Unlikeability Doesn't Work

Excerpted from
The Likeability Factor : How to Boost Your L-Factor and Achieve Your Life's Dreams
By Tim Sanders

People with a negative reputation have few successful relationships. Think of the characters on the hit 1990s sitcom Seinfeld. Low L-factors kept all of them single for the show's entire run. George Costanza was neurotic beyond comprehension. He wore away at you until your teeth itched. Jerry Seinfeld was a perfectionist without sympathy for anyone else's flaws. Elaine was like a fabulous freight train of disaster. To know her was to realize you could live without her. And Kramer was simply insane. They were fun to watch, but you wouldn't want them in your life.

Besides the choice factor, here are four additional reasons why unlikeability is no longer an option.

1. Short-term thinking is dying. Short-term thinking is the belief that the moment is all that matters.

There was once a time when this kind of thinking was not only accepted but normal. A few decades ago we didn't yet believe we needed to consider the future. We weren't yet wired to understand that if we spilled chemicals into a river, the surrounding environment might be harmed; all that mattered was getting rid of our garbage. We didn't yet understand that screaming at our kids might result in negative consequences-all that mattered was shutting them up. We didn't yet know that eating staples such as white bread and white rice could lead to long-range health complications; we just wanted to wolf down a quick meal.

Today, like it or not, we've been forced to become long-term thinkers because it's necessary for survival. We know that our actions have consequences over time. Today's small, thoughtless act could result in tomorrow's disaster.

Being unlikeable is like expelling toxic waste into your social life. Insulting someone is like releasing poisonous chemicals into the air. Screaming at someone is like forcing them to ingest harmful pollutants. Yes, unlikeable behavior can produce a specific, desired result in the short term-when you shriek at someone, you might get what you want out of sheer fear. But if I'm aware that what I do to you today will make a huge-and negative-difference in how you feel about me tomorrow, I am much less likely to throw a verbal jab to get you to do my bidding right this second.

Psychological warfare won't work in the long run. It is much less likely than likeable behavior to produce positive results because it creates antagonism, resentment, and discontent.

As noted earlier, one of the hallmarks of the likeable personality is the ability to register another person's values and opinions. The long-term thinker requires this skill to predict the future successfully. We've all become emotional meteorologists when it comes to our personal and professional lives, thinking and worrying about what the future will hold for us.

As a culture, we are learning that we don't need a surgeon general's report to prove that unlikeable behavior trades a short-term benefit for a long-term problem. Our society now asks "what if" and looks one, five, or twenty years ahead to imagine future effects.

Similarly, people have become aware of the severe long-term consequences of negative behavior on their lives and those of others. This makes the unlikeable person of the past exactly that-of the past. The future is in likeability.

2. Individualism is waning. The concept of teams is on the rise in fields from sales to family counseling. These days the phrase "There is no / in the word team" is uttered not just in locker rooms but by psychologists and counselors in offices to help families patch together broken lives and revive faltering relationships.

Synergy occurs when two or more people produce more value together than they could produce individually; achieving it has become a quest for individuals, companies, and entire nations.

In his bestselling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Dr. Stephen Covey uses nature to illustrate the potential of synergy versus individual effort. "Synergy is everywhere in nature," he writes. "If you plant two plants close together, the roots commingle and improve the quality of the soil so that both plants will grow better than if they were separated. If you put two pieces of wood together, they will hold much more than the total of the weight held by each separately. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. One plus one equals three or more."

To be synergistic requires that we become interdependent. Just a few people working together can create an organization with the power of hundreds. Here's an example: Not long ago some of my friends realized that each of them had been contributing money to fight AIDS. Instead of giving money individually, they decided to pool their resources and came up with an idea to auction off their professional services-one was an accountant, one a physical trainer, one a masseur, and so on. They managed to raise ten times the amount they would have given the charity if they had continued their separate efforts.

Interdependence isn't the same as dependence. Rather, it's a relationship in which, by relying on another, you become stronger. Interdependence is one of the goals of any great family, civic organization, or company.

It's hard to be interdependent and also be unlikeable. Certainly you can be independent and unlikeable, but you won't get as much done in this day and age. You may even be admired, but around you successful teams will thrive while you plod on, alone.

Simply put, unlikeable behavior produces a negative environment. In 199.0 group communications consultants James Wallace Bishop and Dow Scott published a research paper in Human Relations magazine about the impact of unlikeable people and teams. They found that if a worker's job stress "causes her to become irritable and cranky with her coworkers, they may begin to view her as a difficult person who is unlikeable and unpleasant. Conflict is a short step beyond this personal dislike. If unhealthy conflict goes unresolved for too long, team members are likely to quit or search for alternatives."

Harmony, then, is key to any successful team. In 2002, after many years of research, Investor's Business Daily offered team leaders ten pieces of advice. At the top of their list: Always be positive-and beware of a negative environment.

For eons, unlikeable people, playing as loners, have managed to survive and thrive. Because they never had to cooperate or collaborate, their negative attitude was harmful only to themselves. But in today's world, where technology has made it possible to form teams for any activity from sports to social organizations, teams tend to win while single players tend to lose. And as the rise of teams continues, unlikeable loners will have to join larger groups or face extinction. The good news is that this may help convert more of the unlikeable into the likeable.

3. Boundaries are dissolving. At one time we all maintained distinct boundaries between our personal and professional lives. Those boundaries let the monster of an attorney put on his coat at five o'clock, drive home, and be the loving father at the dinner table by seven.

Today at work we make personal plans on the Internet, while at home we log on to the computer to check our corporate e-mail. As the brick wall that once separated professional from personal crumbles, we are slowly becoming the same person 24/7. It's become much harder to pretend to be a good person at home when your neighbors can read about your reputation at work on the Internet.

According to the research company MetaFacts, more than .50 percent of the working population communicates with their family and friends from work via cell phones and e-mail or instant messaging. Of this same group, up to 7;» percent log onto their work computer from home or while traveling. As Sonia Livingston, professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, says, "The Internet blurs those key social boundaries that once organized our physical spaces-intermingling work and home, learning and play, producing and consuming."

According to author Howard Rheingold in his 2003 book Smart Mobs, our grandparents were actually part-timers. People who grew up in the early part of the twentieth century worked an average of twenty to twenty-four hours a week in true nine-to-live jobs, with an hour off for lunch and two coffee breaks a day. That's unheard of in the modern economy, where the average person labors an average of fifty-eight hours a week, counting work done in the car, at the home office, and anywhere else our portable electronics take us.