How to develop my social skills?

4 comments

1. Starting off with small talk is the best thing to be honest. If you’re gonna ask them any questions, let the questions be very general and non-specific

2. If you’re not used to doing it, just take baby steps to get used to it. Ask someone how their day is going. Or how their weekend was. Eventually it will start to feel normal and you can ask more follow up questions and establish connections or common interests.

3. Developing social skills is like learning a musical instrument. Its mostly about getting experience but book learning can help you too.

4. TLDR: Ask questions.

   It’s tough being 17, especially if you’re in a smaller town filled with people who generally know of you and have preconceived perceptions of you, but just know that talking is a skill just like any other. Wanting to improve is the first step, so good for you. Going up and talking to strangers is the hardest part but that doesn’t mean keeping a conversation going is easy either. I’ve got some tips I learned from brains far less smooth than mine, hopefully it helps.

   Talking is a two way street, you listen just as much as you talk. An easy way to do this is by asking questions about what they are talking about. They mention they have a pet ‘what’s your pets name’ ‘do you have any pictures of them’ etc. Asking questions shows that you’re actively listening but also fully engaging in the conversation.

   I’m not sure who came up with this but it’s a sales term used to steer conversations in a particular way, the FORD method. Knowing that asking questions is such an important way to keep conversations flowing, this will help you know what to ask, and will often lead to follow up questions that can keep a conversation going all day long. It stands for Family, Occupation, Recreation, Dreams. The idea of this method is start with the generic side of questions and transition to a deeper conversation which is where the majority of social bonds form. There are surface level questions and deeper ones to ask in each of these categories, so don’t feel like you have to go in order, and you can always circle back if you want to learn more about a person.

   Family wouldn’t just be ‘do you have any siblings’ but it could be anything from ‘do you have pets’ like my example was earlier all the way to things like ‘where are you from’ which then eventually leads into ‘what did you do for work’ or ‘what were your favorite things to do there’ which then steers the conversation to Occupation or Recreation, taking everything one step deeper.

   Occupation is the most straight forward of the bunch in my opinion, but school can be someone’s full time commitment so I often would lump them together here. it’s the easiest to pivot into if the conversation feels like it’s hitting a dead end, and it’s the easiest to pivot out of because it seamlessly transitions into any of the other categories. Pivot in with the simple ‘what do you do for work’ but pivot out with ‘is this a job you see yourself at long term, what type of career do you want’, ‘what made you want to work there’, or even ‘sounds like a busy job, what do you like to do in your free time’, there are plenty of ways to take the conversation to keep it rolling

   Recreational is the all encompassing category, hobbies, music, movies, workouts, and anything else they might enjoy doing. This is a great place to take a conversation because it really can be somewhat endless and it’s a great time to find out what common interests your share with someone.

   Dreams are big one, this is where you can have some deeper conversations. This category is pretty wide open could be simple questions like ‘what type of career to you want to have’ or ‘if you could live anywhere, where would you go’ to some pretty deep and open topics ‘have you ever thought about settling down and having a family some day’. The other topics let you know about who a person is, but if you can get them to open up to you about deep wants or desires, that’s an emotional bond that isn’t going away easily.

   It’s a great way to keep a conversation flowing but you’ll still have to talk about each topic you bring up, don’t just rapid fire question into question, if you ask of them have a pet, be prepared to talk about pets for at least a little while. Going through these topics, these aren’t something to fly through in an hour, I’ve spent hours talking about family, only to spend even more time talking about hobbies, just to end up passing out and picking up the conversation the next day. Know how to hold a conversation is an important skill to build, and when you’re more confident in talking to anyone you meet, it will make going up to those individual people easier because you won’t have to worry about to ask. Building social bonds with people is a great way to make friends or to start a relationship and hopefully this helps you. Also I’m sure this is riddled with typos, I’ll probably fix it up with an edit eventually but if you have any questions let me know