What Are Social Skills and How to Master this Skill Set?

While education, experience and expertise are required in order to have a successful career, well developed social skills are needed to ensure that you maintain a positive reputation with your company, bosses and clients. In fact, 47% of people are employed in a position where social skills are deemed to be the most important skill to have. Workplace social skills are not just about getting to know your colleagues, but are needed in other facets of work, such as when working in teams and negotiating with clients. Ultimately, improving your social skills at work can help you advance in your career. In this article, we’ll go through the types of social skills in the workplace, as well as ways you can improve them.

Social skills are the methods and features involved when communicating with others. Social skills are most often thought of as ones used when communicating with friends in a casual context, but are actually just skills used in person-to-person communication. There are many features of social skills, which range from the way you speak, to the way you react to others. Social communication involves many soft skills, including:

• Verbal Communication: This is using verbal language to communicate with other people. Aside from words, verbal communication also involves the use of pitch, tone, speed and volume of your voice. Verbal communication is one of the most obvious forms of social communication, which makes it easy to reflect on when evaluating your own social skills. 

• Non-Verbal Communication: Social communication also involves non-verbal features, such as your body language, facial expressions, posture and hand gestures. Verbal and non-verbal communication go together, as they complement each other to provide meaning. 

• Active Listening: Active listening is a communication skill which involves being intentional and active during a conversation, rather than passively listening, or waiting your turn to speak. Active listening involves interacting with the speaker in ways that improve your understanding of the topic, and is a social skill that can be used to build meaningful connections. 

• Empathy: Empathy is an incredibly important social skill in professional and social environments. Empathy is the ability to be able to understand and share the feelings of another person; and can help foster meaningful connections with people. Empathy can be built over time, as not everyone naturally can empathize with others. 

• Conflict Resolution: Being able to recognize interpersonal conflicts and come up with solutions is an incredibly important social skill in the workplace. By using other forms of social communication skills, such as active listening and empathy, conflict resolutions can be achieved effectively.

Social skills are required in all forms of communication, both in your personal and professional life. It is a skill that is used everyday, so working on them should be a priority. As improving social skills takes time, knowing how they pay off in the long run could help put their importance in perspective. Improving your social skills has a range of benefits, including: 

Improved Relationships

Strong social communication can improve the connection you have with others. This gives you a strong foundation to build a meaningful relationship with the people you work with, as you can have healthy, open communication with them.

Career Advancement

Being able to communicate with others effectively can allow you to succeed in your career. Whether it’s closing deals with clients flawlessly, rallying the team to work together, or confidently and tactfully asking for a promotion, utilizing social skills can assist you in the professional world.

Mental Wellbeing

Building strong and healthy relationships with others can have positive effects on your overall well-being, as well. Improving your social skills can help you understand others better, and gain more perspective in your own life.

Having strong social skills can not only benefit you, but help you to stay away from some of the negative consequences of having poor social skills. We know what can be achieved through working on our social skills; let’s consider what might occur if you lack social skills: 

Poor Communication

Having poor social skills will affect your ability to communicate, and misunderstandings could occur as a result. This has a lead-on effect where you might be less inclined to communicate with others, and therefore relationships cannot be formed either. Having poor social or professional communication will make it more difficult to network, find new jobs, or make strong relationships with colleagues as well.

Poor Career Progression

A lack of social skills can put you behind at work, as it can reflect poorly on your character or work ethic. Higher up roles often involve leadership and managing others; being able to show that you are not only experienced professionally, but also a strong communicator will mean that you won’t be overlooked for these roles. Leaders must possess social skills, as they are required to understand how individual employees and teams work, in order to manage them successfully.

Thankfully, social skills can be improved with a bit of effort. Developing social skills takes some time, and involves making a proactive effort to improve. Starting can be difficult, as it will involve lots of self-reflection and consistency, but this is necessary when developing social skills. There are many ways to improve, and we recommend using a range of methods. When addressing how to develop your own social skills, consider the following: 

Tip 1: Assess Yourself

Take a moment to self-reflect and evaluate your own social skills and communication in the workplace. Self-reflection in itself can help you build empathy, as you think of how your actions have consequences. To track your progress and note down your thoughts, consider using a journal to reflect on your social skills and make goals. To start off with, you could think of instances where you had a conflict, misunderstanding, or did not feel confident at work – why was that? What could you do to improve for next time? 

