Social Skills

The ability to interact and communicate with others. They are comprised of social rules and relations that are created, communicated, and adjusted verbally and non-verbally. We learn these skills through a process of socialization. Our interpersonal skills, or people/communication skills, are those skills we use to communicate and interact with people. It is a measure of our ability to operate within groups, i.e. social as in neighborhood, social as in work, and social as in dojo participation. 

These same social skills are those that will allow a person to deescalate a volatile situation before physical violence occurs. Social skills are affected by how alert we are, our situational awareness, our awareness of others and their cultural and belief system along with external influences such as alcohol, drugs, mental fitness and other such things. 

Since it is a learned behavior it can make a great deal of difference when handling conflict or any social situation. In self-defense it becomes necessary to learn about how such things affect those you may be trying to communicate with to avoid violence especially if you can not avoid it. It is a critical behavioral skill when you reach outside your social community. This would include various tribal oriented groups such as gangs, etc. 

Having adequate social skills allows a person to encounter a variety of social problems and through proper skill application reduce stress and the possible punishment doled out if you violate a group rule or dynamic. Your skill level is measured on about how you treat others and you react to others. This is an important concept, how you react to others. It's about how you handle your personality toward the people whom you are reacting with or against. 

In self-defense we teach many actions that are physical but rarely do we introduce such topics as avoidance, deescalation or the type of social skills necessary to get along with all types of persons regardless of cultural belief systems including the resulting rules or group dynamics that govern how that group survives.