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Teaching Social Skills to Improve Grades and Lives

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Teaching Social Skills to Improve Grades and Lives

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Skills to Improve Grades and Lives," offers a strong argument for the importance of teaching social skills and emotional management in the early stages of education. Bornstein argues that an excellent social-emotional education is the basis of a prosperous future since knowing how to establish correct relationships with the environment surrounding you will allow you to learn much more from the information you are constantly receiving. He claims that “these people tend to have a higher graduation rate, a higher employment rate, and a lower crime rate.”(Bornstein)At the same time, Bornstein argues that emotional self-management is essential to channel all this information in the best way for our learning. Bornstein mentions numerous studies to support objective evidence of how a good social-emotional education has had significant benefits in the future of the person who received it.  He claims These people tend to have a higher graduation rate, a higher employment rate, and a lower crime rate.

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In the early 1990s, about 50 kindergarten teachers were asked to rate the social and communication skills of 753 children in their classrooms. It was part of the Fast Track Project, an intervention and study administered in Durham, N.C., Nashville, Seattle and central Pennsylvania. The goals were to understand how children develop healthy social skills, and help them do so.

Using an assessment tool called the "Social Competence Scale," the teachers were asked to assign each child a score based on qualities that included "cooperates with peers without prompting"; "is helpful to others"; "is very good at understanding feelings"; and "resolves problems on own."

This month, researchers from Pennsylvania State University and Duke published a study that looked at what had happened to those students in the 13 to 19 years since they left kindergarten. Their findings warrant major attention because the teachers' rankings were extremely prescient.

They predicted the likelihood of many outcomes: whether the children would graduate from high school on time, get college degrees, have stable or full-time employment as young adults; whether they would live in public housing or receive public assistance; whether they would be held in juvenile detention or be arrested as adults. The kindergarten teachers' scores also correlated with the number of arrests a young adult would have for severe offenses by age 25.

The researchers had statistically controlled for the effects of poverty, race, having teenage parents, family stress and neighborhood crime, and for the children's aggression and reading levels in kindergarten.

One major result: Children who scored high on social skills were four times as likely to graduate from college than those who scored low.

These findings add to a growing body of evidence - including long-term studies drawn from data in New Zealand and Britain - that have profound implications for educators. These studies suggest that if we want many more children to lead fulfilling and productive lives, it's not enough for schools to focus exclusively on academics. Indeed, one of the most powerful and cost-effective interventions is to help children develop core social and emotional strengths like self-management, self-awareness and social awareness - strengths that are necessary for students to fully benefit from their education, and succeed in many other areas of life.

"These early abilities, especially the ability to get along with others, are the abilities that make other kids like you, and make teachers like kids," said Mark T. Greenberg, a professor of Human Development and Psychology at Penn State and a co-author of the study. "And when kids feel liked, they're more likely to settle down and pay attention, and keep out of the principal's office, and reap the benefits of being in a classroom. And this builds over time; it's like a cascade. They become more bonded with peers and healthy adults and they become more bonded to school as an institution, and all those skills lead them, independent of their I.Q., to be less at risk for problems."

This isn't a new insight. In a national survey, more than 90 percent of schoolteachers said it was important for schools to promote the development of students' social and emotional skills (sometimes called 21st century skills, noncognitive skills, or character education). But many struggle to integrate this kind of teaching in their classrooms.

One organization that is working to help them do so is the Chicago-based Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, also known as Casel, which has been working for three to four years to help school districts embed social and emotional learning throughout their systems in Anchorage; Austin, Tex.; Chicago; Cleveland; Nashville; Oakland, Calif.; Sacramento; Washoe County, Nev.; and recently Atlanta.

"The goal is to take the learnings from these districts and share them with 15,000 other districts," said Roger P. Weissberg, a professor of psychology and education who is Casel's chief knowledge officer. "Each district has their model of scaling up the work," he added. "The challenge is how to take evidence-based programs and integrate them with other priorities so it's not an add-on, but a way to strengthen things they're already doing."

