If you feel like you’re the awkward person at social events and functions or you struggle to start a conversation because you’re shy, it can impact your social life and your career. Social skills, such as communication, empathy, interpersonal and listening skills, are beneficial not just to your personal life but also to your professional life. So let us discuss more about social skills in today’s post. We will understand what are the important social skills and How we can develop or improve our social skills.
What are the social skills?
Social skills are the skills we use to communicate and interact with each other. Social skills include written, verbal, nonverbal and visual communication used to relay a message to others. Common ways in which you exercise your social skills are:
- The language you use
- The tone, pitch and volume of your voice
- Gestures you make
- Facial expressions
- Your body language
- Eye contact with others when communicating
How to develop or improve social skills:
- Learn people’s name :- We feel really good if in the second meeting people remember our name and address us with our name. Remembering the name of the person is very important thing.
- Encourage others to talk about themselves:- When you speak, you say what you know, but when you listen you will definitely learn something new.
- Interrupt less:- The best appreciation we can give a person is ‘attentive and interesting listening’. So be a Good Listener.
- Ask questions where people can answer much more than simple “Yes” or “No”
- listen with intent to learn and understand:- we often listen to reply not to understand, but if we listen to understand we can develop good relationship.
- Promote others good work :– So if you like this post you can share this and drop your favorite post in comment section so that I can read your post.
Few more simple and effective tips on How to develop social skills
- Offer genuine compliments and appreciation
- Read Books about social skills
- Say please and thank you, these two words cost nothing but can create huge value for the other person.
- Give without expecting a get, but I bet you will definitely get if not from the same person then from others.
- Pay attention to your body language, when you speak as well as when you listen.
- Stay up to date on current news and stories so that you have something to talk about
- Don’t respond to negativity
- Don’t nitpick, no one is perfect try to understand people.
- Be positive, be happy
First learn to listen and then you will learn by listening. ©
How to measure your progress on social skills:
Give yourself a rating from 1 to 5 (where 1 is ‘Never’ and 5 is ‘Always’) for below questions:
- Are you aware of what types of emotions you are feeling
- Can you easily ask for help
- How easily and how frequently you say ‘Thank you’
- How much comfortable you are in receiving negative feedback
- Rate yourself as a Good Listener
- How easily you can give compliment to other person.
- How comfortable you are in introducing two people
- Can you say sorry when you have done something wrong
- How much you are comfortable in starting a conversation
- Rate yourself in understanding other people’s feeling.
More on understanding yourself
Know and understand yourself… Self-Awareness
