“Social intelligence was therefore always at a high premium. A sharp sense of empathy can make a huge difference, and with it in an ability to manipulate, to gain cooperation, and to deceive.”
― Edward O. Wilson, The Social Conquest of Earth
I’ve been a nerd for most of my life. I only cared about grades in school because I thought that was all that mattered.
But I was completely wrong.
As I grew older, poor social skills lead to bad results in other areas of my life. I had few friends. I barely talked in social gatherings. My dating life didn’t exist. Job interviews usually ended with no offer. Communicating with people I worked with wasn’t effective or natural. You get the point.
As I started trying to improve, I studied the world’s most successful, wealthy people. I realized that they were also very emotionally and socially intelligent too. I also found, through books like Outliers and Emotion Intelligence, that studies tracking thousands of people found that people with high IQs often still failed at life.
There were plenty of people who didn’t follow the standard correlation we assume between high IQ and life success. There were many more factors involved in success, once of which is social intelligence.
Why does social intelligence matter? Well, I’ve already mentioned many downsides to the lack of social intelligence…
But also, social intelligence can earn you more money, make you more happy, and get more people to like you and join your cause.
In this video, I’ll explain in detail the power of social intelligence and give you shocking examples from history of how the lack of it literally cost high IQ people their lives:
Recently, I joined Toastmasters to improve my communication skills. It’s only been two months, but I’ve got one of the only standing ovations and several people have come up to me to compliment my speaking skills.
I was grateful and surprised at the response because I thought I was worse than average and I had low self esteem. I believe doing YouTube videos every week for years has helped me tremendously.
I challenge you to write in the comments one tiny thing you will commit to in order to improve your social intelligence. Hold yourself accountable.
For me, it was Toastmasters and YouTube videos. For you, it can be as simple as participating in one social gathering event per week or per month. It doesn’t have to be huge. Just get started.
“There is something I call social intelligence. You can do a lot in life on your own and you can do all kinds of stuff, but if you’re really bad with people, if you’re really naive or aggressive and push people away, if you don’t know the political environment you’re in, it invalidates all the things you know. You’re not going to get anywhere.” –Robert Greene
