Ability to Inspire | Acceptance |
Accepting Compliments | Accepting Differences |
Acknowledging Mistakes | Active Silence |
Anticipating Objections | Apologies |
Appropriate Tone | Appropriate Use of Humor |
Articulation | Asking Questions |
Assertive Communication | Avoiding Assumptions |
Avoiding Gossip | Being Approachable |
Being Friendly | Being Open-Minded |
Being Present | Being Welcoming |
Body Language | Building Alliances |
Building on Ideas | Calm Demeanor |
Changing the Subject | Clarifying Misunderstandings |
Clarifying Questions | Collaboration |
Commitment | Compassion |
Compromise | Conflict Avoidance |
Conflict Resolution | Connecting With Others |
Consensus Building | Consistency |
Conversational Skills | Cooperation |
Crafting Narratives | Creating Rituals |
Creating Social Opportunities | Creative Negotiation |
Cultural Awareness | Cultural Sensitivity |
Defusing Tension | Demonstrating Loyalty |
Demonstrating Respect | Difficult Conversations |
Diplomacy | Emotional Awareness |
Emotional Connections | Emotional Expression |
Emotional Intelligence | Emotional Literacy |
Emotional Regulation | Empathy |
Empowering Others | Establishing Credibility |
Establishing Rapport | Establishing Traditions |
Ethical Behavior | Expressing Interest |
Expressing Sympathy | Expressions of Gratitude |
Eye Contact | Facilitation |
Fairness | Feedback Delivery |
Feedback Reception | Finding Common Ground |
Flexibility | Following Up |
Forgiveness | Formal Communication |
Full Attention | Generosity of Spirit |
Giving Compliments | Good Judgment |
Good Manners | Grit |
Handling Interruptions | Healthy Disagreements |
Helpfulness | Honesty & Candor |
Hospitality | Humility |
Icebreakers | Inclusive Language |
Influencing | Informal Communication |
Initiating Conversations | Initiative |
Inviting Participation | Keeping In Touch |
Keeping Promises | Learning From Others |
Lifelong Relationships | Listening Techniques |
Maintaining Civility | Maintaining Composure |
Maintaining Perspective | Making Introductions |
Making Requests | Managing Interruptions |
Managing Negative Emotions | Manners |
Meaningful Interactions | Mediation |
Mutual Respect | Navigating Social Hierarchies |
Negotiation Tactics | Networking |
Nonjudgmental Listening | Nonverbal Communication |
Nonverbal Engagement | Norms Awareness |
Nudges | Offering Encouragement |
Open-Ended Questions | Open-Mindedness |
Participating In Groups | Patience |
Personal Responsibility | Personal Space |
Perspective-Taking | Persuasion |
Polite Expressions | Polite Transitions |
Politeness | Positioning Ideas |
Positive Body Language | Positive Framing |
Positive Reinforcement | Presentations |
Providing Feedback | Public Speaking |
Punctuality | Reading Between the Lines |
Reading Social Atmosphere | Reading Social Context |
Reading Underlying Meaning | Reading the Room |
Reciprocity | Recognizing Humor |
Reflective Listening | Reflective Questioning |
Relationship Building | Respectful Disagreement |
Respectfulness | Respecting Boundaries |
Respecting Confidentiality | Respecting Differences |
Respecting Others Time | Saving Face |
Seeking Clarification | Self-awareness |
Self-disclosure | Sensitivity |
Setting An Example | Setting Expectations |
Sharing | Sharing Personal Stories |
Showing Interest | Showing Kindness |
Showing Respect | Sincerity |
Small Talk | Smiling |
Social Awareness | Social Cues |
Social Curiosity | Social Etiquette |
Social Reflection | Speaking Clarity |
Speaking Confidence | Staying Calm |
Staying Focused | Staying on Topic |
Storytelling | Supporting Others |
Tactfulness | Taking Turns |
Taking the High Road | Taking the Lead |
Teamwork | Thoughtfulness |
Tolerance | Tone of Voice |
Trust Building | Use of Communication Styles |
Use of Listening Styles | Use of Silence |
Use of Social Proof | Using Emotion |
Using Humor | Using Names |
Using Nonverbal Cues | Verbal Communication |
Visual Communication | Written Communication |
Respect Skills
The ability to demonstrate an appropriate level of respect, consideration and politeness towards others. This includes following the norms of politeness that indicate to others that you respect them. Showing respect also calls for good judgement in communication whereby you avoid harshly criticizing, embarassing or disregarding others.
