Social skills meaning

What are Social Skills? | SkillsYouNeed

Social skills are the skills we use to communicate and interact with each other, both verbally and non-verbally, through gestures, body language and our personal appearance.

Human beings are sociable creatures and we have developed many ways to communicate our messages, thoughts and feelings with others.

What is said is influenced by both verbal language and the way we use it - tone of voice, volume of speech and the words we choose - as well as by more subtle messages such as body language, gestures and other non-verbal communication methods.

The fact that some people are better 'social interactors' than others has led to detailed investigations into the nature and function of interpersonal interaction.

Developing social skills is about being aware of how we communicate with others, the messages we send and how methods of communication can be improved to make the way we communicate more efficient and effective.

There are distinct advantages to having well developed social skills.

Here are five:

1. More and Better Relationships

Identifying well with individuals leads to more relationships and, at times, friendships.

By developing your social skills you become more charismatic, a desirable trait . People are more interested in charismatic people as charismatic people are (or at least appear to be) more interested in them.

Most people know you cannot advance far in life without strong interpersonal relationships. Focusing on relationships will help you get a job, get promoted and make new friends. Well honed social skills can increase your happiness and satisfaction and give you a better outlook on life.

More relationships can also help to reduce the negative effects of stress and boost your self-esteem.

2. Better Communication

Relating with people and being able to work in large groups naturally develops one's communication skills.

After all, you can not have great social skills without good communication skills and being able to convey one's thoughts and ideas may be the single most important skill that you can develop in life..

3. Greater Efficiency

If you are good with people, you can more easily avoid being with the people you do not like as much as others.

Some people dread social interactions because they do not wish to spend time with individuals who do not have similar interests and viewpoints. It is a lot easier to attend a meeting at work or a party in your personal life if you know at least some of the people who will be there.

If you are in a social situation and do not want to spend time with 'John' because you don't like him or he cannot help you with a particular issue, a good set of social skills will allow you to politely convey that you need to spend time with other people at the get together.

See our pages improving self-esteem and building confidence.

4. Advancing Career Prospects

Most worthwhile jobs have a 'people component' and the most lucrative positions often involve a large amount of time spent interacting with employees, media and colleagues.

It is rare that an individual can remain isolated in their office and still excel in their job. Most organisations are looking for individuals with a particular, tactical, skill set: the ability to work well in a team and to influence and motivate people to get things done.

See our pages: Employability Skills and Transferable Skills for more information about the kind of skills that employers are looking for.

5. Increased Overall Happiness

Getting along and understanding people will help to open many personal and career-related doors.

Having the confidence to start a conversation at a work-related conference may lead to a new job offer with a higher salary. A smile and 'hello' in a social situation may lead to a friendship being formed.

See our pages: Personal Presentation and Emotional Intelligence for more.

Characteristics of Social Skills

• Social skills are goal-directed.
• Socially skilled behaviours are interrelated in the sense that one person may use more than one kind of behaviour at the same time, for the same goal.
• Social skills should be appropriate to the situation of communication. Different social skills will be used for professional and personal communication.
• Social skills can be identified as certain types of behaviour whereby an individual can be judged on how socially skilled they are.
• Social skills can be taught, practiced and learned.
• Social skills should be under the cognitive control of the individual - learning them involves learning when to use particular behaviours, as well as what behaviours to use, or how to use them.

Use the characteristics of social skills to think more about what the term, 'Social Skills' means.

The acknowledgement of social skills in this way leads us to think that social skills can indeed be learnt, usually through practice and experience but also taught.

Further Reading from Skills You Need

The Skills You Need Guide to Interpersonal Skills eBooks.

Develop your interpersonal skills with our series of eBooks. Learn about and improve your communication skills, tackle conflict resolution, mediate in difficult situations, and develop your emotional intelligence.

Develop your Social Skills

As social skills involve effective communication it is useful to further explore the models of communication and understand how effective communication can be encouraged and developed.

We have lots of further information to help with this development, follow the links below for more.

It is generally acknowledged that social skills and character development are more difficult to attain and harder to change when people get older, so the sooner you start, the better.

Take our Interpersonal Skills Self-Assessment to discover your strengths and weaknesses.

Social Skills - Kid Sense Child Development

What are social skills?

Social skills are the skills we use everyday to interact and communicate with others. They include verbal and non-verbal communication, such as speech, gesture, facial expression and body language. A person has strong social skills if they have the knowledge of how to behave in social situations and understand both written and implied rules when communicating with others. Children with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Pervasive Developmental Disorder (Not Otherwise Specified) and Asperger’s have difficulties with social skills.

Why are social skills important?

