Social skills types
What are Social Skills? 5 Examples in the Workplace
Your business will be more successful if your team members have strong social skills, often referred to as interpersonal or “people” skills. People with these key attributes are better at collaborating with coworkers, customers, and clients, which typically leads to higher quality work and increased sales for your business.
As you’re making hiring and promotion decisions, look for people with these key interpersonal skills:
- Communication
- Cooperation
- Leadership
- Relationship-building
- Empathy
Here are some social skills examples, tips to help you identify people with these skills, and why they’re an asset to your organization.
What are Social Skills?They are socially focused soft skills that people use to build relationships with coworkers, clients, and customers. There are dozens of “people” skills that people use every day, but the most impactful ones include:
1.
If your team members have strong written, verbal, and non-verbal communication skills, your team will be more efficient and effective. Whether they are writing an email or speaking up in a team meeting, people with strong communication skills can explain their ideas and give instructions clearly and concisely.
People with strong communication skills are also active listeners. They may ask follow-up questions, give actionable feedback, remember what people say, and expand on the ideas of others.
You will be able to assess a candidate’s written communication skills from their resume, cover letter, and any writing samples. If you move forward with the interview process, you’ll be able to quickly evaluate their verbal communication skills (for instance, whether they are engaging and speak clearly and confidently). You’ll also witness their non-verbal communication in action through body language, eye contact, and facial expressions.
2. Cooperation
When your employees cooperate with one another, they share ideas, provide advice, and pitch in when a coworker needs help.
While competition is integral to some jobs, like being a trial lawyer or politician, your company will be more productive if your coworkers work together as a team.
Look for employees who praise their coworkers, congratulate them, and offer to help with projects or any problems that arise. When you interview candidates, ask them to provide an example of a time they worked closely with a small team and what makes them a good “team player.”
3. Leadership
There are several social skills that signal someone’s leadership capability, including decision-making skills, the ability to delegate, an eye toward team-building, and confidence. It’s important to understand that being an effective leader doesn’t mean talking the loudest or otherwise being an “alpha” presence in the office (in fact, that behavior often drives away good employees).
Look for employees who lead new projects, mentor team members, and identify problems and solutions. Ask candidates to tell you about a time they led a team at work or school and what traits make them a good leader.
4. Relationship-Building
Your company will perform better if your employees are adept at developing relationships with colleagues, clients, and customers. It will improve employee recruitment and retention, increase employee morale and engagement, and help you gain repeat customers and clients.
Employees with strong relationship-building skills are collaborative, friendly, and engaging. Ask candidates to share what they think past coworkers would say about working with them—and then check with their references.
5. Empathy
Empathetic employees have an easier time connecting with colleagues, customers, and clients. If your employees are empathetic, they understand other people’s emotions and can build stronger and more productive relationships.
Look for employees who are respectful and accepting of other people’s perspectives. Ask candidates to tell you about a time they worked with a difficult coworker, customer, or client and were able to navigate or even diffuse the tension.
There are numerous ways your company will benefit from having coworkers with strong social skills. Here are the advantages you’re likely to see if your employees have all the key skills:
- Heightened Employee Morale. When your employees work well together, employee morale and engagement is sure to surge. Your employees will be more productive, collaborative, and motivated, making your team and business more successful.
- Increased Productivity and Performance. If your employees have all these socially focused soft skills, they will be able to work together more effectively. It’s likely they will produce higher quality work, making it more likely you’ll have repeat customers and clients.
- Improved Employee Recruitment and Retention. When a critical mass of employees possesses these important skills, they become tenants of your company culture, helping you recruit and retain top talent.
You need the right team in place for your business to be successful. Now you know the key social skills to look for when you’re evaluating candidates and employees and how they will help your bottom line. Attract and retain employees with the right blend of hard and soft skills by implementing additional hiring and management advice from Monster.
75 Social Skills Examples (2023)
Social skills refer to the skills that you need in order to successfully communicate and work with others in a functioning society, community, or culture.
You need social skills both in schools and in the workplace.
Great examples of social skills for students include collaboration, cooperation, and the ability to take feedback.
As you move into your career, examples of social skills or the workplace might include the ability to give constructive criticism, manage a team, work within a team toward common goals, and remain professional in tense situations.
