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Interpersonal Skills (IPS)

Antje Wild & Andy Weeger

Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences

July 10, 2025

Motivation

Having good people skills means maximizing effective and productive human interaction to everyone’s benefit. Lynn Taylor, Workplace expert and author

This course is designed to prepare you for a future role in cross-functional functions and (leadership) positions by helping to lead yourselve and understand and efficiently shape interpersonal interactions and conflicts in organizations.

Learning outcomes

Understanding of own and others’ behavior, interpersonal interaction, self-leadership, & emotional intelligence

Upon successful completion of this course, you will have advanced knowledge and skills in following areas:

• Theories explaining interpersonal interaction in business contexts,
• conflict in organizations and the strategies to resolve it,
• self-leadership and teamwork including the challenges of (virtual) collaboration within and between disciplines
• emotional intelligence and resilience,
• understanding of own and others’ behavior in various settings,
• convincing communication of ideas within professional business settings, and
• ethical dimensions of interpersonal interaction.

Topics

Kick-off: How to get most out of this course?

Career: How to get so good they can’t ignore you?

Productivity (goals): How can I get the most out of my time?

Productivity (focus): How can I fight distraction?

Change: How to change things when change is hard?

Feedback: How to give valuable feedback and help people to thrive?

Communication: How to harness the power of talk?

Resilience: How to get unstuck and thrive in work and life?

Culture: How can I get along with other cultures?

Happiness: How can I become happier?

Learning set-up

classroom teaching, challenges, research, reflection & presentation

This course combines classroom teaching (approx on third of the time) and self-learning components (challenges, personal studies) — engagement in both is required to achieve the learning outcomes.

The focus of the teaching sessions is on giving input to each topics including theoretical groundings, examples, cases, and exercises for reflection.

The will be a reading list for every topic, which serves as starting point for your personal study.

There are challenges for each topic, which are designed to help you to get on and facilitate your learning journey.

The challenges and your personal study based are essential tools for preparing the final presentation.

Rules for virtual Zoom sessions

We aim to have on-site lectures only. However, if we need to move to Zoom, following rules apply:

Keeping cameras on makes us feel more connected to the persons we are interacting with. As we want to connect and as we plan highly interactive sessions, you need to keep your camera on. Keeping cameras off is inappropriate and feels rude.

We also expect that you are super attentive—just as if you were in the seminar room. No multitasking, no power-nap etc. (a virtual lecture is not a video stream like on Netflix ;-)

Learning material

lecture notes, challenges to reflect, change, and grow & reading lists

We will provide

• lecture notes for each topic including theoretical groundings, examples, cases, questions for reflection, etc.;
• three challenges on three levels of difficulty for each topic;
  • level 1 challenges: impetus to reflection (reflect)
  • level 2 challenges: getting into action (change)
  • level 3 challenges: leaving the comfort zone (grow)
• and reading lists as starting points for your personal study

Challenges

The challenges are designed to help you to get on and facilitate your learning journey. Also, they are essential tools for preparing the final presentation. We strongly recommend to take up the challenges in the topics you chose at least up to level 2. However, ultimate growth and fun might only start with level 3 challenges. You are also allowed to create your own challenges.

Effort

5 ECTS
≈ 125 h workload
≈ 35 h classes
+ 90 h self learning

You will gain 5 ECTS for this course. This equals approx. 125 hours workload, which you need to pass the course.

• Presence-teaching sessions: approx. 35 hours (12 sessions)
• Challenges, reflection, research, presentation: many hours ;-)

Please prepare your schedule accordingly.

Schedule

If not noted otherwise, the lecture starts on 8.15 pm and ends 11.35 pm.

Date	Topic	Lecturer	Location
10.10.2025	Kick-off	Wild & Weeger	E5.1.08
17.10.2025	Career	Wild	A.1.62/63
24.10.2025	Productivity (goals)	Wild	A.1.62/63
24.10.20251	Productivity (focus)	Weeger	A.1.60
07.11.2025	Change	Weeger	A.1.62/63
14.11.2025	Feedback	Weeger	A.1.62/63
21.11.2025	Communication	Wild	A.1.62/63
28.11.2025	Resilience	Weeger	A.1.62/63
05.12.20252	Culture	tbd	A.1.62/63
12.12.2025	Happiness	Wild	A.1.62/63
19.12.2025	Back-up / Q&A	tbd	A.1.62/63
06.01.2025	Deadline slides upload	-	Moodle
10.01.20253	Final presentations #1	Wild & Weeger	A.1.62/63
17.01.20254	Final presentations #2	Wild & Weeger	A.1.62/63
24.01.20255	Final presentations #3	Wild & Weeger	A.1.62/63

Table 1: Schedule winter term 2025 (may be subjected to changes)

Q&A

Footnotes

1. 1 pm until approx 4.15 pm

2. 8.15 am until approx 4.30 pm

3. 8.15 am until approx 4.30 pm

4. 8.15 am until approx 4.30 pm

5. 8.15 am until approx 4.30 pm