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Our goal with this podcast is to close the gap recent surveys show exists in our workforce where 58 percent of employers say college graduates aren’t adequately prepared for today’s workforce, and those employers noted a particular gap in social and emotional skills. Research shows that social-emotional skills like social awareness, self-management, and growth mindset are crucial to college and career readiness. We have chosen six social and emotional learning competencies to dive deep into over the next 6 episodes to use as a springboard for discussion and tie in how an understanding of our brain can facilitate these strategies. We want the ideas you take away with you to be actionable whether you are an educator working in a school, an employee or manager in a corporation, or someone just looking to take their skills to the next level. We have done all of the research for you and look forward to hearing about the results that you create. As a recap, in our first episode, we shared with you the “Why behind implementing an SEL/emotional intelligence training program in your school or workplace.” In the second episode, we introduced the first of the six SEL competencies (self-awareness). With each competency, we’ll investigate the best practices and strategies that you can use to develop and improve your own SEL/Emotional Intelligence and well-being practices, before extending these strategies to your districts, schools, classrooms, workplaces and communities. We’ll offer ideas, tools and resources (in the show notes section) so that anyone can apply these skills themselves, and then teach others for improved results, focus and productivity. Our next competency is social-awareness. What is Social-Awareness and Why is it Important? “Social awareness is the ability to take the perspective of and empathize with others from diverse backgrounds and cultures.” [i]  Being socially aware means that we have the ability to: Recognize our own emotions in addition to other people’s emotions Use information about our emotions to help guide or direct our thoughts, feelings, actions and behaviors Be aware of the thoughts, feelings and motivations of others Be able to take another person’s perspective “As an educator, part of our role is to help students see the world through others’ eyes.” [ii] How can we become more socially mindful of others? We know that research shows that students with strong social awareness adapt easily to their environment, are empathetic to others, and have fewer behavioral problems.” [iii] This creates a setting where students can focus on learning. Findings also show that students who demonstrate strong social awareness are better able to engage in effective communication with their peers to resolve conflicts and challenges when they arise. In the workplace, there are a lot of components to think about. We are all equals (men vs women) and of diverse backgrounds and everyone on the team can contribute in a different way to achieve the end goal.  We’ve must learn to communicate between different departments-- marketing can’t work without sales and sales can’t operate without marketing. It’s important to learn strategies to connect with all our colleagues.  Tap into Your Own Social-Awareness in 4 Steps There is a way to train your brain to increase social awareness and create substantial neural changes in your social brain. This practice will help you to change your behavior and in turn, will cause others to trust and connect with you more.  Imagine you have a team meeting and you know the outcome that you want from the meeting. There are some steps that you can take BEFORE the meeting that can prime your brain for these results.  STEP 1: Prepare yourself to engage in the present moment. Yawn, stretch, relax and release any negative thoughts and feelings that might be on your mind. You don’t want to carry anything into the meeting to affect the outcome that you want. STEP 2: Find your power word. Think o