You Must Be Likable
Or Else ...
It’s darn near impossible to measure an employee’s performance, even for easily-observable work on a small team. It’s not impossible, of course, but it’s probably a safe assumption that your boss knows a lot less about the quality of your work than you think she does. And by the time you get to your skip-level boss or a senior executive, they would be lucky to know your name, let alone whether you do good work.
But there is one quality of your work performance that is extremely easy for your peers, boss, and senior executives to measure: whether or not you are likable.
At some level, this whole post is just an expansion of the idiom that people will forget what you said, but not the way you made them feel. There are outliers to any maxim, of course. There are assholes who do absolutely stellar work and there are extremely likable coworkers who are incompetent. But at the margin, learning to be likable is probably the best skill you can acquire.
But what is it that makes someone likable? There are dozens of skills and behaviors that go into being likable, but here are the 3 that I think are most important.
Be an Active Listener
Here are some active listening traits that are worth practicing:
Never interrupt someone intentionally. Over video calls, this happens somewhat regularly by accident. When that happens, always cede the conversational right of way to your partner.
Take notes. Nothing makes someone feel important like writing down what they are saying. This isn’t always appropriate or possible of course, but during important conversations it’s a pro move. During an interview or mentorship session, for instance, taking notes enables you to absorb more content and sends a powerful signal that you care about what the other person is saying.
Use the same words as the people you are talking with. I mean this very literally. If you are in a conversation with someone and they say “team B has 3 big challenges,” when you are responding, try to say something like “it does seem like there are a couple of big challenges facing team B.” Notice that you didn’t repeat exactly what they said, but you almost did. This demonstrates that you were listening and that you understood not just the words being spoken, but their contextual meaning. This is a tough skill to learn. If you’re struggling, you can leverage note-taking to help. During important conversations, I write down unique words or phrases that I hear and then remix those into my responses.
There’s lots more to being an active listener, but these should get you started. Everyone loves talking to an active listener.
Agree More Than You Disagree
The lower threshold is 3 agreements to every 1 disagreement. If you want to really shine, try to keep your ratio at 5:1. It might seem like I’m encouraging you to be a sycophant, but it’s more subtle than that.
If you find the concept of agreeing with most of what your peers or boss say abhorrent, you might be in the wrong team, company, or profession. But even if you do feel well-matched on those fronts, it can feel unnatural to be so agreeable. Shouldn’t you speak truth to power and never compromise your ideals? Isn’t that what real leaders want? Hardly.
Among peers at work, it’s fine to be sarcastic or make jokes about dysfunction and mishaps. But if a peer asks you to do something and you decline more than you accept, you’ll garner a reputation for being tough to work with. This is even more attenuated in your relationship with your boss and management. If your boss asks you to do something and you want to be promoted or remain in the organization’s good graces, your default answer must be “yes.” You can, in very limited situations say “no,” but it’s very expensive to do that. Use your disagreements wisely.
If agreeing more than you disagree requires you to do or say morally odious things, consider leaving. If you can’t afford to leave, you’ll have to make the tough choice between moral rectitude and financial hardship.
Remember Personal Details
I’ll readily admit that I’m terrible at this, but then, there’s always room for growth. There’s nothing more charming than a coworker who always remembers details about your personal life and takes steps to accommodate you.
Maybe you share with a coworker that your mother is very sick at the moment. Later that week, there’s a mother’s day office celebration and your boss pressures you to attend. Your thoughtful coworker swoops in and asks if it would be okay for you to meet with them instead because such-and-such project is behind. After people go to the party, your coworker reveals that they just wanted to ensure you are doing okay and not to feel obligated to attend.
In this scenario, your coworker did a couple of extremely likable things:
They listened when you told them about your mother.
They took the next step to simulate what it might be like in your head and some of the emotions you might be feeling.
They proactively identified that the celebration might make you uncomfortable and sad.
Without revealing any of your personal information to others, they created an opportunity to check in and ensure you are feeling mentally safe and protected.
Maybe you were fine to attend the mother’s day celebration after all. No harm done, you can just tell your boss you were able to quickly resolve the topics with your coworker. But if you were feeling vulnerable, scared, or otherwise exposed, your coworker did you a solid.
This sort of skill is very, very difficult to pull off successfully, but when done, is the highest order of likeability.
Personally, I’ve always struggled with this. It’s hard to get my brain to commit this category of information to memory. Lyrics to Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory album? That’ll be in memory until the day I die. But the names of my new coworker’s two children? No way.
If this describes you, one trick is to use a spaced repetition flashcard program to commit the information to memory. It works really well, but requires a substantial up-front investment. I’ve also occasionally used a lightweight CRM - typically when I’m onboarding onto a new team.
What’s Next?
Remember: in a couple of months, most of your coworkers will probably have forgotten the work that you’ve done. In a year, all but your most important 1 or 2 contributions will be completely forgotten by your boss. In 5 years, nobody will remember what you did at all, but they will remember how you acted around them and whether they liked you.
So, put in the effort to learn or improve the skills that make you likable. It’s gratifying to be liked by people, but it’s also a killer way to advance your career. Because when it comes down to it, measuring performance is nearly impossible and everyone would rather work with a likable person.