Let us share a few useful social skill books to help you
What’s your social life like currently? Do you have strong connections with many people? Or do you constantly feel alone? Regardless of your current social status, it’s a known fact that one of the most important aspects of your life is your relationships because it plays a huge role in you as a person.
As humans, we are all equipped with the faculties to get along in society, however, we don’t all have the skills to have smooth and enjoyable interactions with our fellow human beings. Some people just don’t feel comfortable with social interactions and therefore avoid making and building relationships. If you find yourself in this position it’s not too late to focus on your social skills and develop them. Like any skill, you need to put some time into it and practice them. Let us share some of the best books on how to develop excellent social skills to help you. On the same note, keep socializing with us to know more about human architecture and mooshoo way of living.
You must have come across some people who are just instantly respected and loved. Everyone wants to become friends with them (or their lover if they’re single). In business, they rapidly rise to the top of the corporate ladder. These traits you see are attributes of a more skilful way to interact with people.
The author has spent her career teaching both old and young, how to communicate for success. The book “How to Talk to Anyone” offers 92 effective and easy success techniques. In this book, you’ll find:
- How to prepare yourself to look like someone interesting and worth talking to.
- How to know what to say in all social situations, tips on small talk and how to get a move into deeper meaningful conversations.
- How to be more like VIPs in terms of communication style and the way you act in social situations.
- How to talk like an insider, to get in with any group.
- How to create incredible rapport with someone.
- How to really compliment someone and make them feel it.
- How to get the most out of phone call conversations and get through to people you want to talk to.
- How to work a room at any party or social gathering.
- How to talk to people at the top of the social ladder.
The book Charisma Myth consists of three components which are presence, warmth, and power. Cabane uses Steve Jobs and Bill Clinton to demonstrate how they used these components. As you might know, Steve wasn’t known as someone with warmth, but he was huge on power and presence. However, Clinton exercised more presence and warmth compared to power. The author also describes four categories of Charisma.
- Focus Charisma: Someone who makes people feel respected, listens intensively, and heard.
- Visionary Charisma: Someone who is driven by an idea and then inspires several others to follow. An example is Steve Jobs.
- Kindness Charisma: Emotional connection and warmth are the major traits with these types of people. An example in the book is the Dalai Lama.
- Authority Charisma: Status and power are the major elements of this type of person. Examples are Martin Luther King Jr or Winston Churchill,
What’s really interesting about this book is that despite popular opinion on charisma, Cabane explains that it’s a learnable skill, It’s not something you are born with and is certainly something you can develop!
Ah, this one! Arguably the most popular among social life books ever published, You cannot afford to overlook this amazing piece by Dale Carnegie, if you really want to improve your social life. Dale studied hundreds of successful people from all walks of life and read all of the literature he and his researcher could find at the time. Some examples of his wisdom are his principles around getting someone to like you. He distilled this into 6 easy to use principles that will transform your social life:
- Become genuinely interested in other people.
- Smile.
- Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
- Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
- Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
- Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.
You will also learn that there are no big changes when you criticise people and instead , a build up of resentment and a resistance to change. Bear in mind that we are dealing with creatures of emotions not creatures of logic. This is because we are often motivated by ego and pride not necessarily logic. A truely outstanding book to read even in this day and age!
Covey explains that the way we see the world is based on our perceptions. For changes to occur in a given situation, we need to change ourselves. For us to change ourselves, we need to change our perceptions.
During the study of old literature, the author noticed a crucial change in the way success was defined over time. During the 1920s, people’s view on success was focussed on what Covey calls the “personality ethic”. In this situation, success is a function of behaviours, attitudes, public image, and personality. Covey suggests a different approach based on principles which he calls “character ethic”. Where character ethics focus more on humility, integrity, temperance, justice, fidelity, courage, industry, patience, modesty, the golden rule, and simplicity. To achieve this a person must understand what he wants from life, how he wants to be remembered, how first to become independent from others and be able to stand alone and not be dependent on others. Once you can do this you can then focus on inter-dependence, which is a more harmonious win-win approach to how you interact with people. Meaning you consider the needs of others as well as your own and ultimately through this achieve greater success and happiness in life.
Today, people look for the easy way out. When they come across a successful team or person, the work and effort to become successful is often missed. We’re promised short term solutions to help us achieve the results we want, which often causes further problems. This book an alternative to being caught in the quick win approach to life and how unrewarding this ultimately becomes, It helps you to understand how to have a much deeper appreciation of what success really is. This is a life changer if you take it on board and genuinely practice the 7 habits!
This book talks about emotional intelligence (EI) and it’s 12 competences. According to Goleman, emotional intelligence has several models. Each of which has its own set of abilities. EI comprises 4 domains which are social awareness, self-management, relationship management, and self-awareness.
Each of these domains that are listed above have learnable competancies. These competancies allow outstanding performance when you interact with people. One can be strong in areas such as a positive outlook, empathy, and self-control, but it is important to know that crucial abilities such as influence, achievement, inspirational leadership, teamwork, and conflict management are necessary skill-set to have. This skill-set requires a lot of engagement with your own emotions and how to develop them.
So in order to excel, a balance of strength has to be developed across the suite of EI competencies. It doesn’t matter if you’re old or young, thisbook is a must-read if you want to develop your emotional intelligence.
Robert Cialdini is a genius in understanding some specific traits of being human. Here are the 6 main principles explored in this book; Reciprocation, Commitment & Consistency, Social Proof, Authority. Liking and Scarcity. Now, how you use these is clearly up to you and people clearly can misuse this to get what they want.
Knowing these principles will also help you to understand when we’re under the influence of persuasive tactics. For example, the way organisations may give a freebie to trigger us to reciprocate, or the power of social proof where famous people are used to promote a certain product. As humans we are often overwhelmed by information and these traits helps us quickly make decisions otherwise we would be constantly overwhelmed.
These principles/traits can also be used to help us be more aware of these shortcuts and perhaps when we are unwittingly applying these persuasive tactics to others. This is one of those books that is also a life-changer in terms of understanding what it is to be human!