How To Speak With Confidence & Authority

The way you speak matters. If you don’t sound like you expect respect, you might not get it. Fortunately, you don’t need to be a natural leader to speak with authority, or the king of self-esteem to speak with confidence. With a little practice, anyone can begin to speak with authority and confidence. Don’t believe me? Just keep reading

Telling Stories in Conversation

Stories put your ability to connect into overdrive. People are wired for storytelling, and the easiest way to someone’s heart is not through their stomach but through storytelling. Unfortunately, it’s easy to tell a story badly.  You’ve probably been subject to rambling storytellers that take forever to get to the point — or worse, don’t seem to have a point at … Read More

How To Be More Social

If you’ve come to Improve Your Social Skills, it’s probably because you want to be more social. You don’t study social skills so you can sit in your room alone—you study them so you can go out and be social! But how do you actually make that happen? And what does “being social” even mean, anyway? Well, the first step is … Read More

How To Make Eye Contact

Making good eye contact is tough. Give too much eye contact, and you come across as too intense (at best) or a creepy starer (at worst). Give too little eye contact, and the other person might think you don’t care about what they have to say. Plus, when you’re worrying about making good eye contact, the rest of the interaction … Read More

r/SocialSkills

I am now the moderator of r/socialskills on Reddit! I think r/socialskills could become both a social skills resource hub and a community for folks on a journey of social skills improvement. I made a post to explain my vision and my hopes for r/socialskills, and I hope you decide to play a part. Cool things are happening there, so … Read More

International Listening Month

So March is international listening month. I’ll admit, the thought of dedicating a month to listening seems a bit silly (and who gets to decide what month is dedicated to what?) But listening is important stuff. It’s easy to think that a conversation is about what we bring to the table. We focus on sharing something that is interesting or … Read More

Better Every Day

So my work just unveiled a new slogan: “Better Every Day.” Normally, company slogans are pretty bland. But there’s a powerful idea here. Greatness doesn’t happen overnight. Most things worth doing take persistence and hard work. But often, we look for a quick fix and fast results. When we put in some effort and don’t see immediate improvement, it’s easy to … Read More

How To Learn Social Skills With Asperger’s Syndrome

I wrote this blog post to share the most important rule I learned for learning social skills with Asperger’s syndrome. I’ve addressed this post to readers who have Asperger’s themselves, but these tips can just as easily be used to help a loved one who has Asperger’s. The most important rule I’ve discovered is this: Learn social skills by understanding … Read More

How To Make Great First Impressions: The Name Game

Last week, we talked about how you can use body language to make great first impressions. This week, let’s talk about something equally important—remembering the name of the person you just met. People like hearing their names. When you use someone’s name, it helps them to feel comfortable, and remembering their name makes it much easier for you to strike … Read More

How To Make Great First Impressions: Heart-To-Heart Body Language

So in the week since I’ve launched the site, I’ve been thinking a lot about first impressions. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the first impression that people have of the site. I think Improve Your Social Skills has a lot of great content, but if nobody ever moves past the front page, nobody will ever discover what it has to … Read More