Using People Styles for Interpersonal Competence: Encouraging Purposeful Reflection on Communication Behaviors

The purpose of this article is to revitalize the idea of soft skills as an important part of evaluator training through reflecting on the use of the People Styles Assessment Inventory (Bolton & Bolton, 2009) as a reflective exercise in a course with masters and Ph. D. level evaluation and measurement students. This paper provides an overview of the recent conversation in the literature surrounding interpersonal competency in evaluation, highlighting the need for and lack of emphasis on interpersonal skills in evaluation training, then describes the teaching practice context for engaging in the People Styles assessment and reflective activity. The People Styles model is described in detail along with key reflections on the use of the model for training future evaluation practitioners.

Age-Conditional Effects of Political Skill and Empathy on Emotional Labor: An Experience Sampling Study

Grounded in lifespan development theories that posit a positive influence of aging on emotion regulation, we examine how chronological age and political skill (i.e., a work-related interpersonal competency that functions as an emotion-relevant resource) jointly moderate the relationships between within-person levels of empathy and the use of emotional labor strategies across a workweek. Participants were n = 118 full-time university employees (Mage = 42.85 years; SD = 12.18; range = 20–70), who completed momentary surveys 3 times a day, over a single 5-day workweek. Results show that age and within-person levels of empathy were positively related to momentary levels of deep acting. Considering further the interaction of age, political skill, and empathy, results suggest that the positive relationship between empathy and deep acting is conditional upon age and individual differences in political skill, with differential relationships observed for relatively older versus relatively younger participants. Overall, the findings of this study contribute to a better understanding of the role of age and political skill for daily emotional regulation in the work context.

Age-Conditional Effects of Political Skill and Empathy on Emotional Labor: An Experience Sampling Study

Grounded in lifespan development theories that posit a positive influence of aging on emotionregulation, we examine how chronological age and political skill (i.e., a work-related interpersonal competency that functions as an emotion-relevant resource) jointly moderate the relationships between within-person levels of empathy and the use of emotional labor strategies across a workweek. Participants were n = 118 full-time university employees (Mage = 42.85 years; SD = 12.18; Range = 20-70), who completed momentary surveys three times a day, over a single five-day workweek. Results show that age and within-person levels of empathy were positively related to momentary levels of deep acting. Considering further the interaction of age, political skill, and empathy, results suggest that the positive relationship between empathy and deep acting is conditional upon age and individual differences in political skill, with differential relationships observed for relatively older versus relatively younger participants. Overall, the findings of this study contribute to a better understanding of the role of age and political skill for daily emotional regulation in the work context.

The Relationship between Interpersonal Emotion Regulation and Interpersonal Competence Controlled for Emotion Dysregulation

The aim of this study is to examine the role of interpersonal emotion regulation on interpersonal competency when controlled for emotion dysregulation. The sample of the study consists of 342 (235 female; 107 male) undergraduate students attending to the various departments of a private university in Turkey. The average age of participants was 20.81 (SD=2.29). The Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Scale, Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale and Interpersonal Competency Scale were used. Analyses were conducted through the SPSS 20 (IBM, 2011). Results of hierarchical regression analysis revealed that interpersonal emotion regulation and emotion dysregulation seem to predict interpersonal competency. After controlling for the effect of emotion dysregulation, interpersonal emotion regulation alone explains 18% of the overall variance in interpersonal competency. Interpersonal emotion has the highest contribution on interpersonal competency followed by emotion dysregulation.