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Social Thinking at Work: Why Should I Care?
From Silicon Valley to Wall Street . . . Introducing a Guidebook for Understanding and Navigating the Social Complexities of the Workplace.
In this groundbreaking book, Michelle Garcia Winner and Pamela Crooke describe the inner workings of the social mind in the workplace and decode the hidden rules of the social world by explaining how we think about our own, as well as other people s thoughts and emotions. The process is complex and it requires social multitasking or Social Thinking to successfully navigate the nuances and different mindsets of others, especially people we may perceive as being difficult to work with.
Why is it that someone can come up with a brilliant strategy, but be unable to effectively communicate an idea in a meeting with fellow managers?
What are the social rules of the workplace, and how come it seems not everyone understands them?
How is it that a person can be recognized for his productivity on a job but is never included in work or social discussions?
Social Thinking At Work explores how to better express thoughts and how to encourage others to support personal and professional endeavors as you gain an understanding of how to regularly adjust your thinking and related social behaviors for increasingly successful interactions.
In this groundbreaking book, Michelle Garcia Winner and Pamela Crooke describe the inner workings of the social mind in the workplace and decode the hidden rules of the social world by explaining how we think about our own, as well as other people s thoughts and emotions. The process is complex and it requires social multitasking or Social Thinking to successfully navigate the nuances and different mindsets of others, especially people we may perceive as being difficult to work with.
Why is it that someone can come up with a brilliant strategy, but be unable to effectively communicate an idea in a meeting with fellow managers?
What are the social rules of the workplace, and how come it seems not everyone understands them?
How is it that a person can be recognized for his productivity on a job but is never included in work or social discussions?
Social Thinking At Work explores how to better express thoughts and how to encourage others to support personal and professional endeavors as you gain an understanding of how to regularly adjust your thinking and related social behaviors for increasingly successful interactions.
209 pages, Paperback
First published June 15, 2011
3 people are currently reading
121 people want to read
About the author
Michelle Garcia Winner
57 books32 followersMichelle Garcia Winner, MA, CCC-SLP, is the founder of Social Thinking and a globally recognized thought leader, author, speaker, and social-cognitive therapist. She is dedicated to helping people of all ages develop social-emotional learning, including those with social competency challenges. Across her 30+ year career she has created numerous evidence-based strategies, treatment frameworks, and curricula to help interventionists foster social competencies in those they support. Michelle's work also teaches how these competencies impact a person's broader life, including their ability to maintain relationships and their success in school and career. She continually retools her methods based on the latest research and inspiration from the clients she sees in her San Francisco Bay Area clinic.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 28, 2013
This book left me feeling very torn.
Pros:
This books is one of the few resources out there on social thinking for ADULTS. Please note that not all people with social communication disorders are also on the Autism Spectrum, and so this book is of use for adults on the ASD and those with other Social Communication Disorders (for more information on other SCD, consider digging further at Winner's site, www.socialcommunication.org)
Winner and Cooke provide mini-case studies as examples, citing difficulties experienced by their adult clients, and offering alternative choices those clients (or readers) could make in similar situations.
Each chapter sums up key points, and the book ends with a full summary of all key ideas aimed at both the adults who struggle with Social Communication issues and at any other support personel (professional or otherwise) who might be assisting them in identifying areas to target for skill level assessment and practice.
Some basic blackline masters are provided as tools to use in implementing strategies outlined for assessing or practicing skills.
For the most part, suggestions for assessment and practice strategies are clearly outlined and reasons are provided.
Cons:
The writing often felt extremely abrupt as it moved from one point to the next. While I appreciate that some people on the AS may respond far more readily to less wordy prose, for me it came across as lacking in transitions to the point of almost being without sequencing cues. Winner and Cooke refer to one of the difficulties of those with Social Communications Disorders as a tendency to engage in "Whopping Topic Changes" (terminology I found annoying because what they are referring to already has a perfectly adequate descriptor in the English language - non-sequiturs - but then that's one of my SC issues, being annoyingly literal in my use of language *eye roll*). I often felt as if the writing in this book was choppy to the point of feeling like it was engaging in it's own Whopping Subject Changes (*ahem* non-sequiturs) even within clearly labelled chapters, headings and subheadings.
