Where do your social skills rate?

S

ocial skills are often “picked up” naturally, rather than intentionally taught by parents or teachers. But sometimes they’re not! And while some people are actually born with the gift of social-emotional intelligence, people with average or even lower scores on this measure can definitely improve when shown how.

Before attempting to help your kids expand their social skills, you’ll want to make sure you have a fairly full set of these skills yourself. Go ahead and rate yourself on the following social skill deficits. These are behaviors that can cause people not to like you. You can give yourself a “not one of my problems,” “sometimes do this but not regularly,” “do this more often than I should” rating. Use the list to help you improve your own game even as you begin to teach your kids how to up theirs.

Not saying enough.

Saying nothing, giving one-word answers, failing to ask questions, and failing to react to what the other person has said, are all examples of “not saying enough.” This behavior makes your conversational partner do all the work. She’ll feel tired, strained, or drained from the effort of communicating with you. In healthy conversation, people take turns contributing and responding to each other.

Monopolizing the conversation.

This involves talking at length about whatever interests you and ignoring cues that others want to speak. It may also involve talking over other people, interrupting the speaker, and ignoring topics the other person introduces in favor of constantly promoting your own. Another variation of this style is the tendency to compete with the speaker, again returning the focus to yourself (“You think you had a bad experience with ABC Airline. Wait till I tell you what happened to me!). Monopolizing forces other people to be your audience when they actually want to be participants in an exchange of ideas. Your conversation style offers them few rewards and plenty of work.

Failing to share and care.

When you leave yourself out of the conversation by failing to share your true thoughts and feelings, your conversational partner feels like she’s engaging with someone who is hiding behind a wall or a facade. It leaves her feeling alone instead of connected. A rich conversation involves sharing your own experiences and unique thoughts and feelings while also showing a sincere interest in your social partner’s experience and perspective.

Oversharing.

This social faux pas involves revealing too much private information to people who haven’t yet earned your trust. Strangers, acquaintances, and even friends who you don’t know very much about aren’t the ones to talk to about the details of your family life, your personal struggles, or your financial situation. Oversharing makes other people feel very uncomfortable. They know that it would be highly inappropriate to share their private lives with you and so they won’t, leaving you to indulge in a one-way full disclosure. This creates an unpleasant, unbalanced communication. Only open up to people you’ve gotten to know well slowly, bit by bit, over a prolonged period of time and only if they’ve shared their own details with you in equal measure along the way.

Violating Boundaries.

One way to make people uncomfortable is to literally step into their personal space. When having a conversation with someone who isn’t your spouse or child, it’s important to maintain a comfortable physical distance (2 - 4 feet away) for friends and even further away for business associates. A different type of boundary violation is offering unsolicited advice. No matter how great your tips may be, they (and you) are likely to be rejected when they were never invited. Wait until someone asks you for advice before offering it.

Negativity.

Talking about what’s wrong with people and/or the world and what bad things have happened and what bad things will happen is stressful and not fun. When you raise people’s energy, make them laugh, inspire them or make them feel happier than before you entered a conversation with them, they will want to see plenty more of you.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but getting these skills right will be a great place to start. Add a smile to your conversation and you’re ready to go!

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 975)