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Do youhave members who flail about socially like awkward turtles? Of course you do. You might even be one of them. One of the greatest gifts you can give one of these AT’s is the gift of social confidence and energy.
One of the reasons I’m so proud of what Phired Up does is because college students have limited opportunities in their formal education to learn good communication and sales skills. These are arguably the most vital skills to master if one wants to be successful in relationships, work, organizations, etc. after college — yet our institutions of higher education, in general, do a poor job of building positive communication habits in their students.
We can talk about recruitment strategies until we’re blue in the face, but if you’re an absolute social dud, if you’re awkward to the point of making others uncomfortable, if you can’t summon confidence and energy in yourself in social situations… well, we need you to improve yourself before we can improve your recruitment.
I recently did a powerful workshop with a group of fraternity men in which I demonstrated the power of bringing CONFIDENCE and ENERGY to a social situation. As we push the collegiate student organization world toward social excellence, a great place to start is by building their CONFIDENCE and ENERGY. What are you doing to build the CONFIDENCE and social ENERGY of your members?
Social Energy
I would argue that the energy you bring to a social situation is your own choice. After you read this post you’ll no doubt engage in some social situation… what energy will you bring to that. Will you be aloof, tired, bored, average, nice? Or will you be powerful, engaging, interested, fun, warm, inviting? It is your choice, I think…
The Myth of Cool
I learned long ago the power of taking off your “Cool Cap.” Cool Caps get in the way of social excellence. It has become commonly accepted that people who are good socially are the traditional “cool” people. I strongly argue that. I think socially excellent people are often not obviously”cool.” They don’t try to impress other people — other people are naturally impressed by how confident they are in themselves and the positive energy they bring with them to every social interaction. If you don’t think you’re cool, that’s o.k. It has nothing to do with being socially excellent. In fact, most “cool” people I know think they can lean on their coolness in social situations… they often miss out on experiencing social excellence.
Social Confidence
CONFIDENCE comes from practice. Plain and simple. To become confident socially, check out the lessons in these great non-Phired Up resources. Most of these are blog posts, and there are two big downloads that can be really helpful.
Share the lessons from these resources with your members — THEN PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!
The Positivity Blog: 8 Tips from the last 2500 years
The Positivity Blog: 5 Awesome and 5 Awful Conversation Topics
AskMen.com: How to Improve Your Social Skills
Penelope’s Trunk: Three Specific Ways to Improve Your Social Skills
Dale Carnegie: Communication Principles Free Download
The 7 Challenges Workbook: Free 100 Page Book Download
3 Steps to Making Socially Excellent Awkward Turtles
Here are three important stepsforyou to use to turn the Awkward Turtles in your organization into socially excellent members (who can recruit!):
STEP 1 - CHOOSE EXCELLENCE and ENERGY: The first step is to challenge your members on the choices they make in every social situation. What do they choose to be? Shy or Proud? Inward or Outward? Cool or Curious?Ask them todefine with a single word whatenergythey’d like to exude in that social situation. Ask themhow theywant the other people there to describe them after the social situation.
STEP 2 - PRACTICE IN REALITY: Many peopleget excited about the idea of role-playing social situations so that people can practicebeing sociallyexcellent.This is a fine way to start to build confidence, butnothing replaces reality as the ultimate testing ground. The truly best way to practice good social skills is to do it in real situations. Start by taking your awkward turtles somewhere that they’ll know nobody and nobody will know them. This offers a low-risk opportunity to experiment with new social techniques. Next, try it with some other organizations you’re friendly with and who might benefit from helping their awkward turtles as well. Finally, jump right into a real life social situation (or recruitment situation) and be there with your little turtles the whole time, correcting their behavior, encouraging them, and helping them build their confidence.
STEP 3 - KEEP IMPROVING: Social excellence is not mastered in the course of a day, a week or a year. Social excellence is a commitment to continual improvement and always pushing your own comfort zone. As an organization, make it one of your main accomplishments each year to push your members to higher levels of social excellence.