My chief difficulty with the book, however, was a philosophical one. Obviously, as someone with Social Communication Disorder, I don't "get" some of the "hidden" social rules - that's rather the point. I found some of the author's suggestions, however, involving the necessity of white lies (in the sense of lies of commission) and lies of omission, and on occasion of social shunning to range from distasteful to downright unethical.
While the authors make a point of saying "don't shoot the messenger", pointing out that they did not write the hidden social rules that seem to govern much of so-called mature or adult social interaction in modern North American society, I found myself on more than one occasion, while reading this book, disgusted and outraged by the suggestions therein. It was not because the suggestions would be ineffective in the situations that the authors were laying out - quite the opposite, the suggestions would be quite effective in helping someone to protect their own interests in the workplace, but possibly at the expense of someone else. That I found to be morally .... at the risk of sounding 'over the top' here, I found it on occasion to be morally repugnant.
What it came down to was this - the book itself is honest. The book lists effective strategies and pulls no punches. It tells people with ineffective social radars how to manoeuvre effectively, to protect themselves and to at least act like they are managing the "social fake" in a professional environment that includes gossips, people who largely seem to say almost anything except what they actually mean, and are focused by and large on their own interests and will willingly though not necessarily maliciously sacrifice others in the pursuit of same.
The book effectively confirmed for me that I do not in fact, "fit in". I always knew it, and I was immensely frustrated by it because until I was diagnosed with a Social Communications Disorder and got some other things straightened out as well, I could not for the life of me figure out WHY I was forever and always so very out of step with my colleagues, regardless of my intentions, or of theirs. The diagnosis, and this book offered significant insight.
It has also, however, offered me a profound challenge - I must now decide, deliberately, consciously and unflinchingly - how much of myself I am willing to compromise (and all social interaction is something of a compromise, so I'm not saying that with wild eyed idealism) in balance with how much I am willing and able to accept a certain amount of isolation and loneliness in order to keep a sense of my own integrity. If there are elements of the social fake which I find personally unpalatable, I must accept that the rest of society is not going to stop behaving in what I perceive as a false manner, simply because I find it morally repugnant. Many, many of the hidden rules of the social fake predate my entire existence, and while those hidden rules change over time (dang it - someone should be sending out hidden memos or something!) they're not going away. It is up to me, therefore, to determine what I am or am not willing to engage with and in, and what I am simply going to accept as a given knowing that the trade off for not engaging with game implied in the hidden rules is being left out of play.
For me, this was a "Con" to the book, because of my emotional reaction. To be fair, however, I think that it is also a "Pro" for me, because it is forcing me to do some work in the realm of personal growth.
It concerns me, however, because I fear that some adults with Social Communication Disorders may take much of the advice in this book as read, and may end up in situations they find emotionally and/or intellectually off-putting - and the book doesn't address how to deal with those consequences of engaging with the hidden rules and playing along with the social fake. I suppose that is not really in the scope of the book (and the author notes that the book already ended up longer than she and her co-author had hoped) since it's not a therapeutic book in terms of dealing with the ramifications of your choices, it's a therapeutic book in terms of making behavioural changes, but this seems to be to be a rather gaping hole, and therefore a "Con".
Nonetheless, if you know of or are an adult with Social Communication challenges, it's worth a critical read.
Pros:
This books is one of the few resources out there on social thinking for ADULTS. Please note that not all people with social communication disorders are also on the Autism Spectrum, and so this book is of use for adults on the ASD and those with other Social Communication Disorders (for more information on other SCD, consider digging further at Winner's site, www.socialcommunication.org)
Winner and Cooke provide mini-case studies as examples, citing difficulties experienced by their adult clients, and offering alternative choices those clients (or readers) could make in similar situations.
Each chapter sums up key points, and the book ends with a full summary of all key ideas aimed at both the adults who struggle with Social Communication issues and at any other support personel (professional or otherwise) who might be assisting them in identifying areas to target for skill level assessment and practice.
Some basic blackline masters are provided as tools to use in implementing strategies outlined for assessing or practicing skills.
For the most part, suggestions for assessment and practice strategies are clearly outlined and reasons are provided.
