I find that the majority of people have to stop caring whether people like them. It is then that they suddenly become the most popular person in the office.

I may not have been likeable, but guess who got the house, car and vacation in Hawaii paid for by their former employer?

Likeability only extends as far as when it comes into conflict of getting things done right.

BTW, I read your articles with great interest even though I have been in job market for 25 years. Many of your articles have an X or a Y bent (Gen X, Gen Y that is), but they still are quite relevant to me because your topics focus more on skills for a new workplace than on skills for a particular type of person in that workplace. Thanks, Dan

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Hi, Jess. I can answer quick, specific questions via email. I also do coaching on the phone based on an hourly fee.

Penelope

Unfortunately, PT’s response is also on the mark. (”… in our reality social skills are highly valued. So if you want to succeed today, you need social skills.”) As testimony I know I have been let go because I was not social enough, (ie, socializing in the ofc, and/or drinking or partying after work), prefering to get things done and having accomplished more than those that remained.

I find incompetence in the workplace repulsive, regardless if the colleague is warm, friendly and empathetic. Apparently I wrongly assumed that we are paid to get a job done. This is no longer the case. Social ties are the “ties that bind”.

So how does CT’s comments fit in? Re-read the conditional clause. Our society no longer feels it is important to achieve higher stds of living. We have achieved Nirvana; unfortunately, we have been there and are now headed backwards. Today’s thirty-somethings have a lower std of living than their fathers. (See recent WSJ article). And this trend will continue until society changes its values.

It is very sad commentary that as a society we find it more important to have good social skills, than to be competent. This will only continue to diminish our std of living. We will complain about our failed policies, about the high cost of healthcare, gasoline, … and fail to see that it is of our own (un)doing. But we will enjoy it, because we are likable.

As I look back, it now makes sense. Our educational stds have plummented. HS is no longer a place for education, but rather for socialization (ie. learning how to socialize). Witness how poorly our HS students do in international comparisons. We require 12, and soon 14 yrs of education once pre-K is mandatory, to be at the bottom of the top 30 industialized countries; and they achieve this in 10 yrs. A few yrs back I saw a HS principal on a “news show” brag that imparting knowledge in the classroom was no longer important. He was proud however of the social skills that his students have learned in the student commons. If that’s all these students know (social skills), is it a surprise that this is what they value? People like people who think like themselves (see referenced HBR article).

My objective in life is to maximize the talents/abilities that have been bestowed upon me in order to make a better place for my kids and grandkids. (That must sound really trite to those 30-somethings.) And that takes effort, which is seen as unsocial. However this drive to achieve, learned in school, is what yields accomplishments, increased productivity and in turn a higher std of living. (ECON 101 … Oops I forgot. Nobody studies this anymore; it’s too difficult and offers no redeeming social skills.)

We will continue to see our std of living erode, and more quickly as the dollar continues its slide, until society changes its values. At least we can take comfort in the fact that we will be likable, as we huddle in the dark under the no longer used freeway overpass. (Guilty as charged of sarcasm.)