The Dangers of learning Social Skills
30 April 2007Social skills When people look for the “right thing to say†or if they “don’t know what to say†in any situation it usually boils down to a lack of clarity in what outcome they want or a lack of confidence in their ability to achieve that (self assurance).
While I think there’s nothing wrong with learning social skills, and in fact I commend anyone who wants to improve their social impact, there are, however, caveats and drawbacks which I feel should be addressed.
Social skills are only a probablistic science, like psychology or anthropology. They deal in what is likely to happen, what is statistically probable. If you say/do this, you should get this reaction. Deterministic sciences are those that are heavily based on maths, or deal with things in the purely physical world. If you do this, this will happen. Essentially the point needs to made that learning a social skill(technique) is no guarantee of the results, only a probability of success at best, a promise at worst.
The problem with internalising social skills or any skills training is the fact that you’re always playing with live ammo. There is no encounter that’s safe. If you were learning a new sport, you wouldn’t go straight into a championship game to get to grips with the rules and strategies. If you were learning how to use a new system, you wouldn’t be given the live version but another, or some less important task. Two things arise from this. If you are devloping social skills, doing it only in important situations is probably the most counter productive thing you can do. For one thing, you’re heavily emotional invested in the interaction. If you really want to make a good impresssion on somebody and get a date; win that contract; make the sale; ace the interview, changing and testing your new behaviours in that situation, and that situation only, will mean you’ll come across as very unpolished. Any new behaviour or skill is always rough around the edges. Think of the first time you drove or rode a bicycle, it was no where near as smooth as it is now. If you want to improve yoru social impact, you’ve got to be consistent, which entails changing how you interact in every situation, not just the vital interactions.
Secondly, you can’t break down social skill development into constituent parts and drill them like you can almost any other skill. If you want to be better at volleying in badminton, you can have your partner hit the shuttle to you over and over, with them putting increasing pressure on you as you improve.
This isn’t applicable to developing social skills. Say, for example you want to be better and deflating angry situations. I can’t see a way where you could contrive a situation with someone indignantly shouting at you and attempt to difuse it, afterwards reviewing your highlights and lowlights and then repeating with increased tension or a new strategy. Every situation is different, and you’re always playing life at ‘match pace’. This is a difficulty which is often overlooked in social skills courses.
Also, you can’t control conditions 100%. What makes the perfect date? You can control only to a very limited point. If the other person isn’t in the same headspace as you how can you categorically state you did anything right/wrong. Plus looking at only one encounter or example is unreliable from any statistical or scientific point of view. Would you honestly rely on medicine that had only been tried out by one person with no laboratory conditions? I wouldn’t!
Why I disagree with the term social skill: You cannot teach a social skill, only a technique. A technique used in the right context with the right effect is considered skill. Teachers of social skills make a lot of assumptions, the most important is that you (the student) will know when to employ a certain technique. Depending on your level of experience (social situations beyond what you are truly comfortable with) you’ll either know when to employ a certain technique, use it out of context or be completely baffled as to when to use it.
How social skills are learnt? Social skills are learnt by reading situations, seeing what works – has a desired effect – and then attempting to find the underlying reason or coming up with an explanation.
(Note the term, “has the desired effectâ€, if you don’t know what the desired effect/ideal outcome is, learning how to direct and manipulate conversations is pointless to an extent. The what is always more important than the how.)
How social skills are taught, however, is different. A situation is presented along with an ideal response. A technique is taught over a concept. Why is this? Well a technique is easier taught that a concept. A technique is something solid, with a clearly deliniated start and end point. Concepts are harder to get across because they require an understanding of context. One first needs to understand the situation, the history, and the desired outcome. It requires a more ‘advanced’ reading of a situation.
Sebastian, a social skills instructor who I’ve had the pleasure of sitting in on one of his workshops, has another take on concepts/tactics versus techniques. My BJJ instructor believes that when you’re a beginner, you want to learn all the new cool techniques. But what you really need is to immerse yourself ìn the sport, and start with learning the concepts. Once you have a grasp of the sport, you can learn and implement techniques with ease. If you’re chasing techniques without a solid understanding of the fundamentals, your growth is always stunted. I believe the same is true of social skills.
A lot of social skill teachers, particularly those in the seduction community, have a particularly strong belief system that allows what they say to work for them in any context. Tyler Durden uses this analogy in one of his speeches. If you were to hang out with rapper 50 Cent for a week you’d become convinced it was necessary to wear a bulletproof vest, put up a tough front and never let anyone away with disrespecting you in front of others. If you then visited the Dali Lama for a week you’d belief it important to live a life of harmony with others. So who’s right? Who has the valid handle on reality?
