The Likeability Factor: How to Boost Your L-Factor and Achieve Your Life's Dreams [Paperback]

Tim Sanders (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sanders's message in this follow-up to his bestselling Love Is the Killer App isn't exactly a revelation: people who are well liked are more apt to get what they want out of life than those who are disliked. However, Sanders does offer a valuable look at the four personality traits he says contribute to a person's likability—namely, friendliness, relevance (do you connect on interests or needs?), empathy and "realness" (genuineness or authenticity). Sanders, a Yahoo! leadership coach, is able to deconstruct complex subjects such as personality traits, and the book's value is in guiding readers toward understanding that likability isn't an accident of birth but a skill that can be learned (exercises are included). No doubt every reader knows someone they'd like to give this book to, and perhaps people who suspect their own L-factor is low will find their way to it, too.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“Mr. Sanders is on to something here.” —New York Times

“This book will enrich your life, and more important, the lives of those you touch.” —Anthony Robbins, author of Awaken the Giant Within and Unlimited Power

“An intriguing book that will teach you about the four building blocks of likeability.” —Dallas Morning News

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press (April 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400080509
• ISBN-13: 978-1400080502
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #60,497 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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  Books > Business & Investing > Organizational Behavior > Workplace

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars People like to do business with people they like, March 17, 2007

By	Ted Demopoulos (Durham, NH United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Likeability Factor: How to Boost Your L-Factor and Achieve Your Life's Dreams (Paperback)

Tim's first book, Love is The Killer App, is one of the most influential books I've read in the past few years. The Likeability Factor is another winner from Tim Sanders.

The big idea of this book is that being likeable is extremely important because:

"The choices you make don't shape your life as much as the choices other people make about you."

People make choices using the following three steps:
1) Listen - people can chose to listen to you
2) Believe - people can chose to believe you
3) Value - people can chose to value what you offer

Likeability affects all three.

There are four elements of likeability:

1) Friendliness. Friendliness is the threshold of likeability
2) Relevance, how you connect with another person's wants or needs
3) Empathy (not sympathy)
4) Realness or authenticity. Lack of realness, like lying, hypocrisy, or insincerity can suck your L-factor down.

The second half of the book covers raising your L-factor. While I will probably not get a leather "L-factor Journal" and carry it with me at all times, or repeat my "friendliness mantras" every morning, I found this part of the book the most fascinating. The exercises to raise your L-factor are not simple, and require quite a bit of introspection. I'm not remotely a soft skills touchy feely guy, but I really enjoyed the last part of this book.

If this book has a downside, it's that I was already sold on likeability being important. Tim cites many examples and research in the beginning of the book, and it was like preaching to the choir for me.

I like it, I'm glad I read it, and I recommend it. I will doubtlessly re-read parts again, and may even do many of the touchy-feely exercises!
You can check it put in more detail at Amazon:

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars On a scale of 1-10, Tim's book is an 11, June 28, 2005

By	John Schuler "John C Schuler" (Tualatin, Oregon USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Likeability Factor: How to Boost Your L-Factor and Achieve Your Life's Dreams (Hardcover)

On a scale of 1-10, Tim's book is an 11. Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" gave us the macro message: "Be Likable". Tim Sanders explains the micro details of how to actually "BE" likeable.

As a business consultant, I'd rate myself these days as a 6 moving toward 7. Ronald Reagan was probably a 10 or 11; Merv Griffin is right up there, too.

As a young man raised in a toxic environment, I was probably a 4 on the likeability scale. For many years, beginning with "How to Win Friends ...", I read everything from Freud and Jung to Games People Play and Transactional Analysis. As a loner, I took engineering courses and was "respected", but not socially successful.

After much "psychological bootstrapping", I got my first sales job at the relatively late age of 33, selling expensive, complex electronic test systems. Looking back on those times where I lost a job, alienated a co-worker or upset my wife, I realize now that I sorely needed a book like Tim's.

"The Likeability Factor" is more than just a book; it is like a Scouting Manual - a handbook for those of us who want to tie more social knots with people far and near, and enjoy the improvement in our lives that its tools make possible. It shows us, step-by-step, exactly how to leave behind the isolative and counter productive emotions of Anger and Apathy and move toward a life of filled with Empathy and Enjoyment.

On page: 42, Tim sums the problem of being "unliked": "Being unlikable is like expelling toxic waste into your social life". Then, in Chapter 6, he begins our education in "Likeability".

In a perfect world, this handbook would be spiral-bound and handed out as required reading in every school and company. Or perhaps it should be kept in secret vaults and cost $50 on the black market - so that young people would move heaven and earth to get a copy, then read and discuss it into the wee hours in coffee houses and dorm rooms. (;-)

John Schuler
Portland, Oregon
June 28, 2005

28 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What about the subconscious factors?, February 4, 2006

By	Timothy M. Arends (Indiana) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Likeability Factor: How to Boost Your L-Factor and Achieve Your Life's Dreams (Hardcover)

The author is absolutely correct. Likability is an essential trait to success.

I think most of us would say that good friends are a valuable and cherished part of life. Doesn't our likability determine our ability to make friends? Likeability also determines our marriageability--somebody has to like you for them to have a chance to fall in love with you, and they must fall in love with you, I should think, to want to marry you.

On-the-job, likability is also essential. How well we are liked by our coworkers determines how much we enjoy being around each other, and for people we are around for eight hours a day, this is important. Being liked by our boss or supervisor is as important as how well we can do our job. If somebody likes us, they'll tend to overlook the small day-to-day mistakes we make. If they don't like us, we can hit everything right on target and it just won't matter. I have seen employees try to get a new co-worker fired simply because they did not like him or her. I think the author has done a valuable public service in documenting the studies that underscore the importance of being liked.

What is likability, though? That is a hard question to answer. Various authors have attempted to do so down through the years from Dale Carnegie onward. Neural Linguistic Programming (NLP) called likability "rapport" but horribly oversimplified the process of becoming liked by claiming that simply mimicking or "mirroring" another person's gestures would induce it.

Then there is the old poem that goes:

"I do not like thee, Doctor Fell
the reason why I cannot tell,
but this I know and know full well
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell."

This poem, while humorous, is also startlingly insightful. People often do not know why they like or dislike somebody. Defining why somebody is liked or disliked is incredibly difficult. I have seen people become disliked in as little as five minutes and after a brief conversation.

Of course there is the obvious: insulting people is not likely to make one well liked. Various tips for being well-liked are good listening, smiling, being pleasant, showing interest in what the other person has to say, and being friendly. Ah, but that last point is the rub! How do you define "friendly?" Being a good raconteur is of course, useful in becoming well-liked. But are good raconteurs born or are they made?

Another impediment to being liked is shyness. People who are shy are often misinterpreted as being unfriendly, but there is more to it than that. There are a great many mannerisms that often accompany shyness that can serve as an impediment to being liked. Unfortunately, some of these mannerisms are unconscious; the person exhibiting them may not even be aware of them. For example, eye contact is an important factor in being well-liked. The shy person may not make good eye contact and may not even realize it. Nervous fidgeting, tension in one's jaws, and various vocal traits are all mannerisms that can make other people feel uncomfortable. Just as an angry demeanor will often raise other people's blood pressure, an uncomfortable manner can make other people feel uncomfortable around you.

Unfortunately, these unconscious traits are not explored by the author. True, it would be hard to find studies that measure something as elusive as eye contact and its relationship to being well liked, but such subconscious mannerisms are certainly an important factor. Perhaps it will be up to another author at some future date to adequately explore these subconscious factors.