Basic Social Skills

[everywomanshero]

All too often the advice is given "just fix your body language" or"be congruent". This is often godo advice, but what the hell does that mean? If the guy knew chances are he would've already done something about it.

Here is a basic primer to jump start the process by defining what in the hell these things actually mean.

Communication Congurence:
7% Words, 38% Vocal Quality, 55% Physiology.
When these three all match up, one is congruent. But, for example, when the voice sounds too high & breathy (nervous) it does not match a powerful stance, thus creating incongruence. The guy had one part down (the stance), but his other paralanguage cues did not match it. If both the physiology & vocal quality are good, but one is diverting all his attention to them, the content will likely be chopping and contain errors, thus his inner state is leaked through poor content delivery (words). That's what congruence means, that these three things (which are quite broad) all fit.

Where do errors occur?

First you have an idea in your head. Then you take that idea and turn it into a stream of words. Next, you send the message out via expressions, gestures, & words. The other person receives the messages, decodes (interprets) them, develops feedback, sends feedback to you.

You could make errors trying to send a message to them, they could make an error decoding your message even if it was clearly sent, they could have sent ambigious or confusing feedback, or you could misinterpret perfectly clear communication from them. The environment can also inhibit commonucation as can semantical differentiation.

So What the hell does this **** have to do with anything? Because these are things that can be fixed.
1) Interpreting feedback: These is commonly called "reframing", but if you think about it that is all we are really doing, learning to interpret feedback in a more useful & accurate manner.
2) Managing environmental noise: Talking really f-ing loud in clubs, selecting spots that are away from speakers, etc. These are things I do when I go out. I also look for ideal isolation spots.
Etc. Etc.

If people are often looking at you like, "what the fvck?" there has been a breakdown at one of these stages. The model is useful because it gives one a roadmap to systematically track down where something is going wrong if it's a persistent problem. 75% of guys will never need to do this, but if you're one of the ones with poor social skills, it's important to have some way of figuring out what's wrong.

So is the way to manage these issues to obsess about them and dwell on them every wake moment? I don't think so. It would be quite weird to have to constantly think, "OKAY a cool guy would smile right now & put one hand ......". This is what is commonly called state management. Simply putting onself into a good mental place (happy, upbeat, feeling at ease) tends to automatically correct the physiology & expressiveness to fail in line naturally and requires a lot less work! This is dead simple to do, straighten up a little and think of something happy. I think "treat her like a bratty lil child" is good advice because it tends to keep one's mind in a happy, easy-going state rather than focusing on "OMG was that an IOI, which routine do I n\do next, mode"

 

[everywomanshero]

Wasn't it kind of weird that my post just ended? This is an example of poor social skills, a sentence, story, etc that just stops out of nowhere. This type if cliff hanger might keep someone wanting more, but more likely it's going to be considered a little weird for all parties involved.

Just like a book most stories have a beginning (intro), a middle (body), and an end (signal that story is over, punchline, etc) that are fairly obvious. If there is a story you plant to use over & over, I see no problem with scripting an outline and practicing it a few times with a recorder. I used to think this was weird, but after having done it a few times I have a couple of really tight stories I use. They aren't "memorized routines", but they are real stories that I use at functions for my job. Then when it's appropriate I will modify them on the fly to fit a social scenario.

In closing, even though we've all heard this advice a million times, I get the intuition from reading newby posts that a lot of guys aren't drilling on the basics.

 

[LostAndConfused]

You must learn fundamentals through experience before even thinking about the "basics" you mentioned. This is where I'm fvcked.

Great post though.

 

[ready123]

great post. and the last paragraph of your first post describes natural game, AKA being spontaneous as opposed to trying to microanalyze the interaction in real-time (which is pretty impossible)

we need more posts like these - structured models that guys who are having trouble can actually use to figure out where they're messing up

as opposed to guys w/ no experience preaching inner game fluff to reinforce their own weak realities