Social Skills

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I hear people talk about social skills and a need to improve them and, indeed, often get pulled into this myself. Then I realised I don't really know what people mean by social skills.

What do you define as social skills exactly?

I don't. Instead, people complain to me 24/7/365 about keeping their machinery spinning. Never works for them...

Read Marc Segar:
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/alistair ... rvival.pdf

I've always taken 'social skills' in its broadest definition: all the ability to communicate with and relate to other people, whether it revolves around properly conveying information, conveying emotion and interpreting emotions of others, contributing to the cohesion of the social group you're in (whether it's family, friends, work, the neighbourhood etc.).

The 'level' of one's social skills determines how well one can operate within a social structure or situation. I think one can improve on one's social skills through observation, experience, and imitation, but I also think that, in my own case, I may always be significantly more clumsy than the average person, in large part due to my autism and the 'mindblindness' that comes with it. Nevertheless, I take pride in my progress toward compensating for my autism.

Sorry if that is kind of broad and generalized. I'd normally come up with more specific examples and anecdotes, but it's been kind of a long day.