A - Inter-personal skills define a wide range of skills that allow people to better communicate and engage others, at the workplace, socially and within the family unit. Building these skills is certainly a two-pronged process.
Part one will definitely be to get the appropriate training. You need a framework within which to build inter-personal skills, and a touch-stone against which to assess the effectiveness of your skills. I always recommend the Merrill Reid model since it allows for flexibility in people and it is easy to apply. The second important part is to practice. Find every situation you can in which to apply your skills. Coaches can be invaluable in this process because they provide un-biased feedback on your effectiveness and your progress. Never forget that the real beauty of effective inter-personal skills is to recognise that people are flexible and they do change. So are you. Therefore you must expect your growing palette of inter-personal experiences to be fluid – you need to change to meet the relationship needs of both others and yourself!
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