The Social Interaction Dance

You don’t want to step on someone’s foot when you are dancing with them. This shows that you were off in some respect. It is often joked about as a big deal that someone stepped on their partner’s foot. The joke has relevance because we have high regard for that social dance that accompanies the physical one. This dance occurs during dancing, as well as in conversations and dealings. The people who are the best “dancers” are also the ones who get the most from the social domain.

I have previously written about establishing rapport with someone before trying to help them. Working through the moves of the social dance is the way to establish this rapport. The social dance illuminates a lot about how well a person will be able to work with you. The folks who have the social dance understood are some of our favorite individuals. It has nothing to do with being manipulative, and has everything to do with fitting smoothly into the realities of others.

Energy Levels Should Be Similar

Matching the energy level that another person presents is a part of this dance. If someone contacts you in an excited state, and you respond with a low-energy response, it is like you have stepped on their toes. This doesn’t mean you have to go crazy if they are very excited, but that the closer you get to their level of excitement, the more likely they won’t feel out-of-place. People quickly sense when their energy level is either significantly lower or higher than that of those around them.

We might as well make people feel welcome. It is easy to make people feel like they are outcasts, or out of touch with others, but that doesn’t help us, and it doesn’t help them. The only benefit is a very short-term feeling of superiority.

Pay A Matching Amount Of Attention

Another part of the social interaction dance is that involving the attention we pay. If we are paying significantly more or less attention than the person we are dealing with, the person who is paying more attention can start to build up resentment, and the person paying less attention can start to feel either cocky or bothered. You want to match the attention level of the other person so as to prevent both of these. People usually don’t point out that they are feeling these feelings based on small changes in attention, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

The sooner you adjust an item like the attention you are providing, the better the rest of your dealing or conversation can go. It doesn’t help much to figure it out and adjust at the end of a conversation, as you then would need another chance to showcase your social prowess.

People Want To Be Heard And Felt

One last aspect of the dance to bring up is that of emotional empathy. You have to be able to empathize with the person you are communicating with. The second someone feels like you don’t really value how they felt about something, they quickly back away from you or change their tone. It hurts to point out something relevant to us and not get some sort of feedback or understanding response about it. It is like indirectly saying “you should be able to figure it out on your own” or “you should be strong enough to deal with that”, both of which aren’t helpful.

As a summary of the many items that are part of this dance, two people who are doing it fall into “rhythmic harmony, synchronizing their movements and postures, their vocal pitch, rate of speaking, and even the lengths of pauses between one person’s speaking and the other’s response.”(Daniel Goleman, Working With Emotional Intelligence, Page 137) Just as on a dance floor, the best dancer in social interactions dances with the best partners, so it is in your best interests to master the dance.

How do you feel about your ability to dance the social interaction dance?  Do you have any thoughts in relation to this topic?  Let us know in the comments.

photo credit: zabara_tango

Tagged as: dance, empathy, Energy, social interaction