Social skills are vital in enabling an individual to have and maintain positive interactions with others. Many of these skills are crucial in making and sustaining friendships. Social interactions do not always run smoothly and an individual needs to be able to implement appropriate strategies, such as conflict resolution when difficulties in interactions arise. It is also important for individuals to have ’empathy’ (i.e. being able to put yourself into someone else’s shoes and recognise their feelings) as it allows them to respond in an understanding and caring way to how others are feeling.

What are the building blocks necessary to develop social skills?

• Attention and concentration: Sustained effort, doing activities without distraction and being able to hold that effort long enough to get the task done.
• Receptive (understanding) language: Comprehension of language.
• Expressive (using) language: The use of language through speech, sign or alternative forms of communication to communicate wants, needs, thoughts and ideas.
• Play skills: Voluntary engagement in self motivated activities that are normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment where the activities may be, but are not necessarily, goal oriented.
• Pre-language skills: The ways in which we communicate without using words and include things such as gestures, facial expressions, imitation, joint attention and eye-contact.
• Self regulation: The ability to obtain, maintain and change one’s emotion, behaviour, attention and activity level appropriate for a task or situation in a socially acceptable manner.
• Executive functioning: Higher order reasoning and thinking skills.
• Planning and sequencing: The sequential multi-step task or activity performance to achieve a well-defined result.

How can you tell if my child has problems with social skills?

If a child has difficulties with social skills they might:

• Use fleeting eye contact, does not consistently use eye contact or stares at you fixedly.
• Not be able to take turns when talking to their communication partner.
• Struggle with using appropriate body language (e.g. stands too close/far to another person).
• Fail to use polite forms of communication (e.g. saying: please, thank-you, hello and good-bye).
• Be unable to start and end conversations appropriately.
• Interrupt others frequently.
• Be unable to maintain a topic of conversation and provides irrelevant comments during a conversation.
• Talk ‘at you’ in a conversation as opposed to engaging in a two way conversation ‘with’ you.
• Not ask appropriate questions.
• Repeat information in conversation and tend to talk about topics of their own interest (e.g. trains, a favourite TV show/person).
• Show little or no interest in what the other person has to say.
• Fail to understand jokes and language, such as sarcasm, idioms and non-literal information (e.g. ‘This place is a pig sty!’).
• Interpret what you say in a very literal way (e. g. when you say “Can you open the door?” the child “yes” without moving to actually open the door).
• Talk with unusual speed, stress, rhythm, intonation, pitch and/or tone of voice.
• Be unable to understand different tones of voice or read facial cues.
• Fail to ask for clarification if they are confused or if the situation is unclear to them.
• Struggle to respond appropriately when asked to change their actions.
• Tend to disclose (excessively) personal information to unfamiliar people or strangers.
• Appear unaware of others and fail to read other people’s feelings based on their verbal and non-verbal cues.
• Be unable to respond to teasing, anger, failure and disappointment appropriately.
• Be unable to adjust or modify their language appropriately according to the communication situation.
• Lack empathy (i.e. is not able to imagine what it is like to be somebody else or in their situation).
• Lack imagination.
• Appear self-centred.
• Fail to understand the consequences of their actions.

What other problems can occur when a child has social skill difficulties?

When a child has social skill difficulties, they might also have difficulties with:

• Behaviour: The child’s actions, usually in relation to their environment (e.g. a child may engage in behaviour, such as refusing to go to social events including birthday parties or engage in inappropriate behaviour, such as tugging on a peer’s hair or yelling at someone to get their attention).
• Sensory processing: The child may have trouble attending or focusing and have difficulty interpreting information they receive from the environment.
• Completing academic work (e.g. the child may misinterpret verbal or written instructions for tasks and/or struggle with imaginative writing).
• Receptive (understanding) language: Comprehension of language.
• Expressive (using) language: The use of language through speech, sign or alternative forms of communication to communicate wants, needs, thoughts and ideas.
• Articulation: Clarity of speech sounds and spoken language.
• Fluency: The smoothness or flow with which sounds, syllables, words and phrases are produced when talking.
• Voice: The sound that we hear when someone talks which is unique to each person.
• Self regulation: The ability to obtain, maintain and change one’s emotion, behaviour, attention and activity level appropriate for a task or situation in a socially acceptable manner.
• Executive functioning: Higher order reasoning and thinking skills.

What can be done to improve social skills?

• Play with your child to help develop joint attention, turn-taking, shared interests, cooperation and appropriate play with toys.
• Emotions: Help the child to understand and display their own emotions and to recognise these emotions in other people.
• Empathy: Help the child to understand and recognise how other people are feeling in particular situations.
• Social stories: These are stories which are used to teach children specific social skills that they may find difficult to understand or are confusing. The goal of the story is to increase the child’s understanding by describing in detail a specific situation and suggesting an appropriate social response.
• Social skill groups: These are groups run with the express purpose of mastering social interaction with others.
  