Evidence indicates that effective programs do just that. Casel has been tracking this work for years. In 2011, Weissberg co-authored a meta-analysis of studies of 213 school-based social and emotional learning programs, which in total reached 270,000 students. The review found that the programs produced significant gains in students' social skills, attitudes, behavior and academics.

This year, researchers from Teachers College at Columbia University did some number crunching to estimate the economic value of six different social and emotional learning programs that had strong track records. They looked at the programs' impact on things like future wages and social costs ( pdf), and found that the programs yielded an average return of $11 for each dollar invested.

The United States remains far behind other nations in ensuring that young children get the early support they need to thrive - whether it is through paid parental leave or investing in preschool programs. And one of the most troubling aspects of high-stakes testing in education is that it has led many schools to focus on reading and math instruction and test preparation at the expense of other educational goals.

Nevertheless, awareness of the need for early support is beginning to sink in across the United States. One major effort in this area is the California Office to Reform Education Districts initiative, or Core Districts initiative, a collaboration to improve school quality among 10 school districts that include Fresno, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento and San Francisco. These locales are currently field testing alternative methods to evaluate school success - measures that now take into account students' social and emotional skills. (The districts have received a waiver from standard federal assessment guidelines to do so.)

"We're putting a flashlight on the social and emotional skills to help schools think about the role they play," said Noah Bookman, chief accountability officer for the Core Districts initative. "We think school quality is not only about academic success but also about developing the whole child. And it's essential to give states and districts more flexibility about what to measure."

Consider Cleveland's experience. Eric Gordon, chief executive of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, recalled a tragedy in 2007 that became a wake-up call: a student with a history of emotional difficulties returned to his school after a suspension and shot two students and two teachers before killing himself. "We still talk about that today because we made a commitment that if we never stopped talking about it we would always be working to ensure that no child felt that desperate again," Gordon said. "That was the catalytic moment for our now seven-year investment in social and emotional learning strategies in Cleveland."

The district began by collaborating with the teachers union and then introducing instruction in 2008 in kindergarten through second grade, using a program called Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies. Later it expanded to higher grades. Through the program, children learn how to recognize, communicate and manage their emotions, read others' emotions, solve problems and change patterns of negative thinking. School suspension rooms have been replaced with "planning centers," where students work through problems or practice how to better handle conflicts. Schools have staff teams to lead social and emotional learning efforts and work with families.

Three times a year, the district administers an online survey to gauge progress among its 39,000 students, asking them about safety, school support, peer relationships and social skills. "We have years of data," Gordon said. "Our current ninth graders have a 30 percent higher rating in their social and emotional skills than the 10th- to 12th-grade students," who missed the programs. "Our senior leadership team spends time looking at this data just like they do with the reading and math and graduation data. That's what makes it a priority."

"Every year," he adds, "we bring together a group called the who's who of graduating seniors - 300 to 400 kids," who then identify problems in the schools. "Three years ago," he said, "the No. 1 problem was safety in school. Two years ago it dropped to No. 2. And last year, it dropped to No. 3."

Initially, the Collaborating Districts Initiative encompassed eight districts. A ninth was recently added after Meria Carstarphen, a former head of Austin's public schools, took over as Atlanta's school superintendent and lobbied Casel to include the Georgia city. In Austin, Carstarphen had led the integration of social and emotional learning into the school system, and saw improvements in discipline, attendance and graduation rates. "Having worked in large urban, challenging school systems, I'm convinced that if we don't do this in schools, it's likely that many kids won't get these skills at home," Carstarphen said.

Atlanta is recovering from a major cheating scandal, and the cultural challenges are significant. "We have to be very deliberate about teaching these skill sets to the adults so that they can master them and be able to manage their behaviors and their interactions with each other - so they can teach it to the children," Carstarphen said. "We need the heart and the smarts to teach the kids to be better adults than we ever were."

To date, researchers who are evaluating the collaborative have found that participating districts are implementing programs with fidelity and seeing improvements in attendance, discipline and, in some cases, academic performance. But successful implementations take years. "It's difficult to implement this districtwide all at once," said Melissa Schlinger, Casel's vice president for programs and practice. "Austin rolled it out in a staggered fashion. You don't want it to be a fad - in and out quickly."

