Who Is a Social Skills Coach?
The social skills coach is a professional trained in social communication and pragmatics. These coaches often are psychologists, counselors, or speech and language pathologists who have a high level of understanding of and ability to assess social communication abilities.
Although many of these trained individuals may also provide therapy services in their practice, social skills coaching is not therapy. This is an important distinction. The social skills coach specifically focuses on skills development by helping the individual learn a new set of skills or improve upon a set of skills he already possesses. Similar to sports or athletic coaches, the social skills coach aims to provide support to the individual and to help the individual build on and fine-tune the skills he already has.
The social skills coach works from a strengths-based approach to achieve mastery of social communication skills as well as to build the individual’s confidence in his abilities to use the skills he is learning. The coach works in real-life scenarios, offering explicit verbal cues and in-the-moment feedback, whether the meeting is in a structured setting or in a natural social setting (e.g., library, coffee shop, shopping mall). Furthermore, the social skills coach continually assesses what skills the individual has mastered, what areas need improvement, and which skills need to be developed. The initial and continuous assessment process is imperative to the work and helps the coach individualize the meetings to meet the individual’s needs. The process is collaborative and interactive, allowing for goals to be adjusted as many times as needed to meet the needs of the individual receiving coaching.
What Is a Social Skills Coach?
Social skills coaching is not therapy. This is an important distinction. The social skills coach specifically focuses on skills development by helping the individual learn a new set of skills or improve upon a set of skills he already possesses. Similar to sports or athletic coaches, the social skills coach aims to provide support to the individual and to help the individual build on and fine-tune the skills he already has.
Who Is Social Skills Coaching For?
Other people may describe those with weakness in social skills in different ways. They may say, “Something is just a little off,” “It’s like he got the memo late,” “That wasn’t really funny, why would she say that?” “He just says anything that comes to his mind,” “It’s like he has no filter,” “She just talks too much, it’s like she is talking at you.” On the other side, people without fully developed social skills may think to themselves, “Why are people always annoyed with me?” “Why don’t I have friends?” “Did I say something wrong?” “I thought he liked me.” “What does this text I just got from him even mean?”
We want to emphasize that most people likely benefit from some form of social communication coaching to gain awareness of how they interact with others, how they come across to others, what it is like for others to be around them, and how they may become more effective when interacting with others.
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