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SANDRA J. SUCHER

A Framework for Interpersonal Skills Development

Engaging with others on a level that goes beyond superficial interaction is a lifelong journey, a
journey each of you has already begun. The Interpersonal Skills Development Lab will offer a specific

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target for your development by focusing on four inter-related capabilities we believe are the building
blocks of effective interaction: “humble inquiry,” objective description, perspective-taking, and
building trusting relationships.

“Humble Inquiry”
We are going to call the ability to ask questions of others in a way that encourages openness,
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vulnerability, and a willingness to share, “humble inquiry.”

Humble inquiry was developed by the MIT organization scholar Edgar H. Schein, who realized that
it took a certain approach to question asking to persuade others to feel safe in responding to personal
questions. In his 2013 book, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling, 1 Schein offers this
definition:
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Humble inquiry is the skill and the art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to
which you do not already know the answer, of building a relationship based on curiosity
and interest in the other person. 2

Humble inquiry is demonstrated by behaving in certain specific ways:

• Asking questions from a place of curiosity and deep interest.

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• Clarifying understanding by asking follow-up questions.

• Being comfortable with silence in conversations.

• Responding to how others speak as well as their words (i.e., body language, tone of voice, etc.).

• Maintaining your focus on questioning and listening rather than sharing.

Humble inquiry is the foundational building block of effective interpersonal interaction, creating
the opportunity to get to know others and to exercise subsequently the capabilities of objective
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description, perspective-taking, and building trusting relationships.

Professor Sandra J. Sucher prepared this note as the basis for class discussion with the assistance of Research Associate Shalene Gupta, Research
Associate Patrick Sanguineti, and Lead Coach Suzanne Glazer.

Copyright © 2019, 2020 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-
7685, write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to [Link]. This publication may not be digitized,
photocopied, or otherwise reproduced, posted, or transmitted, without the permission of Harvard Business School.

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 320-040 A Framework for Interpersonal Skills Development

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Objective Description
We are going to call the ability to describe yourself and other people, interactions and situations
without the assumptions, reactions, and biases that limit and distort your view of reality, “objective
description.” 3

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Learning how to describe objectively means aiming to get better and better at describing the
dimensions that make something “the way it is.”

It begins with self-awareness—the ability to understand where you are coming from—how you
have been shaped by particular experiences, goals, successes and disappointments that cause you to
respond in certain ways.

Objective description then applies this same type of awareness to others, ensuring that your filters

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don't create a picture that is more reflective of what you assume or how you respond than on who the
other person actually is. 4

Behaviors that aid in objective description include:

• Removing assumptions, reactions, and biases from descriptions you form of others.

• Creating precise and detailed descriptions of others. 5

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• Communicating facts rather than inferences or conclusions about others.

• Asking others whether your descriptions are accurate and complete.

We all know that the key to solving a problem is first to attain an accurate and agreed-upon
definition of it. Objective description is the ability that lets you do that. It means you’ve done the hard
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work of removing yourself from what you see, and helping others do the same.

Objective description helps you build a bridge to common understanding and is perhaps the most
fundamental ability you need to work well with others. 6 7

It allows you to distinguish real problems from perceived ones, group tensions from feelings you
alone might be having, and interpersonal issues that must be addressed from individual moments of
discomfort that may just need to be lived through. It allows you to see someone else’s values, goals and
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motivations as they actually are, not as you might wish they would be.

Perspective-Taking
We are going to call the ability to see the world through another person’s eyes and to feel
experiences as they would feel them, “perspective-taking.”

‘Walking a mile in somebody else’s shoes’ is one way perspective-taking is frequently described. 8
It helps to remember that when we are doing that walking, we are trying to think, feel, and respond as
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another person might.

There are two aspects to perspective-taking. The first is based on issues, and it requires working
hard to really understand the beliefs, world view, and reasoning that underlie how someone can think
so differently about an issue from how you might think.

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 A Framework for Interpersonal Skills Development 320-040

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The second aspect is identity, and it requires working hard to really understand the history and
experiences that have shaped another person and cause them to be the person they are, in all of their
complexity.

Certain specific behaviors help in perspective-taking:

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• Questioning the accuracy of your assumptions about other people.

• Adapting conversation approaches based on the individual with whom you are speaking. 9

• Expressing empathy for others’ feelings and experiences.

• Trying to deeply understand others’ ideas and opinions, even when they conflict with your
own. 10

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• Searching for underlying reasons that may clarify others’ actions and behaviors.

Perspective-taking relies on the capability of objective description. If you can’t see someone
objectively, there’s no way that you can understand them well enough to see and feel as they do.

