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

Tim Sanders (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 5, 2005

Are you wondering how you can improve your relationships with your friends and family?

Are you curious how to get or keep the job of your dreams?

Do you want to become a more popular person?

This book will show you how to do all that by raising your likeability factor—or how much other people like you.

After all, life is a series of popularity contests. The choices other people make about you determine your health, wealth, and happiness. And decades of research prove that people choose who they like. They vote for them, they buy from them, they marry them, and they spend precious time with them.

The good news is that you can arm yourself for the contest and win life’s battles for preference. How? By being likeable.

The more you are liked—or the higher your likeability factor—the happier your life will be. This book will show you how to raise that likeability factor by teaching you how to boost four critical elements of your personality:

•Friendliness: your ability to communicate liking and openness to others

•Relevance: your capacity to connect with others’ interests, wants, and needs

•Empathy: your ability to recognize, acknowledge, and experience other people’s feelings

•Realness: the integrity that stands behind your likeability and guarantees its authenticity

What happens when you improve in these areas and boost your likeability factor?

•You bring out the best in others

•You survive life’s challenges

•You have better health—and even improve others’ health, too

•You outperform in your daily roles

•You win the popularity contests that define your life

Join me for a few hours and I’ll share the results of hundreds of thousands of pages of research, numerous seminars, and hundreds of interviews with people just like you! Together let’s build our likeability factor and improve our lives!

Also available as a Random House AudioBook

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.

Review

“Conventional wisdom insists that it’s more important to be respected than liked. In this book Tim Sanders challenges that notion and reveals the awesome power of likeability. He shows us that if we want to garner support from our associates, earn the loyalty of our employees, lead our followers to a better future, be healthy, and finally achieve our life’s dreams, we must first be liked. In this important and necessary book, Sanders tells us why our likeability is the foundation of our success, and shows us how we can increase our own.” —Marcus Buckingham, author of First, Break All the Rules and The One Thing You Need to Know. . .

“I think Tim Sanders hits the nail right on the head. If you just make them love you, they’ll be happy to love you. And I learned early in life that if you want people to love you you gotta make sure you love them back.” —George Foreman

“Tim Sanders provides an insightful look at how developing likeability can allow you to influence others and be more successful. The Likeability Factor should be a part of everyone’s success library. It is a fast-paced, readable book. Grab a copy to use on your success journey!” —Peter Handal, CEO, Dale Carnegie & Associates Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Crown; First Edition edition (April 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400080495
• ISBN-13: 978-1400080496
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #804,561 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tim Sanders is a bestselling author, consultant to Fortune 1000 companies, and an international keynote speaker. Tim has authored 4 books, his first of which was the New York Times and international bestseller Love Is the Killer App.

Tim's newest book, the "prequel" to Love is the Killer App, is called Today We Are Rich: Harnessing the Power of Total Confidence. Tim updates Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie and Dr. Norman Vincent Peale to tackle a new world, where social media and transparency present unique challenges to our sense of confidence, sanity and faith, and shows how to unleash winning behaviors to achieve total confidence.

Tim is also the author of The Likeability Factor and Saving the World at Work, which was rated one of the Top 30 Business Books of 2008 by Soundview Executive.

In his work, Tim uses his knowledge and experience in business, people, sales and marketing to help people and businesses thrive in any economy. He's held the position of Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo! and is now the CEO of Deeper Media, an online advice-content company. Tim has appeared on numerous television programs, including The Today Show, and has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Family Circle, Reader's Digest, Fast Company, and Business Week.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 42 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

Format: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:

33 of 33 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

Format: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

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars This book was NOT likeable at all! January 5, 2009

By Sidra

Format:Paperback

This book is divided into two parts; the first half is about why the 'L factor' (likability) is important and the second half is about raising your L factor.

The introduction starts off with this radio dude, 'Mikey', who is really miserable about his life, everybody hates him, and he's about to lose his job. Enter the author. He tells Mikey about how likability is important and how he should be less negative. After following the author's advice, his life becomes a halcyon wonderland. OK, kind of a cliche story, but I kept reading anyway.

It got worse--the author has a very boring style of writing. This is the format of the book: x study shows likability helps with y trait/ anecdote about sad person who lacked y trait/ sad person learns about the L-factor and then gains y trait/sad person is now happy person.

It's hard to avoid this format when giving citations, but I felt like I was reading a English 101 paper where one gives a citation and then expands on it, over and over again. After the first 100 pages, every reader should get the point that being likable will improve your health, marriage, job, kids, oreo addiction, etc. People are reading this book to find out HOW to be more likable; the WHY of it is secondary, and should have been a much smaller section of the book.

FINALLY, we get to the second part of the book, which is supposed to be about becoming more likable. But this part is bogged down in so many anecdotes and citations that it is hard to filter through to find meaningful information. The key things which are noted in the last part are that to be more likable, one should be friendly, relevant, empathetic and real. But these points were written in such a convoluted fashion that it was a strain to even enjoy reading it.

Likability and attraction are both truly fascinating topics, but the poor presentation of the subject in this book makes this an extremely boring read. Best to read the summary on the back of the book, and find an alternative book.