Happy Monday Motivation! That said, it’s Monday again already?! It’s been a consistent theme in my conversations not just this last week but generally these last few months, time is flying! Last year doesn’t feel like 11 months ago, rather it feels closer to 11 weeks ago. Spotify even reminded me of my top songs of 2020 this week, letting me know that my top songs of 2021 are around the corner. You’ll see near the bottom that Pop Smoke had me in a chokehold, it remains a deep shame of his untimely passing. I will however be getting to see Headie One this week, another artist who made my top 2020. In general news inflation has been increasing at an ever-fast rate since the end of COVID restrictions in the UK, so if everything has felt more expensive, it has been. I mentioned last week that with the decline in weather comes winter depression, and the UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid this last week explained that since before the pandemic, the number of adults experiencing some form of depression has doubled. So, use this as a sign to spare a minute or two to check in with friends, which links in with this week’s blog on social awareness.
Babes, take care cah your body's a temple
Time flies by but I still ain't treated my mental
(Unknown T – Bible Love)
Social awareness can be defined as the ability to know and feel the people around you and the ability to interact with them in the most efficient and proper manner. Social awareness makes up the last key cog of emotional intelligence, it is integral to it along with Self-Awareness, Self-Management and Relationship Management. The link between social awareness and emotional intelligence is that even as introverts or extraverts, life requires social interactions, so building up our social awareness allows for richer interactions. It supports us in recognising and empathizing with other perspectives rather than taking a tunnel vision view or approach. You can prevent yourself from ‘using a sledgehammer to crack a nut’, but rather accordingly tailoring your style to the situation at hand.
Social awareness gives you the ability to understand and respond to the needs of others. Improve your social skills and gain the respect of others. We see this in the workplace frequently, people who have honed their social skills do the smallest extra things with colleagues, which in return can go a long way in building a great relationship with them and reputation for themselves. These can be as small as following up on hobbies or checking in on how preparation is going for a presentation. The ability to take the perspective of another is critical for effective social functioning (Duval & Wicklund 1972). Sure, being great at what you do will take you a long way in your career but when you’re that and viewed as someone likeable those soft skills can be one of the differences that propel your career more. As times continue to progress, a more diverse workforce is coming along with it, so it is more important today to build up our social awareness skills to stay in step with our colleagues and a continually progressive society. The pandemic alone has seen significant change in ways of thinking, from race to new attitudes to working arrangements. Here are a few tips for improving your social awareness:
Take ownership for your behaviour and be willing to apologize for errors in judgment or insensitive actions.
Be aware of your body language. Non-verbal communication is as important as verbal communication
Accept that improving your social skills is not happening overnight. Start with one thing and ramp up gradually, stay aware of your limits
Maximize your positive personality traits and use them to your advantage when interacting with others.
The phrase of 2020 was ‘read the room,’ which means to be or become aware of the opinions and attitudes of a group of people that you are talking to. Two similar examples of this are where you can have a meeting with colleagues or friends. For those meetings you could’ve had pre-set objectives or an agenda, but upon entering the meeting room or place, you can see that they are clearly distressed. This should be a sign to check in with them as it could be detrimental to still proceed. Therefore, high emotional intelligence is valued in leaders as being adaptable in your approach can lead to better perception of staff temperament.
I hope you have found this late Monday Motivation post great! Like Relationship Management, Social awareness is the external side to emotional intelligence as it is centred around how we deal with people. Blog 27 marks that I’ve now been writing for over half a year, that is indeed a couple reps. On halfway reflection to a year, as taxing as some of these posts have been to put together, they’ve been just as rewarding and informative for me as well. Even writing about emotional intelligence, something I have seen so much about, even watched a few TedTalks on, it took the research and writing of the four cogs of it to really grasp it. As you can see from the picture above, I was not exaggerating on my appreciation for Pop Smoke, have there been any of your top tracks from 2020 that have stood the test of time and maintained their replay value coming up to a year or more later?
Like, Share, Subscribe, Return, and let me know if you’ve got any feedback, that’s always welcome!
Temis2Pence
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