The Link Between Social Skills And Self-Confidence

This is a fairly quick one.

A question I've been asked a few times is, "I have poor social skills. I also have low self-esteem and I'm really insecure about how I come across with people. I feel like if I could just improve my self-confidence and feel better about myself my social skills would fall into place. Can I do that?"

I think the answer is: Not really. Sure, a person's outward social skills are definitely influenced by how secure and confident they are. For one, there's the idea that many shy, inhibited people have perfectly adequate social skills, but their doubts and anxiety hold them back from using them. A confident person doesn't worry about things and just straightforwardly uses the interpersonal skills they have. Confident people also just make a good impression, like in terms of their body language and the attitude they project. They also don't have as many mental barriers holding their true self back. They'll do things like make a joke or express their opinion to a large group, instead of worrying about whether they should say it.

There are a few unfortunate catches though:

There's no quick way to gain a lot of confidence

Often implicit in the question 'Can I just improve my self-esteem in order to get better social skills?' is the idea that there's some quick way to increase a person's confidence. In my experience this isn't possible. Confidence has to slowly be grown over time. It's one thing to intellectually know that x,y,z are better self-beliefs to have, but it takes a while for them to really be internalized. We often need real world feedback that confirms a different view of ourselves. We'd all be super confident if all it took was reading a few inspirational self-help books or Cognitive Behavior Therapy manuals.

I've touched on the same idea in these articles as well:

There's No Quick, Effortless Way To Fix Your Social Problems
My Experience With Becoming More Self-Confident

By all means, read as much as you can right now about improving your confidence. Try to see yourself differently and more realistically. Don't be so hard on yourself. Recognize your worth, even if you're not the smoothest person ever. Learn to cut off negative, self-defeating thoughts. Realize though that it will take a decent amount of time and life experience for a more self-confident attitude to really take over.

Inner social confidence and outward skills tend to be linked

From what I've seen, a person's confidence in a certain area and their outward skills in it tend to grow side by side. Each reinforces the other. One usually can't get too far ahead of the other either. Social skills just take time to learn and practice and hone, so that's why they can't jump ahead too quickly. True, stable confidence is tied to real world success, which takes time to build up as well. Someone's confidence usually doesn't get ahead of itself. If deep down you know you're a 31/50 level of accomplishment at something, your self-esteem isn't suddenly going to be that of a person who's a 45/50.

So how it ends up working is, imagine two bars on a graph, one for confidence and the other for someone's actual skills and success. They both start off kind of low and at about the same level*. The person may do something to improve their skills a bit, and therefore have a little more success. This real world feedback will make their confidence rise a little. With slightly higher confidence the person may now be able to unlock a bit more success, which increases their self image, which increases their success, and so on and so on and so on. It's a gradual process. Like I said, there's not a way that I know of to make one bar jump way higher.

* I think there are exceptions to this. Sometimes you'll get people who are outwardly quite socially skilled and successful, but their self-image is still poor for whatever reason. Though in my experience, these people wouldn't be asking the question this article is about.

Confidence is important, but it's not everything

I've mentioned this elsewhere on the site as well, but self-confidence isn't the only thing you need. It's very useful, but sometimes people are missing specific knowledge and skills too. Occasionally you'll meet someone who's quite self-assured, but their social skills are poorly tuned and they come across as awkward or abrasive. Internally, they have a good opinion of themselves, but that only goes so far.

The other thing is that no one is going to feel as confident as possible all the time. We're going to have our bad days, or be put into unfamiliar situations that make us insecure. In these cases we have to rely on the skills that we know have worked in the past. Like someone may have to go to a party with a bunch of people they don't know. They may feel really unsure of themselves, but can fall back on everything they know about how to mingle and get along with people, and then do it, even if inside they feel on shaky ground.