Social awareness gives you the ability to understand and respond to the needs of others. Improve your social skills and gain the respect of others as you apply the ideas on this page.

Social Awareness meets
Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence consists of four basic capabilities, or domains. These are:

• Self awareness
• Self Regulation
• Social Awareness
• Relationship Management

The waiter who suggests something better from the menu, the salesperson who goes the extra mile, the supportive team leader, and the executive that remembers your name. each of these have one thing in common

They excel in social awareness. According to Daniel Goleman the competencies associated with being socially aware are:

• Empathy: understanding the other person’s emotions, needs and concerns.
• Organizational Awareness: the ability to understand the politics within an organization and how these affect the people working in them.
• Service: the ability to understand and meet the needs of clients and customers.

Awareness of social situations means you carefully consider what people want, and plan to communicate with them in a way that is intended to meet that need.

Is this the same as manipulation? I’m not sure.

Great leaders and public speakers are skilled in this ability. It helps them build support.

I don’t believe social awareness is intended to be quite as calculated as manipulation. At best being socially aware is a natural response to people, taking their situation and needs into account as much as possible.

Self Awareness

Self Awareness is having a clear perception of your personality, including strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, beliefs, motivation, and emotions. Self Awareness allows you to understand other people, how they perceive you, your attitude and your responses to them in the moment.

We might quickly assume that we are self aware, but it is helpful to have a relative scale for awareness. If you have ever been in an auto accident you may have experienced everything happening in slow motion and noticed details of your thought process and the event. This is a state of heightened awareness. With practice we can learn to engage these types of heightened states and see new opportunities for interpretations in our thoughts, emotions, and conversations. Having awareness creates the opportunity to make changes in behavior and beliefs

Self awareness is the first step in creating what you want and mastering your life. Where you focus your attention, your emotions, reactions, personality and behavior determine where you go in life. Having self awareness allows you to see where your thoughts and emotions are taking you. It also allows you to take control of your emotions, behavior, and personality so you can make changes you want. Until you are aware in the moment of your thoughts, emotions, words, and behavior, you will have difficulty making changes in the direction of your life.

Self Awareness in Relationships

Relationships are easy until there is emotional turmoil. This is the same whether you are at work or in your personal life. When you can change the interpretation in your mind of what you think you can change your emotions and shift the emotional quality of your relationships. When you can change the emotions in your relationships you open up entirely new possibilities in your life.

Having a clear understanding of your thought and, behavior patterns helps you understand other people. This ability to empathize facilitates better personal and professional relationships.

1.  Look at yourself objectively.
2.  Keep a journal.
3. Write down your goals, plans, and priorities.
4. Perform daily self-reflection.
5. Practice meditation and other mindfulness habits.

Self Regulation

Why don’t we just do exactly what we feel like doing when we feel like doing it?

This is a question that you might hear from kids, and it perfectly encapsulates what they “just don’t get” about adults. As adults, we pretty much have free reign to do whatever we want, whenever we want. We won’t get arrested for not showing up to work (for the vast majority of jobs, anyway!), and no one will haul us off to jail for eating cake for breakfast.

So why do we show up for work? Why don’t we eat cake for breakfast? Perhaps the better question is, how do we keep ourselves from shirking work when we don’t want to go? How do we refrain from eating cake for breakfast and eating healthy, less delicious food instead?

The answer is self-regulation. It’s a vital skill, but it’s also something we generally do without thinking much about.

What is self-regulation?

Andrea Bell from GoodTherapy.org has a simple, straightforward definition of self-regulation:

Self-regulation is “control [of oneself] by oneself” (2016).

It can refer to self-control by a wide range of organisms and organizations, but for our purposes, we’ll focus on the psychological concept of self-regulation.

The goal of most types of therapy is to improve an individual’s ability to self-regulate; to gain (or regain) a sense of control over their behavior and their lives. Psychologists generally refer to two specific types when they use the term “self-regulation”:

• Behavioral self-regulation
• Emotional self-regulation

What is Behavioral Self-Regulation?

Behavioral self-regulation is “the ability to act in your long-term best interest, consistent with your deepest values” (Stosny, 2011).

It is what allows us to feel one way but act another.

If you have ever dreaded getting up and going to work in the morning, but you remembered your goals (e.g., a raise, a promotion) or your basic needs (e.g., food, shelter) and got up and out the door all the same—you displayed effective behavioral self-regulation.

What is Emotional Self-Regulation?

On the other hand, emotional self-regulation involves control of—or at least influence over—your emotions.

If you had ever talked yourself out of a bad mood or calmed yourself down when you were angry, you were displaying effective emotional self-regulation.

Relationship Management

“Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, ‘Where have I gone wrong?’ Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than one night.”

Relationship management involves clear communication and effective handling of conflict. It is the bond you build with others over time.  You need to be able to see the benefit of connecting with many different people, even those you are not so fond of.  Solid relationships are something that should be cherished.  They are the result of how you understand people, how you treat them and the history you share.

The weaker the connection you have with someone, the harder it is to get your point across.  The difference between an interaction and a relationship is frequency.  It is a product of the quality, depth and time you spend interacting with another person.  Relationship management poses the greatest challenge during times of stress.  Conflicts at work tend to fester when people passively avoid problems because they lack the skills needed to initiate a direct yet constructive conversation.  Conflicts at work can also explode when people don’t manage their anger or frustration and choose to take it out on other people.

Three strategies to improve relationship management

Enhance your natural communication style – Whether it’s putting in your two cents when others are talking or shying away from disagreement, your natural communication style shapes your relationships.  In your emotional journal jot down what your natural communication style is – think about your interactions with family, friends or colleagues.  Is it direct, indirect, comfortable, serious, entertaining, chatty, curious, cool or intrusive?  Jot down the upsides of your natural style – these are things people appreciate about how you interact with them.  Then write down then the downsides;  when your style has created confusion, weird reactions or trouble.  When your list is complete, choose the three upsides that you can use more in your communication.  Next think about three downsides and strategies you can use to downplay or improve them.  Be honest!

Take feedback well – Feedback is a gift.  It is meant to help us improve in ways we cannot always see on our own.  Feedback can sometimes feel like opening a present and finding a pair of red striped socks on Christmas day.  Not quite what you expected.  When you are about to receive feedback ask yourself these questions “How do I feel when I am on the spot and surprised?  How do I show it?  What response should I choose?  Tune into your social awareness skills and just listen to what is being said. Take time to sort out your feelings and thoughts and help you decide what you want to do with that feedback.  Once you decide what you want to do with that feedback, follow up with concrete plans.  If you take the feedback you receive from people seriously, it helps build and solidify your relationship with them.

Don’t avoid the inevitable – Some people just get under your skin – whether it’s the way they communicate with you or express their feelings.  Sometimes you have no choice and have to deal with people who press your buttons.  In a work context you may have lots of these type of people to deal with and you put off going to meetings with them etc.  Do not avoid the person or the situation because you deprive yourself of the opportunity to learn better self-awareness, self-management and social awareness skills.  Watch your emotions and how you manage them.  Put yourself into their shoes and observe their body language and how they respond to you.  You may frustrate the other person just as much as they frustrate you!