From the time that a child plays with or interacts with another child of his or her own age, there is already that basic need to communicate, socialize and interact. Man is a social animal and this basic need to mingle and communicate cannot be denied. This is the reason why social skills training is a necessity if you want to survive any given social situation.
Be it in a professional setting in the workplace, or a personal setting like a barbeque with friends or family, social skills training will give you a chance if you want to harness your interpersonal relationships with other people.
However, the fear of being judged, being placed under scrutiny of the public eye, fear of being ridiculed or embarrassed and a lack of self-confidence are all factors which may get in the way of your social skills development. These problems, just like any other obstacles in life, need to be overcome and there are steps that you can take to do so. Here are some tips on social skills training that you can follow so that you can widen your social circle and enhance your personal and professional relationships with other people:
1. Learn to develop a good sense of self
Often times, self-confidence issues get in the way of people developing a deeper social and personal connection. For example, fear of public speaking can be rooted from a lack of self-confidence. If you are extremely nervous about what people will think of you when you go out there to speak, then your fear will be physically manifested through heart palpitations, sweating and stuttering.
To counteract this fear, you need to develop a good sense of self. You can improve your physical appearance if that is what you personally need to boost your self-esteem. If your fear is that of public speaking, start eliminating the fear by making small talk with the people that you see everyday. This will serve as your practicing ground so that you will feel more conversant and gain more confidence as you go along.
Finally, if your fear is from the fact that you have nothing 'intelligent' to say, then broaden your knowledge of a wide array of topics. Take personality development trainings or related courses to add to your sense of self-worth.
2. Learn about diplomacy, conflict management and active listening
You can consider these three factors as 'advanced' courses in your social skills training. First, diplomacy is the manner by which a person handles disagreements between two or more parties. At work or at home, you can be immersed in a situation where you are in the middle of a conflict. Through negotiations and compromise, you can methodically and peacefully resolve conflicts as part of your social skills training.
The same thing goes for conflict management. When facing a situation where you need to 'take sides', you should be able to make a decision wisely without ending up harming the personal relationships that you have developed with both sides. This may be easier said than done, but by being objective, you can manage to resolve any work or family-related conflicts.
Finally, active listening is an essential social skill training that you need to have. When mingling with other people, you can probably feign interest even when your attention is not solely directed to the speaker - but what happens when it is time for you to make an appropriate comment? Will you be able to come up with a wise statement if you are not actively listening? To avoid committing social blunders, to avoid being rude and to make the other person feel comfortable, you need to actively listen rather than just hearing without actually paying attention.
With social skills training, you can develop better and more meaningful interpersonal relationships while gaining confidence in yourself with your ability to handle any social situation that will come your way.
An appreciation of the similarities and differences between coaching and other people development approaches is useful when it comes to positioning coaching in your team and in your organization. You may well find that if your team is unclear about what coaching involves and have confused it with other things, then they may not engage as fully as you'd wish.
Coaching is...
Coaching is about helping people move out of their comfort zones. By definition, we are working in our comfort zone when we are performing tasks and activities we find relatively easy and straightforward. Many would argue that there is absolutely nothing wrong with people operating in their comfort zone provided the job gets done and that not everybody is hell bent on climbing the greasy pole chasing promotion after promotion. This is true, but it is less true than it once was. In these turbulent times the nature of the work that people do will change even if they don't and we are obliged to help our teams constantly renew their skills and knowledge. All too often we handle this badly and move people too quickly from comfort zone to panic zone without recognizing the learning zone in between.
Coaching is about releasing potential. As coaches we make the assumption that people come equipped and hard-wired with all they need to succeed. The coaching principles and techniques we'll explore in depth later on are about removing the barriers to that potential coming through. Thus coaching can be thought of as more concerned with drawing out than putting in.
Most conventional training and development concentrates on teaching people things; the skills and knowledge they need to perform. Coaching follows on from this and concentrates on giving people the means to develop their knowledge and skills; to have access to them even when under pressure and to apply them in a diverse range of situations. Coaching then is more focused on helping others to learn as this is a much more enduring outcome and one which creates independence.
Where it is done well, coaching will be motivational and enjoyable for coach and coachee alike. The coach will get their kicks from observing their people blossom and noticing the delight people feel as they grow, develop, solve and innovate within a coaching relationship. In a work situation, coaching has to be performance focused. There are targets to be reached, sales to be made, costs to be contained, clients to serve, changes to be made, policies to implement and so on. It is only because coaching has proven such an effective contributor to these ends that it has endured and not fallen away in the manner of so many fads. However coaching is also people centred; Ultimately, it is people who perform (or don't) and we must accept that people come with feelings, hopes and fears, emotions, etc. and that any approach to dealing with people that ignores this fact is doomed to fail.
Coaching is not...
telling people what to do and how to do it, which is more like instructing or teaching. That's not to say that there's never a place for 'telling' in a work situation, it's just that we shouldn't call it coaching. It may well be that if someone has just joined the team or is generally inexperienced that our management style might have to involve more telling at the start. However once the people that we work with have a decent level of knowledge and skill, telling becomes counter productive because those same people will instinctively want to use their knowledge and skills as best they can and seek to exercise a little initiative and independence. Continue telling and we stifle those instincts and finish up with a frustrated team of 'yes men'. We can use coaching to help people develop their knowledge and skills in their own unique way and encourage them to develop further still.
Coaching is not about offering uninvited feedback. Many of the organizations I work with claim to have an established coaching set up but are mystified by its patchy results. Closer examination reveals that what goes on in the name of coaching in anything but. Staff are observed in action and then a manager or a so called coach - usually clutching a clipboard - takes them off to a private room and runs through a list of mistakes made or opportunities missed. This kind of clumsy feedback does more harm than good and at worst can stoke up resentment and a desire to seek revenge or 'get management back'. A coach, on the other hand, would be offering any feedback free from judgement and placing much more importance of what the staff member had noticed during the interaction in question.
As a coach you are not obliged to have all the answers; you are not there to rescue people. This is an easy trap to fall into for the inexperienced coach and creates a lot of pressure. It may well be that despite a lengthy coaching conversation or a series of them, a problem remains unsolved or a coachee is no further forward. This need not mean that the coaching has 'failed' or even that the coach has done anything wrong. I stress again: coaching is not a magic panacea to cure all work place ills. Some work problems are complex, multi-part and not easily solved. Some people that you coach may have given up in spirit if not in body and put themselves beyond the reach of even the greatest coach. You can rest assured that a bit of decent coaching can't do any harm and will usually do at least some good.
Coaching is most certainly not only for poor performers, and to position it as such is a mistake. A sure way to kill off coaching in its infancy in an organization is to introduce it alongside a performance management system or disciplinary process. Alternatively, to introduce coaching by encouraging the already top performers to develop even further, sends much more positive signals and positions coaching as about moving forward; irrespective of from where you start.
Both Peter Murphy & Matt Somers are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Peter Murphy has sinced written about articles on various topics from Modelling, Marketing and Web Development. Peter Murphy is a peak performance expert. He recently produced a very popular free report: 10 Simple Steps to Developing Communication Confidence. Apply now because it is available only at:. Peter Murphy's top article generates over 90500 views. to your Favourites.
Matt Somers has sinced written about articles on various topics from Power of Coaching, Career Change and Depression Cure. Matt Somers is a leading voice on coaching in the UK where he writes, presents, trains and consults on all aspects of Coaching at Work. An author and regular conference speaker, he is currently producing a range of resources to help with the people side o. Matt Somers's top article generates over 8100 views. to your Favourites.