Imagine you’re telling a friend what an intense, emotionally charged day you had.
Here you are pouring your heart out on the verge of tears. You’re having all the feels.
At this point, you’re hoping that this friend will impart some nuggets of wisdom or maybe
some revelatory advice on the bigger picture. At the very least, they’ll for sure hear
you out, right? Nope. What do they did instead flabbergasts you. Instead of commiserating
and trying to cheer you up, they do a complete 180 on you. They tell you how amazing their
day was because they got promoted! At this point you can’t help but think to
yourself: Ummm, did they not hear what I said? How could they not have picked up on that?
Here I am about to bawl my eyes out and they act like they don’t care about me.
You want to know why? I’ll tell you why. This friend is lacking social and emotional
intelligence. We’re going to look at ways of improving
both of these intelligences in a two-part series.
Today’s focus is on social intelligence, so keep it right here.
[Opening] What’s up Explearners. Mary Daphne here
of myexplearning.com where we believe social skills are the key to the Good Life. What’s
the Good Life? It’s where you call the shots, you have a crew you can count on, and you’re
on a mission you care about. So, first we’re going to look at the definitions
and examples of social intelligence and then we’ll dive into some strategies for boosting
this intelligence. Are we ready?
What is social intelligence? You can think of social intelligence as how
well you understand social settings. It also describes your ability to differentiate between
various social settings and behavioral or social norms that are mandated by the different
social environments. Another way of looking at it is your ability
to act differently in various social roles that you play. For example, the way you are
at home will be different from the way you are at work. And the way you are with a group
of college friends will be different from how you are around your grandparents or colleagues.
At this point I’m sure you’re seeing an interesting reality: We are a slightly different
version of ourselves depending on the people we are interacting with and the social setting
we are in. In fact, one of the most important things
that falls under social intelligence is the ability to feel comfortable with the many
different versions of ourselves. Right? These are all true selves. They’re just slightly
different versions of us. They are what make us interesting, unique, and multidimensional.
And that brings me to another important point we need to talk about.
Impression management. People who have high SQ (social quotient)
or social intelligence are very good about managing the impression of themselves that
they give to the people they are interacting with.
They are able to read their audience and selectively reveal the version of themselves that is most
appealing or persuasive in that context. For example, to your boss, you might choose
to reveal your proactive and confident self. By contrast, with your partner, you may instead
reveal your empathetic and goofy self. What’s really cool is that you can actually
increase your social quotient through social interactions, both the successes and the failures.
It just requires that you remain attuned to the participants, the setting, and your impression
management. Think of it as a muscle that needs to be strengthened and conditioned regularly.
Specifically, here are a few strategies for increasing your social intelligence:
Pay attention to the version of yourself you reveal in different social settings
For example, what self do you use to respond to a stranger asking “how are you?” How
about when you are making small talk at a networking event?
Compare that with who you are with your family. As you do this, pay attention to the aspects
of these various selves that you like, and to the aspects that you don’t like.
Explore their similarities and differences. Pay attention to others
Ask people questions about themselves and their interests to get them to open up.
Focus on what they are saying and how they are saying it, paying special attention to
their facial expressions and body language. This applies both to listening and to when
you are speaking – observe how they are receiving what you are saying and adapt your
speech accordingly. Nurture your relationships
Your relationships are at the core of your happiness and well being.
By nurturing them, you give yourself the opportunity to develop important social intelligence while
strengthening your sense of fulfillment and belonging.
For this reason, it’s critical that you make time to invest in relationships, have
the tough conversations, check in on those you love, and be a positive force in their
life. You’ll find that as you’re improving your
SQ, your interactions will become more solid and you’ll feel more authentic in a diverse
range of social settings. You’ll like the version of yourself that
you’re putting in front of people because you are doing so thoughtfully and deliberately.
The people you engage with will also respond positively to your heightened SQ, which you’ll
notice in the form of closer relationships and better professional outcomes.
But as we started out saying, social Intelligence is only half of the equation.
Be sure to tune in next week as we discuss the other half of the equation, emotional
intelligence, and I’ll share how both SQ and EQ are a superhero power couple.
That’s a wrap on this lesson, Explearners. Be sure to check out the blog article over
at myexplearning.com to review the concepts and strategies discussed here today.
If you enjoyed this lesson, like, comment and share, it really helps support the Explearning
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I’ll see you in my next lesson! Happy Explearning!