Social Awareness

Adam burst into 90 seconds of non-stop profanity. All to tell Sam he had enough and he couldn’t take it anymore.

Once Adam got everything off his chest and calmed down. Sam got more background. Adam felt disrespected, wasn’t getting cooperation, and was beginning to question how he fit into the team.

It was a tremendous eye opener for Sam. She had been going through the motions; she took for granted that everyone was working well together. What she wasn’t doing was paying attention to the subtle cues when folks interacted.

Sam reached out for help

We worked together on improving her Social Awareness.

Social awareness helps us to understand how people fit into and contribute to the group. It makes it easier to share information, communicate, and collaborate with others.

Want to improve your social awareness?

Getting started

Begin by asking yourself these questions. Take time to answer them fully, they’re a bit deep, but fleshing them out fully will turn into a benefit.

•  Are you listening to others' perspectives with curiosity?
•  Can you recognize and apply the strengths in others?
•  Are you able to identify diverse cultural and social norms, including unjust ones?
•  Are you acknowledging situational demands and opportunities?

As you answer these questions, are you answering them from your experiences or from others’? This is an important aspect of social awareness, to improve, you should be considering the perspectives of other individuals, groups, or communities, and applying that understanding.

Here are a few topics to help give that perspective:

Motivation

Everyone is motivated differently.

What is motivating each person, and where is that motivation coming from? Some things to think about are their family, traditions, beliefs, or schooling.

If you want to dive deeper into motivation, check out my Personal Energizers program.

Cooperation

Just as with motivation, cooperation can look different from one person to the next.

One way cooperation is tricky is that one person might think it’s physically working together while another might think that each person can do their tasks separately to combine in the end.

Cooperation is an important part of finding a resolution and a way of working with other individuals and groups. It often involves compromise and patience.

Respect

Don’t just look at whether people are giving respect but that they’re receiving it too.

By looking at both giving and receiving respect, you’re diving deeper into the social aspect of our interactions. Someone may think they’re showing respect to another, but that person may feel disrespected based on their background or culture.

Kindness

Similar to respect, kindness goes both ways.

Kindness is more then being friendly, it’s about being considerate to other people and is especially important when you don't share their viewpoints.

Dive deeper into Kindness with this article.

With some practice

Adam wasn’t upset with Sam, he just didn’t know how to express his building frustrations. Sam worked hard on her social awareness and, not only improved the relationship with Adam, but improved the relationships throughout her team.

Take a cue from Sam. Be observant and pay attention to subtle social hints from those around you. Study how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations. Observe and respect cultural differences.

Socially intelligent people understand that other people have different actions and responses based on their history and upbringing. Use this to build healthy teamwork.