Social Skills: A Factor to Employees' Success

Although the concept of social skill is not new, organizational behavior scholars have just recently started to study the role of social skill in career success. Social skills are important because they allow us to interact with each other with predictability, so that we can more readily understand each other and be understood. Strong social skill can facilitate interpersonal interactions, which can in turn lead to effective job outcomes. Social skills also allow an individual the opportunity to express both positive and negative feelings in interpersonal situations without losing social reinforcement. Some researchers have suggested that social skills are a learned behavior and increased interactions may occur with specific training and opportunities to practice these skills over time.