Social Skills : No way! It is not for us! Or is it?
With the world becoming a small circuit it is important to be well networked. We are not talking about being present across social media platforms but realtime life-skills here. It’s hard to underestimate the impact of good social skills on your career. In fact, across the board, in a wide variety of businesses, people would rather work with someone who is likeable and incompetent than with someone who is skilled and obnoxious!
How one values competence changes depending on whether the person is likeable or not. And people who lack social competence end up looking like they lack other competencies, too.
When it comes to holding down a job, social skills matter today, more than ever. Although this may be more true in fields like entertainment, where it could be the key to get more and better jobs, it is beginning to be true for the not so colourful building industry as well.
In the past the building industry (read engineers!) was considered a haven for loners and people with low social skills, but increasingly it is noticed that career prospects of the technical person improves dramatically along with his sociable nature and people skills. While a person may be successful, even today, to an extent even if he is not networked, but once a team has to be managed, or a client has to be handled such people lose out near their more sociable peers.
With each passing year, people even from the building industry are begining to realize this and therefore those entering the workforce come in with a better likeability factor than the year before.
Our experts at Gallopper have drawn up a few tips and tricks to improve your social skills, at the work place:
1. Work at being likeable : To have a successful career, one must work at being likeable. So if you just decide you want to do better, you probably will.
2. Care about other people : Remember, people who are likeable actually care about other people and care about the connections they make. Each one is responsible to create healthy and productive relationships at work. Being good at talking to people requires that you figure out what interests them.
3. Help : Figure out how to help someone else get what they need. Recognize what you’re trying to get done and who you are trying to get it done with. Then think beyond your own stuff to what the other people want. If you help others reach their goals, it will make you more likeable and then more likely to reach your own goals.
4. Smile : We are not looking at a Personality Contest here but smiling and listening to make someone feel liked makes it much easier to connect.
For self-improvement, choose interpersonal coaching over office skills and you’ll likely look more accomplished!
