Assignment 14: Social Intelligence

The article below, "The First Soft Skill to Develop in Students", addresses the issues that are being seen more and more in our everyday youth that are entering work fields.

This article brings attention to the many things students are lacking to excel in the real world. Some of the problems they are facing are that once they get jobs they tend to show up late and they get too comfortable at work. This leads to them getting more casual about everything and not being professional. The article also states that students, "gossip about colleagues or never develop a strong work ethic". All of these reasons lead to the importance of social intelligence.

Social intelligence is defined as,"The capacity to effectively negotiate complex social relationships and environments". This is critical skill to have because it affects the first impressions you leave on people and first impressions are very important. With this skill, students will also be able to develop better and healthier relationships. Research has also shown that social relationships affect our physical health so this adds to the importance of being socially aware.

One of the things that stuck out to me in this article was definitely the example used to show social intelligence. The example given tells the story of how American soldiers manged to read a situation and tell Iraqi citizens that they were friendlies without even speaking a word. I was very impressed with the story and it just goes to show the importance of how you react and present yourself to others has an effect.