There is a looming question. What happens when the students, armed with social and reflective skills, leave the school and re-enter the real world - a place with implacable peers or police officers, who may not be interested in talking through problems? That happened to a group of high school students from New York City who were studying restorative justice. They had an unfortunate encounter with an undercover police officer on the subway, in which a bump and an exchange of words quickly escalated into the arrest of two students - an incident examined in an episode of the weekly public radio program "This American Life" (start listening at the 44 minute mark).

"Social and emotional learning has always been a critical foundation of education," observes Ed Graff, the superintendent of the Anchorage School District. "People are now at a point where they're beginning to see the true value and benefits of it. It's not something that's a trend. It's the fabric of what we do in education. Our next step is to take it beyond education out into our communities and throughout the state. That's really where the need is."
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David Bornstein is the author of "How to Change the World," which has been published in 20 languages, and "The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank," and is co-author of "Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know." He is a co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network, which supports rigorous reporting about responses to social problems.

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Teaching Social Skills to Improve Grades and Lives

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In the early 1990s, about 50 kindergarten teachers were asked to rate the social and communication skills of 753 children in their classrooms. It was part of the Fast Track Project, an intervention and study administered in Durham, N.C., Nashville, Seattle and central Pennsylvania.

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Yolanda answers the seven questions that are presented to her via email; Their answers reflect the wisdom of a teacher with more than 20 years of experience, who can personally tell us about the importance of social skills, providing personal examples that make us understand the relevance of social skills in various areas of life from an early age.

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With this book, Eagleman does a great job bringing neuroscience to a broad audience. Thanks to his simple and straightforward way of explaining and the practical and clear examples, Eagleman explains some of the most essential and exciting neuroscience points so that these concepts are easy to understand for any person. Thanks to this book, anyone could better understand themselves and learn about the workings of our amazing brain. Eagleman uses a great deal of external scientific evidence, which adds significant credibility to his argument. At the same time, practical examples and with which we can quickly develop empathy bring Logos to the text, which finally makes Eaglerman develop a great authority in his book.

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Locked in the silence and darkness of your skull, your brain fashions the rich narratives of your reality and your identity. Join renowned neuroscientist David Eagleman for a journey into the questions at the mysterious heart of our existence. What is reality? Who are "you"? How do you make decisions? Why does your brain need other people? How is technology poised to change what it means to be human? In the course of his investigations, Eagleman guides us through the world of extreme sports, criminal justice, facial expressions, genocide, brain surgery, gut feelings, robotics, and the search for immortality.

"A magical, mystical tour of the brain showing how life shapes your brain and your brain shapes your life." - Parade

"He is a gifted educator with considerable communication skills... Eagleman is a convincing tour guide, and his unstated goal of being an ambassador of neuroscience - a public intellectual taking on subject matter some may consider too esoteric or controversial for widespread dissemination - is laudable in a time when so much new knowldge may prove valuable to society." - Neurology Today

"In the fine tradition of Carl Sagan, Eagleman shows that science is captivating without hyped embellishment, and, if you pay attention, you'll find yourself immersed in it." - Forbes

"An ideal introduction to how biology generates the mind.... structured around crucial and wide-ranging questions, saturated with personal and social relevance. And Eagleman's answers are consistently clear, engaging and thought-provoking." - Nature

"An intellectual thrill-ride. Plus, Eagleman isn't merely a brilliant guide, he can turn a phrase, too." - Newsday

"The show and its companion book by Eagleman, "The Brain: The Story of You," are testaments to the neuroscientist's fervent belief in the relevance of his field to ordinary people." - NY Magazine

"This ranks as the most fascinating and unsettling science series of the year, setting out the state of contemporary research into the human brain in terms that any interested layperson can comprehend." - OC Register

"David Eagleman's wide-ranging roundup of the current state of knowledge about the brain is concise, accessible and often very surprising. It's a strange new world inside your head." - Brian Eno

"David Eagleman's The Brain its an astonishing read. On every page there is a revelation so fantastic as to make one gasp. It would be impossible to take in if we didn't all possess that impossibly extraordinary thing, a brain. Eagleman comes closer than anyone to solving the mystery of how to find the self inside the grey electric mush between our ears." - Stephen Fry

"David Eagleman makes it easy to comprehend the most complex collection of cells in the Cosmos - our brain. If neuroscience had a rock legend this would be him." - Ruby Wax

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Brain and Behavior: A Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective addresses the central aims of cognitive neuroscience, seeking to examine the brain not only by its components but also by their functions. It highlights the principles, discoveries, and remaining mysteries of modern cognitive neuroscience.

