Ask HN: Are there coaches that help improve social skills?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34824556

by notmindthegap • 3 years ago

9 7 3 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

walterbell• 3 years ago

Public speaking (e.g. Toastmasters), sales/leadership training, in-person Dale Carnegie Course (https://www.dalecarnegie.com/en/courses/190).

CrumpetDiagonal• 3 years ago

Definitely! Some of which are trained medical professionals who assist those on the autism spectrum improve their social skills. And for those new to a culture or region, there are often associations with courses and volunteers that help people develop social skills for their new region

Update: Also beware the category of “charisma” coaching or worse “seduction artists”, who are skewed heavily with grifters catering to the incel and pseudo-scientific rabbit hole.

baremetal• 3 years ago

I know it's slightly off topic but if I may presume:

Reflect on your social interactions. After each one take 5 minutes to replay the events and ponder what you would do better.

Pay attention to your audiences' body language. And learn to tune your own to suit your audience.

Practice. Just like you have to write code to learn to code, or do problems to learn math, you need to practice social interaction to become better at it.

Start with low risk interactions, like at the grocery store or waiting in line. Get good at small talk with strangers. I'm currently working on improving that myself.

Best of luck!

Sevii• 3 years ago

Yes

barelyauser• 3 years ago

Simply care for others.

In a conversation don't ask dumb things for the sake of giving a response.

People are committing time and energy into socializing. Respect that. And if people don't respect your time then dump them. There is nothing wrong with that.

Don't make yourself a search engine or some kind of automaton. People don't want to talk to a encyclopedia. People want to connect to another human being. They want a story that they can grasp. Something that could happen to them. Understand who they are and then establish common ground.

bjourne• 3 years ago

I think so.

surprisetalk• 3 years ago

I'd consider doing a weekly "social-skills practice call" with anybody who wants to do some deliberate practice.

[1] https://calendly.com/taylor-town/30min

Also, How to Win Friends and Influence People is the de-facto book on this topic, and it's excellent.

[2] https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0...

Ask HN: Are there coaches that help improve social skills?

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