Why You Need To Directly Practice Your Social Skills And How To Do It

To improve your social skills you have to practice them. All the advice on this site can help you have a better idea of what to do or not to do, but you still have to hone the actual skills in real life. It's the same for any other ability people can have. This point is really basic, and you can read the same advice in dozens of other places. I still have to mention it though because it's so important.

If your interpersonal skills are a little shabby, you've likely spent much less time socializing compared to most people. Some combination of your personality and your life experiences has caused you to miss out and fall behind your peers. You need to get out there as much as you can and put in the hours to catch up. You need time to become familiar with all the little things everyone else learned years ago.

You have to try out all the different aspects of interacting with people, make your inevitable mistakes, and slowly get the hang of things. With practice, situations that you used to awkwardly bumble your way through will turn into ones you've come across dozens of times, and which you know how to handle. Skills and traits that feel forced and stilted at first will become second nature, and almost feel like you've always had them. You'll start to gain a confidence that comes from realizing you've been around people successfully before, and you can do it again.

Learning by observation is also important

You have to directly practice skills like making conversation. While you're around people, you also can't help but take in what everyone is else doing and incorporate some of the ideas you pick up into yourself. This goes for learning positive new things to do, but also what to avoid. It's good to be open to learning from anyone. Sometimes you may not be crazy about a person on the whole, but you could still pick up some good isolated skills from them.

Like with direct practice, this process is gradual. You won't change overnight just from watching people, but eventually the benefits will pile up. It's another reason to simply spend more time in social situations. At times the observation process is conscious and deliberate, like you'll notice someone has an effective way of introducing themselves, and decide to do the same thing. Just as often, it all happens automatically. As you hang around people enough, certain traits of theirs will rub off on you without you noticing it's happening.

Attitudes have to be practiced as well

Your social success will partially be determined by your attitudes; how confident you are, how positive your self-image is, how optimistic you are, how you view other people, and so on. Helpful attitudes have to be built up over time too. They're quite abstract and psychological, but they still have to be earned through real-world experiences and successes that support feeling that way.

How to practice your social skills

Below I'll list some general ways you can get some more social experience under your belt. First a point I want to make:

Practicing specifically what you want to work on vs. spill over effects

There are lots of different ways to socialize with other people. Chatting to someone over coffee isn't the same as debating them. In one sense, you'll get good specifically at what you practice. Learning to have deep conversations with people won't make you all that much better at cracking jokes and being the life of a party. If you want to get better at something in particular, like being able to think of things to say in group conversations, then put yourself in more situations where you can do that.

Sometimes someone will take up something like public speaking, hoping it will help them get along with people more easily, and then later find that the skills needed to give good speeches don't 100% translate into helping them chat to people at social gatherings. One is rehearsed and pre-planned, the other is more improvised and spontaneous.

So on one hand, try to directly work on the things you want to get better at. But it's obviously not that cut and dry. Getting better at one type of socializing can have spill over effects into other areas. To get back to the example from a second ago, becoming a good speaker may make you more confident and polished on the whole. Your sense of humor, or ability to tell a good story may improve. Learning to handle the nerves from speaking before a crowd may make you more at ease in smaller groups. Realistically you'll end up doing a mix of specific and indirect practice. It all helps in the long run.

Places to practice your social skills

Through your day-to-day life

Unless you're really isolated, you'll find yourself in several social situations each day. You'll run into people you know. You'll have to talk to classmates, customers, or coworkers. You may hang out with friends or your partner. These are all good practice opportunities, especially if you view them that way and consciously try to get something out of them, instead of just doing what you always do without thinking too much about it.

And if you can just find a way to put yourself in these situations a little more, than you can get more practice time in. Try to make a little more small talk than normal with the people at your job, or start having lunch with them if you don't already. Hang out with your friends for a little longer. If you normally hold back in conversations, try to take part more. Without getting too caught up in over-analysis, purposefully pay attention to what you're doing, and to what works and what doesn't.

Get a job that involves socializing

I got a lot of social practice in college from having part-time jobs that forced me to be social with the general public, and which also had a lot of other people my age working there. Some examples are:

Retail - approaching and helping customers in person, learning to be pleasant and friendly.
Being a waiter - same as above, more or less.
Bartending - making chit chat with customers.
Working as a cashier - having to make small talk with lots of people.
Customer service over the phone - talking to people, again.
Sales (in person or over the phone) - learning to be personable, assertive, and persuasive, handling nerves and rejection.
Any job where you have tons of coworkers, like a call center.

For some of these, the idea of specific vs. spill over practice comes into play. Being a charming, witty waitress doesn't guarantee you won't feel shy or quiet in other situations, but all that time chatting to patrons has to help at least somewhat.

Get a volunteering position that involves socializing

Same idea as above. Some volunteer positions give you opportunities you couldn't easily get through a job:

Socializing with seniors or the homeless - generally making conversation, listening, etc.
Canvassing/fundraising - similar to sales. You have to put yourself out there, and risk getting turned down.
Working on a support line - listening skills, conversation skills.

