Social skills is the final element of Emotional Intelligence – it relies on the three others we covered in earlier blogs – being more self-aware, regulating your own emotions and having empathy with others.  Social skills are how you connect with others and influence them on an emotional level.  This becomes especially important when dealing with people you find to be difficult!

If you’ve honed the other 3 emotional intelligences… you’re ready to put them together and enhance your social skills.  This can be as simple as a friendly hello to brighten someone’s day, or as challenging as careful listening to help someone who is upset to calm down. If you can take time every day to listen to others and respond to them the way they prefer, you’ll build stronger work connections and collaborative relationships.  We all know the Golden Rule – treat people the way you would want to be treated.  By listening carefully, you’ll find that many people have different preferences in how they want to communicate and work together. So we’ve coined the term: Golden Rule 2.0® – we try to treat people the way they want to be treated.

This is a big challenge and those of you who have taken our T.E.A.M. Communication Styles® assessment have an idea about the range of styles and preference people may have.  Once you’ve identified someone’s style and understand their preferences… then you can try to shift your social skills to be more in line with the other person’s preferences.  That’s where the challenge comes in. It’s hard to change our long-term patterns.  We have a number of blogs on communication and on T.E.A.M. that can give you some tips on strengthening your social skills.

Dealing with difficult people is where all aspects of Emotional Intelligence really come into play. Difficult people can throw you off balance, push your buttons and sometimes have you reacting without a lot of intelligence!  If you know yourself (self-aware) and are able to manage your emotions (self-regulate), then you’ll be ready to have constructive dialogues with people who you find challenging.  By listening empathically you’ll build a connection and learn a lot about the other person’s point of view.  At this point you need to respond constructively using enhanced social skills.  This can include acknowledging the other person’s concerns and sharing yours in a way that builds collaboration not conflict.  A key aspect of this, is to home in on the other person’s “interests” – why they are acting in a difficult way or why they are pushing an unhelpful position.

As we look behind their statements, we can see emotions that we can connect with. They may be acting out of fear, out of feelings of unfairness, out of isolation or feeling unappreciated.  If we can identify and address these we can begin to find our way to some common understandings that in turn can lead to a positive resolution. (We’ll talk more about this in our next newsletter.)

During this process we need to maintain the other 3 emotional intelligences – continue to monitor and regulate our emotional reactions, and maintain an empathetic listening mode. Practice this every day and you’ll boost your EQ score!

If you’d like to find out how we can help you and your team build their emotional intelligence and work together more effectively, contact our Project Manager, Nicole O’Connor, at Nicole@KriegerSolutions.com.