My son is going through that with his mother right now, his job requires a certain amount of social interaction after hours and his mother gets her feelings hurt when we are not invited, she says things like : we are good enough to spend a thousand dollars for Christmas on your kids but not good enough to come to your parties," She feels he is ashamed of her. Truth is she is very nice but very socialy awkward and likemyself has very limited education and life experiences, we just don’t fit in and I don’t blame him one bit. Other than that we are very close and get along great, his mother is not speaking to them now.
What you are describing is VERY different than what my Mother does. She doesn’t know anyone else at the event, and her only method of conversation is to criticize, especially strongly when she’s feeling insecure. So she starts a conversation with my bosses’ boss about some imagined horrific import of a tiny statement I made last Christmas.
Given the oppportunity, she’ll end the evening sobbing in a corner about how xxx I am, (insert whatever false complaint has produced the most sympathetic response through the evening) with as large an audience as she can muster.
Is your mother my father?
Wait, that doesn’t make any sense. And Dad doesn’t cry much anyway. He doesn’t get why I can’t invite him to every party we throw, though.
Since a lot of people asked:
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She panics about small problems. The second her email stops working, she’ll yell “my email’s not working!” to no one in particular. She does this all the time. If you ask her after a proclamation if she needs help, she says “never mind.” Now I just ignore her outbursts and only respond if she calls me by name.
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Instead of saying my name she taps me on the shoulder to get my attention.
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She brags about things that no one thinks are impressive. Like a good grade she got in a college class. I won’t say what we do, but imagine a programmer saying “Lets solve this problem by doing X. I know because I got an “A” in computer science.”
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She’ll ask you questions about your weekend and family, but won’t answer the same questions. She gets defensive on a lot of questions regarding herself, and she’ll exaggerate details about her history.
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She talks a lot about physical ailments. Her bad elbow, and her mother’s cancer. I tried talking about her mother’s illness, but she got defensive on a lot of questions so I had to stop.
She’s around 40 and hasn’t accomplished a lot, and works in a profession with very accomplished people. I imagine that’s where the defensiveness comes from. Her hysteria probably comes from some painful childhood experiences. She’s not a bad person, just very afraid of something and unable to control her emotions.
I deal with her by not talking to her about anything personal, and helping her whenever she taps my shoulder. Her hysteria still puts me on edge, though.
A lot of socially awkward people I know are people who do not know when to stop talking. I used to have a co-worker that almost everyone would actively avoid because once you got sucked into a conversation with him, it was impossible to extract yourself. He just talked AT you constantly. Also, he couldn’t bear to admit to any gaps in his knowledge. Someone once asked him his opinion on the upcoming Pakistani election (because his parents are from Pakistan + he was talking about how he loved to read the Economist and keep up with world issues) and it took him ten minutes of bullshitting that basically boiled down to “I haven’t the foggiest.”
It often depends on what category the poor social skills fall under. We have faculty at my university that probably have some degree Asperger’s Syndrome (think Sheldon Cooper with gray hair). They are some of my favorite faculty to work with because they are honest and deligent. They do things right and expect to follow the rules. I’ll take that over tact anyday.
You speak as if the traits you praise are inconsistent with being tactful. They aren’t, and both are important. I can think of a former manager here who, if he’d lasted long enough for me to be his boss, I’d have had to counsel extensively if not fire because of his utter tactlessness in dealing with his team members. It’s not enough to know how things are best done; it’s not enough to be honest and diligent and willing to follow the rules. You have to deal with your peers, superiors, clients, and subordinates in a way that does not provoke needless animosity and discontent, or you’re not doing your job in a professional and appropriate fashion. This applies particularly to managers but is true of everyone.
I think one of the greatest problems with our society today is people putting form over substance. It should be enough to know how things are best done, honesty, and diligence. Socializing with your co-workers or co-workers shouldn’t matter (and probably should be looked on as shirking work). As for clients, anyone that is more impressed by how someone makes them feel rather than how competent they are at their job deserves the burn they’ll get from every con artist they encounter.
I didn’t say anything about socializing. I was talking about getting along with people in a respectful and productive fashion.
Let’s take the guy I was talking about. He knew tons of useful information about the services our company provides, both on a technical and operational level; he’d have been an excellent resource for factual information if he knew how to deal with people (or were willing to do so). Ask him a question and he’d immediately mock you for not knowing the answer. Make a mistake, no matter how innocent, and he’d ream you out wherever he ran into you–in the bathroom, in the bullpen in front of all your peers, wherever. He was so rough on his subordinates that he made it impossible for them to relax around them. They’d come to me or another manager for help because the emotional costs of going to him were too high.
People have feelings. You have to take those feelings into account when dealing with them, no matter how technically competent you are, or you’re not going to prosper in any non-hermitic job. Sometimes that means being firm; sometimes it means being soft. It never means pretending that people don’t have emotional responses, or prioritizing your own emotions over theirs (as the fictional Sheldon Cooper does).
Dealing with people skillfully is more than just “socializing with your co-workers.” It is an incredibly important part of some jobs, and at least a slightly important part of any job that involves contact with other people.
I see where you’re coming from. I’d rather be treated by a doctor who was knowledgeable, skillful, and trustworthy than by one who was personable and had a great bedside manner, if I had to choose, for example. But I’d rather have one who excelled at both. It’s not necessarily an either/or thing: being competent at the less human-interaction-oriented parts of one’s job doesn’t preclude being skillful at dealing with human beings.
(And I’ve tried to be tactful in composing this response. If I’ve failed, and you’re resistant to what I’m saying because of it—well, that kind of proves my point.)
Since I’m not the most social person, especially at work where I just want to get things done and be left alone- when I think ‘poor social skills’, I think of people who are OVERLY social and emotional and/or have poor boundaries, and don’t understand people like me. Relentlessly chatty, too loud all the time, close-talkers, those who live to gossip, chronic complainers, people who try to flirt with/hit on me, people who are always having tantrums (crying, or losing their tempers with other people, over every small thing). If everyone could just interact as little as possible at work- that’s my ideal workplace dynamic.
It’s practically impossible for quiet, awkward people to annoy me, because I am one, and we leave each other alone most of the time even if we are friends. I’m sure we annoy extroverts plenty though.
Persons who are “relentlessly chatty, too loud all the time, close-talkers, those who live to gossip, chronic complainers, people who try to flirt with/hit on me, people who are always having tantrums” do NOT have good social skills. Having good social skills means understanding the effect of your behavior on others and moderating your behavior accordingly.