Social Skills… They Last a Lifetime

| By: Committee for Children

I recently had the opportunity to attend a six-day professional development workshop about leadership and coaching which, as advertised, was designed to provide participants with skills to become more effective in their work.

It quickly became evident that a specific set of behaviors was expected to maximize the workshop experience. At the beginning of each day, the trainer reviewed the norms for working together: Be respectful, listen while others are speaking, respectfully disagree, follow directions, and stay on task. This was not unusual to me, as the expectations were similar to other workshops I’ve attended. It made sense that a common set of ground rules were needed for working together successfully.

The workshop content also emphasized the importance of similar skill sets. During the first two days, we spent a significant amount of time on the characteristics of effective coaches and leaders, which included being attentive, positive, patient, caring, empathic, compassionate, non-judgmental, and sensitive to others’ needs and feelings.  The continuous review of such skills seemed logical, as I found myself thinking these were important to portray in everyday life, and not just when acting as a coach or a leader in a school or district.

There were also several readings associated with this workshop. Much of the content was related to building trust and relationships and creating partnerships with others, with research about the relationship between higher trust and improvements in reading and math. I also read about the importance of having personal regard, listening with empathy, and paraphrasing. These topics and skills seemed similar to the ones we teach children and teens in the Second Step curriculum. In fact, I noticed that the Second Step lesson objectives were almost identical to those reviewed in my Powerpoint and readings.

These similarities appeared each day of the workshop. We applied self-management tasks (one of the five main SEL competencies as identified by CASEL), such as sorting our tasks into four quadrants according to urgency and importance.  We talked about how effective leaders need both competence and benevolence. We practiced different types of listening skills, and during coaching role plays, had to consider questions such as “From what perspective am I seeing this?” and “What other perspectives can help me understand this?” We reviewed the concept of avoiding assumptions. We discussed and practiced how to allow people to create their own solutions through effective questioning, rather than trying to solve issues for them.

This workshop experience reminded me that what we teach students in the Second Step curriculum are skills that we continue to need daily as adults, for both work and personal interactions. It also reacquainted me with the importance of continuously revisiting and re-practicing these skills. For example, several of our participant role plays ended with personal reflections about how our listening skills needed further work. 

So here is a big shout out to all of you who work hard in teaching your students social skills through programs such as Second Step. You are providing them with a skill set that will be beneficial to them throughout their lifetime!