Social Skills Examples
1. Verbal communication
While most people can communicate verbally, there is a wide spectrum of skillfulness in speech.
For example, as a trainee teacher, I had to train myself to speak slowly and explicitly. If you are not explicit in what you say, you leave room for interpretation that can lead people into twisting or misinterpreting your words.
The flaws in verbal communication are demonstrated in the famous game of telephone. Our words are often misunderstood and misheard, so the skill in speaking clearly and choosing your words wiself can help you immensely in social situations.
2. Cooperation
Cooperation skills emerge in childhood at about age 4 and a half, with the emergence of children’s cooperative play. From here on, we learn to cooperate with others to achieve common goals.
The ability to cooperate is an essential social skill for the vast majority of jobs in today’s world.
A person working in teams will need to be able to work with their teammates to work toward a common goal. This may require putting aside differences, finding comonalities, and making concessions.
Similarly, if you’re in a company that works with outside stakeholders, you’ll need to be able to cooperate with other companies to reach common financial goals (see also: collaboration).
3. Leadership
Leadership skills are advanced social skills. They involve the ability to manage teams or individuals so that they reach their greatest potential.
There are multiple theories of good leadership, but in general, a good leader is seen as a person who has high expectations of their group, can manage the internal personal dynamics well, and can ensure the team is moving toward its common goals.
Good leaders are often charismatic (which helps convince people to follow them), attentive to the needs of their group, and capable of motivating their followers.
Leadership skills are usually developed in adulthood when people are given opportunities to take on supervisory and managerial roles in organizations.
4. Empathy
Empathy refers to your ability to relate to the emotions of others. This is an excellent social skill because it helps you to reach mutual understanding during interactions.
For example, if you come across a person who has made a mistake, your empathy may help to mange the situation well. If you are an unempathetic person, you might chastise and belittle the person.
But if you are an empathetic person, you are likely to see that you, like them, have made mistakes, and can recall that terrible personal feeling you have when you’ve made a mistake.
This will help you to work with the person who made the mistake so they can rectify it, leading to better outcomes for all.
5. Conflict resolution
Conflict resolution refers to the ability to find common ground or resolution between two competing parties.
Conflicts can occur for a range of reasons, such as resource scarcity, ideological disagreements, or conflicting goals.
A person with strong social skills will have the ability to defuse a situation, lower the intensity of emotions, and help the two conflicting parties achieve positive mediation.
This is an important social skill for people working as teachers, lawyers, therapists, police, and in managerial roles in workplaces.
6. Active listening
Active listening is a social skill that can be explicitly learned and practiced. It involves being an engaged listener that turns listening into a two-way communication approach.
Active listeners use strategies like nodding, maintaining eye contact, and using facial expressions to demonstrate their engagement to the person they are listening to.
It can also involve non-invasive verbal cues like saying “yes” intermittently to show the speaker that you are following along.
Once the speaker has stopped speaking, an active listener will often ask open-ended questions to achieve clarification.
7. Non-verbal communication
Non-verbal communication is understood to be a social skill because you send a lot of signals to people you’re talking to through your body language and signs.
For example, a person with great social skills will walk into a room with excellent posture. They will make eye contact with others and shake hands firmly. A person with poor social skills will walk into the room slouched, stand in the corner out of fear of others, and not extend their hand to shake hands when others approach.
Other examples of non-verbal communication include your smile, the way you dress, pointing, and even sign language.
8. Humor
Humor is an advanced social skill that can be used to diffuse tense situations and endear others to you.
For example, a witty joke at just the right time can help everyone around you to relax.
It may set a friendly atmosphere or help tone down the level of formality.
However, a bad joke at the wrong situation can be fatal for a conversation and even your reputation!
So, humor is truly a social skill in the sense that if you’ve got good humor with good timing, you can go a long way in life. Yet, if you use humor poorly, it can demonstrate your lack of social skills.
9. Giving constructive criticism
Constructive feedback refers to feedback that is honest and helpful. It doesn’t shy away from pointing out areas for improvement, but is never cruel or condescending.
The ability to give constructive criticism can get you a long way in life. In school and the workplace, you need to be able to give good feedback that doesn’t offend and leaves the person thinking that you wish them well. This will help to maintain social relationships in the long-term.
