How to Enhance Your Social Skills for Career Success
The way you conduct yourself at work and interact with people may have a significant influence on your job success—or failure. Working properly entails more than just executing tasks and projects successfully and on time. To be fully successful in your work, you will require social skills.
The Value of Social Skills
According to the Pew Research Center, professions that need social skills are becoming more popular, and this trend is predicted to continue. In 2018, 42% of all employees had professions that required the highest social skills. Meanwhile, between 1980 and 2018, the rise of employment in occupations requiring the highest social skills increased by 111%.
According to another Pew Research Center analysis, the highest employment growth—13.1% by 2024—is projected in positions requiring high degrees of social skills, such as bartenders and home health aides.
According to Harvard University research, those who can add social skills to their technical talents have greater career prospects and better salaries.
What Exactly Are Social Skills?
Social skills are soft talents that are characterised by how well you connect to people. They are also known as interpersonal skills. These are some examples:
- Verbal communication refers to how you talk to others, from your phrase to your tone of voice.
- Nonverbal communication: We don’t always communicate verbally; in fact, one eye roll may sometimes be worth a thousand words. Body language, facial emotions, eye contact, and other nonverbal cues are examples of nonverbal communication.
Other important social skills are empathy, listening, and cooperation.
You can understand why these skills might be valuable in the workplace: It is critical to be able to communicate effectively with other members of your team. If you work in a customer or client-facing capacity, your demeanour and listening skills may make a major impact in conversations.
How to Develop Your Social Skills
Some individuals are born with the gift of gab. Others, on the other hand, may find it more difficult to express themselves vocally during meetings and one-on-one engagements. Perhaps your resting face is unappealing, or you dislike making eye contact. It’s possible that even under the best of conditions, you find it difficult to interact with people. Whatever the cause, you may improve your social skills and feel more at ease at work.
Here’s how you may alter and enhance your social skills in order to excel at work and form better bonds with coworkers and customers.
- Examine the Situation
It’s critical to understand what abilities we have and which ones we need to work on. This may be awkward, but try approaching a trustworthy coworker and asking how you come across. We aren’t always mindful of how we conduct ourselves.
As you hear your colleague’s impressions, try not to get defensive. Take their comments to heart and see them as constructive input rather than a criticism.
- Observe Others
Keep an eye on your coworkers while you’re at work. What is their relationship like? What does it sound like when they have one-on-one talks with customers? Is there anything you can pick up on from their body language?
- Be a Duplicate
Once you have a decent feel of what others do, strive to emulate them. That might imply starting meetings by asking the individual sitting next to you about their weekend. You might also grin as you pass individuals in the corridor. Perhaps it means paying attention to what others say rather than focusing on what you’ll say next in the discussion.
- Invest Now
If you avoid talking because you don’t care about your coworker’s TV viewing habits, resist the urge. These brief exchanges of small conversation pave the door for deeper interactions.
Make an effort to ask open-ended inquiries. Simple options are: What are your kids up to this summer? How did you spend your weekend? What are you watching lately? How is your project coming along?
Listen carefully to what people say and get invested and interested in their responses.
- Take Classes
Along with reading, taking classes can help strengthen your social skills. For instance, if you find speaking in groups a bit uncomfortable, maybe an improv class will help you loosen up.
You can also take classes to improve listening skills and other social skills you may want to sharpen. There are a variety of free or low-cost classes you can take online:
- Skillshare Online
- Social Skills Classes
- Udemy Social Skills Classes
- Coursera Social Skills Classes
- LinkedIn Communication Classes
- Set Goals
Are you looking to improve your posture, facial expressions, verbal communications, and more? It’s good to know what you want to work on, but it’s hard to be successful if you’re trying to work on too many things at once. Prioritise areas where you’d like to update your behaviour.
Then, try to set SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timely) goals, rather than more wishy-washy intentions.
For instance, you might say, “My goal is to have one quick conversation a week in the office kitchen.” You could also say, “By the end of the month, I will smile at every customer as they walk into the shop,” or “I’ll ask my team members how they enjoyed the weekend at our Monday-morning meetings.”
How To Achieve Your Goals
Here are some ways you can help ensure that you achieve your goals:
- Make a List
Write down your goals and how you plan to achieve them. Even something as simple as trying to smile at every customer or colleague is worth listing.
- Set Deadlines
Set a deadline for each goal you want to achieve and keep track of. As you meet the goals on your list, check them off, and then expand your list with more things you’d like to accomplish.
- Reward Your Accomplishments
When you achieve a goal, reward yourself for your achievements. If you’ve completed a class or reached another career-related goal, be sure to add it to your resume and LinkedIn profile.
- Consider Getting a Partner
It is always helpful to have someone to talk to who can support your goals. You could ask a colleague, family member, or friend if they’d be interested in partnering with you. They may have goals to accomplish as well. Having support will help you both.
