Interpersonal effectiveness skills help you clearly communicate your needs with respect.
Strong relationships can improve mental health outcomes and reduce distress.
These skills can be learned and practiced to improve everyday interactions. Working with a therapist can help.
Building good relationships doesn’t always happen naturally. Interpersonal effectiveness is a wide set of skills that helps you communicate with others and resolve conflicts. These skills also help you respect your own needs and boundaries. It’s an important aspect of mental health included in many evidence-based treatment programs.
Using interpersonal effectiveness skills can improve your relationships. You can lower the emotional stress that often comes from misunderstandings or conflict. And if you aren't sure how to strengthen these skills, therapy can help. A therapist can help you express your needs and build healthy connections.
What interpersonal effectiveness skills look like
Interpersonal effectiveness isn’t about getting everybody to like you. It’s a concrete set of skills that helps you communicate, resolve conflict, and build strong relationships without losing yourself in the process. These skills are important in every area of life — home, family, dating, and work.
Some important interpersonal effectiveness skills include:
Assertive communication: Strong communication doesn't have to be scary. It's about expressing your needs without minimizing them or crossing someone else’s boundaries.
Staying true to yourself during interactions: Be honest about your values and preferences, even when there’s pressure to go along with others.
Active listening skills: Pay attention to what someone else is saying, and show that you care about their perspective.
Conflict resolution and negotiation: Finding solutions in which needs are considered and compromise feels fair.
Beginning and ending relationships: It’s just as important to know how to respectfully end relationships that aren’t working out as it is to understand how to start new relationships.
Setting boundaries: Being clear about what’s OK with you and what isn’t. Boundaries protect your emotional well-being and make relationships feel safer.
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Why interpersonal effectiveness matters
Interpersonal relationships are a core part of mental health and well-being. Studies show [1] that having social support is often a key factor in managing mental health conditions. People with strong support are also less likely to develop these conditions. Interpersonal effectiveness skills allow us to connect with people and build supportive relationships. Without them, we can feel misunderstood or stay in conflict with others.
Interpersonal relationships and mental health have a deep, interwoven relationship. Not having strong relationships can make you more vulnerable to mental health concerns. And experiencing symptoms of a mental health condition can impact relationships. Fortunately, there are ways to improve this connection.
Interpersonal effectiveness is included in many evidence-based therapy methods. For example, interpersonal effectiveness is one of the core components of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).
Research shows [2] that people can learn interpersonal effectiveness skills with the right training. Interventions that teach these skills have been found to have many benefits for people with mental health conditions.
For example:
Interpersonal effectiveness skills training can improve functioning and social well-being [3] for people who live with depression.
Learning these skills can help people with borderline personality disorder [4] (BPD) strengthen relationships with their loved ones. This can then help lower other symptoms as well.
Improving interpersonal effectiveness can help reduce stress for people living with anxiety disorders — especially social anxiety [5] (SAD).
How to build interpersonal effectiveness
It takes patience and practice to strengthen these skills. But small changes can make a meaningful difference over time.
Think about your needs and desires
It can be helpful to be specific about your needs and desires when it comes to interpersonal relationships. For example, are you looking for people to share a deep emotional bond with? Maybe you would like to improve the relationships you already have. Or you could simply be wanting to navigate the relationships with your coworkers more effectively.
Different relationships meet different needs. And part of interpersonal effectiveness is understanding what behaviors are appropriate for what types of relationships.
Assess your current skills
Take an honest look at where you stand now when it comes to interpersonal effectiveness skills. How satisfied are you with your current relationships? How well do you feel like you communicate your needs, thoughts, and feelings? How comfortably can you handle interpersonal conflict?
Taking note of your current skills can help you set reasonable goals for how you might want to improve.
Find opportunities to practice
Improving interpersonal effectiveness skills starts with learning about them. You can do this on your own or with support in therapy. But it’s also important to practice them in real time. You might try speaking up when you’d usually stay quiet or listening more carefully during conversations.
Consider therapy, especially DBT
A therapist can teach you specific interpersonal effectiveness skills that you can apply to your life. Specifically, DBT has structured treatment components that teach interpersonal effectiveness skills.
DBT is conducted in group and individual settings. But you can ask your therapist to guide you through some of the lessons even without participating in the full program.
One interpersonal skill that often makes the biggest emotional difference is learning to express your needs clearly and calmly. When people communicate with honesty and respect, they tend to feel more confident and connected in their relationships.
Ashley Ayala, LMFT
Clinical reviewer
Find care with Rula
Strong relationships are important for your mental health. Interpersonal effectiveness skills can help you build connections that feel safe, respectful, and emotionally supportive. A therapist can guide you as you practice and apply interpersonal effectiveness in your everyday life.
At Rula, we’re here to help you feel better. Rula makes it easy to find a licensed therapist or psychiatric provider who takes your insurance. That way, you don’t have to choose between great care and a price you can afford.
Rula patients pay about $15 per session with insurance, and 93% say they feel better after getting care through Rula. We have 21,000+ providers, and appointments are available as soon as tomorrow. We’re here to help you take the next step — wherever you are in your mental health journey.
References
- The correlation of social support with mental health: A meta-analysis https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5633215/
- The efficacy of applying the Interpersonal Effectiveness skills of dialectical behavior therapy into communication skills workshop for clinical nurses https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10015201/
- Effect of Interpersonal Effectiveness Skill Training Intervention on Social Functioning and Communication Competence Among Clients With Depressive Disorder https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1155/2024/6564098
- Dialectical behavior therapy as treatment for borderline personality disorder https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6007584/
- DBT Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills as Social Anxiety Intervention in College Students https://www.proquest.com/docview/2444585286?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true
Saya Des Marais
Saya graduated with her Master in Social Work (MSW) with a concentration in mental health from the University of Southern California in 2010. She formerly worked as a therapist and motivational interviewing trainer in community clinics, public schools, mental health startups, and more.
Her writing has been featured in FORTUNE, GoodRX, PsychCentral, and dozens of mental health apps and therapy websites. Through both her clinical work and her personal OCD diagnosis, she’s learned the importance of making empathetic and accurate mental health content available online.
She lives in Portland, Oregon but you can find her almost just as often in Mexico or in her birthplace, Tokyo.
Ashley Ayala, LMFT
Ashley is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who specializes in generational healing and family dynamics. Ashley has worked in schools, clinics, and in private practice. She believes that people’s relationships, including our relationship with ourselves, greatly shape our experiences in life.
Ashley is committed to empowering others to show up authentically and deepen their self understanding. This passion stems from taking a critical lens on her own life story and doing inner healing. One of her favorite quotes is “Be yourself and the right people will love the real you.”
Rula’s editorial process
Rula’s editorial team is on a mission to make science-backed mental health insights accessible and practical for every person seeking to better understand or improve mental wellness.
Members of Rula’s clinical leadership team and other expert providers contribute to all published content, offering guidance on themes and insights based on their firsthand experience in the field. Every piece of content is thoroughly reviewed by a clinician before publishing.
