What is Social Intelligence?
Why does it matter?
Social intelligence is mostly learned and develops through experience interacting with people and learning from success and failures in social settings. It is more commonly referred to as “tact,” “common sense,” or “street smarts.”
What are the key elements of social intelligence?
1. Verbal Fluency and Conversational Skills. The highly socially intelligent person can carry on conversations with a wide variety of people, and is tactful and appropriate in what is said.
2. Knowledge of Social Roles, Rules, and Scripts. Socially intelligent individuals learn how to play various social roles. They are also well versed in the informal rules, or “norms,” that govern social interaction. In other words, they “know how to play the game” of social interaction. As a result, they come off as socially sophisticated and wise.
3. Effective Listening Skills. Socially intelligent persons are great listeners. As a result, others come away from an interaction with an SI person feeling as if they had a good “connection” with him or her.
4. Understanding What Makes Other People Tick. Great people watchers, individuals high in social intelligence attune themselves to what others are saying, and how they are behaving, in order to try to “read” what the other person is thinking and understanding where they are coming from.
5. Role Playing and Social Self-Efficacy. The socially intelligent person knows how to play different social roles — allowing the individual to feel comfortable with all types of people. As a result, the SI individual feels socially self-confident and effective — what psychologists call “social self-efficacy.”
6. Impression Management Skills. Persons with SI are concerned with the impression they are making on others. They maintain a delicate balance between controlling the image they portray and being authentic. We will look more at impression management skills later.
For Development: Consider these social intelligence dimensions and do a “self-inventory.” On which are you more skilled and less skilled? Anticipate ways that you might improve the areas you are a bit weak on and how can you best leverage your areas of strength?
