The last pillar of emotional intelligence is social skills or what some refer to as relationship management. In my opinion, I don’t think you need to be a particularly social individual to be a great leader, but you do need to have strong social skills to be an effective leader. That’s also the opinion of many leadership experts and why we find social skills as the final and four pillar of emotional intelligence. But, what does it mean to have social skills?
I think sometimes we believe when thinking about social skills it means that we know how to make friends or how to get people to “like” us. We think of it in almost a superficial type of way. However, that is not really what having social skills means; it is a lot deeper than that. Once you have social awareness as a leader, then I believe that social skills are the application of your awareness.
For instance, leaders who have great social skills or relationship management skills excel with conflict management. They know how to use their skills to improve relationships despite conflict. Exceptional leaders even know how to improve relationships because of conflict as they learn how to negotiate flawlessly. Leaders with social skills know their teams are watching and learning from them. Therefore, they use these opportunities as teachable moments as well as a time to come together.
In my opinion, conflict management is something most leaders struggle with at first and often, struggle with throughout their career. Whether you are in the conflict yourself or have team members in conflict, this can be a challenging aspect of leadership. The ability to settle these disputes and misunderstandings makes you an effective leader with strong social skills. Although, I personally do not believe this is a skill that we acquire overnight. It takes practice like anything else.
I find that we tend to avoid conflict as humans. Now, you may be reading this thinking, “well, I don’t.” That might be so now, but you never have? I know I have but I do not anymore. In fact, I went from one end of the spectrum to the other and now, I am in the middle. I went from avoidance as a young leader due to the overwhelm to extreme confrontation. There’s balance just like anything else and that’s why it is called social skills.
I’ll never forget one of the first tough conflicts I had to resolve as a “leader”. I had two grown men physically fighting in my store. Yes, they were physically fighting in my store. Do you think I handled that situation with exceptional social skills at twenty-two years old? Absolutely not. I ran to the phone and called security, then my regional director. Was that the wrong thing to do? Not necessarily. The problem with the situation is that I allowed it to get that bad at all. I was socially unaware and therefore, my social skills lacked. How could I effectively deal with conflict when I was not even aware? They had been upset with each other for a few weeks about “stealing” sales. I had no idea. I should have known better as their leader as that was my environment and my responsibility to have social awareness so I could handle a conflict such as that one with social skills or relationship management before something like a physical altercation happened.
Like every situation in my leadership journey, I learned from that one but there were more situations that happened where my social skills or relationship management lacked. A social skill I gained from that experience was what you call a “change catalyst” as I recognized a dire need for a fair “up” system for sales in our store (essentially a fancy term for a list for when it was their turn). I implemented it. This lesson served me well for years to come because do you think this was the last time I had teams fighting over sales? Absolutely not.
Three years ago I was managing a national sales team and a similar situation came up. It was a nasty fight between two salespeople but they were not in the same state so it was not a physical altercation this time. I discovered quickly that text messages, social media posts, bad mouthing to clients, and so on was happening. Many years after that physical fight in the store in 2009, I had the social skills to nip this one before it became a thing. I called each sales rep and heard their side of the story while staring at the evidence in front of me. I wrote the one sales rep up after (later parted ways with the sales rep after more inappropriate behavior). I spoke with the clients that had contacted me and reassigned them to deserving salespeople. I let them know this behavior would never be tolerated on my team.
I personally could care less what company we worked for or what had occurred in the past here. Maybe that is not your style, but that is mine. I have ethics and morals and that trumps anything else in my opinion. I have no tolerance. I believe in awareness so that I can manage the relationships with my team actively. Most importantly, I believe this develops my teams into better people and creates teamwork which is the point of social skills.
So, I handled it a bit differently years later as you can see. I’d love for you to share a social skill or relationship management evolution story with me. Or, tell me, how would you have handled these two situations? I hope at least you would have handled the store fight of 2009 better than me. But hey, we all have to learn somehow, right?
The biggest takeaway from social skills or relationship management that I hope you get is that it is truly the application of the three pillars of EQ. In my opinion, you are definitely putting your social awareness in action but I do not believe you can do that until you are self-aware and able to self-manage. We must be able to take care of ourselves before taking care of others effectively. I often tell other people when I do interviews that you are already a leader. You are the leader of your life.
People ask me all the time, “What should I do if I want to be in a leadership role?” or “How do I get promoted to a leadership role?” I respond with the fact that you are already a leader. You are the leader of your life and people are watching that every single day. So, if you want to be a leader, be the best damn leader you possibly can be of your own life and develop these four pillars of EQ. No one has to give a you title to lead. You want to lead then start now and the title will follow because you will already have the skills to prove it. You ARE a leader
