By: Sandeep Atre
All relationships are based on that all-important connect’. And just the way, to establish a contact, two persons need to share factual information, in the same manner, to establish a connect’, two persons need to share emotional information. And the best part is that the desire to connect’ is so deeply woven into each one of us that people keep sending emotional signals all the time.
The only difference is that more often than not those signals are subtle, in the form of gestures, postures and expressions. And that is the realm of social intelligence’. So, how successful you are in connecting to people primarily depends on how well you can understand what is going on inside them. People’s behavior is eventually a reflection of their emotions. So if you can connect emotionally then you can synchronize behaviorally and thus excel interpersonally.
We define Social intelligence as Observing nonverbal behavior and understanding emotions for greater interpersonal effectiveness and self-management’. Thus, it is a skill backed by conceptual depth. It helps you observe a person’s gestures, postures and expressions in the light of the emotional counterparts.
We all know that humans are social animals and the basis of our social being is interpersonal communication’. One look at our evolution and it becomes absolutely clear that we are wired to connect, because there is no other way we would have survived all that we did. But are we connecting anymore? Look around and you would find that if not destroyed, the very basis of our social being is surely under serious threat.
At homes, fathers are busy staring at their smart-phones, mothers are busy watching television, kids are busy with their videogames and teenagers are tuned into a song in the I-pod. Similarly, at workplace, bosses are busy looking at laptops and employees are either logged into their company’s intranets or some social networking sites. Even the education hasn’t remained unaffected. Teachers are looking at their PowerPoint Presentations rather than at students and students are also preferring online videos to learn from.The scene in business is no different either. Customers are choosing e-commerce websites over a real shopping experience and Customer Care Executives are busy checking out customer records in CRM software rather than relating to the very same persons standing in front of them.
Yes! We are looking less at people, listening to them less, being less mentally-present in conversations and are paying lesser attention to their reactions. Those speaking silences and subtle interactions of the past are today struggling in the impulsive hands of Poke, Ping & Post’. And with decreasing attention span and declining face-to-face contact, people are finding it hard to relate to each other, connect with each other and hold on to relationships.That’s what makes social intelligence such an important virtue to develop. We, at Socialigence, define Social Intelligence as observing nonverbal behavior and understanding emotions for greater interpersonal effectiveness and self-management’. Yes! If we develop renewed interest and caliber to pay attention to people and to what they are conveying without saying it, then this simple change has a potential to enrich our lives as social beings to a great extent.
For instance, while interacting with a family member, a relative, a friend or a colleague, this skill can help you gauge from his or her gestures and postures whether the person’s emotional state is negative or positive’ or that of appeal or avoidance’. Then you can zero in on the exact emotion by observing the face.
This knowledge can be utilized to then prepare the most apt response on your part based on the context and setting. Now, the best part of social intelligence skill is that once you have responded in the chosen manner, you can observe if that response has generated the desired effect as the effect can again be observed by the change in that person’s gestures, expressions or postures.
Now, what makes this skill even more important for interpersonal success is the fact that in the contemporary world, all relationships are overwhelmed by the need to stand strong in the onslaught of unprecedented speed of change! It makes an even more strong case for creating stable and supportive relationships.
And what damages a relationship most is unresponsiveness’. And that unresponsiveness is and ability to observe’. This skill of social intelligence’ and the knowledge associated with it builds an interpersonal bridge by reviving one’s focus towards the importance of paying attention to people and then strengthening their skill-set to do it competently mostly born out of disinterest. And that disinterest is mostly a side-effect of less willingness.
