How to Improve your Social Skill

Introduction

Socializing is such a skill that helps you to move up both in your personal and professional life. If you feel hesitant to initiate the conversation with new people in the social events or in society, then don’t worry we’ll provide you tips on how to improve your social skill.

What is Social Skill?

The social skill is an ability that allows you to interact and communicate with others confidently in any given environment. Professionally speaking, social skill is necessary to perform better in the team, win the job interview, or build trust and confidence of peers.

It’s time to address the main question of how to improve your social skill. Here are some of the main ways to develop your social skill are as follows;

Be Social

You should behave like an extrovert and socialize with people, it doesn’t matter whether you like it or not. You shouldn’t allow fear, depression, and anxiety to pull you down and hold you back. Make up your mind that it’s always your choice and decision to engage in conversation with other people. It doesn’t matter whether you’re nervous or not, it would still be your decision.

I know overcoming your nervousness and anxiety is difficult in the beginning, but gradually it gets better.

Small Act of Social Behavior

If you think that engaging in conversation with multiple people at once in a social event or any party is too much for you, then you should start small. By small talk, I mean that you should practice making small conversations. For instance, you could open the door for other people and say “thank you” to the salesmen at the grocery store or the clerk.

Also Check out swot analysis of yourself.

Open-ended Queries

You should familiarize yourself with open-ended questions if you want to catch the attention of other people in the conversation. It would help you to avoid the chitchat and get to the main point of discussion. Most importantly, it would make the other person share his/her views.

If your question is good, then it would attract the attention of other people. They would like to be part of the conversation and keep the conversation going.

Encourage others to Speak

Some people love to talk about themselves. You should go to them ask them about their hobbies, interests, and career. Just show a little interest in their conversation, and they would keep talking. Don’t forget to add comments and raise questions in their conversation.

Goals

You should start by developing smaller goals. For instance, your goal is to attend a local social activity in your community and practice your social skill there. Therefore, you should work on developing goals and objectives in order to remove your hesitation and build social confidence.

Compliments

Compliments play a significant role in opening the door to conversation. It makes the other person feel that you’re open and amiable. For instance, you can start with paying a compliment to your neighbor on his lawn/hair/dress/car or complimenting your colleague about his performance.

Study Social Norms books

You should visit the local bookstore and explore the books on socializing and how to talk with other people. Studying these books won’t make you a social expert, but they would give you various tips and guidelines. Now, it’s up to you to practice those guidelines and improve your social skill.

Practice Manners

Good table manners, being grateful, showing gratitude, and being kind and polite are some of the top social manners that go in the long term.

Careful about your Body Language

Body language and non-verbal cues are equally important along with your verbal communication. Therefore, you should pay attention to your body language that which should match up with the verbal speech.

You should try to maintain eye contact with the other person and your posture should be calm and relax.

Social Skill Support community

There are groups and communities, and they provide support to those people, who are anxious, awkward, and feel shy. Such support groups help them to overcome such feelings. Most importantly, you should reach out to those people who understand your lack of social skills and help you to improve them.

Be Up to Date

You should keep your knowledge up-to-date so that you can engage in conversation and share your views. While doing so, you should avoid sharing your views on controversial issues like religion and politics. However, you can talk about the current news stories of different countries. It’s better if you start the discussion with neutral subjects.

Replacing & Avoiding Negative Thoughts

If a person has negative views about his social interacting skill, then it would happen the same way. For instance, a thinks that he awkward, people don’t talk to him, and he would end up sitting up in the corner, and leave the party earlier than everyone else. In short, he was thinking negatively and it resulted negatively.

Therefore, you should point out the negative thoughts that are pulling you down, and replace them with positive and motivating remarks. For instance, you should give yourself a compliment that you’re better in communication and you can attract the attention of people.

You should intentionally reject any thought that would enter your mind. The more you stay positive, and the positive things would happen to you.

Conclusion: How to improve your social skill

After a careful study of how to improve your social skill, we’ve concluded that social skill is significant to communicate effectively in the community. If socializing isn’t your strong suit, then you should work on the abovementioned suggestions and practice them. Remember that effective social skill comes with practice.