Natural language and non verbal communication are difficult. I have found that it can be especially difficult for some technically minded people such as yoursel

Natural language and non verbal communication are difficult. I have found that it can be especially difficult for some technically minded people such as yourself, while some people seem to do it effortlessly. I give this advice freely to my friends: you're a hacker, so hack it. There are an abundance of resources out there for learning social skills, I'd recommend selecting just a few and memorizing them using spaced repetition. These resources will give you social exercises, like asking how a cashier's day is going before doing business with them. I'd recommend memorizing each of the exercises as well, because you will never know when or where you will be able to do an exercise, despite the book(s) telling you it is critical to do each exercise in order, and only to continue reading after having done the exercise -- disregard the author in these cases. This won't make you a hot shot sales guy or a presidential candidate right away. Think of it as learning to program for the first time. In the beginning the language, syntax, memory allocation, and data types seem like "the" thing to know in order to code, and later on we laugh, because we were missing the forest for the trees. But the thing is, knowing those things are prerequisites to being able to build towards the larger picture of the system as a whole. When you memorize social skills and nuance, that knowledge will initially lie dormant in your mind, and that is an incredibly powerful place for it to be, do not feel guilty for not putting the tools to work right away. Then on some morning you might be in line about to order a muffin, and you might talk to someone in line, or the cashier. You might see some people joking around on a bus. You will start to see the things you've memorized coming to life, and you will have that "oh shit, I can do anything, can't I?" snap moment that comes for many good programmers and engineers. Some people might look down on you for memorizing social skills, so don't tell them. What they don't realize is that as an engineer, you invested more time in learning technical skills, and as a consequence of that you invested less time learning social skills. Everybody that has a "type A" charismatic personality has memorized/learned it as well, just in a different context. https://socialpronow.com/blog/books-improve-social-skills/#1 https://socialpronow.com/blog/books-improve-social-skills/#1 Also, many books will touch on the concept of confidence, or just have it generally implied. The easiest way to get it is through physical exercise. Cardio for clarity and weights for willpower.