned with
writing. The most popular topic, “Having Difficult Conversations,” comprised a
mélange of courses, each focusing on very specific problems: reducing “drama” in the
workplace, giving and receiving criticism, dealing with insubordination, handling
employees with “bad hygiene,” resolving conflicts, making the transition from “buddy
to boss,” dealing with rude employees, disciplining workers, conducting performance
reviews, counseling employees, handling terminations, avoiding “bad boss” behaviors, working with disabled employees, and repairing relations with other departments.
Most of the vendors promised that these issues could be resolved by the use of videos,
audio programs, written scripts, flash cards, or a combination of these methods. In
most instances, course content focused on various “rules” that would permit managers
to modify the undesirable behaviors of employees. (Some courses, though, devoted
attention to rules intended to modify the behaviors of managers.)
Interpersonal Communication in the Workplace 451
The listing of possible “difficult conversations” presents a brief catalog of certain
interpersonal communication in the workplace—especially those dealing with situations that hold the potential of embarrassing managers, employees, or both. But the
other types of training offerings, including “Speaking as a Leader” and “Coaching/
Motivational Speaking,” are also forms of interpersonal communication. Clearly,
from the standpoint of vendors whose business consists of providing corporations with
the kinds of training deemed most saleable, interpersonal communication in the workplace is considered a moneymaker. These trainers for hire agree with Reinsch and
Gardner (2011), as well as the articles in this section: Interpersonal skills are critical
attributes, necessary for successful employees.
But even this plethora of behavior modification training does not add greatly to our
knowledge of interpersonal communication. We are merely told that certain “rules” or
scripts, if followed correctly, will cause certain problems to disappear. In short, the
vast terrain of interpersonal skills in the workplace remains an “unexplored region.”
The two articles presented in this section represent genuine attempts to explore the
terrain and invite future researchers to join this ongoing effort.
Robles contributes to our knowledge by developing a clear nomenclature with
which to discuss “interpersonal skills” and its relation to communication. According
to Robles’s formulation, the term soft skills is a composite of interpersonal (people)
skills and personal (career) attributes. Personal attributes consist of behavioral
traits unique to an individual, such as effective time management. Interpersonal
skills, however, involve traits exemplified when the individual engages in social
interaction. The ability to communicate effectively—to handle difficult conversations in such a manner that problems are resolved—is an interpersonal skill. “Soft
skills” refers to all attributes or traits associated with personal skills as well as those
dubbed “interpersonal.”
Hynes describes a consulting engagement in which she developed a curriculum
intended to provide training in interpersonal communication competencies to employees of a major corporation. Her discussion emphasizes that assessment is a complicated matter when interpersonal skills are the focus of instruction. (The nettlesome
topic of assessment was never broached by the 38 vendors who forwarded to me their
training proposals.) Hynes reveals to us that thorough assessment involves not only
the reactions of employees who have been trained but also the observations of managers who are requested to assess employees many weeks after training has concluded.
Conducting surveys and interviews and then collating and interpreting their results are
time-consuming tasks.
Both Robles and Hynes, working independently, reach similar conclusions. One of
these findings, which may also partially explain why the topic of interpersonal skills is
largely an “unexplored region,” is that organizations have not developed methods for
measuring the long-term value of training. Many of the participants find employment
with other companies; others transfer to different departments within the organization.
Thus, the actual return on investment of interpersonal skills training is elusive.
452 Business Communication Quarterly 75(4)
The second finding, with which both authors concur, is that business communication curricula at the college and graduate school level are well served by including an
interpersonal skills component. As Hynes indicates, most curricula currently include
instruction in business writing and verbal presentations. However, given the significance attributed to interpersonal communication in business environments, the topic
should not be ignored or given short shrift. Perhaps, if this recommendation were seriously considered and implemented by instructors of business communication, the
topic of interpersonal communication in the workplace would not remain largely
unexplored.
Reference
Reinsch, N. L., Jr., & Gardner, J. A. (2011, October). Do good communicators get promoted?
Maybe not! In L. G. Snyder (Ed.), Proceedings of the 76th annual convention of the Association for Business Communication. Retrieved from http://businesscommunication.org/
wp-content/uploads/2011/10/2011-ABC-01-REINSCH.pdf
Bio
Sam H. DeKay, Section Editor, is a vice president for corporate communications at BNY
Mellon Corporation in New York City. He is also an adjunct associate professor at the
Graduate School of Education, St. John’s University, Jamaica, Queens, New York.
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