You have probably made this comment before, and more than likely to your children, “I love you but I don’t always like what you do.” I don’t know about you, but I want to be both loved and liked. As a small business owner, “The Likeability Factor” is very important as my clients need to ‘like’ me before they will hire me. Tim Sanders, author of The Likeability Factor, defines likeability as the ability to create positive attitudes in other people through the delivery of emotional and physical benefits. He says there are four critical elements of your personality that will help raise your Likeability Factor:
1. Friendliness: your ability to communicate liking and openness to others.
2. Relevance: your capacity to connect with other’s interest, wants, and needs.
3. Empathy: your ability to recognize, acknowledge, and experience other people’s feelings.
4. Realness: the integrity that stands behind your likeability and guarantees its authenticity.
Additional elements that I try to incorporate into my life and business as I strive to be likable:
5. Be cooperative
6. Be a good listener
7. Be generous
8. Be helpful
9. Be kind
10. Be positive
Take Tim Sander’s Likeability Factor Self Assessment (timsanders.com/book/likeability) to see if there’s room for improvement.
George Foreman once said, “If you want people to love you, you gotta make sure you love them back.” I like to think of this as the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” (Matthew 7:12)…works in life as well as business.
