Hey there Mr./Ms. Creative. How are your social skills?
Think you can get by on raw talent? Think your agent, rep, manager or business partner is going to take care of that fluffy customer-facing stuff so you can be a reclusive artist, camera-hider-behinder? Think again. Like it or not, the feeling you’ve been feeling all along is becoming more pronounced. Call it unfair, call it fake, call it whatever you want, but as the world becomes more connected socially, the bias toward socially connected individuals and groups is continuing to serve out the prophecy…social skillz help pay the billz.
While geographic location clearly means a lot for earning more, growing faster, and reaping the rewards of a larger network–ie. being a professional creative located in LA, NYC, London, etc–, recent article in The Atlantic by Richard Florida (author of Rise of the Creative Class) states in no uncertain terms that you’d be way better off having more than just technical skills:
Highly developed social skills … including persuasion, social perceptiveness, the capacity to bring the right people together on a project, the ability to help develop other people, and a keen sense of empathy…are quintessential leadership skills needed to innovate, mobilize resources, build effective organizations, and launch new firms. They are highly complementary to analytic skills [read: your technical abilities as a photographer]…and indeed, the very highest-paying jobs usually require exceptional skill in both realms.
So are you prepared to get a lot more social and heighten your chances at success?
I’ve actually always felt that my social skills have been MORE important than my photographic skills/talent. It is my social skills, interactions, networking, etc., that have opened the doors to various photographic opportunities, not the other way around.
I’d have to agree with the point of your blogicle … advanced social skills, the sensitivity to real social schmoozyness (not just fake gabbledygook), are so important these days, and yes, not just in photographic-allied individual service businesses. And I understand … theoretically … how and why this is so.
The problem for some of us is that in the last 30-years of the last century, those of us who are on that autism/aspergers spectrum (though not quite obviously so) could have a good business built on proven success as a (in my case) award-winning portrait photographer and solid business history of taking care of clients. Bluntly, that isn’t enough these days.
And the skills that are most needed these days, the excellence in close inter-personal interaction as noted in this article, are things those of us on that spectrum can’t ever be natural at. I’ve had so many people tell me just study and learn, but the inability to discern subtle social cues is at the very core of the definition of both autism and aspergers. It’s something that those thinking of coming into the profession should note … and be very aware of.
Yes, the times have changed. Dramatically so, in fact. Social skills are more important than photography skills to making a living at it. Don’t get me wrong, you NEED to be able to handle the camera … but as stated here, the greater need is the social skills.
I totally agree. I think you can connect with more people now but the step a lot of us miss is actually taking that online social connection and making it an offline real one. It’s easy to be a social nut and still live like a hermit. One of the things that really scored you big points in my book was years ago you used to throw the “CJ Socials”. I thought that was so cool. It was a way for me to meet an online thought leader in real life. Have a margarita with a bunch of creatives and really make real connections that helped me achieve where I’m at today.
You know those Dolly shots where the camera zooms in on the character, causing the whole perspective behind him to shift? I feel like that moment, where everything about the photography business (or any) is suddenly magnified, blurred and beyond reach. At times, this business overwhelms the shit out of me I don’t know where to begin.
I’ll press on for sure; I just needed to share how I felt about this post, for which I’m grateful, but the way a kid might be grateful for a parent’s hard, truthful lesson.
Somewhat indirectly, this also points out why a traditional liberal-arts college education still has value. (Chase, you were a philosophy major as I recall?) Communication skills and big-picture thought, as well as social and networking skills are picked up along the way at a good college.
This is certainly not to negate the value of technical training, nor to suggest the traditional college route is necessarily the only way (obviously it’s not), but it does provide a grounding in these “soft” skills that become extremely important the higher one reaches. So a liberal arts degree should not be dismissed as “impractical” even in a technical industry and these uncertain times.