Build the Interpersonal Skills a Growing Team Runs On
Interpersonal skills are the behaviours people use to work with each other: opening a usable working relationship, cooperating across departments, building trust, giving feedback and working through differences. GullyHR runs the programme and your workplace supplies the material. We hold a needs discussion, collect real situations, and have participants rehearse the difficult versions with feedback.
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Share your requirementsInterpersonal Skills in brief
Interpersonal skills are the behaviours people use to work with each other: opening a usable working relationship, cooperating across teams, earning trust, giving and taking feedback, and disagreeing without damage. GullyHR's interpersonal skills training is a customised workshop programme for employees, team leaders and managers in Indian startups and small and medium businesses whose work depends on other people's cooperation.
- GullyHR provides HR process consulting and implementation, HR management consulting, workplace training and the GullyHR HR software platform to growing businesses in India.
- This page covers one training programme: interpersonal skills at work — relationships, cross-team collaboration, teamwork, trust, feedback, handling differences, empathy and professional networking.
- The exercises are written from situations gathered in your own workplace, and the modules are weighted by what your managers say is actually failing.
- Delivery is at your premises, online or a mix, for one cohort or several, with reinforcement after an interval you agree.
- The next step on this page is a discussion about a custom training programme.
The starting point
Are Your Teams Working With Each Other or Around Each Other?
Relationships at work are usually left to chemistry. That holds while everyone sits in one room. Once work moves between departments, shifts and sites, a strained relationship stops being a private matter and starts costing delivery.
We make working relationships something people manage on purpose, with practice on real situations.
You may be experiencing:
- Two departments no longer talking, with every request between them passed through your desk.
- A technically strong employee quietly worked around by the team, and never told why.
- An employee first hearing that colleagues find them hard to work with in the appraisal, months after it began.
- An argument about who owned a task becoming a long message thread that reaches you weeks later as a complaint.
- A new joiner spending weeks working out whom to ask for what, because nobody in the team offered.
- Capable seniors on one project losing a week to mail confusion a short conversation would have settled.
- Client-facing staff who are polite and transactional, so the customer's real worry surfaces late.
- Requests between departments sitting unanswered because they were framed around the sender's priorities.
- A team meeting where two or three voices carry everything and the rest wait to be asked.
- A promise made in a corridor and forgotten, with the other person drawing their own conclusion about trust.
- Feedback saved up for the appraisal because nobody knows how to say it earlier.
What we can help with
What the Programme Covers
Building Working Relationships
How to open a working relationship with a colleague you do not yet know, and keep it usable, so relationships are built on purpose instead of left to chemistry.
Cross-Team Requests
Framing a request the other team can act on, against their priorities rather than yours, so asking another department for something becomes a skill instead of a favour.
Teamwork
Contributing in a meeting without taking it over, raising a concern early and knowing what the team actually needs from you in particular.
Building Trust
Doing what you said by when you said it, and saying early when you cannot, so trust becomes something people build rather than hope for.
Giving Feedback
Describing behaviour and its effect rather than labelling the person, so feedback is offered as an observation and not heard as a verdict.
Working Through Differences
Naming a difference plainly and separating what someone wants from why they want it, so differences get worked through while they are still small.
Empathy and Listening
Listening for what a colleague or customer is actually worried about, so people start responding to the concern and not only to the words.
Networking Inside and Out
Introducing yourself and your work so people remember it, and keeping contacts inside and outside the company warm deliberately rather than only when needed.
The scope
Topics in Detail
These are the topics the sessions can work through, in plain terms. The needs discussion decides which are used and in what depth for your group.
First Conversations
Opening a working relationship with someone you do not yet know, and finding out what they need from you.
Making a Request Land
Framing a request so the other team can see why it matters to them and what exactly is being asked.
Saying No and Negotiating Priorities
Declining or re-sequencing a request without damaging the relationship.
Handovers Between Teams
What to confirm when work passes from one person or department to another, so nothing is assumed.
Contributing in Meetings
Speaking at the right moment, making room for others and raising a concern early.
Keeping Commitments
Saying what you can deliver, by when, and telling people early when that changes.
Observation, Effect, Request
A simple feedback structure that describes what happened and what it caused, without judging the person.
Receiving Feedback
Listening to feedback about yourself and deciding what to do with it.
Raising a Disagreement
Naming a difference plainly, including with someone senior, and separating what a person wants from why.
Listening for the Worry
Hearing what a colleague or customer is concerned about beneath what they ask for.
Working With Different Styles
Adjusting to colleagues who differ in seniority, region, language or pace, without stereotyping them.
Staying Connected
Keeping working contacts in the company and outside warm on purpose, and not only when you need something.
Working together
Ways to Work With Us
Interpersonal Skills Workshop
One customised workshop for a single cohort, built on situations gathered from your work.