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In this online entry, without a specified author or publication date, it is argued from a concise and straightforward manner that social skills have an incredible relationship with emotional intelligence since both form a symbiotic relationship with each other. They are fundamental factors that need each other to fit the puzzle in both. It is explained that the lack of emotional intelligence will slow down the development of correct social skills. At the same time, if you do not receive a good education in social skills, it will not be possible to develop a healthy emotional intelligence. To formalize their argument and create authority, they use Ethos, reflected in their solid verbs and grammatical structures, since it is the only way to build credibility without formal evidence.

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'Social skills' is a very broad term (our page Social Skills covers the general meaning), but it is also used quite specifically in the context of Emotional Intelligence.

In emotional intelligence the term ' social skills' refers to the skills needed to handle and influence other people's emotions effectively.

This may sound like manipulation, but it can actually be as simple as understanding that smiling at people makes them smile back, and can therefore make them feel much more positive.

Social skills can therefore be considered as the final piece of the emotional intelligence 'jigsaw'.

Emotional intelligence starts with understanding your own emotions (self-awareness), then being able to manage them (self-regulation) and use them to achieve your goals (self-motivation).

Once you are able to understand and manage yourself, then you start to understand the emotions and feelings of others () and finally to influence them (social skills).

The term ' social skills ' covers a wide range of skills.

Social skills, in the Emotional Intelligence sense, include:

Persuasion and Influencing Skills

Communication Skills

Conflict Management Skills

Leadership Skills

Change Management Skills

Building Bonds (Rapport)

Collaboration and Cooperation | Team-Working Skills

Persuasion and Influencing Skills

Persuasion is the art of enthusing others, and winning them over to your ideas or proposed course of action.

People who are persuasive, or who have influence, read the emotional currents in a situation, and fine-tune what they are saying to appeal to those involved.

For more about this, see our page on Persuasion and Influencing Skills.

Communication Skills

Communication skills are vital to good emotional intelligence. You need to be able to listen to others, and also convey your own thoughts and, perhaps more importantly, feelings.

Good communicators:

Listen well to those around them, making sure that they understand what is said, and seek full and open sharing of information. For more, see our pages on Listening Skills, Reflection and Clarifying.

Are prepared to hear about problems, and don't just want to be told about good news.

Deal with difficult issues straight away, and don't allow problems to fester.

Register and act upon emotional cues in communicating, making sure that their message is appropriate.

For more about good communication skills, including how to improve communication and reduce barriers, see our section on Communication Skills.

Conflict Management Skills

Conflicts and disagreements can arise at any time, often seeming to appear out of thin air.

The art of managing and resolving conflict is crucial both at home and at work. It starts by being aware of the importance of tact and diplomacy, and how these can be used to help to defuse difficult situations.

Good conflict managers are able to bring disagreements into the open, and resolve them. They use sharing of emotions to encourage debate and open discussion, reducing the hidden currents and problems, and helping each party to recognise each other's feelings as well as logical position. They also try to obtain win-win solutions (see our pages on Transactional Analysis and Negotiation Skills for more about this).

See our pages on Conflict Resolution and Mediation Skills for more about managing conflict.

Leadership Skills

It may sound strange to include leadership skills as part of social skills. Surely emotional intelligence is part of leadership, not the other way round?

The answer is that leadership skills and emotional intelligence are inextricably linked. As we noted earlier, only those who are tuned into their own and others' emotions can hope to influence. Perhaps the key aspect of good leadership is influence, and being able to take others along with you. Some people call that charisma, but it is more profound than that: it is good emotional intelligence.

