Social media has become such a basic part of our lives that it's no longer something new or innovative – but simply another tool to connect with customers and potential clients. And businesses that don't harness their power risk being left behind.
Social intelligence is the ability to understand your own and others' emotions and motivations to convey emotion effectively in business.
It's not just about how you can best engage with customers, but also how you can build a more connected team. Basically, social intelligence is the ability to listen and respond in an emotionally intelligent way.
Social media is a powerful marketing tool and can transform your business into a force to be reckoned with. In order to take full advantage of this opportunity, however, you'll need to leverage social media platforms to their fullest extent. That means understanding your audience, creating engaging content, building community, and ultimately boosting sales.
Lack of social intelligence can cause your business to fail. Social intelligence is a skill that's important for individuals who work in customer service, sales, marketing and management.
What is social intelligence?
Social intelligence is the ability to understand and interact with other people in a social setting effectively. It’s not just about being good at communication, it’s about understanding human behaviour, motivations and emotions.
Successful businesses are the ones that have a social intelligence strategy. They know that social media isn’t just a place to sell or market their products, it’s a place to connect with their customers on a personal level.
They know how to create content and how to build relationships with their followers and how to respond to feedback.
There are four components to social intelligence
1) Self-awareness: Self-awareness is the ability to understand a person's abilities, thoughts and feelings. Being mindful of who you are and how you respond to things.
2) Self-management: Self-management refers to how you apply your self-awareness to address any challenging situations. It's a kind of decision-making process.
3) Social awareness: Social awareness is how you recognize social norms, body language and subtext when communicating with others.
4) Relationship management: Relationship management is how you apply your social relationship with others. This can include developing empathy, understanding your motivation and identifying the role you play in your social network.
Importance of Social Intelligence
An individual with low social Intelligence often displays unsociable behaviour, making other people feel frustrated, inadequate, and devalued. Often, a low social intelligence person is not intentionally unsociable.
The person whose behaviour lacks social awareness and understanding of how their behaviour affects other people. Recent brain research studies show that we are wired to connect to others our feelings. Relationships in our life shape our experiences and also influence our brains.
People can catch emotions from one another through facial expressions, moods, and other ways. The more strongly we are emotionally connected to the person we are interacting with, the stronger the impact it has on our brain. Because of this interconnectedness, individuals with high social intelligence can build relationships and create positive feelings in the people they work and play with.
Importance of social intelligence at the workplace
1) Improve collaboration and productivity
An increase in social intelligence can lead to more of your peers as you better understand their feelings and motivations. This may improve collaboration and productivity by encouraging your other teams to express their opinions and ideas.
2) Good management
Good management includes influencing the way your peers perceive you by thoughtfully choosing your words and actions around them.
3) Conflict resolution
Conflict resolution is the kind of skill to achieve peaceful solutions through communication. Building effective relationships with other members of the organisation's peers may make it easier to compromise when team members disagree about completing a project or resolving an issue with them.
4) Social roles
Social intelligence can lead you to better adapt to your workplace by understanding social roles and how they fit into the workplace roles as well. You can create a more unified team effort by learning what part each social role takes in project teams and knowing when to help others fulfil their roles.
If you want your business to be successful on social media, you need to develop a social intelligence strategy. Here are a few tips:
1) Create content that matters
Content is key to communication when it comes to social media. You need to create content which is interesting, informative and engaging to your audience. It should be something that people want to share and talk about.
2) Build relationships with social media followers
The best way to build relationships with social media followers is to engage with them. respond to comments, ask questions and get involved in conversations.
3) Respond to feedback or review
When followers take the time to provide feedback or review, it’s important to respond. Thank them for their efforts and let them know that their feedback or review has been heard and matters to you.
4) Be clear with your words
Avoid miscommunication and misunderstandings by learning to express yourself clearly while communicating.
5) Think before you speak or act
Ensuring that you take time to think before acting or speaking can prevent you from acting impulsively, which may leave us with regrets later.
6) Be authentic
Most people appreciate an honest opinion expressed in a non-judgmental, non-critical way which can help you maintain healthy social relationships.
7) Understand the rules and norms of your society, community, or workplace
When you move to a new social environment for example shifting or going to a new workplace, learn the rules and social norms for behaviour. It is helpful to become adaptable to new skills and to be open to new ideas and experiences.
Ways to improve social intelligence at the workplace
Once you understand what social intelligence is, you can develop your own in the workplace. Here are some steps to take to improve your social intelligence in the workplace:
1. Develop your new skills
Practising mindfulness every day can help you form new skills. Being aware of yourself and your surroundings where you are going to work is an important first step in becoming more socially intelligent at the workplace.
2. Self-awareness and self-management
Before you try to improve your social intelligence, consider your own thoughts, emotions, behaviours and reactions towards others.
Think about whether you should contribute to a conversation, how well you listen to others and how you respond to certain situations. Understanding how you act and respond can help you in an unexpected situation.
3. Adjust your communication practices
Being socially intelligent can mean being aware of others' social norms, but it's important to be direct and authentic while working in a new workplace if someone's behavior or words are unclear or if you need something to clear out try to understand their ways of communication.
4. Try to understand another person's perspective
In each situation you encounter, consider the other person's perspective as well. This could mean thinking of their typical reactions, how they encounter them, and their personal feelings.
This can help you adjust your actions, and reactions and build empathy. Considering others' perspectives might come automatically in your decision-making process once you start understanding.
5. Practice active listening
Thinking about another's perspective is helpful, but actively engaging with others on their thoughts provides information that can inform you about your social awareness.
Summary
Social intelligence allows you to function as a human. Social intelligence refers to a person's ability to understand and manage interpersonal relationships with other people. It is distinct from a person's IQ.
It includes an individual's ability to understand, and act on, the feelings, thoughts, moods and behaviors of other people. In this article, we are talking about how businesses will fail if you lack social intelligence.
FAQ's on Social Intelligence:
Business intelligence includes data analytics and business analytics but uses them only as parts of the process. BI helps users draw conclusions from data analysis.
Individuals with social intelligence can sense how others feel, know intuitively what to say in social situations, and seem self-assured, even in a larger crowd.
An individual with low SI often displays unsociable behaviour, making others feel frustrated, inadequate, and devalued.
Must read article:
- 8 Ways to optimize your social media partnership
- Social Media Is Essential For Business
