You know bud, if you’re interested, let’s be hackers and hack this social skill test. Can you give me a specific situation (or several) where you feel your social skills are lacking??
Let’s start off by testing your theory. I’m old enough to have known a lot of really wonderful people who think their social skills suck when they actually don’t - they’re just interested in completely different, non typical things.
From there, let’s go into strategies. Let’s start off with a social gathering hack. You’re at an event and don’t know many people. What do you do??
If you said “copious amounts of cocaine”, that’s a way but likely not the best way to cope. Instead, try approaching people who are speaking in groups of two. It can be a really simple approach (“Great bag!”/“I’m Greg!”/“Cheers!”/“There’s a dude with bad social skills chipping away at Mount Yay2 in the bathroom.”)
Smile, pause for a full count and walk away. If you were unwelcome, nobody worth knowing fucking cares. However, when you’re at an event and see two people talking, there’s a very very very high chance that one party wants out of the conversation. Be that out!!!
In fact, a really massive part of what people call social skills is really just about giving people ins and outs.
For example, don’t try to pick up romantic partners when they’re at work - they’re contractually obligated to listen to your shitty pick up lines. If you try to pick them up when they’re at work, they might not have an out - they likely can’t just quit their jobs on the spot.
Or when you’re in a meeting, make sure everyone else has three times the chances to speak that you do. Give their anxiety, perceived lack of social skills or whatever an in - make it easy for them. Things like this work:
“Hey btheshoe, we were talking about $x a couple of days ago and you had some excellent points.”
If it’s stuff like eye contact, focus on the person and the conversation. Smile, laugh and express interest with your eyes.
But now it’s your turn. What gets you every single time?? You’re in a safe place and I’m on your team. If this is a scary environment use hypotheticals or reach out directly, I’m Greg and you can reach me at gthluska@gmail.com.
> Instead, try approaching people who are speaking in groups of two.
I would advise to check body language first. If the duo are facing each other head-on, don't interject. If they're turned slightly outwards, like they're observing the crowd whilst talking, go for it.
I've had a couple of intense conversations broken up like this by someone standing there awkwardly, but then you also don't want to make them feel bad by telling your conversation partner "I'll finish the story later <turn> Hi!", etc.
This is helpful as it has three very useful examples for people who want to learn social skills.
1.) The tactic is action, action, count and action. Greet the couple, smile, count (“and one and”) and move on. That’s enough time to give someone an out. The tactic is not “stand there silently and stare.”
2.) Part of having social skills is knowing when and where to have intense conversations. If you choose to have an intense conversation at a place where people mingle, that’s really not very helpful.
3.) Again, most social skills are about giving people an out. If someone is standing there awkwardly, have some compassion. Ask yourself if you’re having the conversation in the right place and be kind. It sucks to be that awkward person standing on the fringes. Our job as nice adults is to make them feel incredibly welcome, even if it means having our intense conversations in private.
Greg, thanks for posting this, this is all very good insight especially about how to approach people with an opening. For many, that ability to know what to say does not come easily and your pointers are helpful.
I stuttered well into my high school years, didn’t have many friends and genuinely had to learn. Some amazing people helped me and it’s amazing getting to pay it forward. Thanks for the kind words friend - it’s amazing knowing some of my crap is helpful. :)
> Or when you’re in a meeting, make sure everyone else has three times the chances to speak that you do.
That rhymes with something I "deducted" lately: somebody at work just talks with no end. One of those persons that keep on talking even though you left the room, requiring you to do double turns because it is not socially acceptable to just leave a conversation.
One observation (shared by co-workers) is that talking to him alone (two person dialog), is actually quite bearable. He is definitely a smart guy and has a lot of interesting (if opinionated) things to say about basically every topic.
Where this becomes unbearable is in conversations with three or more participants. Once more than two people are in conversation the "alotted conversation time" per person immediately drops by a significant percentage (two persons -> 1:1, three -> 1:2, n persons -> 1:(n-1)).
tl;dr: A person that talks non-stop only uses double his "alotted speaking time" in a two person conversation, but that same person uses thrice his share once three persons converse.
Small off-topic note: dialogue has nothing to do with di-, 2, its etymology is dia-, "across, between". For all n > 1, n people speaking together are in a dialogue.
This is kind of funny, but trialog or trialogue are both reasonably correct. Thanks to my friend Christine (I genuinely thought simiones was Christine), I can tell you that tria is Greek for trio.
Dialogue would come from “dia” and “legein”, or “through” and “speak”. Trialog could be seen as coming from “tria” “legein”, or “trio” “speak”.
Greek is really cool. For the most part, if it would work in math, it’s likely okay in Greek.
Edit - Dia is still most precise. It means ‘through’ or ‘between’ and implies you can have a dialogue between two up to a limit of an infinite number of people.
First off, this is incredibly interesting and you seem like an unbelievably cool person. I’m serious - this is one heck of a great addition, I’m glad you shared and I really dig knowing that other people add numbers to social things too. :)
I’m going to figure out how to express my advice differently. Three times works well in a three person conversation but you’re right - it will start to fail when groups get bigger.
One consequence of that 1:(n-1) "rule" above is that at some point it basically does not make a difference anymore. The step from 1:1 to 1:2 is "huge" (2x vs 3x more than the alotted speaking time), but once more people are in the room every other person joining just changes the denominator by a tiny amount.
Let’s start off by testing your theory. I’m old enough to have known a lot of really wonderful people who think their social skills suck when they actually don’t - they’re just interested in completely different, non typical things.
From there, let’s go into strategies. Let’s start off with a social gathering hack. You’re at an event and don’t know many people. What do you do??
If you said “copious amounts of cocaine”, that’s a way but likely not the best way to cope. Instead, try approaching people who are speaking in groups of two. It can be a really simple approach (“Great bag!”/“I’m Greg!”/“Cheers!”/“There’s a dude with bad social skills chipping away at Mount Yay2 in the bathroom.”)
Smile, pause for a full count and walk away. If you were unwelcome, nobody worth knowing fucking cares. However, when you’re at an event and see two people talking, there’s a very very very high chance that one party wants out of the conversation. Be that out!!!
In fact, a really massive part of what people call social skills is really just about giving people ins and outs.
For example, don’t try to pick up romantic partners when they’re at work - they’re contractually obligated to listen to your shitty pick up lines. If you try to pick them up when they’re at work, they might not have an out - they likely can’t just quit their jobs on the spot.
Or when you’re in a meeting, make sure everyone else has three times the chances to speak that you do. Give their anxiety, perceived lack of social skills or whatever an in - make it easy for them. Things like this work:
“Hey btheshoe, we were talking about $x a couple of days ago and you had some excellent points.”
If it’s stuff like eye contact, focus on the person and the conversation. Smile, laugh and express interest with your eyes.
But now it’s your turn. What gets you every single time?? You’re in a safe place and I’m on your team. If this is a scary environment use hypotheticals or reach out directly, I’m Greg and you can reach me at gthluska@gmail.com.