Multi-Cohort Programme
The same programme run for several cohorts across departments, shifts or locations, so colleagues who work together practise together.
Learning Journey With Reinforcement
The workshop followed by practice clinics at intervals you set, manager check-ins and a closing review.
Intact Team Intervention
The programme run for one team that already has to work together, with the reporting manager involved in the follow-up.
A behaviour self-assessment is issued before and after, with an optional manager view. Anything a participant shares in the room stays in the room.
The deliverables
What You Receive
Depending on the scope of your engagement, deliverables can include:
- A programme outline for your sign-off, listing the modules, their sequence, the cohort composition and the situations used.
- A participant workbook covering relationships, cross-team requests, teamwork, trust, feedback, differences and empathy.
- Role play and case material written from your own workplace situations and de-identified before use.
- An interpersonal behaviour self-assessment, issued before and after, with an optional manager view.
- A one-page feedback format participants keep at their desk: the observation, its effect, the request.
- A written individual action plan for each participant, with a copy for the reporting manager where you want that.
- A manager brief describing what the cohort practised and what to reinforce in the weeks that follow.
- A programme report for management covering attendance, feedback, self-assessment movement and recurring themes.
- A relationship map exercise sheet where participants list the colleagues they depend on and what each needs from them.
- A short request-and-handover checklist participants can use between teams.
Step by step
How We Work
Find Out Which Relationships Are Failing
A conversation with you and the managers concerned about which relationships are failing and where. We then talk to a few managers and prospective participants to collect real situations.
Take a Behaviour Self-Check
Participants complete a short interpersonal self-assessment before the programme, with an optional second view from their manager, so each person's starting point is recorded.
Design and Sign Off
Modules are chosen and sequenced, cohort size and mix are fixed, and the role plays are written against your situations. Nothing is scheduled until you have approved the outline.
Practise the Hard Ones
Each module opens with brief input and moves into discussion and structured practice. Participants rehearse the difficult cases, such as giving hard feedback or raising a disagreement with a senior.
Apply, Brief and Review
Participants name two or three relationships they will work on. Their managers get a short brief, and after an agreed interval a clinic reviews what happened when they tried it. Where it is included in the engagement, a pilot session with a small group is run first and the design is refined from what those participants found.
The difference
What Better Working Relationships Give You
An interpersonal programme helps your people:
We do not promise outcomes. We record a baseline before work starts, covering participants' starting self-assessment and the relationships currently causing difficulty, and report against it, so you can see what changed and what did not.
- Make requests between teams in a way that gets acted on, instead of routing them through you.
- Give feedback between colleagues during the year, so the appraisal is not the first time anything is said.
- Settle disagreements about priority, scope or credit at the level where they started.
- Bring a new joiner into the team through the team, rather than leave them to work out whom to approach.
- Show managers one recognisable standard of working behaviour across departments.
- Get customer conversations past politeness to the thing the customer actually raised.
- Frame a request so the other team can see what is asked and why it matters to them.
- Raise a concern early, before it becomes a message thread.
- Say clearly when a commitment will slip, instead of letting the other person find out.
- Work with colleagues of different seniority or style without avoiding the conversation.
Find your fit
Who This Programme Is For
Businesses Past One Room
Companies where work now moves between departments, shifts or locations, and a strained relationship costs delivery.
Teams Assembled Fast
Groups built during a growth phase, where most people were hired within months of each other with no shared way of working.
Specialists Who Depend on Colleagues
Employees promoted for technical strength who now rely on people they cannot instruct, such as project leads and quality heads.
Mixed Teams
Teams where seniority, region, language and generation sit at the same table, and one misreading becomes months of friction.
Companies With a Trigger
Businesses where something specific prompted the call: a complaint between departments or the same feedback appearing repeatedly.
Project and Cross-Functional Leads
People who coordinate work across departments without authority over the people doing it.
Customer-Facing and Support Teams
Staff who depend on other departments to resolve what a customer has raised.
New Joiners and Recent Hires
People still working out whom to ask for what, who benefit from structured ways to open working relationships.
Good to know
How the Programme Runs
Before the sessions
- Needs analysis: a conversation with you and the managers concerned about which working relationships are failing, followed by a few discussions with prospective participants.
- Design around your roles: modules chosen from the topics above, and role plays written from the situations we collected, de-identified, for the cohort you name.
During and after the sessions
- Delivery: short input on one skill at a time, in the format agreed with you.
- Practice: structured role play of the difficult versions, such as a request that was refused or feedback to a senior, with feedback from the group and facilitator.
- Follow-up: individual action plans naming the relationships participants will work on, a brief for managers, and a clinic or review where it is included in the engagement.
Nothing is scheduled until you have approved the design.
