What Is Social Intelligence (And How to Increase Yours)

As mentioned above, social intelligence exists, too. It is especially crucial during this pandemic when our routines and relationships have been rattled, if not upended. The uncertainty in the air calls for more careful handling of social interactions, specifically when dealing with new life scenarios, physical distance from our colleagues, and social changes in our close personal relationships.

Most people tend to simplify being socially intelligent into merely being friendly or approachable. But the truth is, learning to develop and harness your social intelligence can spell the difference between seeming approachable and having the capacity to build secure connections, diffuse conflicts, and communicate long-term solutions.

Social intelligence is the capacity to evaluate and influence other people’s emotions and relationships by knowing one’s self and others. It develops through time and experience with people concerning success and failure in social settings.

Even more significantly, some social intelligence-based skills and methods will allow you to break the ice and strengthen trust in valuable relationships. (Check out What Socially Intelligent People Would Never Do)

6 Essential Social Intelligence Skills

Socially intelligent individuals tend to have an extensive, efficient network of social connections that they can rely on personally and professionally. This is because social intelligence comes with a set of powerful skills that you can use to build, maintain, and improve relationships.

The following skills can help you identify key people, understand and pay attention to them, and smoothly resolve any conflict that comes up during different scenarios:

1. Assessing Life Influencers

As you go through life, you will meet and regularly interact with people who have a significant impact on your journey. They are your life influencers.

To determine who they are, look for these three attributes:

• Life influencer has a significant impact on your personal or professional growth. Your long-term success hinges heavily on a continued relationship with this individual.
• The influencer cannot easily be replaced. Your time-tested relationship with this person has already yielded continuous positive effects on your life. You can identify who this influencer is by assessing the impact of past advice or interactions.
• The relationship is mutual: you can identify what you need from the influencer and vice versa. Your goals and desired results are aligned with this person.

2. Empathetic Listening

Go beyond the surface level and try to understand the people you interact with, whether you’ve just met them or they are one of your life influencers. In other words, when they are communicating with you, you need to listen to what they mean and not just what they are saying.

Your goal is empathy — the skill of understanding what other people feel. Focus not only on their message’s content but also on their tone and body language. By doing so, you will be able to figure out the meaning behind their words and what explains their feelings.

One of the best ways to demonstrate empathy while engaging with others is by showing them that you are paying full attention to them via:

1. Nonverbal signs include:

• Constant eye contact (casual, not intense)
• Keeping your feet and shoulders pointed to them
• Keeping your arms open (if you are sitting)
• Standing straight and not slouching (if you are standing)
• Smiling, nodding, and using hand gestures at appropriate times
• Duchenne smile, not fake smile (includes eyes in smiling)

2. Non-interruptive verbal signs such as saying “uh-huh,” “ok,” “go on,” etc. at appropriate times

3. Echoing and Mirroring

Another way to show your undivided attention is by echoing and mirroring, which uses one or a combination of the following methods:

• Rephrasing the essence of what your life influencer is saying with your own words every one to three minutes – If you do it right, the person you are talking to will be grateful for your attention. If you don’t, they will be thankful that you checked and will correct it.
• Using their jargon – Notice specific words that the other person is using relevant to the issue and integrate them into your echoing.
• Mirroring their tone and posture in broad terms – For example, if someone is speaking formally, do the same thing. If they’re leaning towards you, do so as well. Just pay attention to their body language and tone and try to match it, but don’t try to mirror everything quickly. When done correctly, it will help people feel connected to you and trust you.

4. Building Rapport

You can also convey how you understand the person you are interacting with by building rapport. You need to help them feel that you are on their side and that you are a part of their tribe. Without explicitly stating it, signal that you grasp their emotions, goals, incentives, values, and obstacles by doing any of the following:

• Express compassion (sense of caring) towards their feelings.
• Find points of commonality between your goals and values and theirs.
• Convey implicitly that you get what their obstacles and incentives are.
• Use humor to help bring down defenses while avoiding making fun of them or what they value or using sarcasm as it’s too often misunderstood. Instead, you can lightly make fun of yourself since you’re the safest target.
• Remember that the most impactful humor feels spontaneous. However, you can build it in, and people will still appreciate it.

5. Curious Questioning

Injecting some genuine curiosity in your conversations will go a long way in expressing your sincere interest in your influencers’ needs and concerns. It will help facilitate effective knowledge-sharing and further refine your understanding.

To do it correctly, try to envision what someone wants you to ask them. Express curiosity in your questions without coming off as probing or provocative. Keep in mind that many people may not want to reveal their emotions directly, so a practical approach is to throw an indirect question at them. For example, you can say, “If I were in this situation, I would feel _______. How about you?”

You can also share a story about someone who felt an emotion that you think the other person is feeling in a similar situation and see how they respond.

6. Conflict Mediation and Resolution

Manage your feelings and then try to resolve the conflict through social intelligence. As a proactive measure, try to scan your relationships for signs of conflict. Don’t give in to the temptation of ignoring potential disputes in hopes of seeing them disappear because that’s when minor molehills turn into major mountains.

Then, you may employ the following ideas during interactions:

1. Remember that a great deal of conflict comes from misunderstanding other people’s emotions and focusing solely on the content of their message. When you start noticing growing tensions, check for misconceptions around both.
2. Be diplomatic when checking for misunderstandings and treat the situation as a miscommunication on your part.((Business Insider: How to disagree with someone successfully and still effectively communicate