Are You A Social Genius?

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I’ve been researching and thinking a lot about Social Intelligence in for a module I’m putting together for a client. The goal for that course is to work with a team of accomplished engineers and help them to develop stronger client relationships. I’m always wary of stereotyping anyone, but engineers in general can usually benefit from being exposed formally to the principles, skills and techniques of social intelligence. Why do I know that? Because any functioning human being can usually benefit from increasing their social intelligence.

What is social intelligence?

Social intelligence, or SQ as it’s also called, is the external counterpart to its better-known cousin, emotional intelligence, or EQ, a term which became part of the popular culture when it was used by Daniel Goleman in a book by the same name in 1995.

One of the reasons the term is not better known is that Goleman himself initially considered it a subset of emotional intelligence, but he soon realized two things. First, it’s a big enough topic in its own right, and second, you can be good at one without being good at the other. (We all know some people who are wonderful around other people but completely messed up inside, and others who have it all together emotionally but don’t feel comfortable in groups.) So he wrote another influential book in 2006 called Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships.

Emotional intelligence is the capacity to know, understand, manage and express your own emotions effectively. It’s internally focused. Social intelligence is externally focused, and it’s the capacity to understand, manage and express yourself among others. Here are a couple of other definitions. Edward Thorndike called it (in 1920—so the term is actually much older than EI), “the ability to understand and mange men and women”; he also described it as “acting wisely in human relationships.” Karl Albrecht, who also wrote a book called Social Intelligence: The New Science of Success in 2006 (I wonder who came first?), defines SI as “the ability to get along well with others and to get them to cooperate with you.”

That’s the general definition, and if you don’t buy in to the idea that it’s quite at the level of intelligence, like IQ, we can just go with the broad term, people skills.

Is it just common sense, or something you need to work on?

The simple answer is yes and yes. People skills are common sense in the sense that everyone can generally agree whether someone has them or doesn’t, and in the sense that you pick up a lot of it as you make your way through life and learn to fit in with whatever group you’re a part of. Some you learn by watching others, some by hard experience; some by taking advice from parents, peers, then maybe bosses and maybe even from trainers like myself.

But they are also skills that you need to work on. The word “skills” is important because it’s the only way to but it won’t be useful unless we look under the hood and break out the various components and skills that go into it. Skills are useful, measurable and learnable.

Goleman lists seven component skills, under two general headings: social awareness and relationship management.

Social awareness

• Empathy
• Organizational awareness

Relationship management

• Influencing skills
• Coach and mentor
• Conflict management
• Inspirational leadership
• Teamwork

Albrecht’s model is a bit simpler, and has the added advantage of forming the acronym SPACE.

• Situational awareness
• Presence
• Authenticity
• Clarity
• Empathy

As you can see, there’s a lot of overlap among the different models, but they both make sense. What’s my point? If you laid out each skills on the left hand side of a page, and then honestly scored yourself on a 1-10 scale of your effectiveness, you would find plenty of opportunities to improve your own skill and thus your social outcomes. That brings us to the third question:

If you do need it, is it something you can learn?

Obviously, you know my answer is going to be yes, but you have to take it with a grain of salt because I make a living by teaching these skills. I don’t think you need much convincing, thought, because just by listening to this podcast you’ve proven yourself to be someone who cares about self-improvement, personal effectiveness, and growth. So that’s the good news.

But the bad news is that it’s not easy. You don’t get better at social skills just by listening to a podcast, or even reading a book or taking a course, no more than you get better at golf or tennis by taking a lesson. The information helps, but you have to get out into the field and actually practice these skills. Here’s a useful process to improve your skills.

Mindset and Attitude

First, adjust your attitude and mindset. You probably already feel it’s important, but it always helps to remind yourself, at least until you turn it into a habit. There is one mindset you must have and two attitudes. The mindset is a growth mindset: you can’t think of social intelligence as a trait that you’re born with, but as something that you can change and improve if you set your mind to it.

The first attitude you need to have in the front of your mind at all times is that’s it’s important to pay as much attention to the relationship as to the task at hand. Because if you work with people or they’re clients, there will be many more times beyond just this transaction to get things done with them, and everything you do or say is cumulative—it either adds or subtracts. The second attitude is to care about adding value to the other person: if you go into every encounter with the sincere intent to leave the other person better off for having spoken with you, a lot of the techniques will take care of themselves. And even if they don’t come off perfectly, the other person will detect your sincerity and genuineness and respond very positively.

Awareness

Take honest stock of your skill in each of these areas. Try to see yourself through the eyes of a disinterested observer, which is harder than it looks. The thing is, most of us think we know how others see us, but according to psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson, we’re mostly wrong. So, painful as it may be, you need to ask someone you trust, to be honest and helpful at the same time.

Knowledge

This is the easiest thing to pick up. Some of the skills have excellent articles, podcasts, books and courses which address The knowledge is out there. Pick up a book on speaking, or join Toastmasters. Google Active Listening and jot down some tips you’re going to try in your next conversation, and so on.

Practice

Get out of your office and tear your eyes off your device, and just talk to people. Don’t try to do too much at once. Pick one skill at a time and concentrate on it for the next few weeks.

Reflect

Try to set time aside after every important meeting or conversation and do a quick after-action review, specifically thinking about the skill you wanted to work on. Did you remember to work on it? How did it feel? How do you think it felt to the other person? What can you do better next time?

Is SQ more important than IQ in your career success? Maybe, maybe not. But look at it this way: IQ gets you on the ladder, but SQ can help you rise. At the very least, it will make the climb much more pleasant.