What activities can help improve social skills?

• Visuals: Make up a poster of rules to remember when starting a conversation (e.g. using a friendly voice, making eye contact, using appropriate greetings, such as ‘hello’).
• Role play: Practise playground/party scenarios where the child does not know anybody. Model and create a list of different things you can say:
  • To join others who are playing (e.g. “Can I play too?”).
  • To introduce yourself (e.g. “Hi my name is ….”).
  • To politely negotiate with peers (e.g. “I don’t want that one. Can I have the blue car please?”).
• Sing songs, such as ‘If you’re happy and you know it’ to help teach a child about different emotions.
• Masks: Make masks together to help improve eye contact.
• Turn taking: Play turn taking games (e.g. board games) to encourage a child to say whose turn it is in the game (e.g. “My turn”, “Your turn”).
• Games: Play board games with the child. Make sure the child is not always the ‘winner’ so that they learn about ‘losing’ in a game and are able to cope better when this happens with their peers.
• Bean bag conversation: Throw a bean bag around a circle and each child takes a turn to contribute to the conversation. Think of different ways to contribute to the conversation (e.g. ask a question, comment on what has been said, add something related to the topic).
• Watch and comment: Role play different situations and comment about appropriate and inappropriate attempts of communication (e.g. standing too close or too far from another person, not using appropriate eye contact, interrupting a conversation).

Why should I seek therapy if I notice difficulties with social skills in my child?

Therapeutic intervention to help a child with social skills difficulties is important to:

• Help a child to engage appropriately with others during play, conversation and in interactions.
• Help a child to develop friendships at school and when accessing out of school activities (e.g. playing sport, attending a group such as Scouts).
• Help a child maintain friendships with peers.
• Help a child to behave appropriately during interactions with familiar people (e.g. parents, siblings, teachers, family friends) and unfamiliar individuals (e.g. adults and children they may need to engage with during excursions and when visiting places, such as the park or swimming pool).
• Assist a child in developing their awareness of social norms and to master specific social skills (e.g. taking turns in a conversation, using appropriate eye contact, verbal reasoning, understanding figurative language).
• Develop appropriate social stories to help teach the child about how to respond in specific social situations.
• Some children require explicit teaching about how to interact and communicate with others as these skills do not come naturally to them.

If left untreated what can difficulties with social skills lead to?

When children have difficulties with social skills, they might also have difficulties with:

• Making new friends.
• Maintaining friendships with peers.
• Communicating effectively with unfamiliar individuals during situations including asking for assistance in a shop, asking for directions if they are lost and negotiating with someone with whom they have had a disagreement.
• Reading/understanding social situations.
• Understanding jokes and figurative language during interactions with others, and when watching television shows and movies and reading books.
• Coping with failure.

 What type of therapy is recommended for social skill difficulties?

If your child has difficulties with social skills, it is recommended they consult a Speech Therapist.

If there are multiple areas of concern (i.e. beyond just social skills) both Occupational Therapy and Speech Therapy may well be recommended to address the functional areas of concern. This is the benefit of choosing Kid Sense provides both Occupational Therapy and Speech Therapy.

Social skills: what are they and what are they for

Social skills are the skills we use to communicate and interact with each other, both verbally and non-verbally, through language, gestures, body language and our appearance. Humans are sociable creatures and we have developed many ways to convey our messages, thoughts and feelings to other people. It is something vital to us, and that is why we attach so much importance to it from birth.

Communication is important to people and is achieved through good social skills. What is said is influenced by verbal language and how we speak (tone of voice, volume of speech, and words we choose), as well as more subtle messages. such as body language, gestures and other nonverbal ways of communicating.

There are people who are better "social partners" than others, for this reason there is extensive research into the nature and function of interpersonal interaction. Developing social skills is about being aware of how we communicate with others, the messages we send, and how communication methods can be improved to make the way we communicate more effective and efficient.

Index

• 1 Advantages of the presence of good social skills
  • 1.1 Best social relations
  • 1.2 Best communication
  • 1.3 Big efficiency
  • 1.4 Improve your view of life
  • 1.5 You will be happier than
• 2 characteristics of characteristics social skills

Benefits of having good social skills

Better social relationships

If you have a good way of communicating with others, you will have more friends. By developing your social skills, you become more charismatic, and anyone can like it. People are more interested in charismatic people because they are (or at least appear to be) more interested in themselves and others.

Most people know that without strong interpersonal relationships one cannot get very far in life. Focusing on relationships will help you get jobs, promotions, and make new friends. Well-honed social skills can increase your happiness and satisfaction by giving you a better perspective on life. In addition, good relationships with other people will also help you reduce your stress levels. boost self-esteem.

