Practice Your People Skills Every Day

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I taught a module last week on social intelligence, and as part of it I gave my students a homework assignment to find opportunities to practice the skills I taught, especially the skills that make for favorable first impressions. They have to look for opportunities to practice their nonverbals, their social gifts, adjust their warmth and competence, etc.

There are opportunities everywhere you look; I know, because I have this strange habit of feeling compelled to practice what I preach. Since class ended on Wednesday afternoon, I have practiced these skills on TSA agents, gate agents while boarding my flight, old friends in a social situation, new friends in a social situation, supermarket checkers, a homeless man, and even my brother-in-law (that last one probably surprised him as much as it did me). I’ve also watched others practice these skills and have learned from them. Conservatively, I consciously practiced my social skills on at least a dozen occasions in the past four days.

Seriously, every time you speak with someone, no matter how briefly, there is a lot going on. You are exchanging words, participating in rituals, giving or withholding appreciation, transmitting and receiving messages about your respective moods and mental states, gauging their warmth and competence unconsciously while they do the same to you, making decisions about how much intimacy to seek or allow, etc. We are performing a rapid and unconscious algorithm to measure how much we like, respect and trust the other person, and it’s all going on below the level of conscious awareness.

Another way to practice mindfulness in social intelligence is to observe others, particularly those whose social skills you admire. What do they do differently than you do? What do they do more of, or less of? How do others respond to what they do?

Most of us go through most of our days without even thinking about what’s going on, which puts us on autopilot. The nice thing about autopilot is that it’s efficient; the sad thing about autopilot is that no learning or growth is taking place.

Practice the habit of being more deliberate and mindful in your interactions with people, and you start seeing other things that most people miss. You notice how people respond to questions about themselves; you see how a smile elicits an equal but not opposite reaction; you quickly find out that your mood is contagious; you may actually learn a thing or two. And best of all—others benefit as well!

In this podcast I go into detail about how to increase your awareness, adjust your attitude, practice the proper skills, and work towards turning your new skills into habits.