A friend of mine who works at a major financial firm once asked me to be a speaker for the firm’s women’s group. After several calls and lots of enthusiasm, the incoming group president said “Likability? I don’t think so. We’re not doing it.” To her the word Likability was too soft, and the engagement was cancelled. Ever since I have been very aware of the fact that people don’t see the value in likability. Yet likability for a person, a company, a product, a brand all lead directly to profitable results.

As a kid I remember thinking McDonalds and Coke were nice advertisers and Burger King and Pepsi were mean ones. Not surprisingly that association impacts my buying decisions to this day.  Do you have those associations?  Ever have a bad customer service experience? Would you go back to that option if you had an alternative?

The value of likability has been overlooked in so many ways in business that it is starting to cause companies to loose valuable employees, clients, and referrals.  A Gallup poll of more 1 million employed U.S. workers concluded that the No. 1 reason people quit their jobs is a bad boss or immediate supervisor. We have all heard the saying, “People leave managers not companies” (click to tweet) and that fact hits companies on the bottom line. Gallup puts the cost of disengagement at $440 billion dollars.

The Well Being at Work Report has revealed that the most important factors for improving productivity are effective workplace relationships. If we think about what makes a difference in our professional careers, it is about having people be your champion, be willing to follow you, work with you and work hard for you. People don’t work for organizations, they work for a person and you want to be the person that people want to work for, work with, the one everyone wants on their project, client, board and committee.

I know Likability matters so I built a program to help develop The Relationship Driven Leader (and manager, and employee, and entrepreneur…). Do you want to increase your impact, take your career to the next level, or drive results with and through a team of people? If so, then check out the program based on The 11 Laws of Likability: The Relationship Driven Leader: Because People Do Business with People They Like (and hire, and promote and recommend, and…)