Perspective-taking is the key to understanding how two people can see the same thing, or be in the
same situation, and experience it entirely differently. In organization life, perspective-taking is what
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allows you to understand different customers and their wants and needs, to wrestle with complex
interpersonal issues, and to appreciate why some of your best laid plans fall flat with certain
individuals and groups.

Perspective-taking, like objective description, is a bridge-building capability. But whereas objective

description depends on the discipline of removing the personal to attain a clear and accurate vision,
perspective-taking depends on you doing the hard work of deeply understanding and experiencing
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the personal reality of someone else’s life to fully appreciate who they are.

Building Trusting Relationships

We are going to call the capability to allow others to experience you, and you to experience them,
as complex, multi-dimensional individuals “building trusting relationships.” 11 It requires courage and
uses a bundle of skills and behaviors that gives you the ability to impact, and be impacted, by someone
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else.

Building trusting relationships depends on self-awareness, in understanding what makes certain

situations harder or easier for you to be yourself in, and in managing the emotions that might prevent
you from engaging more fully with someone else.

Trusting relationships are built through certain specific behaviors: 12

• Demonstrating respect by being present and attentive in the presence of others.

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• Being open about your motives and intent.

• Respectfully telling people when you disagree with them.

• Being willing to be vulnerable by sharing feelings and experiences.

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 320-040 A Framework for Interpersonal Skills Development

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• Keeping confidences.

• Following through on your commitments.

• Aiming to do good; caring about the well-being of others.

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Building trusting relationships relies on objective description to help you be as clear and easy to
understand as possible.

And it is also built on perspective-taking, which enables you to appreciate the different risks each
of you is taking to establish a deeper and more personal connection with one another. 13

Trusting relationships are essential to working through the tensions, misunderstandings, and
disagreements that are a constant feature of organization life.

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It also is the ultimate bridge builder, linking you to others through moments of shared risk and
personal ties that help you to dig deep when you need to, and to bring out the best in each other. 14

The Skill-Building Cycle

You will become better at these personal engagement skills the more you use them. They build on
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each other: humble inquiry leads to the ability to describe someone objectively, which, in turn, helps
you to truly take the perspective of that person. These three lay a foundation for building a trusting
relationship, in which you keep confidences, honor promises you’ve made, are transparent about your
motives, and are willing to openly and respectfully disagree—all behaviors that help you to be seen as,
and to be, worthy of others’ trust.

What distinguishes this set of capabilities from learning any other skill is that they are
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fundamentally employed with others. The view of the other person is really the only way you can know
whether your efforts at interpersonal engagement are working. As such, seeking feedback and being
willing to review, reflect, and refine how you interact creates a skill-building cycle that will enable you
to engage well, have influence, and build trusting relationships.
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 A Framework for Interpersonal Skills Development 320-040

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Exhibit 1 The Interpersonal Skill-Building Cycle

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Source: Casewriter

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 320-040 A Framework for Interpersonal Skills Development

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Endnotes

1 Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling, Oakland California: Barrett-Kohler Publishers,
2013. For a description of humble inquiry in the context of business and organizations, see “Introduction: Creating Positive
Relationships and Effective Organizations,” pp. 1-6. For a fuller description of humble inquiry, see Chapter 1: “Humble

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Inquiry,” pp. 7-20. For examples of conversations employing humble inquiry, see Chapter 2: “Humble Inquiry in Practice,” pp.
21-37. For the difference between humble and other forms of inquiry, see Chapter 3, “Differentiating Humble Inquiry from
Other Forms of Inquiry,” pp. 39-51.
2 Ibid., p. 21.

3 Sandra J. Sucher, The Moral Leader: Challenges, Tools, and Insights, (Routledge, 2008), “While description sounds easy
enough…it means getting into the mind of a character or the heart of an argument—people (and ideas) that are, or may be,
very different from you and your own ways of thinking. The questions you ask yourself are: Do I really understand this person

