Your social skills when interacting with other people can be the deciding factor that can help you build, grow and maintain relationships with colleagues, clients, and new friends.
Developing social skills will not only help you establish and connect with other people but also create many opportunities for you in life.
Why is it important?
Social skills are one of the most important skills children and adolescents develop, as they often serve as predictors of future success. Social skills have also been linked to job success, independence, and emotional well-being.
Those with adaptive social skills often demonstrate superior ability to observe, problem solves, and respond in social situations.
Researchers from Pennsylvania State University and Duke University found that youth who scored higher on social skills measurements were four times more likely to graduate from an undergraduate institution.
Poor social skills
When you have poor social skills, others may feel uncomfortable with your responses. Have you experienced anyone with weird or even creepy behaviors? Or maybe you are the one with that behavior?
Some examples of poor social skills include:
- Being overly friendly when it is not always appropriate
- Poor display of eye contact and body language
- Replying poorly or inappropriately toward an insult or criticism
- Being too eager to speak without letting the other person finish
- Failing to say “no” in a polite way
Focus on improving it
You can tell a person has strong social skills when they are easier to talk to and are able to communicate with unfamiliar individuals effectively.
My social skills for example are amazingly low…Whenever I try to interact with a stranger or someone who is further ahead in the life I want to be in, I tend to finish the sentences in my own head and not speak the final words.
That makes the person slightly confused and you can feel this air of awkwardness between us seeing how we both stare at each other for a while thinking of what to say next.
Having excellent social skills can be very useful, especially in this day and age, where most people are now used to communicating with text messages and other forms of social media.
To the point where interacting face-to-face with someone can be rather uncomfortable.
Well-developed social skills may make you stand out from the crowd, with proper eye contact, good manners, and social acceptance can also improve your mental well-being.
Emotional Intelligence (E.I.)
Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, manage, and understand emotions. This includes the ability to recognize, interpret, and regulate your own emotions as well as those of other people.
Your emotional skills also play a huge role when communicating with others as this will allow you to not only manage your emotions but also improve your self-esteem which has been proven in psychology studies.
Social skills, in the Emotional Intelligence sense, include:
- Persuasion and Influencing Skills
- Communication Skills
- Conflict Management Skills
- Leadership Skills
- Change Management Skills
- Building Bonds (Rapport)
- Collaboration and Cooperation | Team-Working Skills
Persuasion and Influencing Skills
These skills are important as they can help you win them over with your ideas or move them in the desired action so that you can lead them effectively and efficiently.
Communication skills
It will let you understand others by listening to and making other people feel understood. By using nonverbal cues you are able to send messages and receive them such as noticing facial expressions such as hesitant eye contact and looking downwards.
Conflict resolution skills
allow you to bring disagreements out from others and resolve them. Being able to manage difficult situations helps you build trust with others.
Leadership skills
being able to properly guide and support others while also holding them accountable for their performance. Leading by example allows others to be drawn into your direction and you appear to be more charismatic.
Change management skills
allows you to let others feel less anxious since change can be stressful and difficult for them. By bringing excitement to new changes and making sure no one is feeling left out.
Building Bond (rapport)
It is important to build a large and strong network of contacts. By bringing value to their needs, you can keep healthy relationships and create opportunities.
Team-working skills
Helps you go a long way and overcome difficult situations. When one of your teammates is having trouble, you or other people will collaborate and help bring him back up together.
Social Awareness
The ability to empathize with others and take look at their perspective, including those from diverse backgrounds and cultures.
You understand the strengths and differences between the person and the group and even predict others’ feelings and reactions.
How do your actions, thoughts, or emotions impact those around you? Being able to take consideration is important as we used to hear when we were a kid, “Be considerate of others”.
Having self-awareness is the first step in building empathy toward other people’s reactions. If we don’t try to understand others’ emotions we will struggle in building meaningful relationships.
Conflict resolution
You will also be able to improve your conflict resolution skills, even if you prioritize peace and want to avoid hurting the feelings of the other person. Conflicts are part of life and must be addressed and being defensive will not solve anything.
Handling conflict appropriately with proper communication can not only solve problems at the moment but also deepen relationships for future success.
Your career
By now you understand that social skills are important but can they really help us with career-related doors?
Social skills can help you advance in life and your career; a lack of the same skills can not only slow down but also restrict your progress in the promotion.
Strong social skills can help with interpersonal interactions, which can, in turn, lead to effective job outcomes.
A Harvard study says that people who have the added advantage of social skills along with their technical skills have more job opportunities and higher wages.
Effective communication skills
Bad communications ends a lot of good things; Good communication ends a lot of bad things ~Anonymous
Is it really necessary to have social skills in technical field jobs, where people are now working at home alone and even from different countries?
Although careers in the STEM(Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) field do not prioritize social skills as much, companies encourage skills like critical thinking and problem-solving and just need the technical knowledge necessary to complete the specific tasks associated with their job. (Katie McPhee)
However, as author Julia T. Wood Award-winning, forward-thinking scholar outlines in her text, Communication in Our Lives, 7th ed, these social skills are necessary for STEM fields as well.
“Healthcare professionals must communicate effectively to explain medical problems to patients, describe courses of treatment, and gain information and cooperation from patients and their families.”
“Even highly technical jobs such as computer programming, engineering, and systems design require communication skills. Specialists must be able to listen carefully, work in groups and teams, and explain technical ideas to people who lack their expert knowledge.”
Teamwork
Back in high school when we formed groups for a project while discussing how to split up the tasks for it.
I would throw out suggestions on giving the hardest tasks to the person who had the highest scores in our group while complimenting him at the same time.
Although it might seem as if I was avoiding doing the difficult tasks and doing the least amount of work. It was more of assigning the best person for it to achieve the best outcome.
These projects were meant for us to practice working with others effectively.
Growing up we focused more on our own personal life and growth, especially when we enter the work world. I am not saying to focus on yourself but you shouldn’t ignore cooperating with others either.
The ultimate solution to this? You will need to focus on Interdependence, not Independence. Rather than keeping to themselves, individuals collaborate and facilitate efforts to progress toward that shared interest and not compete with one another or isolate themselves.
“Interdependence is crucial for the success of any team or organizational culture and there are identifiable and measurable behaviors that foster a strong sense of interdependence in your workplace.”(Dianne Crampton)
“When employees feel recognized for their contributions, they are happier and more productive in their roles. An added benefit is that your organization will experience higher employee retention, too.
A work culture that focuses on interdependence is sure to improve talent retention. ” (Dianne Crampton)
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
~African Proverb
Life is about people do you agree?