As you move into leadership positions, you’ll reach a point where you give constructive feedback regularly.
Here, to become a trusted and respected leader, you need to be able to give that feedback in a way that ensures people know you have high expectations and unconditional positive regard for them.
10. Waiting your turn
In some societies, such as the United Kingdom, the ability to wait your turn is incredibly important. In fact, not waiting your turn may be a social taboo.
This is a basic and fundamental part of social awareness. In everyday situations where you are in crowds of strangers, you’ll need to respect this social convention.
Common examples of times when you use this social skill might be at the doctor’s office, waiting for a bus, lining up to buy tickets, or waiting to be served at a cafe or restaurant.
11. Using manners
Good manners is a basic social skill. Without them, you contravene social mores that are required in order to get re-invited to social gatherings or even a second interview for a job.
Manners does, however, change depending on the context. For example, good manners in some countries is to not finish all the food on your plate to demonstrate that you’re full. By contrast, in other countries, it’s considered bad manners to leave food behind.
Therefore, this social skill also requires cultural competency in order to fully pull it off.
12. Compromising
The ability to compromise helps prevent unnecessary conflict and achieve common goals.
This social skill is particularly important in business. For example, if you are trying to secure a contract to sell products to another business, you might not be able to agree on the price.
To reach a common compromise, you might need to agree to a lower price for your goods, but in return, the person buying your goods might agree to buy more goods overall.
Compromise is also a necessary social skill in group work situations, such as when you’re working in a group on a university task.
Not everyone will perfectly agree on what to do, so some give and take may be necessary.
However, compromise doesn’t just mean meeting half way. It usually means coming up with a creative solution so everyone feels happy with the result. You may give up one aspect in exchange for keeping another.
13. Being patient
Patience is a necessary social skill in jobs where you’re working with others. For example, it’s an extremely important soft skill for teachers.
Teachers need patience because almost by definition the people they’re teaching don’t know or understand what they are saying.
The teacher is, ideally, teaching new knowledge.
Thus, patience is required while the teacher waits for the students to come to a point of understanding.
14. Receiving feedback
The ability to humbly and graciously receive feedback is a social skill that needs to be developed in childhood, but is one we often work on our whole life.
Feedback can be hard to hear. It often involves being told about your weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and blind spots.
But the trick to receiving feedback is keeping in mind that the feedback is very valuable for your own self-development. If you can listen to the feedback with a mindset of being grateful for hearing about ways you can improve, it will be easier to hear, and you’ll start to seek out feedback rather than being offended by it.
15. Sharing resources
Sharing resources is a social skill that children begin to develop around the ages of 4-7. Before then, they generally experience egostism and high amounts of selfishness.
Resource sharing is a characteristic of emerging cooperative play, where children also begin to share common goals and see benefits in working as a group.
As we move into adulthood, sharing resources becomes an important groupwork skill because we come to realize that sharing is mutually beneficial, both because it encourages reciprocation, and because we can often get more done when pooling resources than working independently.
16. Finding common interests
The ability to find common interests with others helps to break the ice and identify areas where two people can find mutually enjoyable conversation.
This can be as simple as sharing experiences, thoughts, and ideas on the same topic during small talk. However, common interest can lead to greater cooperation and the development of genuine partnerships.
Indeed, friendships often form as a result of common interest. For example, we befriend peers at school because we have shared experiences in the classroom. As we move into adulthood, our friendships often cohere around workplace, hobby, and religious groups because of the shared common interests within each of those in-groups.
17. Asking for help
Asking for help is a social skill that many adults still struggle with. This can be due to anxiety and even fear that asking for help is a sign of weakness.
However, the act of asking for help has substantial personal benefits that make it an important and valuable trait to have.
But knowing how to ask for help is equally important.
Asking for help should be preceded by attempts at finding answers yourself. For example, before asking a teacher for help, a student should ideally conduct independent research and brainstorm answers.
If the student still needs answers, then asking the teacher might be the right solution.
Here, we can see that you don’t need to just be capable of asking for help, but also be strategic in using this strategy to make sure it’s socially appropriate.