Relationship Building
The ability to network, interact with new people and establish relationships. This is much about general sociability and the capacity to find things in common with others. For example, generally being approachable, friendly, open and positive towards others can lead to professional and personal relationships.
Relationship Skills
Once relationships are established with relationship building, there is the ongoing process of cultivating and sustaining these relationships. This can be a productive, meaningful and thoroughly rewarding pursuit that nonetheless can require much skill and careful effort.
Conversation Skills
The ability to engage in conversation with a variety of people in a variety of situations. This can include everything from small talk to formal business conversations. Conversational skills can include elusive but powerful social abilities such as personal magnetism whereby people feel drawn to the power of your personality.
Communication Skills
Communication skills are a foundational type of social ability. This mostly revolves around verbal communication and the conversational skills that are broken out above. However, things like presentations, public speaking and formal communication are also considered social abilities. These require additional communication skills such as visual communication, showmanship or negotiation.
Listening Skills
There are several types of listening skill. This begins with the ability to truly pay attention to others and listen with intent to understand as opposed to thinking about what you will say. It is also a skill to actively show that you are listening by acknowledging the speaker and potentially reflecting their emotion. There are also specialized listening skills such as selective listening that apply to situations where full attention isn't actually required. For example, a relatively pointless meeting where thinking about something else might actually be productive but you kinda monitor for anything that requires your input.
Emotional Abilities
Emotions are cognitive modes that color all thoughts. These give human behavior great depth and variety. Emotional abilities include the ability to detect, manage, monitor, accept, express and use emotion. This includes dealing with negative emotions. This doesn't mean that negative emotions are suppressed with toxic positivity but rather that you can work to be reasonable whatever way your emotions are pushing you.
Manners
Attunement to what is socially acceptable and polite in various situations and the ability to achieve these behaviors. Consistently demonstrating good manners is a sure way to earn respect from others. In other words, you tend to get respect when you show respect. Other prized character traits such as wit and sense of humor can conflict with manners such that manners aren't the only way to get respect.
Social Awareness
Social awareness is the ability to read people and social situations. This also includes self-awareness whereby you monitor your own communication and social behaviors. People often feel that they can intuitively sense what others are thinking and feeling and to some extent this may be true. However, it is generally impossible to actually read other people's minds and the belief that you can do so is a common bias known as asymmetric insight bias. This is the belief that you can read others but they can't read you.
Collaboration Skills
The ability to work with others productively and creatively. This goes beyond coordinating separate work items to actually working on the same outputs such as solving a problem, developing a strategy or making a decision as a group. This typically involves leadership whereby someone in the group dominates and begins to orchestrate things.
Character Strengths
Beyond skills, there are many character traits that tend to produce a thriving social life. This goes far beyond the stereotypes of the extrovert versus introvert dichotomy to include basic traits such as adaptability. As an example of how this works, adaptability is key to communication as you can customize your approach to each conversation, audience and relationship.
Conflict Resolution
The process of handling disputes, disagreements and misunderstandings in some positive way. Conflict resolution can be emotional and intense and benefits from calmness, grit and perspective whereby you recognize the emotions of yourself and others and try to transition over to a more positive state with reasonableness.
Influencing Skills
The ability to use nothing more than communication to influence the thoughts and behaviors of others. This can be contrasted with formal authority whereby you influence others with the powers of your position.
Leadership Abilities
The ability to take the lead in social environments to get people moving in the same direction towards common goals. This is a basic feature of human behavior whereby leaders tend to emerge in any group that spends time together.
Social Problem Solving
The ability to identity and resolve problems related to group behavior or interpersonal relationships. A common example here is resistance to change whereby employees passively or actively resist change they see as upsetting the status quo. Solving this type of problem is a high level leadership skill known as change management.
Summary
Social abilities are talents, skills and character traits that help you to navigate social situations and to build productive relationships. Society is fundamentally social such that social skills are important to common business, academic and life pursuits.
