Top 10 Essential Social Skills For Kids And Adults To Be A Good And Successful Personality
Social skills are the qualities that enable us to communicate and interact well with others. It is also known as interpersonal or soft skills.
To connect well with people, you need discipline. You should mind your words when you speak, use proper body language, gestures, facial expressions, and maintain good eye contact with the people you are communicating with.
For instance, persons with improved social skills are likely to do well in interviews during employment processes. Besides, employers are not only interested in the level of education or experience of those seeking employment, but also their interpersonal skills.
Social skills are crucial when dealing with customers and contact with colleagues at the workplace. The common social skills are; empathy, conflict resolution, cooperation among others, etc.
It is important to understand how essential it is to develop and show strong social skills. Here is the reason. You cannot build and maintain a strong relationship with your family members, friends, colleagues, fellow students, and the new people you meet if you lack strong social skills.
Maintaining a good and healthy relationship can help you to achieve your life goals. There are many more benefits of strong social skills.
10. Ability To Solve Conflicts
Conflict resolution is an essential social skill in settling disputes. And as we live, you will agree with me that many circumstances occur where disagreements or fights happened.
When two or more people engage in a conflict, they need someone to intervene, help them, and get the root of the problem and find the solution.
So, to resolve the disputes at home or the workplace, you need good conflict resolution skills to calm the agitated as you settle their differences.
9. Listening
Listening is the ability to pay attention, hear, identify, and understand what someone says.
You’re an employer, a counselor, or whatever you are. You find how necessary it is to listen to your clients’ distress and confirm that you’ve understood what they said. You need to be a careful listener to understand what others say or ask you.
In my experience as a teacher, I interact with my colleagues and students; I can affirm that people will regard you as noble if you’re a good listener. They like you if they feel you’re the one who listens to their concerns.
How to Grow Your Listening Skills
- Concentrate on the speaker
- Avoid disruptions; let nothing make you lose your focus.
- Prepare what to say in advance so that when it’s your turn to respond, your ideas will flow, and you’ll save much time talking; you won’t bother people.
- Then, when you’ve to respond, speak when it’s your time to. Don’t talk while another person is speaking. That’s a lack of respect.
8. Respect
Respect is a courteous act. These are the behaviors intended to please people you interact with.
How to Improve On Your Behaviors
- Don’t interrupt others while speaking; let them finish before you talk. A respectful person knows how and when to start a talk.
- Always stay on topic while discussing serious matters.
- Manage your time, especially during meetings. Don’t annoy people by spending much time while presenting your views.
- Learn to ask logical questions. Don’t pose ambiguous questions.
- In case someone asks you anything, ensure you reply to them all.
7. Empathy
A person with empathy can identify, understand, and show genuine sympathy for another person’s feelings. You cannot interact well with others if you’re not able to understand their moods.
Learn to consider how others feel so you may develop the right approach to their conditions, especially when dealing with depressed people who bring their problems for you to solve. Show your sincere concern to them and help to solve their issues.
Sympathizing with a person enables them to identify you, thus building stronger relationships and respect.
6. Cooperation
Cooperation is the key when you have to work as a team or alongside any other person to scope the mutual aim of your company or institution.
It isn’t easy to partner and works with other people to reach a common goal if that person lacked strong cooperating social skills.
5. Verbal Communication
Verbal communication is the activity of passing information using clear spoken language that others can understand.
You must follow the grammar rules and maintain respect whenever you speak to people face to face or on the phone.
Remember, you can still translate your speech into written form. Here, you’ve to check your spellings and the format of writing emails, texts, letters, or reports.
4. Gestural Communication
This is a non-verbal way of communicating. It’s a communication mode where you use your body language, eye contact, and facial expressions to convey a message.
For example, if you read your face, you should be able to tell whether you are an empathetic person or not.
Your body language should obey your gender. It’s not appropriate to posture yourself as a woman when you’re a man and vice versa.
It’s also improper to put your face down while talking to others. Maintaining good eye contact is one of the effective ways of communication.
3. Effective Communication
Both verbal and non-verbal communication skills are crucial when you want to share your ideas with others.
If you can express and define your thoughts in an easy-to-understand way, then good for you because you own one of the fundamental skills of a moral leader.
2. Ability To Maintain Healthy Relationships
When you have the right skills to interact, create, and sustain a relationship, you can say that you’re good at relationship management. This social skill is important, especially when you providing services to your regular customers.
Maybe you’re a vendor or a receptionist; it’s your responsibility to promote the relationship between your company and the client. And by doing so, you build and flourish your social-economic status.
1. Sharing
And finally, we’re talking about the willingness to give or receive intellectual or concrete resources. I mean, sharing includes both materials and ideas.
With my eight years as a caregiver for children aged 1–14, I can affirm that children aren’t the only ones to learn and gain ‘sharing’ skills, but adults have to learn too.
Like children, some adults share when they only feel they have plenty of resources. And more especially when the resources come at a cost, people become reluctant or selfish in sharing.
As the saying goes, ‘you cannot receive more than you give.’ Therefore, it’s childish when you only share the information or substantial materials that you no longer are interested in or are outdated.