Social competence is the range of interpersonal skills that help youth integrate feelings, thinking, and actions in order to achieve specific social and interpersonal goals. These skills include encoding relevant social cues; accurately interpreting those social cues; generating effective solutions to interpersonal problems; realistically anticipating consequences and potential obstacles to one's actions; and translating social decisions into effective behavior

Emotional competence is the ability to identify and respond to feelings and emotional reactions in oneself and others. Five elements of emotional competence: knowing one's emotions, managing emotions, motivating oneself, recognizing emotions in others, and handling relationships.

Cognitive competence includes two aspects: the first as the ability to develop and apply the cognitive skills of self-talk, the reading and interpretation of social cues, using steps for problem-solving and decision-making, understanding the perspective of others, understanding behavioral norms, a positive attitude toward life, and self awareness.
The second is related to academic and intellectual achievement, including the ability to use logic, analytic thinking, and abstract reasoning.

Behavioral competence refers to effective action: nonverbal communication (through facial expressions, tone of voice, style of dress, gesture or eye contact), verbal communication (making clear requests, responding effectively to criticism, expressing feelings clearly), and taking action (helping others, walking away from negative situations, participating in positive activities).

Moral competence is a youth's ability to express moral maturity as both a respect for rules and a sense of social justice.

Nation to Nation promotes positive youth development approach as an understanding that all youth need is an access to developmental opportunities. They also need reliable information about behaviors that put them at risk. N2N sends a clear massage: avoid harmful risk behaviors such as: alcohol, drugs, tobacco and violence.