18. Online etiquette (netiquette)
In the digital age, online etiquette has become an increasingly important social skill – and one many people fail at.
As an online teacher, I have often written about my surprise at students’ lack of understanding of how to send a professional email, which should involve a salutation and a sign-off.
Similarly, on social media, online etiquette may involve only saying things online that you’d also say face-to-face, having the self-awareness to restrain yourself from saying things in the heat of the moment, and being able to step away from a negative social media interaction.
19. Persuasion
Persuasion is an advances social skill that might be useful in sales jobs. It involves being able to convince someone through reasoning, argument, and even emotional appeals.
We can see persuasion at work during debates. Each opposing person gets a chance to explain their side of the argument. The way the frame your perspective, the evidence you provide, and the emotional connection you make can help sway observers to your side.
In fact, school debate teams are often set up primarily as a means for helping students to develop skills in persuasion through verbal argument.
20. Delegation
Delegation is a leadership skill that refers to the ability to distribute tasks among a group in order to most effectively complete a larger project.
For example, if you are a group leader, you might set up group roles such as ‘researcher’, ‘writer’, or ‘IT specialist’ in order to ensure each person knows exactly what they are doing.
When in leadership roles, you might also need to think about how to delegate tasks to get the most out of your team. You would want to delegate a task to someone who you think will be best at that task and try to get the best out of each team member.
21. Social awareness
Social awareness refers to the subtle and implicit contextual signs in a social situation that you need to be aware of.
An example might be:
- Knowing when to leave: If you’re invited over to dinner and your host starts clearing the table or appears tired, you’ll read that social cue and start getting ready to leave.
- Knowing the atmosphere: If you’re in a very formal situation, it may be inappropriate to make a joke.
- Reading emotions: Having social awareness might also involve being able to see when a person is feeling sad and anxious. If you can read their emotions, you’ll know how to act respectfully around them.
22. Tolerance
Tolerance today is generally referred to the ability to tolerate someone else’s culture. But it can also simply mean being able to accept people around you who you don’t agree with.
In the first definition, it may mean that you will see people who practice a different religious or cultural practice to you and you’ll still be okay with interacting with them politely and professionally.
In the second defintion, it may mean working with someone who has a different approach or opinions to you. Instead of being rude to them, you may decide to be tolerant of their approach and accept that they have the right to their perspective.
23. Agreeableness
Agreeableness refers to a person’s ability to engage in civil and polite conversation.
Generally, it means you avoid controversial topics. When the controversies arise, agreeable people have a capacity to navigate them without offending others, while still not compromising on their own beliefs.
By contrast, a person with low agreeableness might regularly respond to questions with “No”, “I disagree”, or “That’s wrong”.
One way to increase your agreeableness is to hedge your statements. This means that instead of saying “I disagree”, you might say “that’s an interesting perspective. How did you come to that conclusion?” This continues the conversation without lying or causing an argument.
24. Public speaking
People who are good public speakers often rise to positions of leadership and power, while people who lack this social skill may find it hard to move up the social hierarchy.
We can see the some of the most inspiring people in history used their public speaking skills to rally people behind them. Examples include Winston Churchill, Barack Obama, and Volodimir Zelenski.
A good public speaker is able to use their tone and speed of voice to compel people to listen. They may be good at constructing an engaging story and be able to mix up humor and seriousness to keep people engaged.
To learn public speaking, you need to practice it. There are many ways to do this – from joining a Toastmasters group to starting a podcast!