Good leaders will:

Be able to articulate a vision, and enthuse others with it;

Not need to be in a formal leadership role to provide leadership;

Support and guide the performance of colleagues, while holding them accountable; and

Lead by example.

For more about this, see our section on Leadership Skills. You may also like to try our quiz on What Sort of a Leader Are You?

Change Management Skills

Effective change managers, often known as change catalysts, are those who make change happen without alienating everyone involved.

We can all understand that change is naturally quite stressful for all those involved. Good change catalysts, however, make it an exciting opportunity rather than a threat. Independently, they recognise the need for change and remove barriers. They challenge the status quo and champion change. They also lead from the front, modelling the desired change.

See our pages on Change Management for more.

Building Bonds (Rapport)

It is vital to be able to build and maintain relationships with other people.

Developing this skill will lead to better relationships, and a much better ability to work and get on in life. People who are good at this are great networkers, building and maintaining a strong network of contacts and connections.

They are extremely good at building rapport, but also work on established relationships to keep them healthy. One hallmark of people who are good at this skill is that they have many friends among their work colleagues. It is very much about valuing others: being interested in them and wanting to know more about them.

See our page on Building Rapport for more.

Collaboration and Cooperation | Team-Working

There are some people who work well with others: they build good and productive working and other relationships.

This is a key social skill in emotional intelligence. These people tend to see the relationship as at least as important as the task in hand: they value people as much or more as the activity.

They actively collaborate, sharing plans and ideas, and work together to build a better whole. In doing so, they promote a cooperative climate in which everyone is invited to contribute. They also actively seek out opportunities for collaborative working.

When good team-workers are in a team, the team performs better. They draw other members of the team in, and help them to collaborate. They build a team identity and therefore foster commitment. They may do this from a leadership role, or they may be a subordinate, but having people like this in a team is crucial to success.

For more about this, see our pages on Collaboration or Working Together, Effective Team-Working and Team and Group Roles.

A Cycle of Emotional Intelligence

Social skills are where good emotional intelligence is perhaps most obvious.

However, emotional intelligence does not start or end with social skills. Instead, it is a cycle, with its core lying with and in the individual. Only those who understand and regulate themselves and their emotions are able to work well and effectively with others.

Understanding this is crucial to developing your emotional intelligence.

Further Reading from Skills You Need
Understanding and Developing Emotional Intelligence
Learn more about emotional intelligence and how to effectively manage personal relationships at home, at work and socially.

Our eBooks are ideal for anyone who wants to learn about or develop their interpersonal skills and are full of easy-to-follow, practical information.

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'Social skills' is a very broad term (our page Social Skills covers the general meaning), but it is also used quite specifically in the context of Emotional Intelligence. In emotional intelligence the term ' social skills' refers to the skills needed to handle and influence other people's emotions effectively.

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In this opinion article published by Carmen Jacob, writing on the UpJorney blog, she explains the importance of social skills from the eyes of professionals in the field, who approach it with a different personal experience. The professionals consulted are very different in their work areas since we have entrepreneurs, administrators, psychologists, and lawyers, among others. All of them provide us with an opinion of the most significant benefit of social skills from their point of view concerning the work field in which they work. These expert opinions make Jacob's text highly credible, and due to the varying perspectives, the text has a broad audience.

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Social skills affect our everyday actions - from a simple hello to forging lasting relationships.

Hence, we asked 7 experts " Why are social skills important? "

See their top insights below!
Social skills are critical.
Learning face-to-face social skills provides a number of benefits. Human beings are social animals, and functioning effectively in society requires the skills to interact within society.
For the first time in generations, however, our kids aren't learning how to socialize in person.
These days, too many young people are spending hours staring at the screen of a digital device, such as a smartphone, tablet or another device.

As a result, we've seen the rates of depression and self-harm among teens surge upward (30% between 2010 and 2015 alone).
Positive social skills promote dialogue among and between teens.
Having a network of friends provides a support network and a sounding board, helping each other to come up with ideas for dealing with a difficult situation or challenge.
Having positive social skills increases understanding and empathy of (and by) others.
Positive social interaction can promote understanding of other viewpoints.

