Some people are naturally charismatic and navigate the social scene with ease. Others (me!) are not so good with the social and people skills.

For my part, I'm naturally pretty introverted. Most of what I struggle with with other people is relevant to that. I'm slower than most people expect, especially in group conversations. This leads to me just not getting the opportunity to say what I need without (very, very uncomfortably) cutting in and forcing my way into the conversation (which has its own downsides, if done at the inappropriate time and in an inappropriate way). This is combined with a propensity to straight up forget what I want to say (I'm listening!) and difficulty extracting verbalized words from my head.

So, yeah, I don't do so well in loud, fast-moving groups.

To build social skills, intentional observation followed by practice is usually the best approach. A bunch of academic reading isn't going to solve all of the issues. But -- if you need some kind of baseline to even get started, books are a decent start. In order of recommendation...

Strong Recommendations

• Quiet, Susan Cain -- A lot of people with social struggles are apparently just introverted. This is an excellent book about introversion in a very loud, very extroverted world.
• Cues & Captivate by Vanessa Van Edwards. It's a little bit of an overbright tone for my liking, with some element of "influencer" vibes. However, they are useful despite the influencer/salesmanship, and focused on business contexts. She also has a website where you can learn more stuff.
• You Say More Than You Think by Janine Driver. There are pictures, they're helpful.
• Joe Navarro's collection. The author was an FBI body language expert type. Most likely, these are useful for adversarial contexts... sounds exactly like work!

Meh Recommendations

• The Gentle Art of Verbal Defense at Work was okay but pretty dated. I found it overly lengthy, and I never finished it.
• How To Win Friends and Influence People -- was also okay but very, very dated, anecdotal -- and most of the tactics and techniques are blatantly transparent these days. This is the one that everyone recommends, and it's probably worth a read if only that it's "foundational" -- but it's not a one-and-done sort of read.

RMET Test

I took this test about reading people's emotions from just their eyes (and very fuzzy, bad pictures at that). My original score was 19 or 20 out of 36. After reading a bunch of books and engaging in intentional practice over the course of about a year, I clawed my score up to 28 out of 36. Sample size of one, but hey, it seems to have worked for me.