Social Skills for Kids
- Playing alongside each other (parallel play)
- Playing together on shared games (cooperative play)
- Observing others
- Waiting your turn
- Asking politely
- Refusing politely
- Self restraint
- Respecting personal space
- Respecting personal property
- Voice control (‘inside voice’)
- Following rules
- Applauding performers
- Greeting strangers
- Communicating emotions
- Non-verbal communication
- Choosing
- Expressing gratitude
- Making eye contact
Social Skills for Students
- Working toward common goals
- Collaboration
- Etiquette
- Netiquette
- Respecting elders
- Knowing when to stop
- Active listening
- Dressing appropriately for school
- Exercising patience
- Organizing a team
- Negotiating with peers
- Cooperation
- Written communication
- Asking engaging questions
- Volunteering to particiate
- Speaking in group settings
- Vocabulary selection for the context
- Compromise
- Receiving constructive criticism
- Giving constructive criticism
- Consoling others
Social Skills for Teens
- Agreeableness
- Being a team player
- Taking a supporting role
- Empathizing with peers
- Prosocial behavior
- Walking away
- Contextually appropriate humor
- Accepting the umpire’s ruling
- Losing humbly
- Winning gracefully
- Turning the other cheek
- Holding your tongue
- Overcoming egocentrism
- Offering encouragement
- Adhering to social norms
- Reading social cues
- Social awareness
- Offering suggestions
Social Skills for Adults
- Leadership
- Mentoring
- Coaching
- Setting the example
- Modeling behaviors
- Teaching
- Conflict resolution
- De-escalation
- Public speaking
- Tolerance
- Self-advocacy
- Protecting the weak
- Taking a stand
- Persuasiveness
- Community building
- Cold introductions to strangers
- Altruism
- Inclusion of outsiders
Why are Social Skills Important in the Workplace?
Social skills are increasingly important in workplaces because modern workplaces tend to involve teams of people working on complex projects.
Economies of the 21st Century are increasingly focused on difficult problems that can’t be solved individually. To get things done, you have to work within and across teams. This means you’ll be in social situations constantly.
As a result, employers tend to seek out people with strong social skills who can navigate tricky professional social situations. Importantly, an employee with good social skills should be able to work toward common goals within a team, be a constructive team member, and be supportive of other people within the team.
Conclusion
Social skills overlap with a range of other important skillsets for successful students and employees. For example, you will also need organizational skills, communication skills, leadership skills, and digital skills (as you can see, there’s big overlap here – to the extent that communication skills could be considered an example of social skills). Combined, the ability to apply a range of professional, personal, and social skills in the workplace and as a student will help you to succeed and develop important social capital.
Chris Drew (PhD)
Website | + posts
Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education.
6 types of social skills and what are they for? / psychology
Throughout our lives we are forced to face a number of social situations in which we must interact with other people. In order to deal effectively with each of these situations, people must develop what is known as social skills.
These abilities allow us to communicate with others and resolve situations and conflicts in our interactions with others. In addition, there are different kinds of social skills which are classified according to their complexity and according to the functions they perform.
- Article on the topic: "Assertive communication: how to express yourself clearly"
What social skills?
At present, there is no consensus in the world of psychology that allows unequivocally and equally to define the concept of "social skills". However, if we take into account both its characteristics and its functions, we can define social skills as a set of tactics or behavioral maneuvers that people naturally learn and which are used in situations of interaction with other people in order to successfully solve a social situation.
The fact that these skills are not innate but acquired spontaneously throughout our lives makes them susceptible to learning and improvement through social skills teaching methods. feelings in an adequate and satisfactory manner. In the same way, it also gives us the opportunity to express our opinions and thoughts according to the situation in which we live..
Thanks to them, we enjoy favorable and positive interpersonal relationships; we feel better with ourselves and help achieve our goals in our social life .
These skills are also observed in the animal world. In nature, we can observe communication skills and relationships between members of the same animal species, these abilities are similar to what we know as social skills.
Finally and finally, social skills have a number of characteristics that distinguish them and distinguish them from other types of human abilities. These characteristics:
- They are learned and therefore is able to learn and improve .
- They are essential if we are to have good mental and psychological health.
- They are not rigid patterns of behavior but norms that adapt to every situation.
Types of social skills
There are various ways to group different types of social skills according to the classification criteria used. In this case, we will stick to the classical classification of social skills, within which, as we will see, there are 6 different sets.
It should be added that all these categories are modulated by two main attitudes in establishing interpersonal relationships.
1. Basic Social Skills
They are the first to be acquired, being important for creating and maintaining satisfactory communication . These include:
- Know how to start a conversation.
- know talk .
- Active listening skills.
- Wording of questions.
- Introduce yourself .
- Thank you.
- The ability to give compliments.
- Empathic skills .
2. Advanced Social Skills
After a person has acquired basic social skills, he has the necessary base to work on advanced social skills, which gives us strategies for conveniently dealing with social relationships. This category of types of social skills includes the following skills:
- Opportunity to express your opinion.