Tip 2: Request Constructive Feedback

Ask one of your managers for their feedback on your social communication in the workplace. Think of specific skills you want feedback on, such as verbal communication, and ask what you could do to improve. You can note this feedback in your self-reflection journal and check in on it as you make progress. Another reason to get feedback from your managers is that it keeps you accountable – they now know you want to improve your social communication, and can help you stay on track.

Tip 3: Join Social Activities

To overcome anxiety and practice your social skills, consider joining networking or social events for your industry. Social activities do not have to be high-pressure, you can start by making small goals; such as talking to two new people at an event, and eventually work your way up. Social events are often held by chambers of commerce, or industry associations for your area or specialization. Sign up to their mailing list so you can be notified when there is a new networking event.

Tip 4: Books, Courses and Workshops

Using a variety of resources to learn about the types of social skills can help you broaden your understanding. There are plenty of books, courses and workshops online that can help you build social skills. Consider using resources from experienced, qualified professionals, such as leaders in your industry, or organizational psychologists, to make sure you are receiving high-quality advice. Also, use many perspectives when finding resources. You can try reading about social skills from a variety of perspectives – corporate, psychological, historical perspectives, for example.

Tip 5: Consistent Practice

Use every networking event and day at work to slowly improve your social skills. By starting with self-reflection, you can narrow down what parts of social communication you want to improve on, and then periodically check in to re-evaluate your progress. If you have asked a manager for feedback, they can help keep you accountable, or motivate you to practice often. You can practice outside of work as well, such as by making small talk more often. This type of practice can help if anxiety or confidence is a factor affecting your social skills.

Social skills are soft skills; and are therefore a bit difficult to address when job applications are done online. Unlike hard skills, there is no certification, degree or qualification you can list on your application to prove that you have social skills. After going to all the effort to improve your social skills, you want to make sure you can show them off! tHere are our ways you can show your social skills when finding work: 

Resume and Cover Letter

Use creative ways to weave in your social skills in your resume and cover letter, rather than listing them off. You can do this by mentioning networking events, conferences, projects you’ve led and responsibilities you’ve had, to show that you actually utilize social skills in many contexts. Use CakeResume’s resume and cover letter examples to see more ways you can show off your social skills.

Online Presence

Use online networking platforms to your advantage, and share examples of you being social with your LinkedIn audience. When attending a networking event or conference, for example, share pictures of you there, with a short but friendly caption. These events are a great way to build connections on LinkedIn, where you can endorse social skills for each other. 

Job Interviews

Use in-person job interviews to showcase your social communication to recruiters, as behavioral questions can often have social or interpersonal themes. Practice your verbal and non-verbal communication by yourself, such as the tone and pitch of your voice, as well as the way you sit, shake hands, and make facial expressions.

As for the interview questions themselves, you can also show off your social skills there as well. Don’t try to mention social skills where it doesn’t make sense – this will only seem like you are a bad communicator. Anticipate what type of questions you will be asked in the interview, and brainstorm ways you can tactfully mention your social skills. Using the STAR technique can help you with this – as recounting specific stories is a more natural way of mentioning your social skills. The STAR technique should be practiced for job interviews either way, as it is a storytelling method which builds a compelling response – we have a whole article on it!

To conclude, social communication in the workplace is a necessary part of many roles; as leaders and teams need to develop ways they can communicate effectively. By reflecting and getting feedback on your own social skills, you can develop your own methods to improve them. There are so many upsides to improving your social skills, from networking, job hunting, or getting a promotion. Use a variety of resources and opportunities to practice your social communication in the real world, so you can succeed at your job sooner!

--- Originally written by Bronte McNamara ---