The term “social skills” is incredibly broad, but it is also used correctly in the context of emotional intelligence (EI). When it comes to emotional intelligence, your social skills refers to how you handle and influence other’s emotions effectively. EI is most needed for leadership roles as these individuals are managing, influencing, and leading people.
Emotional intelligence starts with your understanding of your feelings and being able to effectively manage (self-regulate) them to achieve your goals. When you can understand and manage yourself, you can begin to learn how to understand the feelings of others and how to influence them.
Here are five ways that you can improve your social skills to increase your emotional intelligence.
Work on Your Communication Skills
Your communication skills are a vital part of having good emotional intelligence. People who demonstrate high emotional intelligence can effectively listen to others and convey their own thoughts and feelings appropriately. Good communicators listen well to others and make sure that they understand what is being said. This allows them to register and act upon the emotional cues so that they can respond appropriately.
Improve Your Conflict Management Skills
Conflicts and disagreements are a natural part of life and can happen at any time. The art of managing and resolving disputes is a crucial aspect of emotional intelligence and is critical for your success, both personally and professionally. Improving your conflict management skills starts by being aware of the importance of diplomacy and tact, and how they can be used to diffuse a situation. It’s about negotiating to come to a mutual consensus to keep working relationships at a high.
Improve Your Leadership Skills
Your leadership skills are inextricably linked to emotional intelligence. Leaders must be tuned into their own and other’s emotions if they want to be influential. Good leaders tend to have high emotional intelligence because they can articulate a vision and provide support and guidance to their colleagues while holding them accountable for their actions Emotionally intelligent leaders inspire and build trust with their employees and model ‘good’ behavior which inspires the team.
Develop Persuasion and Influencing Skills
Persuasion is the art of motivating others and winning them over to your ideas. People who have high emotional intelligence are apt at persuading others to their proposed course of action. They can read the emotional currents of any given situation and fine-tune their response to appeal to everyone involved.
Work on Building Rapport
If you want to improve your emotional intelligence, then it is vital that you figure out how to build and maintain relationships with others. Developing this skill will lead you to have better relationships and an increased ability to get on with life. Not only are highly emotionally intelligent people good at building rapport, but they also work to maintain the relationships they already have.
When you have high emotional intelligence, it’s obvious based on your social skills. If you want to improve your emotional intelligence, then you need to work on these five ways for developing your social skills. There are ways to improve your leadership skills, one which is to hire a coach who can help you in developing these skills and hold you accountable until you do. You can be the leader your team desires.