- Ask for help.
- Opportunity to apologize .
- participation.
- Offer and give instructions.
- Follow instructions.
- Conviction ability .
3. Affective social skills
These types of skills are related to the ability to effectively identify and manage both our feelings and the feelings of others. Within this category there are:
- Identify and recognize emotions and feelings.
- Understand the feelings of others.
- Container express feelings and emotions .
- Expression of affects.
- Respect the feelings of others.
- Capacity for to face the wrath of others .
- Independent ability.
- Management of fear of communication with people.
- Ability to inspire others.
- Container for comfort others .
4. Negotiation skills or alternatives to aggression
Social negotiation skills enable us to avoid or manage conflicts.
They lie in the ability to solve problems in interpersonal relationships without the use of aggression or violence. They are:
- Know how to ask for permission.
- Possibility to share .
- Ability to help others.
- The ability to love yourself.
- Ability to tolerate and respond to jokes.
- Negotiation skills .
- Ability of self-control.
- Ability to defend one's rights.
- Don't get into fights .
- Ability to avoid problems for other people.
5. Stress Coping Skills
These types of skills are essential for successful conflict resolution in situations of tension or stress. This group includes:
- The ability to manage feelings of shame.
- Ability to protect others.
- Tolerance for failure.
- Ability to respond to beliefs .
- Ability to respond to an accusation.
- Ability to formulate complaints or claims.
- Ability to respond to complaints or grievances.
- sportiness.
- Know how to resist group pressure.
- Manage a difficult conversation .
- Tolerance to be ignored or disregarded.
- Ability to deal with conflicting messages.
6. Planning skills
In the category of social skills related to planning, we can find:
- Recognition of one's abilities .
- Ability to make decisions.
- Setting goals .
- Determine the cause of problems and solve them.
- Collection of information.
- Ability to focus on a task.
Social skills: what are they and how to develop them
May 22, 2020
Social skills are the skills a person has to successfully interact with others. They allow you to competently conduct a dialogue, improve the quality of communication, and also keep your emotions under control.
Many people think that social skills are just about being able to communicate. But this is a misconception. In this article, you can learn in detail about the development, formation and features of social skills.
Types of social skills
Developed social skills allow a person to control his emotional state and express himself in various areas. A person who is able to develop social skills can successfully lead people, have good persuasive power. The formation of such skills allows you to correctly convey the position, using logic or eloquence at the right time.
Social and communication skills include:
- presenting oneself and greeting another person;
- control of voice, emotions, keeping calm, sincerity;
- conducting a conversation and presenting oneself in a team;
- the ability to accept compliments and respond to criticism.
Skill development methods
By developing social skills, a person becomes more charismatic, self-confident and calm.
He learns to achieve his goal in life, climbs the career ladder. The main methods of forming social skills are as follows:
- Getting someone else's opinion. It is impossible to see your behavior from the outside, so in this case it is worth asking for help from another person who will point out mistakes, advantages and disadvantages. It is desirable to take into account the opinion of several people.
- Gaining self-confidence. Having completely relaxed in communication, a person becomes more charming and able to maintain an interesting conversation. If you notice that insecurity prevents you from showing social skills, then you need to eradicate this problem.
- Communication with successful people. Social skills can be formed by communicating with people who have managed to achieve great heights in life. When communicating, try to pay attention to how successful people behave. Draw some conclusions for yourself, but avoid imitation. Do not be afraid to make new acquaintances, surround yourself with strong people and, if necessary, ask them for advice.
- Practice regularly. Even if you read a lot of smart books and articles, but do not practice, all your skills will come to naught. Try to communicate regularly with people, improving social skills. And the online intensive Wikium "Effective Communication" will help you learn how to interact with people in any situation.
Additional recommendations
All suggested teaching methods are quite simple. You can supplement them with the following recommendations:
- develop a sense of empathy towards others;
- be interested in other people's problems and become an active listener;
- share your stories and learn to listen to others;
- travel, walk around the city a lot;
- develop acting talent;
- learn how to properly resolve conflict situations.
All these simple and uncomplicated rules are significant in the development of social skills. But often people are hindered by fear, insecurity, irascibility, arrogance, excessive gullibility.
