Psychology and Leadership
Practical Tips to Increase Social Intelligence
I present my observations and interactions with socially intelligent leaders in multicultural environments.
Social intelligence is coded in our genes. We evolved as social beings throughout history. Our brain is wired in a way, craving for tribal connections. Our limbic system (the emotional part of the brain) is designed to cater to our social needs.
Social intelligence is complex, but it is not rocket science. By understanding the fundamentals, we can perform as socially intelligent people. Further, by emulating the behavior of socially smart people, we can significantly improve our social competence.
The limbic part of the brain is an open system. We crave relationships. Not many of us can enjoy loneliness. We cannot live in isolation.
Of course, there may be some exceptions, but most of us desire constant human connection. We also socialize with animals, especially with our pets. We see our pets as part of the family.
Even though we all have social desires stemming from genetic and neurological levels, some of us have difficulty connecting with others. Therefore, social intelligence becomes a vital skill to survive and thrive in society.
At a younger age, I knew the importance of social intelligence, but it took me several decades to develop my social competence. Initially, I had to build my social competence to relate with my friends, family members, colleagues, neighbors, community members, and others.
As social intelligence was an essential skill for my personal and professional development, I had to acquire fundamental skills using unique methods.
In addition to learning fundamentals from the body of knowledge during my cognitive science studies, I also conducted ethnographic research that enabled me to observe and interact with socially intelligent leaders. Emulating their behavior expedited my skill-building. Each competent leader provided me with a new perspective.
As an individual, a family member, a colleague, and a community member, my emotional and social intelligence opened many lucrative doors to exciting opportunities and relationships.
Therefore, in this post, I want to summarize my observations of socially intelligent people to provide fundamentals. This topic was part of my thesis with a comprehensive literature review. However, to make it worthwhile, I highlight essential points at a high level.
The central aspect of social intelligence is connecting with others easily. While we can effortlessly connect with some people, we have difficulty connecting with others.
Our social intelligence depends on both emotional and cognitive intelligence. Emotional intelligence plays a significant role in connecting with others emotionally. Cognitive intelligence helps us understand norms and pick up psychological cues in communications. Our IQ also allows us to understand societal norms, rules, ethics, and regulations within a knowledge framework.
Socially intelligent people know themselves at an individual level, and they also understand the emotions of others collectively. In addition, to regulate their emotions, they also find ways to respond to others’ feelings intelligently. Thus, emotional intelligence is a fundamental skill for building social intelligence.
Emotional intelligence enables us to see other people’s realities and accept them as they are. In addition, our emotional maturity makes us feel comfortable dealing with multiple personalities. Besides, emotional intelligence sharpens our social intellect in understanding other people’s feelings. Thus, social and emotional intelligence are tightly coupled.
There are overlapping fundamental skills for both emotional and social intelligence. The essential skills are communication, empathy, compassion, politeness, manners, authenticity, openness, transparency, influence, trust, reliability, integrity, credibility, humor, privacy, and team spirit. These skills are interrelated.
Socially intelligent people can articulate their needs, understand, and acknowledge the needs of others. They don’t compare themselves with others. They can have enriching conversations with active listening. Good communication also requires empathy and compassion for others. Good communicators can influence others by establishing trust with their reliability and credibility.
Socially competent people can have pleasant communication with others. Their empathy and compassion make them trustworthy. They understand the pain and frustration of other people. In addition, their integrity plays a critical role in making them credible and reliable. For example, they keep their promise and respond genuinely in enriching conversations.
While socially intelligent people build one-on-one relationships effortlessly, they can also develop great relationships in small and large groups. Therefore, team playing is an essential social intelligence skill. Furthermore, all leaders need to have team-building skills. Therefore, social competence is necessary for them.
People only relate to people who listen to them and understand their concerns. They create distance from those who judge them. No one enjoys being judged. Criticism is a professional development tool that does not work in social settings. Socially intelligent people know this sensitive fact, and they don’t judge or criticize people overtly, especially in social settings.
We all have perceptions about other people. However, sharing our perceptions without filtering them is a killer in relating with others. While this point relates to emotional intelligence, such as empathy and compassion, it also relates to cognitive intelligence to filter risky issues and reframe them as palatable statements.
Socially intelligent people refrain from arrogant behavior. Because they know people don’t want to relate to arrogance and supremacy. Therefore, socially savvy people act modestly and humbly even if they have superior positions and intellectually rich backgrounds.
Related to team building, socially intelligent people bring team members together. They encourage them to have fun. They find ingenious ways to engage people by understanding their preferences and points that make them tick. For example, they organize celebratory events such as birthdays, anniversaries, and achievements to have fun together. They connect others with significant life events and their values.
Some cultures pay particular importance to social events. They create formal occasions and special days to bring people together. However, people who belong to a single culture might be challenged in relating with other cultures. Nevertheless, socially intelligent people pass the borders of cultures and can relate to different cultures by focusing on the fundamentals. Everyone wants to be loved, acknowledged, appreciated, and heard, whatever culture they come from.
Social intelligence also requires understanding the importance of diversity and inclusiveness. Each person is unique even though they live in the same town and country, speak the same language, or work in the same organization. High-performing teams include diversity as the main success factor. Many countries and organizations focus on multiculturalism as they understand the value of diversity and variety for collaborative success.
Humor is essential in social intelligence, but it is risky in some social settings. For example, sometimes good-intentioned yet careless remarks can hurt the feelings of others. Therefore, our cognitive intelligence can help us tame our humor. In addition, our emotional intelligence can flourish with humor when we do it with empathy and compassion. One key aspect is our humor should never belittle a person but heighten their good traits.
Another critical point in social intelligence is respecting the privacy of others. Some people take their friends for granted and try to breach their privacy. Even though our friends are very close to us, they still want to keep some private points they don’t like sharing. Respecting the privacy of people is non-negotiable. Understanding this simple fact is critical to developing our social connections.
Socially intelligent people also use social media cleverly. Although social media require less emotional intelligence as we don’t see people face to face, we need to act mindfully with extra precaution, such as putting ourselves in others’ shoes and showing empathy and compassion. Likewise, we need to be extra careful with our written communication in online forums.
Our cognitive intelligence is essential to thriving in social media. For example, privacy is even more important in social media. Clarity and neutrality improve our communications in online forums. While verbal communication is essential in face-to-face social settings, written communication is vital in online forums. For example, it is critical to understand the background, context, and perspectives before responding to a post, thus respecting people’s privacy.
Socially intelligent people are seen as charismatic and charming because they understand the thoughts and emotions of other people. Charisma stems from empathy, compassion, appreciation, and mindful behavior. As charisma is not a single trait, it includes multiple communication and behavioral skills. Nevertheless, charisma revolves around emotions even though logic plays some role in relationships. For example, a charismatic leader enhances a topic rather than showing overt disagreement.
Improving our social intelligence can be an excellent investment in gaining visibility, acceptance, and recognition from others. Social intelligence is an essential success factor in building exciting relationships personally and professionally. Therefore, it is a vital competence. We can learn fundamental principles and develop social intelligence skills. An effective way to develop social intelligence competence is to understand the behavioral patterns of other people with these skills and then model and emulate them.
Relationships are risky. They can put us in a vulnerable position. The risk of exploitation is inevitable, but we can mitigate it with diligence and prudence. Taking calculated risks and tolerating vulnerability and uncertainty by opening our hearts to others are vital life skills to improve our social intelligence. Moreover, social intelligence skills can significantly contribute to our mental health and well-being.
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