The APA points out, " By seeing how other people tackle problems and make positive changes, you can discover a whole range of strategies for facing your own concerns. "
Good social skills are necessary to become a part of most social groups.
Belonging to a social group can reduce or eliminate feelings of isolation, and promote overall improved social, mental and emotional well-being. People who are accepted members of a group tend to be happier and more satisfied in general.
Social skills can make or break a business deal, a relationship, or something as simple as a pleasant conversation.
The ability to hold a conversation, be engaging, and listen actively is not just a skill but a necessity in any business situation.

Within the technology industry, far too often is it considered acceptable to have a closed-door policy of poor social skills with the understanding that someone is just a "developer" or an "engineer" and that it's acceptable.

There are stereotypes, and there are acceptable social norms. Having a strong social presence and ability to network, even at a basic level, is an invaluable resource.

I'm passionate about health and well-being, including fitness, nutrition, and fulfilling work.
But many studies also show that social connections are extremely important to health and longevity.
That used to concern me because, although I generally get along well with people, my husband and I are self-employed, solo business owners, and we never really made the time to use our social skills.

In other words, we didn't go out and meet new people. So our friendships were limited to just a couple of people we had known all of our lives (and who we weren't able to see very often).

We often felt lonely and scared about being even more lonely in the future.

Last year, we decided to start attending "meetup" groups and formed our own.

I'd say social skills were crucial to taking connections made in those groups to the next level. We had to be outgoing enough to make friends, and have them want to stick around, plus we had to exert the time and energy needed to get together with them.

We now have at least twenty (20) people we could ask to dinner, or for a favor, plus several new very close friends. I don't know what impact this will have on our health or longevity, but I do feel far less anxious about the future (and we now have lots of social options every weekend, which is both a good and bad thing!)

Obviously, without social skills, we couldn't have made new friends and would have continued feeling lonely, which, if you believe the science, wouldn't have been good for our health.
Social skills are important because they are the foundation for having positive relationships with others with your partners, friends, and for your career.
If you have social skills, you will be able to make small talk with your coworkers, meet new people at parties to increase your friendship base and meet potential romantic partners in person.

Social skills allow you to connect with other people on a level that is important in life so you can have more in-depth relationships with others.
Social skills take your relationship with other people to the first level of becoming friends and colleagues.
In order to communicate what you want to communicate, you must have a reliable communication channel. This is true with everything you want to communicate.

When it comes to communicating with people, if you don't have a reliable communication channel, you won't be able to convey your message properly.
When you communicate with people face to face (or even by phone or by text), your communication channel is none other than your social skills.
People with poor social skills won't be able to interact properly with people, especially with strangers. As a result, it will be difficult for them to meet new people and expand their network.
Social skills allow you to initiate contact with people.
Social skills are very useful when it comes to approaching people, whether it is to meet new business partners, to make friends, to start a conversation with a woman or a man you find attractive, and so on.

When you know how to initiate contact in a way that will make the other person feel good, you'll meet new people on a regular basis, and thus quickly build a big social circle, in turn allowing you to meet even more people.
Social skills allow you to convey the right emotions.
According to numerous studies, more than 70% of your message doesn't come from the words you use, but from the emotions you convey.
What is important is not what people hear, but how they feel.
If they feel good when talking to you, they will appreciate you and will want to see you again.

On the other hand, if they feel bad when talking to you, they won't appreciate you and won't want to see you again.
Great social skills allow you to convey the emotions you want.
It allows you to feel the right way when you interact with people, and thus naturally make them feel the right way. Since they usually don't feel very comfortable when interacting with people, people with poor social skills fail to convey the right emotions.
Social skills also allow you to understand people, and thus to deliver a message that suits them.
Social skills come with an increased ability to understand people and to sense how they feel, as well as their wants and needs. This ability allows you to adapt to the people you're talking to, which is extremely important if you want to be able to connect with them.
Ultimately, social skills allow you to be liked by people.
Since your social skills allow you to meet and connect with people while making them feel good, it will allow you to be liked by people. This will provide you with many opportunities that will help you improve your life like never before.
Social skills will help you form an excellent elevator pitch.
Your elevator pitch is a concise way of explaining your credentials, current work, and goals.