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or this point of view? Could I articulate what makes this person tick? Could I expound on this idea?” p. 12.
4 Part and parcel of this capability is adopting a multiple identities perspective, by which we can see others as defined not by their
one single, externally obvious category, but rather comprised of numerous “overlapping and interdependent” aspects (cf.
“Intersectionality,” in The Oxford English Dictionary). For a similar approach, see Kimberle Crenshaw’s seminal works on
intersectionality, such as Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of
Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, no. 1, article 8,
pp. 139 – 167, and “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford
Law Review 43, no. 6 (July, 1991), pp. 1241 – 1299.
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5 Martha Nussbaum, interpreter of Aristotelian philosophy and law professor, writes of “the priority of perception [or] priority
of the particular” – continuing “In these essays, and in the novels, much is made of an ethical ability I call “perception” after
both Aristotle and [William] James. By this I mean the ability to discern, acutely and responsively, the salient features of one’s
particular situation.” Martha C. Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1990, p. 37.
6 Correct perception depends not just on cognition, but on emotion as well. “The agent who discerns intellectually that a friend
is in need or that a loved one has died, but who fails to respond to these facts with an appropriate sympathy or grief…doesn’t
really, or doesn’t fully, see what has happened, doesn’t recognize it in a full-blooded way or take it in…the emotional part of
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cognition is lacking.” … “The emotions are themselves modes of vision, or recognition.” Ibid., p. 79.
7 See Sucher, [Link]., “This particular skill, the ability to understand other people and other ideas, is probably one of the most
important capabilities you can acquire in making you effective in organizations. As you may well know from your own
experience, nearly all of the meaningful work you will do will involve your ability to engage other people and their ideas, so
focusing on careful description—the ability to get inside other people and their ideas—is critical,” p. 12.
8 George Herbert Mead, distinguished pragmatist philosopher, sociologist, and psychologist, similarly defined perspective-
taking as “imagining another person’s thoughts or feelings from that person’s point of view.” George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self,
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and Society, Definitive Edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015, reprint.
9 In a pair of related studies, Robert M. Krauss and Susan R. Fussell demonstrate that listeners who engage in perspective-
taking and adjust the content of their information based on what they believe their partner to know tend to exhibit better
listening comprehension. These perspective-taking listeners also tend to make their partners feel more understood as they
continue to shape their approach based on feedback in the conversation. Krauss and Fussell, “Perspective-Taking in
Communication: Representations of Others’ Knowledge in Reference,” Social Cognition 9, no. 1 (1991), pp. 2 – 24, and Fussell
and Krauss, “Coordination of Knowledge in Communication: Effects of Speakers’ Assumptions About What Others Know,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78, no. 3 (1992), pp. 378 – 391.
10 Striving for deep understanding is essential for building meaningful interpersonal connection. As Adam D. Galinsky, Gillian
Ku, and Cynthia S. Wang discuss, “pallid perspective-taking,” or the kind done only cursorily, can lead to even further
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misunderstanding and frustration. See Galinsky, Ku, and Wang, “Perspective-Taking and Self-Other Overlap: Fostering Social
Bonds and Facilitating Social Coordination,” Group Processes & Intergroup Relationship 8, no. 2 (April 2005), pp. 109 – 124. For an
example of the dangers of “pallid perspective-taking” in action, see Jerry B. Harvey’s classic article, “The Abilene Paradox: The
Management of Agreement,” Organizational Dynamics 3, no. 1 (Summer 1974), pp. 63 – 80.
11 See Robert C. Solomon and Fernando Flores, Building Trust: In Business, Politics, Relationships, and Life, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001. “[Trust] is not subjective so much as it is intersubjective—dependent on social relationships and mutual

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 A Framework for Interpersonal Skills Development 320-040

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responses. In a sense, trust is not about evidence and outcomes at all, except as secondary concerns. Authentic trust is
ultimately about relationships and what it takes to create, maintain, and restore them,” p. 32.
12 See Stephen M.R. Covey with Rebecca R. Merrill, The Speed of Trust: The One Things That Changes Everything, New York: Free
Press, 2006. The section on “Relationship Trust” elaborates a similar list of 13 behaviors “of character and competence” that

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build relationship trust: talk straight, demonstrate respect, create transparency, right wrongs, show loyalty, deliver results, get
better, confront reality, clarify expectations, practice accountability, listen first, keep commitments, extend trust, pp. 125 – 229.
13 See Michele Williams, “Perspective Taking: Building Positive Interpersonal Connections and Trustworthiness One
Interaction at a Time,” in The Oxford Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship, edited by Gretchen M. Spreitzer and Kim S.
Cameron, pp. 462 – 473, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. In her section on “Perspective Taking and Trustworthy
Action” (pp. 464 – 465), she argues that perspective-taking enables trustworthy action along three main axes: benevolence,
emotional influence, and what she calls “proactive trustworthiness,” or “behavior that an individual actively engages in
because she anticipates that others will view it as trustworthy.” See also Williams, “Building and Rebuilding Trust: Why
Perspective Taking Matters,” in Restoring Trust in Organizations and Leaders: Enduring Challenges and Emerging Answers, pp. 171 –

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184, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Here, she contends that “the proactive (or more strategic) aspects of perspective
taking” can not only generate trust, but also repair it, and perhaps even prevent it from being lost in the first place.”
14 See Solomon and Flores’ ([Link].) explanation of why trust matters so much in relationships: “…the main point of trust [is]
that it opens the door to positive outcomes that would be impossible without it,’” p. 31.
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