11 Examples of a People Person

John Spacey, June 01, 2021

A people person is an individual who enjoys socializing and generally likes people. This is an important talent that is a basis for business and social abilities such as leadership, networking, influencing, negotiation and customer service. The following are illustrative examples of what it means to be a people person.

Positivity

The term people person implies that you generally like people such that you try to view them in a positive light to see their good side and potential. This is a huge advantage in social processes because people are more likely to be responsive to people who like them.

Likability

Friendliness can be quite likable as long as you're good at it. The experience of opening up to people tends to make you good at socializing with time as long as you self-improve with each interaction.

Resilience

Friendliness typically leaves you exposed to mild rejection. For example, if you greet a neighbor in a friendly way they may respond in an overly reserved way that may feel like a slight. People persons are resilient to this type of thing. This may stem from high social confidence that only builds with time as people persons usually establish a large number of social connections.

Collaborative

A people person prefers to work on problems and decision making as a group. Group decisions are often suboptimal as compared to individual decisions because they reflect the social dynamics of a group as opposed to pure rational thought. However, group decisions are often necessarily to get people moving in the same direction such that they are often the most important type of decision.

Empathy

Empathy is the ability to share an emotion. For example, the ability to feel happy for someone when they achieve some small win.

Sympathy

Sympathy is the ability to recognize and respect a negative emotion such as sadness without fully sharing it.

Tolerance

You can't be considered a people person if you only have warmth for people exactly like yourself. A people person is friendly regardless of factors such as ethnicity, culture, religion, gender, language, politics or age.

Curiosity

Friendliness often stems from an interest in people and a curiosity about them. For example, a customer service representative who doesn't view each customer as an interchangeable drone but is rather curious about people as individuals.

Humor

Humor is a basis for smooth social interaction as people are more than information consuming machines but enjoy common recognition of the absurd and lighthearted aspects of life. If you're constantly flooding people with seriousness you might not be a people person.

Authenticity

If you truly like people there is no need to pretend that you like them to smooth over social processes.

Candor, Wit & Politeness

People persons differ from each other in several key respects. Some are candid and open such that they engage others without any subterfuge. Others are witty such that they are harder to read but engage, influence and lead people effortlessly nonetheless. A third approach to friendliness is politeness whereby social interaction is guided by polite limits.