Improving social skills and connections

This page includes information on what social skills are. As well as a short self-learning module on how to improve your social skills and what to do when you don't feel like being social at all.

Social skills are actions people do in order to maintain good connections with other people.

Social skills include:

• Initiating conversation
• Asking other people questions
• Responding to questions from other people
• Listening to other people
• Sharing your opinion and ideas in a respectful way
• Giving compliments and praise
• Being polite and using manners
• Asking people to socialise with you
• Responding to criticism
• Saying “no” when asked to do something you don’t want to do
• Not relying on gossiping or badmouthing others to build rapport with someone.

In this short self-learning module, you will learn ways to improve on your social skills and what to do when you don’t feel like being social at all.

This is part two of our ‘exploring social circles’ self-learning modules.

Recap on part one here

Cover Slide

Improving our social skills and connections

Continuation.

This self-study module is a continuation of 'Exploring our social circles'. In order to get the most value out of building social skills and connections, you may want to take a look at that one first.

Before you begin.

Before you begin, remember:

• Be open and honest with yourself
• Treat yourself with kindness and respect
• Be present
• Enjoy it!

Opening task

Before you start, take note of what brought you to this workshop, and take a moment to notice any emotions or feelings you are experiencing right now.

Social skills

Social skills.

In the next few slides, we’re going to look at steps we can take to increase our positive social skills and opportunities to connect with people. Social skills are actions people do in order to maintain good connections with other people. Social skills include:

Social skills: your turn.

Your turn.

Write down two social skills you are good at and make a conscious note to continue implementing these in your social interactions.

Now, write down two social skills you think need more attention. Can you identify any opportunities where you can practice them? For example, could you give more compliments and praise? If so, you may want to practice this with your team at work. If you’re struggling to identify social skills to improve, or how you can improve them, try talking to a trusted person from your inner social circle who can support you. It may also be a good idea as part of your professional development to chat about them with your manager and work on them together.

Opportunities to connect.

Opportunities to connect with other people.

Feeling low can make it difficult for us to want to connect with others and it can be difficult to find the motivation to do so – especially if we feel overwhelmed with work or studies. In times like these, it’s important to not isolate ourselves to our own circle where there is only ourselves and our thoughts and worries.

When reaching out in difficult times, some of us may want to connect with those from our inner social circle so we can open up and find the support or advice we need. Some of us turn to our outer social circle so we can ‘forget’ our problems and focus on socialising.

Take a moment to identify at least one person from each circle who we can turn to in moments of need, and what activity you could do together. This could look like:

• Inner circle > brother > long country walk so I can open up about work stress
• Outer circle > hairdresser > an hour of self-care and easy, social chat to take my mind off things.

Completed.

You have completed the self-study module on improving social skills and connections. Keep your notes from this session in a safe and personal place and come back to them when you find yourself feeling lonely or down, and need someone to connect with.

If you found this module useful for your wellbeing journey, sign up to the ACTNow campaign. You'll get sessions like this straight to your inbox to give you reminders to prioritise your wellbeing.

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Thanks for learning!

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This page was reviewed in March 2024.

Are you looking for free mental health and wellbeing training?

Our Wellbeing Learning Platform is for individual wellbeing learning and training and is available to pharmacists, trainees and students. By signing up to the platform, you can access a range of free online wellbeing workshops such as Stress Management and Building Resilience and Introduction to Wellbeing.

Find out more and sign up for free

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