Making Personas Work for Your Web Site: An Interview with Steve Mulder
http://www.uie.com/articles/mulder_interview/

Spool, Jared M.
User Interface Engineering
2007

Abstract:

It's important for the people responsible for creating the personas to have active listening skills, empathy, and clear communication skills. Ultimately, what design teams need to do is aggregate all of the qualitative or quantitative data into a clearly communicated story. This means that writing and communication skills are also critical. From the point of view of a more tactical skillset, the design team will get better results if they have experience conducting interviews and writing surveys.