Social Savvy Sage | Curriculum

Hi! I’m Dennis, and I’m here to help you develop the social skills necessary to be more successful in all aspects of your life, from romantic to social to professional.

Here’s what I can do:

Teach you to become a better conversationalist.
Help you learn to be comfortable interacting with anyone in any setting.

And here’s what I won’t do:

Give you a bunch of pickup lines to memorize.
Tell you the exact formula for attracting the opposite sex (or whichever sex is your preference).

While memorized routines and flamboyant displays can grab someone’s attention, they won’t help you build an actual connection to them. To accomplish that, you need interpersonal skills — or what we refer to as social savvy. Once you learn these skills, you’ll be able to converse with ease and generate attraction just by being yourself.

To be clear, the Social Savvy Sage curriculum isn’t just about learning how to talk to romantic interests. It’s about learning to be comfortable interacting with anyone. If you focus on your universal social savvy first, your natural attractiveness will grow and flourish. I speak from personal experience here.

Here are the eight fundamental skills that we will work on at Social Savvy Sage:

Social intelligence

You know the acceptable and unacceptable ways to behave in any given setting.
You know the appropriate and inappropriate topics to talk about with any given person.
You know what topics may be interesting to others and how long to talk about them before they become uninteresting.
You understand the different levels of conversation and the reasons for them. You know the appropriate time to progress from one level to another, and the appropriate time to step back a level.
You are aware of social norms and understand when it’s acceptable to break from them.

Emotional aptitude

You acknowledge and remain in control of your own emotions.
You are compassionate towards all people, even strangers.
You recognize how your words and actions affect others around you.
You detect when someone’s mood shifts and adjust your words and actions accordingly.
You notice clues that someone is starting to feel a romantic attraction. You are able to stoke said attraction without coming across as desperate or aggressive. You know and accept when someone is not interested.

Charisma

You exude energy when you speak and do so without resorting to yelling.
You can take something bland and talk about it in a fun and exciting manner.
Your stories inspire and influence others.
You rely on positivity rather than fear or hate to inspire and influence others.
You command attention without demanding it.

Self-confidence

You show your attractive qualities without boasting.
You accept the qualities about yourself that may be seen as superficially unattractive, but which you can’t change (height, skin color, etc.).
You don’t tear others down to build yourself up.
You project self-confidence even when you are listening.
You don’t need to rely on others for validation.

Humility

You don’t need to rely on others for validation, but understand the value of feedback from others.
You are always striving to build and refine your knowledge and skills.
You take responsibility for your mistakes and grow from them.
You aren’t afraid to change your position when proven wrong.
You are willing to defer to someone more knowledgeable or skilled than you.

Fluidity

You know when to talk and when to listen quietly.
You know when to joke and when to be serious.
You are easygoing, but not a pushover.
You know when to be stubborn or aggressive, and when to relent.
You know when to work alone, and when to ask for help.

Keenness

You understand and employ the power of a quick wit and sharp sense of humor.
You notice the quirky things around you and are able to make insightful observations about them.
You remember the meaningful details that people tell you about themselves.
You catch the verbal and nonverbal cues that reveal how someone wants to be perceived.
You catch the verbal and nonverbal cues that reveal other people’s relationships to each other.

Self-awareness

You are aware of the qualities you have that may be seen as attractive or unattractive.
You are constantly on the lookout for potential blind spots in your own knowledge.
You recognize when someone is more knowledgeable than you.
You understand the impact that past experiences and society in general may have on your own values and beliefs.
You know where you stand on all eight skills.

Even though some of these skills may seem innate at first glance, my personal and professional experiences have demonstrated that they can in fact be taught and learned. In my coaching, I incorporate two pedagogical methodologies: 1) guided practice and 2) simulation-based learning. (Yeah, yeah, I was showing off there — “pedagogical methodology” is just a fancy term for “science-based teaching strategy.”)

The standalone coaching sessions (guided practice) give you a chance to work on individual skills under my tutelage. And then the practice dates (simulation-based learning) allow you to apply these skills in a low-pressure approximation of the real world, where you can make as many mistakes as you want without creating any actual social disasters.

Look at it this way: if you’re studying to be a brain surgeon, you wouldn’t jump straight from the anatomy book to sawing open the skulls of living patients, right? You’d practice on a whole bunch of cadavers first. Well, my coaching partners are here to be your metaphorical cadavers (sorry, coaches).

Ultimately, my goal is to get you to a point where you no longer need to be actively cognizant of these eight skills. Once there, you’ll find that your conversations flow naturally, and you and the person you’re interacting with can enjoy the ride together and see where it takes you.

That is the ultimate key to building rapport and creating meaningful interactions, whether romantically, socially, or professionally.

If you believe the Social Savvy Sage curriculum can help you, click here to learn about my coaching services, or sign up for a free consultation below:

Consultation