Fernando Callejo: «Achieving social success implies achieving personal success»

Social relationships constitute a good part of what allows us to function as people; In other words, personal development is never an individual process, but takes place in our relationships with others as well.

That is why improving and "polishing" our social relationships is essential both to achieve specific goals and to feel good about who we are and what we do.

This is the topic that we are going to address in the following lines, with an interview with the psychologist Fernando Callejo, member of the management team of the UPAD Psychology and Coaching Center, located in Madrid.

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Interview with Fernando Callejo: personal development through social skills

Fernando Callejo is an expert psychologist in personal development and coaching, sports psychology and brief therapy. Together with Carlos Rey, who is also CEO and co-founder of UPAD Psicología y Coaching, he works helping all kinds of people to promote their projects in the personal and professional sphere. Here he will talk to us about how personal development connects us to other people.

Personal development is often spoken of as if it were a process that involves only the individual. To what extent does it also go through the way we learn to relate to others?

At UPAD we understand the Personal development as a process of integral growth, where the person learns to manage through various strategies and concepts, their own psychological abilities to optimize their levels of performance, satisfaction and wellness.

When we talk about performance, we refer to all the behaviors that the person carries out throughout the day, that is, what “I do”. What I "do" generates a certain level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. This is defined by those thoughts in the form of valuation, which people elaborate when we carry out different actions.

It has to do with what "I think." Over time, depending on how we think / value the way we do things, associated feelings of well-being or discomfort are generated. What I feel". This last one would be the third wicker of what we understand in UPAD that it would be a process of personal development.

We work on these three fundamental pillars: behaviors, thoughts and feelings. In short, "what I do" affects "what I think" and this in turn to "what I feel", and "what I feel" returns to affect "what I do", often becoming a kind of loop from which it is difficult to escape.

From there, we work to develop greater self-management on the part of the person, focusing on certain basic psychological skills for its achievement such as motivation, activation, attention, cognition and the emotions, among other.

To be able to relate effectively with other people, it is first important to know how to do it with ourselves, and for this it is important to know, accept and improve ourselves.

Learning to communicate assertively with ourselves will allow us to develop an optimal and effective language to interact with others.

Is it common for people with technical knowledge to fail to progress professionally or personally because they have learned dysfunctional dynamics when socializing with others?

The level of knowledge does not have to be united or at odds with social skills. We usually find a profile of people who come to UPAD possessing high levels of technical knowledge in their field.

It is quite frequent that the same level of demand and expectations that they have had with themselves to develop in their work, are overturned in their following challenges and in their environments, which can lead to high levels of frustration, and instead of analyzing their individual responsibility in the possible improvements to be made, try to attribute your difficulties to the environment or to the other people with whom you interact regularly (locus of control external).

We are even talking about company bosses and managers who, instead of analyzing how they can improve their own communication skills, try to find a way to change others, and of course, high levels of stress and anxiety tend to occur in the face of what they have no control over, often leaving them with the dubious consolation that it is someone else's fault... But I don't feel well.

Many times, these feelings of ineffectiveness prevent them from progressing in their respective professional fields.

What aspects of social skills are usually most important on a day-to-day basis?

At UPAD we try to teach the person who comes to our consultation to understand her difficulties, to achieve the level of well-being necessary to express themselves in social situations in a more satisfactory way and manage their communication, both internal and external through various strategies.

Achieving that social success involves first achieving personal success in terms of what we have been talking about (performance, satisfaction and well-being).

It is difficult to be good with others if we are not good with ourselves. From there, we can focus on developing social skills and communicative, both verbal and non-verbal, that help the person to improve their communication style. For example, by working on assertiveness, we can achieve high levels of personal satisfaction and social adaptation.

What can be done from psychology to help people interested in enhancing their personal development through their skills in relating to others?

In the first place, it would be essential to know his demand, analyze his needs, and from there, draw up an action plan that allows the person to enjoy the journey during the process. Strengthen their self-esteem, self-concept and self-confidence, for example, through decision-making and assertiveness, will allow the user to generate greater satisfaction when facing the reality of it.

Of course, implementing a feeling of continuous empowerment, which allows the person to generate meaningful learning about their own abilities. After that, the work of managing thoughts and beliefs will be fundamental to your own personal development process.

What are the most common techniques and strategies used in consultation in cases where, for example, shyness limits a person's way of communicating?

First of all, it would be interesting to analyze whether this shyness extends to all personal spheres of this person's life. If not, it would be good to reflect on whether it is a kind of selective shyness, because in that case, there will be something behind this shyness that It would be interesting to analyze, understand and propose certain objectives so that, gradually, that circumstantial feeling of shyness.

In relation to the aforementioned, an initial work could be done on its assertive communication and their decision-making, to generate a higher level of self-confidence when putting their communication skills into practice.

Logically the process would be gradual, small steps generate big changes, as long as we learn consciously. This will generate a strong foundation for the development of the person's self-esteem, which will allow them to face new challenges of greater complexity every day.

And in cases of mismanagement of anger or aggressiveness in situations in which you discuss or negotiate with others, what can be done?

Similarly, it is important to work on your emotional intelligence to learn to manage your emotions. For this we emphasize their attitude, since this is the key that will define how we face each situation.

From there we work on thoughts, on the interpretations that this negative situation holds, on emotions and sensations associated with these thoughts and with all this information, we generate new strategies to deal with these situations. Where there is a crisis there is always an opportunity for improvement. The most important thing: to internalize the new coping strategies, it is convenient to raise the levels of consciousness about how we carry them out.