All things being equal, people do business with and refer business to people they know, like, and trust. True as gravity. Always has been and always will be. We know this intuitively and yet so few people take the time to increase their “Like-Ability Factor.” I think that people would invest the time to increase their Like-Ability Factor if they knew the returns that it would provide them.
Our likeability isn’t about insincerity or manipulation. At least not the way that most people think about manipulation. Actually, if you look up manipulation in the dictionary, it means “to handle skillfully.” I’m guessing that most people would love to be handled skillfully instead of treated poorly. It’s a no-brainer.
We are programmed to think that the more degrees we have and the higher up the ladder we climb the better off we are. I don’t know that that’s accurate. Our likeability probably has more to do with our success than how many letters come after our name. We all know people who are bright off the charts but if we see them coming down the hall, we’ll duck into the bathroom or an alley. This speaks volumes about those folks.
Learning how to increase our “Like-Ability” is a life-long endeavor. But the good news is that there isn’t a lot of heavy lifting. We just need to open our eyes to reality. The reality is that we tend to do business with, be interested in and want to spend time with people we like. The fish doesn’t know that it’s wet. We tend not to think about things like likeability. It may serve us well to observe the obvious. There’s a reason why the obvious is obvious. The challenge is that we take things for granted and tend not to notice the things that are right in front of us.
Your “Like-Ability” or your ability to like people and be liked in return has an effect on every area of your life. This is a two-way street. People tend to like us when we like them. Isn’t it funny that we have to point this out? It’s so obvious to children and yet as we get older we forget this. Remember that people can appear to be very complicated, but in reality we’re all pretty similar. We all want be appreciated, respected, approved of and noticed. Increasing your “Like-Ability Factor” will be one of the best investments of your life.