Humans are social creatures. They developed numerous ways to pass their messages, thoughts and feelings to others. Both verbal language and ways you use it influence on what you say: tone of your voice, words you choose, and more “thin” messages shaped as non-verbal signs.
Social skills are all the abilities you can use to communicate with other people both verbally and non-verbally by using gestures, body language and your personal appearance. The process of gaining those skills is called socialization. A person not having those skills developed enough is bound to misunderstanding and difficulties in communication.
Why to Develop Social Skills?
I you haven’t decided yet if it is worth to concentrate on improving this field of your life, here is the list of advantages you could gain if to develop social skills.
Build Good Relationships with Others
As only you learn how to communicate with people correctly, you’ll be able to build better relationships with them and to create a solid, strong friendship. By developing social skills, you gain more charisma and start attracting others.
Become a Master of Communication
You can’t have strong social skills without communicative abilities developed. Most part of your talks with other people will pass and finish with a great pleasure for both sides. Every your message will be accepted exactly in the way you want it to.
Increase Effectiveness
A person who is unskilled in communication attracts people he or she does not really like. Such person is busy with constant quarrels and is under attention of similar people.
When having your social skills developed, you’ll be able to avoid meeting unpleasant people politely and start attracting pleasant ones. This will increase your effectiveness in many life fields.
Get New Career Development Perspectives
In our times, the most profitable positions are connected to a skill of conversation, negotiating, persuading. Here you can’t cheat on anyone: if you do not know how to communicate, this fact will become visible during the very first job interview already. Most of modern companies look for employees who can work in a team, are able to motivate and cause enthusiasm.
Increase Happiness Level
Social isolation and inability to build relationships correctly influence one’s feeling of happiness directly. If you can find approach to everyone, if you have the ability to solve conflicts, then you’ll be feeling well in any group and satisfied with every moment of your life.
Three Factors Basing Social Skills
Some components lay on a surface: words, gestures, behavior (we are going to talk about all that later). The rest of them are hidden, their influence is invisible, and so you should take them into account, too.
Notice
Any social situation can be determined somehow as they all require various kinds of behavior. To learn how to do that, you need to notice tips. Otherwise, notice the context.
For instance, when entering the room, you should try answering such questions:
- Is the mood friendly or tense?
- Are there my friends, relatives or strangers? Who is the most familiar?
- What is everyone busy with?
People unconsciously do that almost every time. Without those answers you can feel yourself “lost”. With them, you’ll catch up with the context and try entering the group.
Another tip: notice other people’s reactions, especially if the situation is not that good. Maybe, there are topics or questions being unsuitable. Your behavior can be understood as silly or even pushing, if you explain yourself what’s gone wrong.
Think
After you have noticed some special features, it is time to think what it all means. Why do people do what they do? Are they friendly or aggressive? Why?
To think means to predict answers of other people and to develop effective strategies to influence them.
The main problem of many people is that, they understand other people’s intentions wrong. And this is connected to their bad usage of a point number one: notice. So, before you start thinking and understanding, watch after events well enough.
Act
This means start interacting with people positively. If you’ve come to a party where you do not know anyone, it is not worth it to stand alone and expect somebody to make friends with you or speak at least. Act decisively, introduce yourself and start a dialogue.
Keeping up to these three principles can make you safe from many problems and allow you to improve your social skills level. If you ignore them or replace them somehow (for instance, start acting at once), you risk to become an unpleasant person.