Go backpacking

I love to mention this one because it personally helped me so much. I talk about it more in this article: How Traveling Can Boost Your Social Skills.

Basically, backpacking involves meeting lots of new people and partying with them. You'll get really good at making new friends quickly, and by hanging around so many fun people, part of that will rub off on you.

Join any kind of club, team or organization

Basically, get yourself out around people more. If you're in a club with someone, they have to interact with you. When a person wants to make friends, "Join something" is a common piece of advice. In this case, if what you're after is social practice, it doesn't even matter that much whether you come away from the experience with some new buddies. You're still getting social experience when you're around people during the hours the club is in session. Though making friends is always a bonus, and there's no reason not to try and practice that as well.

Chat to strangers

This is a funny one. If you broke down the average person's social activities, talking to strangers wouldn't be a gigantic part of it. Initiating interactions with people you don't know can also be pretty hard. It can make you feel nervous, and you sometimes have to be pretty good at holding a conversation or overcoming their wariness. Still, some people who want to practice their social skills will go somewhere like a mall and try making quick, friendly chit chat with whoever they come across. For example, they might ask people's opinions on what present to buy someone, or ask a store clerk for help and then try to make small talk for a minute or two.

I think this kind of thing can definitely help you if you're particularly nervous about approaching people, or talking to someone you don't know. It can help you learn to think on your feet and make conversation-starting small talk. It's also useful in the sense that if you're up for it, there's always somewhere to go to practice for a bit. I don't think you have to do this though. There are lots of other ways to get time interacting with people.

Random tip: If you have a dog it's pretty easy to end up speaking to lots of people (maybe offer to walk someone else's?). Another random thought: This is probably easier in a smaller town, as the people are probably more open and friendly. On the other hand, a city offers more people to potentially chat up.

Take a comedy or speaking class

I'm referring to something like Toastmasters or an improv comedy class. I've heard lots of good things about Toastmasters, and something like a comedy class would help you to become more confident and think on your toes. The disclaimer about not all of the skills transferring over into more regular situations definitely applies. I've met people who are great on stage, but a little awkward in real life. 'Performance' comedy isn't the same as spontaneous, conversational comedy either. Overall, I'd say the benefits outweigh this factor though.

Online

There's some debate on how much interacting with people online can help you practice your social skills. In my experience it can help, but mostly if you try to make your online socializing as much like real world socializing as you can. It's not hard to see that the online world has its own rules and conventions. If you stick to them you won't get as much benefit, or you may end up teaching yourself bad habits. You probably won't be surprised to hear me say that while I think online practice can supplement real world experience, or be a baby step towards it, I don't think it should be the only way you try to improve.

You could try any of the following:

Voice chatting with someone, while you have a webcam set up. This is probably the way to practice online that's closest to the real world.
Voice chatting, e.g., while playing a game.
Chatting with friends and acquaintances through Instant Messaging.
Chatting with strangers in a public chat room.
Chatting with people while playing a game.
Interacting with people on discussion boards or through comment threads. This is getting pretty far from the 'real world', but could still have it's uses.

Like I said, when you deliberately practice your social skills online, try to make the experience as much like real life as possible:

When chatting, type out complete sentences, not short, clipped ones. Write what you'd say in real life. It's just my taste, but I try to avoid the lol, brb style abbreviations and misspelling as well. Make your brain think this is a real world conversation.
Try to carry your weight in the conversation. Don't answer someone else's question with "good u?" If the other person isn't speaking much then try to speak more yourself and draw them into the conversation.
Don't give yourself much time to think out your response. Spit it out quickly.
Avoid that online obnoxiousness if you're prone to it. You know, don't be more brash than you would in real life, and don't say anything you wouldn't say to someone's face.
Don't refer to internet jokes and memes that you'd never be able to use in real life. Assume you're talking to someone who doesn't know about all that stuff. Don't use a style of humor that would only fly online, or that only works with text.
Don't use flashy smileys or post funny images, animations, or links to pad out your conversations.
Even if a certain way of interacting would work better to get somewhere with someone online, try to act like it's real life anyways.

I'm sure that's more detail than most people will need. You get the idea, pretend you're using 'real life' rules, even if the other person doesn't play along. One-on-one is good of course, but busy chat rooms or can also get you acquainted with the dynamics of group conversations. Don't hang back, try to get in there.

Join a support group

Individuals or organizations in some cities run support groups for things like social anxiety or Asperger's. Joining them will obviously help you work on the issues those conditions cause. You'll also probably get some social benefits as well. Just from being around other people at a social anxiety support group, you'll get a chance to become more comfortable with others. An Asperger's group may specifically address the issue of social skills and do role plays and exercises to help the members improve (or not, it's hard to say what will happen in any one group).