oh hey there, I have been trying to work on social skills myself, I'm still a total noob, shy and awkward person but I believe I have three important pieces of knowledge that I even put to test recently that worked:

1 - from chris voss, paraphrasing: the elephant in the room doesn't go away if you ignore it, or pretend it's not there; it diminishes and goes away on its own when you acknowledge it and decide that it's not that big of a deal - last week I went to meet a person and, given the circumstances, I was surely expecting to be very nervous, my "conversation performance" was still horrible but because I had the right mentality and told her I was expecting to be nervous, things got pretty smooth and natural very quickly (his masterclass has all the knowledge you need on the things he teaches and it's amazing)

2 - from [this video](link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAnw168huqA&ab_channel=StanfordGraduateSchoolofBusiness): "it's not a performance" - so you don't have to rehearse nor get every tiny detail exactly the way you think is "perfect" because there isn't even such a thing

3 - to be interestING, be interesTED

I've been watching a lot of charisma on command videos, craig ferguson's interviews, videos like the one I linked on "2", and working on changing my mentality and perspective and once you change/improve yours you will feel the power it has, it's also a positive feedback loop because all you need is a small win to build more confidence and then you start doing better for being more confident