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Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

improveyoursocialskills.com

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Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#221

Post by zozbot234 »

kempbellt wrote: post #67
allovernow wrote: post #45

>In a nutshell, you inspire me when something that you share makes me want to share something, too. Notice the word "want" in that definition. Inspiration does not make your partner feel obligated to share. It makes them want to share. This is the part that I've been stuck at for years. And I imagine other technical people hit this roadblock as well. Being able to talk with people when you have little in the way of c…

> since most young women aren't exactly excited to talk about code This may reflect your subjective experience, but I have had a different experience and would (kindly) give you the heads up that this is a borderline sexist generalization. I've met women in the industry that are just as capable as nerding out over new tech as I am - even if it hasn't been very common (in my experience).

OP wasn't necessarily talking about folks in the industry. Most young men aren't exactly excited to talk about code either!

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#223

Post by TeMPOraL »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #195
wallflower wrote: post #53

While some of you may make light of the fact that I am giving you advice, my single most important piece of advice to people who are highly analytical and/or always solving problems is to not give unsolicited advice to friends, family, acquaintances, or even strangers. People will ask for advice if they really want it. People are not “broken pieces of code” begging to be fixed. I’ve lost friends over this, until one…

With my wife, when she was upset about something, I'd tell her how to fix it. That... didn't go well. Eventually, I learned to just let her talk, and for me to say "Uh huh", for about five minutes. Then I could tell her how to fix the problem. But I had to listen for five minutes first. Note well: Five minutes worked for me talking to my wife . For person X talking to person Y, the correct time may range from 0 to in…

Same here. I learned the hard way that I have to pay the entry fee of listening for 5-10 minutes and affirming emotions before I'm allowed to offer solutions. This wasn't immediately obvious for me, because in my case, the optimal listening time is 0 - if I didn't want actionable advice or knew how to solve a problem, I wouldn't be bringing it up in the first place.

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#224

Post by CPLX »

wisty wrote: post #43

Why are social skills always focusing on the positive? A lot of programmers often seem to be more nice guys than anything else, and need to be able to be more assertive / aggressive. Everyone tries to distinguish these two, it's mostly just in the eye of the beholder - IMO aggression is just assertion when it's judged to be inappropriate or incompetently done - a drill instructor being assertive looks different to a…

Being assertive and aggressive are not variations on the same thing. In fact if you observe people with actual power they tend to rely less and less on aggressive behavior, and more on suggestions and persuasion.

I think it would be a mistake to characterize assertiveness as just a subset of aggression, defined as all aggressive acts less the inappropriate ones, or the reverse, as you seem to be arguing here. I think it's more accurate to say there's a very small set of cases where they overlap.

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#225

Post by SolaceQuantum »

kempbellt wrote: post #87
notJim wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, the problem with environments like that is that the best fighters win, not the best ideas. The best fighters are usually the people who can project the most confidence, talk the loudest, and who are the most popular. By contrast, environments that provide psychological safety enable people who may have better ideas, but may not be as brash and overconfident to contribute.

I understand your perspective. Unfortunately, however idealistic, I don't see that being a great benefit in the long term for anyone. I prefer environments that teach you how to advocate for your ideas. Build you up as a good self-advocate. Environments that say "Hey everybody! It's Timmy's turn to speak. Pass him the talking stick" are patronizing and disgust me at the onset. Better to have someone by your side sayi…

"Environments that say "Hey everybody! It's Timmy's turn to speak. Pass him the talking stick" are patronizing and disgust me at the onset."

I actually personally think its useful to say that in order to shut up overly opinionated people without publicly pointing them out and putting them immediately on the defensive. Opinionated people are also incredibly opinionated on their opinions, of course, and it's more efficient to sidestep that altogether.

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#226

Post by abstractbarista »

This is great! Wish I had it starting in elementary school. I've felt socially retarded my whole life. It's definitely caused me to miss out on a lot of normal social stuff. This was especially realized during high school. Only after going to college did I start to feel like I was correctly decoding a decent percentage of social indicators (and emitting more of my own to elicit enjoyable interaction).

My advice to any nerdy boys like my past self would be to lay off the computers somewhat and actually try to find a girlfriend and go to parties and stuff. You'll be a lot better for it once you're older and working.

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#227

Post by Afton »

kristofferR wrote: post #216

Socially insecure people should just watch the s*it out of this channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/charismaoncommand/videos I think visual examples can be way more impactful than what the linked dry text guide could ever hope to be.

I'm someone who is just never going to watch a video when someone says "Watch THIS!" with no further context. It's too expensive to find out if your advice is useful or not. So, while I know you are under no obligation, can you give some flavor for why this video is a great and impactful video?

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#228

Post by SolaceQuantum »

SkyBelow wrote: post #121
babadabada wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a young woman in tech. I am happy to confirm that "since most young women aren't exactly excited to talk about code" is in fact some sexist bullshit.

How? Most people don't want to talk code. Thus, given a demographic breakdown that relates neither positively nor negatively with talking code, one can assume the general pattern applies. Most old people don't want to talk code. Most young people don't want to talk code. Most left handed people don't want to talk code. None of these are discriminating. They are stating that a pattern true of the general population al…

I actually think most people do want to talk code. Specifically, how coding might work, or might not work. Whenever I bring up my software dev job, at least one person asks me what my day to day looks like, am I familiar with ML, do I know what blockchain is, etc. And then when I explain it, it comes off almost like revealing the man behind the curtain.

Technology touches everyone. Of course they want to know about how it works!

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#229

Post by TeMPOraL »

gherkinnn wrote: post #125
wisty wrote: post #43

Why are social skills always focusing on the positive? A lot of programmers often seem to be more nice guys than anything else, and need to be able to be more assertive / aggressive. Everyone tries to distinguish these two, it's mostly just in the eye of the beholder - IMO aggression is just assertion when it's judged to be inappropriate or incompetently done - a drill instructor being assertive looks different to a…

Yes. That’s why I find dev.to and to be a rather uninteresting place. It’s 90% niceties and explaining .map over and over again. Similar things can be observed in many meetups and some companies. Everything is awesome. Everybody is nice. People shy away from deciding anything . Even the simple act of two people wanting to go through the same door at the same time is an impossible conundrum. No matter how important ps…

> Even the simple act of two people wanting to go through the same door at the same time is an impossible conundrum.

Tangential, but I hit this issue very often with couple of friends during university years; two of us wanted to go through a door, and get stuck in a "you go", "no, you go", "I insist" loop. At some point I said, "you know what, let's do rock-paper-scissors, if you lose you go first". It immediately caught on with my friends, and ever since that, when attempting to go through a door at the same time, we'd just exchange looks, and immediately play a wordless round of rock-paper-scissor to resolve the conflict, while the rest of the class looked at us and asked "WTF just happened?!".

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#230

Post by kristofferR »

Afton wrote: post #227
kristofferR wrote: post #216

Socially insecure people should just watch the s*it out of this channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/charismaoncommand/videos I think visual examples can be way more impactful than what the linked dry text guide could ever hope to be.

I'm someone who is just never going to watch a video when someone says "Watch THIS!" with no further context. It's too expensive to find out if your advice is useful or not. So, while I know you are under no obligation, can you give some flavor for why this video is a great and impactful video?

It's not a single video - it's a channel dedicated to helping its viewers becoming more charismatic, a damn effective one at that.

Charismatic people are, of course, people who exude social skills and confidence.

One of the most useful things to watch, for somebody without good social skills may be the video clip breakdowns - where he breaks down social interactions celebrities have and why people perceive it like they do. You can't learn by example the same way through text.

This may be a good first video to watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjES8831wKc

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