Inside the Recruiter's Head: What He's Really Asking You During the Interview

Inside the Recruiter's Head: What He's Really Asking You During the Interview

Social Intelligence...a definition

This is an interesting comment on social intelligence. After reading the link above you'll see several divergent views...is there or isn't there something TO this area of intelligence?

"The Prototype of Social Intelligence
Although social intelligence has proved difficult for psychometricians to operationalize, it does appear to play a major role in people's naive, intuitive concepts of intelligence. Following up on earlier work by Rosch (1978), Cantor (Cantor & Mischel, 1979; Cantor, Smith, French, & Mezzich, 1980), and Neisser (1979), Sternberg and his colleagues asked subjects to list the behaviors which they considered characteristic of intelligence, academic intelligence, everyday intelligence, and unintelligence; two additional groups of subjects rated each of 250 behaviors from the first list in terms of how "characteristic" each was of the ideal person possessing each of the three forms of intelligence (Sternberg, Conway, Ketron, & Bernstein, 1981). Factor analysis of ratings provided by laypeople yielded a factor of "social competence" in each context. Prototypical behaviors reflecting social competence were:
 

Accepts others for what they are;
Admits mistakes;
Displays interest in the world at large;
Is on time for appointments;
Has social conscience;
Thinks before speaking and doing;
Displays curiosity;
Does not make snap judgments;
Makes fair judgments;
Assesses well the relevance of information to a problem at hand;
Is sensitive to other people's needs and desires;
Is frank and honest with self and others; and
Displays interest in the immediate environment.
 

Interestingly, a separate dimension of social competence did not consistently emerge in ratings made by a group of experts on intelligence. Rather, the experts' dimensions focused on verbal intelligence and problem-solving ability, with social competence expressly emerging only in the ratings of the ideal "practically intelligent" person. Perhaps these experts shared Wechsler's (1939) dismissive view of social intellience"

From the link above...

Growing Intelligence..social intelligence?

The reading link focuses on increasing intelligence. Always an area of interest, this morning, however my first thought goes to social intelligence specifically. What exactly is social intelligence? Is it the ability to get along or go along? Is there really such a thing as social intelligence?

In my past human resource career, and to some extent in my current instructor life, it quickly became apparent  the ability to work well with others is a critical component to overall success in a career and life. Some seem to come by working well with others naturally while others seem naturally abrasive in their approach to life.

What causes the differences? Different upbringing? Different life experiences? Different genes? Probably all of the above, but what can we do to change the naturally abrasive to the naturally nice? And do we want to?

In preparing students for a graphic design career, this IS critical. It can make the difference between getting a client, maintaining a client relationship, getting a job and maintaining a career.

So...let's do some research.What is social intelligence, do we need it, how do we get it?