Social-emotional Skills: What They Are, Types And Examples

According to Duckworth and Yeager, social-emotional skills are those non-cognitive skills that influence goal-directed efforts, healthy social relationships, and decision-making. These skills predict academic, economic, social, psychological performance and physical well-being. Although some authors consider them characteristics associated with personality traits, more and more people understand them as skills that can be developed throughout life through upbringing, formal education and cultural patterns.

In the beginning, they were considered fixed personality traits. However, in recent years, research has changed the way we understand them, considering them as skills that can be reincorporated and improved with intentional family, educational and social intervention.

For many years, personal and social success was predicted from IQ. This index was used as a predictor of the personal achievements of students and adults in their careers. However, for some decades, different authors have highlighted how other factors better facilitate the vital development of people: Gardner spoke of “interpersonal intelligence and intrapersonal intelligence” and Goleman, based on Gardner’s work, coined the term “emotional intelligence”; etc

These new concepts, along with others defined later, began to constitute the so-called socio-emotional skills, which could predict life achievements much better than cognitive intelligence tests.

UNESCO has organized “21st century skills” into three categories:

1. Personal skills: those personal characteristics that allow the individual to act effectively in his or her life.
2. Social skills: facilitate satisfactory and positive personal relationships.
3. Learning skills: they allow the person to acquire significant and useful learning for their life and for society.

Each category encompasses a set of more specific skills that we will describe in the next section.

Below we present a list of examples of cognitive skills based on the classification made by UNESCO:

Personal skills

1. Initiative: important skill to start something new.
2. Resilience: allows you to successfully overcome obstacles and move forward with new goals.
3. Responsibility: pushes you to make the effort necessary to carry out a project.
4. Assumption of risk: not be afraid of dangers, looking for effective solutions.
5. Creativity: to create new things or ways useful for our purpose. In this article we explain How to develop creativity.
6. Self-regulation: important skill that allows us to invest our strength when it is at its maximum potential, rest when we need it, take time for reflection, etc. It allows essential personal care to carry out our lives optimally.
7. Adaptability: flexibility necessary to adjust to the social group and the environment in which we interact, without falling into submission.
8. Time management: allows us to prioritize and be efficient. Here you will find Time Management Tools and Techniques.
9. Self-development: necessary to evolve along with life and not stagnate.

Social skills

1. Teamwork: essential to integrate all personal skills into a common project. The result this way is much more fruitful.
2. Networking: to make it more effective.
3. Empathy: essential to foster a pleasant climate of personal relationships. In the following article you will find How to practice empathy.
4. Compassion: nourishes and unites people.
5. Cultural sensitivity: allows us to open our consciences to other knowledge and worlds and nourish ourselves with them
6. Communication skill: necessary aspect to transmit objectives and specify them. Here you will find Techniques for effective communication.
7. Social skills: essential to carry out a joint project through personal relationships
8. Leadership: greatly favors the management and effectiveness of group work. In this article you can read more about leadership and its types.

Learning skills

1. Organization: Every project requires planning and organization.
2. Problem resolution: allows you to overcome obstacles and create from new perspectives.
3. Critical thinking: basis on which creative, efficient and useful cognitive work becomes possible.

Planning the positive development of these skills from an early age will allow students to express their inner potential and develop according to their needs in a healthy way and in harmony with others, guaranteeing personal satisfaction and, with it, a good life project.

Taking into account the importance of social-emotional skills for personal and professional development, the importance of their development from an early age is emphasized. The steps to follow to develop these skills from the first educational years will be:

• Develop a theoretical framework that supports the project
• Identify socio-emotional competencies
• Train teachers
• Create curricular content adapted to different educational levels
• Create evaluation and diagnosis instruments
• Implement the change
• Evaluate the project, permanently incorporating the necessary changes

In the following articles you will find specific guidelines and strategies for the development of some socio-emotional skills:

• Activities to work on empathy in adolescents
• Strategies to improve social skills in children
• Strategies to develop critical thinking in boys and girls
• Troubleshooting technique

This article is merely informative, at PsychologyFor we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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