Tips to Increase Social Intelligence

The ultimate goal of social intelligence is to prepare us for social competence.

social gesturePhoto by Omar Lopez on Unsplash

We are social creatures. It is embedded in our genes, minds, hearts, and souls. Not many of us desire to live lonely and in isolation. Human touch is essential to enjoy a satisfying life. To survive and thrive in this world, we need to increase our social intelligence, social knowledge, and social skills.

Social intelligence is the foundation for knowledge, skills, and competencies. The ultimate goal of social intelligence is to prepare us for social competence. Socially intelligent people learn about social knowledge such as rules of engagement with others and can develop necessary skills to adapt to society.

We need social capability at home with our families, friends, colleagues at work, and people in our communities. Social intelligence starts with the ability to connect with other people. This connection requires not only cognitive intelligence but also emotional intelligence. Thus, cognitive, social, and emotional intelligence are interdependent.

Cognitive intelligence helps us communicate logically. Emotional intelligence helps us regulate our emotions for connection. Social intelligence covering both cognitive and emotional intelligence eases connecting with others.

Social intelligence requires interacting with others meaningfully. This interaction is maintained by effective communication. To be able to communicate with others effectively, we need to know what we want and express our intention and goals clearly in the right context.

The problem is everyone is unique. We cannot communicate with everyone with the same style and tone. Talking with a child, a teenager, parents, spouse, friends, strangers, colleagues, authority figures, and community members can differ.

This fact necessitates customising our communication based on various personas. Tailoring communication for different personas requires social intelligence, knowledge, and skills.

Understanding social norms, learning the social dynamics, and gaining skills to use our knowledge can increase our social intelligence.

There are essential skills to improve our social intelligence. The most important ones are learning how to speak and how to listen. Speaking is given for communication.

However, listening to others can be tricky. It is an overlooked necessity. Listening requires cognitive and emotional skills. Focus, attention, memory, and task switching are part of our cognitive abilities. These abilities establish the foundation for listening.

The concept of active listening is an essential requirement for social connections. Active listening requires those cognitive skills and emotional skills such as empathy, compassion, politeness, confidence, and courage.

When we combine our cognitive and emotional intelligence, our social intelligence can take care of the rest.

Social intelligence requires us to share our thoughts and feelings with confidence. Timing is crucial for social connections. There is a time for everything. Speaking and listening must be timed in a balance.

Socially intelligent people respond genuinely and meaningfully rather than react randomly. They also share their thoughts and feeling confidently with no defensiveness and fear. The criteria are context and timing for maintaining interactions.

Social intelligence goes beyond simply communicating with others. Socially intelligent people also connect with other people. They bring people to a commonplace and create an atmosphere for other people to enjoy social gatherings.

MeetingsPhoto by Antenna on Unsplash

Socially intelligent people create opportunities for people to gather, communicate meaningfully, and share their thoughts and feelings in social settings. Joy and fun create these settings.

Social connection requires organisational skills. Socially intelligent people can organize family parties, work meetings, and community events. Birthday parties, anniversaries, achievement recognitions are some examples of organisational skills.

In the modern world, in addition to face-to-face gatherings, we also need social skills in virtual platforms. The world is connected with virtual networks. We use telephone, chat tools, email, and other textual formats in online forums to communicate with a person or a group.

Social intelligence also requires cultural and societal awareness.

The understanding of the cultural background of other people is an essential requirement of social intelligence. This understanding requires both cognitive and emotional skills. We need to know about different cultures, show respect, empathy and compassion for them.

Privacy, diversity, and inclusiveness are the key concepts that we need to learn to improve our social intelligence.

Respecting the privacy of others is critical. Tolerating other people's cultural requirements and including them in social gatherings are essential factors for advanced social intelligence.

Socially intelligent people know how to act neutrally and to remain independent of their prejudices. They become role models in providing clear, precise, and neutral communications in culturally diverse settings.

To go further, advanced social intelligence also requires some interpersonal, business, and leadership skills. The critical interpersonal traits are tolerance, being optimistic, understanding, and openness. The key leadership and business traits are influence and charisma.

CharismaPhoto by hp koch on Unsplash

Being charismatic means understanding the emotions of others and aligning them with our feelings. Charismatic people respond appropriately and mindfully to create a charismatic outlook.

Charisma revolves around emotions rather than logic. This is evident in our devotion to some public figures, our favourite celebrities, athletes, and politicians.

People love famous singers, movie stars, athletes, and politicians for no logical reason. They follow them religiously in real life and the virtual world without even questioning the truth.

Charisma is a leadership skill. Contrary to common beliefs, it is not a genetic and inherited characteristic. We all can learn charismatic traits to advance our social intelligence.

An effective way to learn these advanced leadership skills is to understand the charismatic patterns and emulate them. Rather than seeing charisma as one single entity, we can deconstruct its components and apply each part to our behaviour. Sometimes warm body gestures and authentic smiles contribute to a charismatic outlook.

The golden rule of social intelligence is putting ourselves in other people’s shoes. By accepting mistakes, taking responsibility for our errors, and genuinely apologizing, we can resolve many difficult situations.

Social interactions can put us in vulnerable situations. None of us can avoid it completely. Life is full of risks. Social intelligence does not prevent us from vulnerability. However, equipped with cognitive intelligence and emotional maturity, we can tolerate risks and threats and respond to challenging situations more powerfully.

Thank you for reading my perspectives.

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