Socializing is the basis for building strong relationships and being a good communicator. It includes skills that foster positive social interactions, like communication, body language, and eye contact.
For almost everyone, socializing is a learned skill. Yet, it’s possible to be better at certain social skills than others because not everyone socializes in the same manner. Your upbringing, self-esteem, past relationships, and personal values all impact how you socialize.
Social skills training (SST) can help you improve your social skills to become a stronger communicator and build lasting connections with the people around you. SST often includes a collection of evidence-based techniques designed to fit your unique situation, goals, and help you build strong relationships.
What is social skills training?
Social skills training, sometimes referred to as social effectiveness therapy, is a strategic and compassionate approach to helping people improve their interpersonal social skills. It’s a behavioral intervention that teaches essential skills such as active listening, making eye contact, navigating new social settings, and carrying a conversation.
SST is taught using two leading theories in psychology. Albert Bandura’s social learning theory suggests that people learn primarily through observation and modeling interactions. B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning theory describes positive reinforcement as a key strategy to encourage a certain learned social behavior.
Additionally, self-efficacy is another concept from Bandura that describes a belief in your ability to accomplish goals and handle complex situations. It’s important for SST because it helps you develop new skills that allow you to trust in your ability to navigate different social environments and work with other people.
For social skills training to be successful, it’s important to take a compassionate approach that caters to the individual. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to improving social skills.
Who might benefit from social skills training?
Anyone experiencing difficulty in social settings could see results from social skills training. You might have gotten feedback from a work supervisor or friend. Or perhaps you struggle to manage conversations in large group settings. Additionally, if you feel as if you fall into any of the following categories, SST might be helpful:
- Social anxiety disorder (SAD): Social anxiety can make interacting with others stressful. For example, you may not know what to say or do in a given situation. SST can help those who are shy or socially awkward develop skills to help them navigate these settings and connect with people around them.
- Autism spectrum disorder: Autistic individuals often have a different communication style than neurotypical people. They may speak more directly, not rely on nonverbal cues, and desire to talk about their special interests. Because of this, navigating social situations can feel tricky. Social skills training for autism often involves self-acceptance and working within your comfort level when building social skills. A 2021 meta-analysis captured how SST helped autistic people develop greater social awareness, have increased confidence, and work better with others.
- Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): Individuals with ADHD who seek social skills training may be looking for strategies to manage big emotions or to learn how to cope when dealing with sensory overload. It may also help those who may feel easily overwhelmed in social situations. A systematic review published by the Cochrane Library noted that it’s not yet clear if SST positively impacts individuals with ADHD, but it can still be worth trying.
- Personality disorder: Both solo and group-oriented SST can help those with personality disorders learn to communicate with the people around them and process emotions. For example, a person with a personality disorder may work with their provider to improve emotional regulation skills. Certain types of therapy, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), are usually helpful alongside SST.
- Schizophrenia: SST has been shown to help individuals with schizophrenia improve their interpersonal skills. For example, a professional trainer may help someone with schizophrenia communicate better through weekly interactions with peers. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs notes SST as an evidence-based practice to support those suffering from serious mental illness, including schizophrenia.
Anyone can benefit from social skills training. You don’t have to resonate with these mental health conditions or neurotypes to find value in SST. It’s important to have good communication skills in all aspects of life. Whether you’re in a leadership role at your company or you’re hoping to strengthen your relationships with others, social skills training techniques can help.
Social skills training pros and cons
As you think about whether SST is the right approach for you, consider its pros and cons. Your experience depends on the provider you work with, and most trained professionals ensure you only benefit from the training. Keep these considerations in mind.
Social skills training pros
Social skills training cons
- It’s possible for there to be unintended negative consequences. These can include teaching an autistic person to change who they are because they don’t live in an accommodating environment.
- SST courses are not a fix-all solution to social difficulties. Their effectiveness increases when used with other strategies, such as cognitive behavior therapy or exposure therapy.
Learning social skills with a compassionate and trained professional can help boost your interpersonal skills at work and in your personal life.
Common social skills training development areas
Social skill improvement areas vary from person to person. However, to get started, there are a handful of soft skills that are common for most people pursuing SST:
- Verbal communication skills: Strong communication skills help you advocate for yourself, express your ideas, and work with others.
- Active listening: This allows you to respond thoughtfully to your conversation partner and forge a stronger connection.
- Conflict resolution: Whether in your personal life or at work, being able to resolve conflict is an essential skill for working with others.
- Emotional regulation: It’s important to have healthy coping mechanisms for managing and processing large, uncomfortable emotions.
- Eye contact: When you make eye contact with someone, it signals that you’re invested in the conversation and paying attention.
- Body language: Your body language is a form of nonverbal communication that reveals your engagement in the conversation.
- Avoid interrupting: Giving the people around you space to speak is crucial, so try to avoid interrupting whenever possible.
Successful social skills training has five main scales and various subscales that can help you gain new social skills. Here are the main skills you learn:
- Cooperation: An ability to help and work with others
- Assertion: An ability to request, initiate, and respond appropriately to surrounding people
- Responsibility: An ability to show respect for property and people, and communicate well
- Self-control: An ability to regulate impulses and emotions
- Empathy: An ability to show concern for the feelings of others
- By learning new social skills, you can increase your self-confidence and ease social anxiety. As you start learning which SST strategies may work best for you, consider your personality type. This includes your interests, temperament, and any other part of who you are that could contribute to how you socialize and communicate. SST techniques are most effective when they’re catered to who you are.
