Are You Likeable? Does It Matter for Career Success? [Updated]

Are You Likeable?

Is it important to be likable as it relates to your work and career? Do you consider yourself a likable person? Think about some of the best people you have worked with. Have they been likeable? Is it important to be likable to be successful?

In most cases, the answer is “yes.” Now, Steve Jobs was not exactly a likeable guy and for many years neither was Bill Gates. However, I think you will find a lot of very successful people found their success through being likeable.

Likeability and Your Career or Business

Currently, there is much being written on this topic.

Likeable Business: Why Today’s Consumers Demand More and How Leaders Can Deliver by Dave Kerpen.

It pays to be LIKEABLE!

You can have a rock-solid business strategy, unlimited resources, and the most talented people on staff. But only one thing is guaranteed in today’s hyper-connected society: if your business isn’t likeable, it will fail.

Likeonomics: The Unexpected Truth Behind Earning Trust, Influencing Behavior, and Inspiring Action by Rohit Bhargava

How to become a trusted resource for consumers in a society of constant manipulation

People decide who to trust, what advice to heed, and which individuals to forge personal or transactional relationships with based on a simple metric of believability. Success, in turn, comes from understanding one basic principle: how to be more trusted.

Likeonomics offers a new vision of a world beyond Facebook where personal relationships, likeability, brutal honesty, extreme simplicity, and basic humanity are behind everything from multi-million dollar mergers to record-breaking product sales. There is a real ROI to likeability, and exactly how big it is will amaze you.

Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam Grant

Givers are at the top and the bottom of career success. Bottom early in their career and at the top later in their career.

For generations, we have focused on the individual drivers of success: passion, hard work, talent, and luck. But today, success is increasingly dependent on how we interact with others. It turns out that at work, most people operate as either takers, matchers, or givers. Whereas takers strive to get as much as possible from others and matchers aim to trade evenly, givers are the rare breed of people who contribute to others without expecting anything in return.

13 Habits of Exceptionally Likeable People on Forbes.com by Travis Bradberry

Too many people succumb to the mistaken belief that being likeable comes from natural, unteachable traits that belong only to a lucky few—the good-looking, the fiercely social, and the incredibly talented. It’s easy to fall prey to this misconception. In reality, being likeable is under your control, and it’s a matter of emotional intelligence (EQ).

The 13 habits of exceptionally likeable people are as follows. They:

Ask questions
Put their phones away
Are genuine
Don’t pass judgment
Don’t seek attention
Are consistent
Use positive body language
Leave a strong first impression
Greet people by name
Smile
Know when to open up
Know who to touch (and they touch them)
Balance passion and fun

Being Likeable and Career Success

We all know that not all successful businessmen or women have been likeable. There have been a lot of evil or mean people who have been very successful. I believe that is changing and changing fast. Just look at the #MeToo Movement.

Being likeable will be even more important to your career success moving forward.

What has changed?

The speed of communication has accelerated. Just look at what has happened in Hollywood. Look what is happening in Washington D.C. with the sexual and ethical lapses of our politicians being called out and now being forced to resign.

Those who are not likeable will not create good karma and it will cost them…eventually. In this day in age, where everything you do is recorded, if you are not be working on being likeable, it will cost you. It may not cost you immediately – but in the long run – it will catch up with you.

This does not mean becoming someone you are not. It is being respectful, considerate and treating others the way you want to be treated.

It has been said many times that:

People hire people they like!

In my opinion, it is more important for your career success to be likeable than knowledgeable.

Yes, it does matter to be likeable!

What do you think?

Marc Miller

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