Vin DiCarlo states that the only reason the social skills taught in the community work are because people have a weak sense of reality and if you’re belief is stronger you’ll be accepted as the leader.
If these guys – who make a living from teaching social skills - claim that belief is of paramount importance, it’s surely proof that inner game work has far further reaching consequences than learning techniques, and that everything comes from within.
If you have poor social skills, a lack of social success and confidence, I definitely agree with improving yourself. Definitely. However going from zero to hero overnight seems unlikely. This is my main gripe with the “Seduction Communityâ€, the selling point of saying a few lines and all your dreams will come through. You need to be able to survive, be comfortable, and interact in social settings before you can influence them, let alone control them completely.
Social skills are a means to an end, and as such, not vitally important. They are a how, and not a what. So you’re better off working into the what. What do you want out of this interaction? Obviously if you know what your ideal life is this will help immensely, but the clearer you are on the ideal outcome the easier it is to take action.
When people get caught up in the hows of any situation, the hows become whats in themselves. This can be seen in all types of endeavours. In more traditional martial arts there’s an obvious example, bowing. In martial arts they wanted to show respect, and bowing was considered a means of showing respect. Respect being the important thing, and bowing a means to an end. But I know of an Aikido teacher who was furious when a Muslim student of his wouldn’t bow. “Why won’t you bow?†“I only bow to God†“But bowing shows respect!!!†“Okay I respect you.†“But you have to bow!!!†It’s a clear case of the how in the situation becoming a what in itself.
Your presence, which ultimately controls your inner value, is the determinant of how you’re perceived. A lot of the social skills teachers out there (seduction community or otherwise) will provide a student routines of phrases that will convey x, y and z about your personality. However the main problem is that if you don’t posess these qualities, any superficial action or words will be incongruent with your personality. It’s far better (in the sense of it will come across better to other people) to actually develop the traits, rather than working on a mannerism that will display an admirable trait that you’re lacking. It’s also more rewarding in a broader sense.
Also by following this path you need to watch everything you say. While there may not be a problem with controlling and deliberating on the words you use the effort required is enormous. It also means the effort is required with each and every interaction. While there is an enormous amount of effort in changing one’s belief system, deciding want they want or raising their self confidence, the payoff to effort ratio is much higher. Working on a deeper level permeates to all your actions, which is more efficient than working on action by action, or each part of your life as separate components. Secondly, once the momentum is developed inside you, transfering that inner ability (combined with faith in yourself) to different skills and tasks is relatively simple.
I’ve also never met someone who wanted to focus on learning social skills that didn’t have a deeper issue that was unresovled or a goal that was fuzzy or ill defined. If you’re learning social skills in order to be more confident, work on being more confident. If you’re working on social skills in order to be more comfortable or happy, work on those instead. Without resolving inner conflicts and developing yourself as a whole, social skills are of little use.
Have you ever noticed those people who truly have their social skills (which should read “have their social impact handledâ€) never have a clue what they’re going to say in most of their social interctions? They’re usually the ones who say something along the lines of “I dunno, just say something†and can’t really give specific advice. This is a result largely of their confidence in themselves to perform in any situation.
So why are learning social skills popular then? Well, it seems easier. Inner work on yourself requires a lot of effort. And people tend to take the easiest route wherever possible. When you’re learning techniques, you begin to get a different reaction from people. Even if it’s a harsh one, it’s a reaction, an immediate emotional payoff. We are pleasure seeking animals, and any emotional payoff is a reward for our actions. It’s far more effective and efficient to delay the instant gratification of the new killer line in favour of working on yourself as a whole.
In a marketing course I once took, the lecturer said that the common perception about marketing was that it’s all about advertising. Marketing was about finding out the customers needs, figuring out your strengths and weaknesses, developing a fantastic product that met the market and finally advertising it. Your social success can be viewed in the same way. You need to develop yourself completely, figure out who you want to have in your life (target market), as well as advertise yourself (work on your social skills). You cannot just advertise alone if you don’t have the product to back it up!
Am I saying that learning social skills is a worthless pursuit? Absolutely not. I read up on how to deal with irate customers, how to present yourself better in an interview, small talk techniques and a host of other outer social skills courses. I think they do have their place. But they need to be tempered with personal development and inner relfection. Without working on your foundations, painting the front of your house isn’t going to substantially increase it’s value.
One Response to “The Dangers of learning Social Skills”
August 25th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
Hey, good site. Just one question. What is going on with your apostrophes? In place there are these weird symbols. One of them is the pounds symbol for money and the other is something strange as well. You may want to look into fixing this. Just a suggestion.