Social Skills

It has been said that social skills must be practiced in order to be maintained let alone improved. As a person with poor social skills, I can say that when I practice I see a noticable difference in my ability to interact comfortably with peers and coworkers. However, I still struggle with every social interaction that occurs for a variety of psychological reasons. My comfort comes at a price, I must make myself uncomfortable in order to become more comfortable.

In addition to these poor social skills I have a tendency to work too much. This combination of traits means that unless I force myself to do otherwise, I will eat my lunch at my desk working on a project and listening to something on my headphones. This is truthfully how I spend most “lunch periods” on a daily basis. The days that I do seperate myself from my computer to eat lunch in the break room, I generally stay until I have finished my food, 5-10 minutes, and then return to my cubicle to start another project.

I don’t share this, now that is is written for everyone to see, seemingly sad existance to engender pity. I share this to suggest that if you know someone like me, suggest to them that they may want to make a goal (I know cliche) of working on their social interaction skills. The reason for this statement is that research suggests that people who are better able to socialize, either during happy hour or other times, are more likely to get the corner office, head of department or other desired outcome in the work setting. Additionally, there is no way to expand your network without actually interacting with humans in some way. I have followers on twitter and friends on facebook, pownce, myspace and contacts in linkedin that I actually know from conversations, but I tend to communicate better with my fingers than with my mouth (if only because I tend to think before and while I type, which doesn’t always happen with talking).

Don’t try to force someone to be social, but encourage healthy social interactions at every opportunity.