Better communication

Connecting with people and working in large groups will help you improve your communication skills. After all, you can't have good social skills without good communication skills and The ability to express your thoughts and ideas can be the most important skill you develop in life.

This is a good idea if you think your communication is poor or that your social skills are not what you want, you are making situations talk to other people. In this way, you can practice more, for example, in the cafeteria, at the seller in the supermarket, etc.

Greater efficiency

If you communicate well with people, it is easier for you to avoid people you don't like as much as others. And also others will be nice to you. Some people are afraid of social interactions because they do not want to spend time with people who have different interests and points of view . .. or they are even afraid of being with bad people.

It is much easier to attend a meeting at work or a party in your personal life if you know at least some of the people who will be there. If you find yourself in a social situation and don't want to spend time with a particular person because you don't like or can't help them with a particular problem, a good set of social skills will allow you to Politely communicate that you need to spend time with other people in the meeting.

Improve your outlook on life

The most valuable jobs have a "personal component" and the most lucrative jobs often require a lot of time spent interacting with employees, the media and others. It is rare that a person can remain isolated in his office and still succeed in his job.

Most companies are looking for people with a certain set of tactical skills - the ability to work well in a team, influence people and motivate them to achieve results.

You will be generally happier

Communication and understanding of people will help you open many personal doors related to your profession or in general in your personal relationships. Confidence that you will start a conversation at a work conference can lead to a new job offer with a higher salary. Smiling and "hello" in a social situation can lead to friendship... and friendship can give you valuable contacts in your life.

If you get along with the people around you, you will feel more happy, because you will understand that not everyone is bad or wants to take advantage of others. Moreover, they want to help. Although, if you encounter toxic people along the way in your life, it would be nice if you knew how to remove toxic people from your life so that they don't drain your energy.

Characteristics of social skills

To better understand what social skills are keep in mind these characteristics that define them very well.

An important aspect we need to consider is that cultural and socio-demographic variables are necessary for learning and assessing social skills, because Habits and relationships change depending on where we are .

Therefore, it is important not only to have a good set of social skills, but also You must know when and where to put these skills into practice. The latter is known as social competence.

so, the fact of owning them allows you to avoid anxiety in difficult or new social situations , facilitate emotional communication, problem solving and relationships with other people, if they adapt to the context.

"An emotionally intelligent person is capable of four areas: identify emotions, use emotions, understand emotions, and regulate emotions."

-John Mayer-

If certain social skills are lacking, will be passive in coping with situations avoiding them and accessing the demands of others. But you can also become aggressive, imposing criteria and violating the rights of others.

There are a large number of social skills, but At a general level, we can distinguish two types that encompass and organize the rest: basic social skills and complex social skills. Let's look at them in detail.

Basic skills

• listen . Listening is not the same as listening, only when we can take an active, close and empathetic approach to who is in front of us, we give form to this first step of our social interaction. This dimension, however basic it may seem, in many cases we fail.
• Start a conversation . No matter how curious we are, knowing how to create the right conversation start always says a lot about us. Requires ease, requires politeness and intimacy, requires positivity and communication skills where it does not seem threatening or unsafe, but quite the contrary.
• Ask a question. To know how to ask is to know how to demand and also to use the appropriate self-confidence. This social competence is one of the first things children are taught in the classroom, and the ones that can help us the most in our daily lives, in almost any context..
• Thank you. Have you met someone who is incapable of giving thanks? Knowing how to recognize the other is a core dynamic in any personal or professional relationship. This is courtesy and respect. Let's never forget this great tribute to social skills.
• Introduce yourself and other people. We do this in the context of friendship and family, as well as in the workplace or at school. Knowing how to present or introduce others is a very important basic skill. or another, depending on the characteristics and complexity of the same.
  • Empathy and emotional intelligence. These competencies are now required in every dynamic and circumstance. This is another root that exclusively feeds our relationship and that, without a doubt, we must know the practice effectively.
  • assertiveness. We mentioned this a minute ago. In a complex world such as social relationships, being able to defend ourselves with respect, talk about our needs, communicate and listen, claim rights, and also care for others is a great skill.
  • Ability to identify a problem, negotiate and evaluate solutions. This dimension is something we should all practice daily and maximize. In this way, we could more easily reach an agreement, agree and set goals in which both parties will benefit.
  • Ask for help. The realization that we do not know everything, that we need advice, support or other aspects, is an act of maturity. Knowing how to effectively ask for it is an example of good social skills..
  • Persuade others. To know how to convince is not to manipulate. It is the ability to argue, connect, and reach an understanding where to make the other see that a certain behavior or act can be more helpful. Creating impact and performing it with respect is an art worth learning.
  Why is good social skills management so important??

  As we can see, the problem of social skills is present in our daily life, both because of their presence and because of their absence, both in the family environment, and at work and with friends.

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