In a nutshell, your elevator pitch consists of what you've done, what you're doing, and where you're going. What you've done includes degrees, certificates, past projects, or skill's you've developed.

What you're doing comprises current major projects, the position you're working, your job status, main roles, and top-line professional information, or the pursuit of degrees.

Where you're going involves your goals within the next 3, 5, or 7 years.

Since your elevator pitch can be 20-second long for informal meet-ups or two-minutes long for the interview question " Tell me about yourself," it's a great way to demonstrate your value and confidence.
People like confidence in others.
It's inspiring and comforting. The elevator pitch allows you to present yourself on your terms. If you can do this, you'd leave a good first impression with networking partners or interviewers.
Remember, you'll never get a second chance at a good first impression. Social skills are important in many definitions.
As an entrepreneur myself, I like to be social to be able to promote my brand and market myself. Basically being social is to market yourself with the surroundings and be active in formal and informal discussions.

This can create many opportunities as in career growth or in maintaining a social network worth following. As Gary Vaynerchuck would say; " Surround yourself with famous and successful people ".

Social skills can enhance your networking and your ability to upscale yourself in the eyes of the viewer or the listener.

Being an introvert has its own benefits, but being social not only on online platforms i.e. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc, but to make your physical social circle or group of friends vast.

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Why are Social Skills Important? - Experts' Advice

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Social skills affect our everyday actions - from a simple hello to forging lasting relationships. Hence, we asked 7 experts " Why are social skills important? " See their top insights below! Social skills are critical. Learning face-to-face social skills provides a number of benefits.

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Bryan writes an entry on this forum on economics. He explains that although computers and machines are currently taking away many jobs, and many people are scared because they do not know the limit, they do not need to worry. The main difference and advantage that humans have compared to machines is that we have social skills, and machines do not. Machines will never develop this characteristic, which is the limit of their workforce. You have to know data and objective information, and you also have to understand how to interpret emotions, which can be reflected in things as simple as they look, the tone of voice, or facial gestures (Bryan). Social skills are a unique characteristic of humanity that will limit machines.

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Why employees with better social skills earn more

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The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. Incorporated as a not-for-profit foundation in 1971, and headquar…

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Poor social skills may be harmful to health

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Poor social skills may be harmful to health

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This short entry explains how the lack of social skills can have terrible consequences, especially on a psychological level. The lack of mental abilities often leads to mental illnesses such as depression or anxiety. These mental illnesses are more familiar to develop in children and adolescents during the educational stages. However, the lack of social skills continue to cause harmful effects even when we are older since it has been shown that the lack of social skills is directly related to loneliness, the cause of multiple mental illnesses in adulthood and retirement.

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Those who struggle in social situations may be at greater risk for mental and physical health problems, according to a new study from the University of Arizona.

That's because people with poor social skills tend to experience more stress and loneliness, both of which can negatively impact health, said study author Chris Segrin, head of the UA Department of Communication.

The study, published in the journal Health Communication, is among the first to link social skills to physical, not just mental, health.

"We've known for a long time that social skills are associated with mental health problems like depression and anxiety," Segrin said. "But we've not known definitively that social skills were also predictive of poorer physical health. Two variables -- loneliness and stress -- appear to be the glue that bind poor social skills to health. People with poor social skills have high levels of stress and loneliness in their lives."

The study is based on a survey of a nationally representative sample of 775 people, age 18 to 91, who were asked to respond online to questions designed to measure social skills, stress, loneliness, and mental and physical health.

Social skills refer to the communication skills that allow people to interact effectively and appropriately with others. Segrin focused on four specific indicators of social skills: the ability to provide emotional support to others; self-disclosure, or the ability to share personal information with others; negative assertion skills, or the ability to stand up to unreasonable requests from others; and relationship initiation skills, or the ability to introduce yourself to others and get to know them.

Study participants who had deficits in those skills reported more stress, more loneliness, and poorer overall mental and physical health, Segrin said.

While the negative effects of stress on the body have been known for a long time, loneliness is a more recently recognized health risk factor.

