In this chapter, you'll learn more about interpersonal skills, which allow you to work and interact peacefully with others. And you'll see, these are vital skills.
Our Brain Is Neurosocial
What does that mean?
We Need Each Other
We need others to express ourselves and unlock our potential.
For example, how could you know that you need to develop your oral fluency if you don't have a benchmark? Thanks to others, you can adjust your attitude in real-time using your soft skills.
Suppose you are in the middle of a discussion and observe that the person you're speaking to doesn't understand you. In that case, you'll have to change your approach and communicate your ideas more clearly.
We Are Emotionally Connected to Others
Mirror neurons are activated when you observe others' actions and attitudes. Daniel Goleman explains that it's almost like we are connected to others by WiFi.
For example, when you see happy people around you, you're likely to be happy as well. If someone gets angry with you, you'll probably get angry too.
Once again, emotions help you understand your relationships with others. If you learn how to decipher them, you can avoid taking on others' feelings or attitudes.
This skill, emotional intelligence, is now one of the most in-demand in the job market and directly impacts how you work with others.
Social Skills in the Professional World
There are three key social skills: communication, collaboration, and service orientation. Let's go more into detail.
Communication
Communication is crucial for all professions: more and more people who previously did not have to interact must now learn this skill. For example, many developers now have to work with different teams to automate specific tasks. They must express their ability, where they are in the process, and their goals while understanding what others convey to them. Communication skills mainly cover the following aspects.
Multimedia communication: choosing the most suitable media and format to convey a message.
Oral communication: presenting an idea, opinion, or analysis, whether in front of one person or a group.
Written communication: adhering to the writing rules suitable to the medium, audience, and context.
Visual communication: diagramming, illustrating, or visualizing complex information.
Collaboration
The ability to collaborate with others is a vital soft skill in the rapidly changing workplace. It ensures that work progresses collectively. Consider a band: several musicians play different instruments, yet their collaboration produces a coherent (and hopefully pleasant) melody. The same goes for workers at a company, who must collectively create a product.
Collaboration mainly refers to the following dimensions:
Teamwork.
Facilitating collective intelligence: knowing how to lead a working group and producing collaborative creations.
Conflict resolution.
Receiving and sharing constructive feedback.
Empathy: actively listening to the messages, feelings, and emotions of the person you communicate with and adapting to them.
Service Orientation
In a service economy, the ability to identify others' needs correctly is critical, and consumers today want quality customer service. The service-oriented soft skill is incredibly helpful with after-sales service.
Service orientation consists of:
Knowing how to respond to a user or customer needs appropriately.
Knowing how to resolve conflicts.
Knowing how to give and receive constructive feedback.
Now let's take a look at a real world example of these social skills in the workplace. We spoke with Anna Thorsdottir, a specialist in creative influencer marketing and content branding, to better understand how these three key social skills have made her a better leader.
It's Your Turn
Exercise: Learn From Your Past
Think back to your most recent experiences: when did you have difficulty in a work or school relationship? How could you have overcome this dilemma?
If you listen, are patient, manage your emotions, and practice empathy, you can change your attitude and the situation.
When you practice soft skills, you adjust your attitude toward others by putting your intentions into words.
For example, "The next time I talk to this person, I want to listen more." If I set this intention, I'll improve our discussion's quality by paying better attention to the other person's perspective.
Challenge: Develop Your Network
Professional life often works through networks.
You can expand your network by identifying three people in your professional social circle who you would like to contact. You could be interested in their business sector, job skills, experience, philanthropy, etc. Plan a telephone interview (or an in-person meeting) of at least 30 minutes to get to know each of them and perhaps consider future discussions or collaborations. It's also called an information-gathering interview. This exercise may not feel natural, but it's essential to your learning process.
Let's Recap!
In this chapter, you discovered that:
Our brains are neurosocial. We are all emotionally connected.
The three key social skills in demand in the professional world are communication, collaboration, and service orientation.
You can develop your social skills by expanding your professional network.
And while skills can solve many relationship problems, they also help solve other more complex issues. Let's explore this in the next chapter.