Cons:
The writing often felt extremely abrupt as it moved from one point to the next. While I appreciate that some people on the AS may respond far more readily to less wordy prose, for me it came across as lacking in transitions to the point of almost being without sequencing cues. Winner and Cooke refer to one of the difficulties of those with Social Communications Disorders as a tendency to engage in "Whopping Topic Changes" (terminology I found annoying because what they are referring to already has a perfectly adequate descriptor in the English language - non-sequiturs - but then that's one of my SC issues, being annoyingly literal in my use of language *eye roll*). I often felt as if the writing in this book was choppy to the point of feeling like it was engaging in it's own Whopping Subject Changes (*ahem* non-sequiturs) even within clearly labelled chapters, headings and subheadings.
My chief difficulty with the book, however, was a philosophical one. Obviously, as someone with Social Communication Disorder, I don't "get" some of the "hidden" social rules - that's rather the point. I found some of the author's suggestions, however, involving the necessity of white lies (in the sense of lies of commission) and lies of omission, and on occasion of social shunning to range from distasteful to downright unethical.
While the authors make a point of saying "don't shoot the messenger", pointing out that they did not write the hidden social rules that seem to govern much of so-called mature or adult social interaction in modern North American society, I found myself on more than one occasion, while reading this book, disgusted and outraged by the suggestions therein. It was not because the suggestions would be ineffective in the situations that the authors were laying out - quite the opposite, the suggestions would be quite effective in helping someone to protect their own interests in the workplace, but possibly at the expense of someone else. That I found to be morally .... at the risk of sounding 'over the top' here, I found it on occasion to be morally repugnant.
What it came down to was this - the book itself is honest. The book lists effective strategies and pulls no punches. It tells people with ineffective social radars how to manoeuvre effectively, to protect themselves and to at least act like they are managing the "social fake" in a professional environment that includes gossips, people who largely seem to say almost anything except what they actually mean, and are focused by and large on their own interests and will willingly though not necessarily maliciously sacrifice others in the pursuit of same.
The book effectively confirmed for me that I do not in fact, "fit in". I always knew it, and I was immensely frustrated by it because until I was diagnosed with a Social Communications Disorder and got some other things straightened out as well, I could not for the life of me figure out WHY I was forever and always so very out of step with my colleagues, regardless of my intentions, or of theirs. The diagnosis, and this book offered significant insight.
It has also, however, offered me a profound challenge - I must now decide, deliberately, consciously and unflinchingly - how much of myself I am willing to compromise (and all social interaction is something of a compromise, so I'm not saying that with wild eyed idealism) in balance with how much I am willing and able to accept a certain amount of isolation and loneliness in order to keep a sense of my own integrity. If there are elements of the social fake which I find personally unpalatable, I must accept that the rest of society is not going to stop behaving in what I perceive as a false manner, simply because I find it morally repugnant. Many, many of the hidden rules of the social fake predate my entire existence, and while those hidden rules change over time (dang it - someone should be sending out hidden memos or something!) they're not going away. It is up to me, therefore, to determine what I am or am not willing to engage with and in, and what I am simply going to accept as a given knowing that the trade off for not engaging with game implied in the hidden rules is being left out of play.
For me, this was a "Con" to the book, because of my emotional reaction. To be fair, however, I think that it is also a "Pro" for me, because it is forcing me to do some work in the realm of personal growth.
It concerns me, however, because I fear that some adults with Social Communication Disorders may take much of the advice in this book as read, and may end up in situations they find emotionally and/or intellectually off-putting - and the book doesn't address how to deal with those consequences of engaging with the hidden rules and playing along with the social fake. I suppose that is not really in the scope of the book (and the author notes that the book already ended up longer than she and her co-author had hoped) since it's not a therapeutic book in terms of dealing with the ramifications of your choices, it's a therapeutic book in terms of making behavioural changes, but this seems to be to be a rather gaping hole, and therefore a "Con".
Nonetheless, if you know of or are an adult with Social Communication challenges, it's worth a critical read.
July 16, 2017
We all need to care and share
December 19, 2024
My impression was it needed cut down and simplified, even if written for a wider audience that needs details. Also, I disagree with it being okay to use white lies. There are many ways to redirect a question or just not answer it. It had a lot of good points and scenarios to illustrate them. It can be a slog and worth reading.
July 9, 2012
Another great book for people who may benefit from taking a more specific look into social thinking skills. While working with children on the spectrum, I thoroughly enjoyed this peek into the future.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews