I recently read an article written by Daniel Goleman about “bonding and creating high performance” and I also started a conversation in our LinkedIn Courageous Leaders Group and it has resulted in a deeper exploration.
The article brilliantly explored a critical factor facing managers and leaders every day – their belief in the importance of both “being liked” by the members of their team; and “to like” each person in their team. As we undertake this exploration try differentiating liking you as a person from liking you as a team member or team leader. When we take it to a highly personal level then we can lose objectivity; and divert from our purpose and even build our relationships from inappropriate bases. We often find ourselves going to the opposite side of the spectrum when talking about the importance of “liking” – we go to the other end of exploring what happens when we either dislike others or are disliked by people in the team. And it can be this positioning that drives us to consider being liked as important!
I have regularly maintained you do not need to be best friends with the people you work with, and now is the time to explore that maybe you don’t even need to “like” them or have them like you.
Start by defining “like” – and you find the word replacements of – enjoy, similar, resembling, adore, fond of, appreciate and delight in. Look up “dislike” and you find the words of – aversion, hatred, repugnant, loathing and detest. No wonder we want to shift toward “like” and away from “dislike”.
However we humans have a habit of swinging from one end of the pendulum to the other without finding our core – so let’s explore what this core IS and I believe Goleman eloquently enunciates it in his article as:
1. Ensuring people feel they belong (and this can happen in a myriad of ways and has nothing to do with feeling liked….and everything to do with feeling valued and feeling significant)
2. Showing respect for each other as individuals – who may be very different from you and at times even though you may feel you don’t like them you can still respect them for what they bring to the team – sometimes you will endure conflict and find the interactions trying and difficult and therefore you wouldn’t use the word like and yet you would not go so far as to say dislike………there is the core that you want to find! Respect and appreciate you do not need to like – this is the limiting belief you need to surpass to find this core.
3. Supporting and trusting each other by being real and authentic and sharing how tough it is to engage with each other – and this is so much deeper than liking!
Through the exploration on our LinkedIn Group with some wonderful colleagues I feel like I have managed to shift my thinking into another space. The core is clear and I am shifting away from needing people to like me……..I have a strong core and a belief that I AM good enough.