Good to know
How We Check It Is Working
During and straight after
- Behaviour self-assessment: how participants rate their own habits before and after, with an optional manager view.
- Participant feedback: which exercises were useful and which were not.
In the weeks that follow
- Action plan follow-through: whether participants report acting on the relationships they named.
- Recurring themes: which kinds of friction appear in role plays and clinics, which helps you see where structure rather than skill is the issue.
- Manager observations: what supervisors notice in everyday work, shared in one-to-ones.
Measures are agreed beforehand. We report what moved and what did not, and we do not claim a programme changed how colleagues work together.
Good to know
Format and Boundaries
Each programme defines
The audience, group size, delivery format and duration, agreed with you in writing after the needs discussion. Mixed-department, intact-team and multi-cohort formats are all possible.
Requires a separate agreement
- Individual coaching for a participant beyond the programme sessions.
- Formal assessments or psychometric instruments, which are scoped and licensed separately.
- Certification or accreditation through an external body. A certificate of participation, where you want one, is a company training record.
- Licensed third-party content or tools.
- Travel, venue and equipment arrangements.
Where the problem is overlapping roles or an unagreed handover between departments, that is a process question and is better handled as separate consulting work. A live dispute between two people needs a different approach from a group programme.
Good to know
What We Need From You
What we ask you to share
- The roles and approximate number of people who would attend, and which departments they sit in.
- Examples of working relationships that strain delivery, with names removed.
- The reporting lines in the group, so we can decide whether to mix or separate them.
Sponsor and manager involvement
A named sponsor approves the design and measures. Reporting managers receive a brief on what the cohort practised, and are asked to raise the action plans in one-to-ones, because the weeks after the sessions decide whether habits hold.
Good to know
Participant Information
Handled by agreement
Before work begins we agree what we collect about participants and the situations they describe, who may see it, how it is stored and when it is deleted.
Self-assessments and role plays
Self-assessments belong to the participant. What is said in role plays stays in the room, and management reports describe the group, with individual results shared only where the participant agrees.
Good to know
Frequently asked questions
Building working relationships, cross-team requests, teamwork, trust, feedback, working through differences, empathy and listening, and networking. Which are weighted most depends on the needs discussion and on who attends, since a new team and an established one have different gaps.
Yes. Role plays and cases come from situations gathered in your own business, de-identified before use, so participants practise the exchanges that actually strain their working relationships rather than generic examples.
People whose work depends on others they do not manage: project leads, quality, service and cross-functional roles. For a team that already has to work together, an intact-team format works well, with the reporting manager involved in follow-up.
No. Teambuilding events usually focus on shared experience. This is skills practice on the specific interactions that go wrong: asking for something, giving feedback, raising a difference. The aim is behaviour at work on Monday rather than goodwill on the day.
Yes, though observed role play tends to work best in a room. Many businesses run the main session at the workplace and the reinforcement clinic online, which keeps the cost of getting people together down.
With the before and after self-assessment, participant feedback, individual action plans and the manager brief. We report what moved and what did not. We do not promise outcomes, and the real test is how colleagues behave in the weeks that follow.
A group programme is not the right tool for one live dispute. The conflict management programme, or a facilitated conversation, suits that better. This programme builds the everyday skills that stop disputes forming in the first place.
Yes, where you want one. Each attendee who completes the interpersonal skills programme receives a certificate of participation. It records that the person took part and finished, which is all it can honestly say, and it does not certify how well anyone works with colleagues.
After the needs discussion about which relationships are failing. The proposal then states the modules, cohorts and reinforcement, and it is agreed in writing before anything is scheduled, so you can see exactly what you are committing to and what is deliberately left out.
No. Team building usually focuses on shared experience. This programme practises the specific exchanges that strain working relationships, such as asking for something, giving feedback and raising a difference.
Yes, because most habits come from years of working one way. Experienced staff often benefit from seeing how a conversation lands on someone else, which role play with feedback makes visible.
It can. We include how to open a relationship, make a request and give feedback by message and video call, and can run the sessions online in smaller groups.
We can run the programme for an intact team, but a live dispute between two people is usually better handled by a facilitated conversation or our conflict management programme.
Small enough that every participant is observed in practice and gets feedback. The number is agreed once we know the modules and the format.
A brief on what the cohort practised and what to look for in the following weeks, and, where you want it, a copy of each participant's action plan. Participants are told in advance what their manager will see.
Pricing depends on the number of participants and cohorts, the modules chosen, the delivery format and whether follow-up is included. Share your requirements and we will send a tailored proposal.
Make Working Relationships Something People Manage on Purpose
Practise asking, giving feedback and raising differences on your own situations, so colleagues work with each other rather than around each other.
Prefer to talk first? Call +91 80958 58589 or write to hello@gullyhr.com.
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