5 social skills training techniques
Positive reinforcement
Positive reinforcement involves offering encouraging and uplifting feedback as someone learns new social skills. Instead of critiquing when someone has made a mistake, the focus is on rewarding them when they do something correctly. Negative feedback is not as effective as positive feedback.
Giving positive feedback can help reframe socializing into an exciting and healthy experience. The goal is to use praise and positive self-talk to help individuals boost their self-confidence in their ability to hold a conversation and work through their emotions.
Habit reversal
Habit reversal training (HRT), also known as habit reversal therapy, is a behavioral intervention technique that helps individuals replace old, unwanted habits with new ones. For example, if you are trying to nix a nail-biting habit, keeping a stim toy or fidget toy to play with instead of biting your nails can help you break the habit. This habitual “hand-to-head” behavior is proven effective for reducing unhealthy habits.
In clinical psychology, HRT is helpful for people dealing with social anxiety, unhealthy coping mechanisms, and repetitive self-harm behaviors such as picking. It’s proven especially helpful for people dealing with OCD.
You may feel overwhelmed in social settings and begin picking at your cuticles. An option for habit reversal is wearing a fidget ring that you can spin on your finger instead of picking. For some, the repetitive spinning of the ring can be a soothing behavior in a stressful situation.
Successful behavioral reversal means identifying the signs that a negative habit is likely to appear. Maybe you’re in a stressful situation or someone said something unclear that caused a thought to start spiraling. By spotting the cause, you may feel more empowered to address it faster.
Pro tip: Each time you successfully replace an old habit with a new one, pause to praise yourself. This could simply be noting that you’ve accomplished the habit reversal successfully. Positive self-talk and practicing self-love are helpful in sticking to new habits if you don’t get it right every time.
Modeling
Modeling in social skills training involves mirroring actions or speech patterns back to your conversation partner. It provides individuals with an example to follow, and they can more easily see and reenact social skills through observation in different contexts.
In modeling, you can work on anything from conflict resolution to how nonverbal communication contributes to the conversation. Modeling provides a safe setting where you can earn positive social feedback and practice new socializing techniques. It’s also a chance to determine which strategies you are comfortable with and which don’t work.
Pro tip: As you experiment with different strategies, try creating social goals to guide your practice. These goals can help you focus on the right skills to help in the areas of life you’re striving to improve.
Role-playing
Role-playing helps practice social skills. It’s been shown to improve self-efficacy in educational and social settings. While role-playing, you collaborate with one or more people to work through a sample situation that could play out in real life. It could be as simple as making small talk with a new person or working on avoiding interrupting someone while they’re speaking.
For example, you can collaborate with a trusted loved one to practice conflict resolution skills. You could walk through a sample confrontation with a coworker about comments that have made you uncomfortable or a disagreement about a project. Or you could practice conversing and setting boundaries with a close friend.
Overall, the goal of role-playing is to help you get a sense of what it feels like to navigate these social situations successfully. It’s a version of safe and healthy exposure therapy that can help you gain social confidence. The more you practice your social skills, the greater your muscle memory to help you in real-life situations.
Regular practice
As with any new skill set, regular practice is crucial. Once a practiced behavior becomes habitual, you don’t have to think about performing it. Instead, the behavior comes naturally. In clinical psychology, this impact is called automaticity.
Over time, habitual behavior can help reduce the mental load when you’re navigating social settings. It will help you feel more confident and comfortable in socializing and making connections.
Is social skills training healthy?
In most cases, social skills training is healthy. However, it depends on the approach and the individual.
For those looking to improve their problem-solving and conflict-resolution skills, SST can help you create the social skills and language necessary to navigate those situations. You’ll be better able to set boundaries, communicate your needs, and aid in improving teamwork.
However, social skills training can do a disservice to neurodivergent people if it’s teaching them to mask their natural tendencies. For example, harmful SST would teach an autistic person that flapping their hands and moving around when they speak is inappropriate and unhealthy. A better alternative would be teaching them to use a stim toy instead of tugging at their hair in social settings.
Social skills therapy can be harmful if its strategies involve shaming someone for who they are. It’s crucial that any form of SST be compassionate and inclusive for all different types of people.
When uniquely catered to the individual, SST can offer a host of benefits:
- Stronger relationships
- Strong communication skills
- Improved teamwork
- Improved conflict resolution
- Enhanced conversational skills
- Greater sense of belonging
- Stronger emotional regulation
When done with inclusivity in mind, social skills training has proven effective in helping individuals overcome their social anxiety and learn something new.
Social skills training to boost self-confidence
We learn how to socialize over the course of our lives. But sometimes, our social skills in one area are stronger than in another. Whether in the workplace or in our personal lives, we can implement tried-and-true techniques to improve our communication skills.
When we can better regulate our emotions, resolve conflict, and communicate with the people around us, we’re set on a path to a more meaningful life. Learn to build relationships more easily with a BetterUp Coach and grow closer to the people in your life.
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