Have you got social intelligence?

I don’t know whether you’ve heard of Social Intelligence yet and I’d like to apologise to Daniel Goleman at this point, because for me Social Intelligence is about the unique mix of social skills you need in order to make the very best use of the social networks.

As an entrepreneur, you are required to be a ‘Jack of all trades’ many times over and yet rarely will you have had formal training in most of the areas that will now be the bread and butter of your life.  Yet this is one area where those who have highly advanced social skills and who also know how to use the social networks from a technical perspective, can really clean up.

To be socially intelligent – from my perspective – you need to exhibit the following seven characteristics AND have a reasonably high degree of understanding about how the networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter really work.  The characteristics are:

• Empathy
• Listening
• Social Cognition
• Synchrony
• Self Presentation
• Influence
• Concern

What is particularly interesting for me as a mentor though, is that these are the very skills that every mentor needs as well if they are to be effective in their work with their clients and over the coming few weeks I’ll be taking a closer look at each of these character traits to see what you can do to ensure that you are working with them favourably.  Once you have those under your belt, then my little series on how to use the social networks should help you to develop that all important Social Intelligence …. Enjoy!