Variations in personality has become a massive common discussion point in society over the past few years. When I was growing up, lots of the handles, lots of the titles, lots of the names we give to different personalities, didn't exist.
People were just people.
Nowadays though, all of us have a badge, or a tag that in some way excuses us or absolves us from taking responsibility for the actions that we have, or the interactions that we create or manage.
Social cues is one of the real differentiators, one of the real pointed examples of how different personalities and the different types of personalities that apparently exist now diverge and fall into different areas. Before we enter into this very small discussion, worth remembering the emotional intelligence has been proven to be a learnable skill. It may be that you're not the cleverest at emotional intelligence, but you can be better at it. It's not like IQ, which is immovable. It's totally movable. And so understanding how to use, but also how to receive social cues is something you can teach your children, no, it's actually something you should teach your children, (similar to how to deal with money).
One of the most obvious and useful social cue skills is how to end the conversation. This is particularly useful in my line of work because I have based the success of my business on the ability to have conversations and the ability to make personal connections. But by definition, that takes time. And by definition, I work (at least clinically), in a space where time is finite and effectively chargeable. This is how you end a conversation or an appointment with a patient, or as I've just completed before I write this blog, a zoom consultation a patient.
Recently I've had the need to speak to several patients who are suffering from a condition known as atypical facial pain. And these people often want someone to talk to and someone to speak to over a long period of time.
What can happen with these patients is that you can get ‘stuck’ in a loop appointment that you can never close and therefore find yourself still speaking to the same patient about the same topic, 90 minutes after you've started, which is catastrophic to people who work in the dentistry like I do, but absolutely terrible for people who work In dentistry, where their appointments are much more finite than mine (I get 60 minutes for a new patient).
Having the ability to get to the end of a conversation and to say “I think we're done”, or “it's been nice seeing you”, and creating an obvious social cue that says we're finished, is a critical skill to learn.
Once you're able to do that, you can manage your appointment book, but you can also manage how you are kind to people and nice to people. And how you give people the ability to share personal information.
Of course, it's a skill that transcends your work into your life. And allows you to understand when people are finished speaking to you in social context, but also allows you to politely and kindly finish conversations with people when you'd like to move on to the next one.
It might not seem like much, but it compounds through the whole of your life.
And therefore, it's essential.
At least essential for living the best life that you can.
Blog Post Number - 4828