"We started realizing about 15 years ago that loneliness is actually a pretty serious risk for health problems. It's as serious of a risk as smoking, obesity or eating a high-fat diet with lack of exercise," Segrin said.

Segrin likens the experience of loneliness to the way people feel when they're in a hurry to get out the door and can't find their keys -- except the feeling never truly goes away.

"When we lose our keys, 99 percent of the time we find them, the stress goes away, we get in the car and it's over," he said. "Lonely people experience that same sort of frantic search -- in this case, not for car keys but for meaningful relationships -- and they don't have the ability to escape from that stress. They're not finding what they're looking for, and that stress of frantically searching takes a toll on them."

The good news, Segrin says, is that social skills have proved to be amenable to intervention.

"For people who really want to improve their social skills and work on them, there's therapy, there's counseling and there is social skills training," he said.

Unfortunately, however, many people who have poor social skills don't realize it, Segrin said.

"One of the problems with possessing poor social skills is lack of social awareness, so even if they're not getting the date, they're not getting the job, they're getting in arguments with co-workers or their spouse, they don't see themselves as a problem," Segrin said. "They're walking around with this health risk factor and they're not even aware of it."

Where Do Social Skills Come From?

Social skills are mostly learned over time, beginning in your family of origin and continuing throughout life. Yet, some scientific evidence suggests that certain traits, such as sociability or social anxiousness, may be at least partly hereditary, said Segrin, who has studied social skills for 31 years.

While Segrin doesn't address it in his current study, he says that technology, for all its benefits, may be taking a serious toll on social skills, especially in young people.

"The use of technology -- texting, in particular -- is probably one of the biggest impediments for developing social skills in young people today," he said. "Everything is so condensed and parsed out in sound bites, and that's not the way that human beings for thousands of years have communicated. It makes young people more timid when they're face-to-face with others, and they're not sure what to say what to do. There's no social interaction, and I fear that's really hurting young people."

Parents can help with their children's social skills -- and, in turn, their health -- not only by limiting screen time but also by making sure children are regularly exposed to situations that require in-person social interaction, Segrin said.

"It could be a summer camp, a sporting program, a church group -- something where they can hang out with peers and just talk and do things together," he said.

Future research, Segrin said, should explore how other aspects of social skills might impact health. He also is interested in looking at how social skills impact those struggling with chronic illness.

"I want to get the word out about how valuable good communication skills are," Segrin said. "They will not just benefit you in your social life but they'll benefit your physical health."

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mental health research; workplace health; patient education and counseling; children's health; psychology; learning disorders; social psychology; relationships

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Poor social skills may be harmful to health

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
While social skills deficits have long been linked to mental health problems like depression, a new study links poor social skills to poor physical health as well. Those who struggle in social situations experience more stress and loneliness, which can take a toll on the body.

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Importance of Social Skills in the Elementary Grades

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Importance of Social Skills in the Elementary Grades

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Meier et al. They carry out a study in 10 institutes to find out what types of social habits are the ones that have the most relevance at the time of education according to the opinion of various teachers. Results of their study tell us that teachers think that social skills are more critical than affirmation skills. They also develop a comparison with studies carried out previously with the same objective, and find substantial differences in the results, for which Meier et al conclude that "These studies disaggregate the importance of each of the social skills evaluated. Therefore, we cannot generalize any of the results and declare the most important social skills in education "(417). More studies should be carried out until a generalization about the most important social skills can be reached.

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How does gender relate to social skills? 

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How does gender relate to social skills? 

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In this article written by Tan et al. the relationship between gender and social relationships is discussed. Tan et al. are concerned that the broad study of social relations concerning academic results has never addressed how gender could affect both. So Tan et al. conducted a psychological study at an Illinois institute. The results showed that "women who perceive social skills as more important had higher grade point average (GPA), higher attendance rates, and fewer disciplinary problems than their male counterparts. On the contrary, women who perceive that social skills are less important have lower GPA, lower attendance and more disciplinary referrals than their male counterparts" (Tan et al.) With which we can conclude that gender influences both social skills as well as academic results. The abundance of objective statistical data and the constant use of evidence from external sources provide authority and credibility to the article.