Effective Social Skills

Chapter 6 – Benchmarking and Engaging with Effective Social Skills

"I consider social skills a bit like learning a language. I've been practicing it for so long over so many years I've almost lost my accent."
— Daniel Tammet, English essayist, novelist, translator, and autistic savant

Obviously, some people find it easier to listen and talk confidently and relax naturally around people. However, just like with any other set of skills and anyone else, you can learn, develop, and enhance social skills.

Training yourself with social skills is a key factor in building social confidence. Developing them relates to being conscious of how you communicate with others and how you can improve your modes of communication effectively and efficiently.

Foremost, you must have the ability to understand the real sentiments of others or entering deeply into their core feelings when you interact with them. By recognizing how they truly feel, as well as showing your genuine interest to others, being empathic allows you to respond or react quickly in the most caring, affectionate, and understanding way towards their feelings.

Empathy is especially more important in the customer relations sector when dealing with some clients who approach them with issues or complaints. You should know how to express genuine understanding and concern for their questions and help them solve the issue.

A principal element of social anxiety is self-consciousness, which you can alleviate through concentrating firmly on another person. Being fascinated (no matter if you induced it at the start) with the conversation of others tends to heighten your comfort levels while making them feel engaging. Your intent here is that you should never worry about what you are going to talk about since you know you can cause others to converse.

With empathy, it develops in you another important skill of having the ability to focus outward. For all you know, the perfect social situations are those instances where you forget actually all about yourself, and rather, become totally focused on what is going on with others.

Listening: The Channel of

 Mention previous statements – Refer or go back later on to the comments of the talker (i.e., ‘as you have said earlier…’).

 Exercise attentive body languages – While others talk, maintain an eye-to-eye contact and exhibit stillness of your body to show your interest and attentiveness.

Actually, you should develop a real interest in others so that you can listen carefully to them. Like having empathy, it only through understanding the feeling of others where you can listen to them well.

Refrain from interrupting while others talk. Usually, this happens when you are feeling nervous. You must rather save your thoughts at a later instance when the speaker has shortly finished talking.

When you are anxious, it really tempts you to be more attentive to yourself; engrossing yourself to thinking deeply about how anxious you are and how you will react to the situation. In hindsight, your disposition of nervousness or silence amidst a conversation can make others feel that you do not really care to listen to what they