The title of Alicia Menendez’s new book caught my eye. It’s called The Likeability Trap: How to Break Free and Succeed as You Are...

This is something I have thought about a lot in the last few years, as I take on more responsibility at work and delve more deeply into the kind of manager and colleague I want to be. She opens the book by saying: "I have to admit something to you, something I hate to admit: it is very important to me that you like me.” This resonates more deeply than I want it to. 

I have a conflicted relationship with my own likability. It’s been raised in performance reviews  my entire career… observations like “you’ve built relationships so quickly” and “you’re energy is good for the team” and “everyone really likes working with you”.  And I know it shouldn’t feel good, but oh how those words warm my heart. But what I’ve come to realise is that in addition to feeling good, this kind of praise distracts from more meaningful feedback. In fact, it’s blinding. 

Recently, I had a performance review where I had laid out, far more directly than I would have earlier in my career, where I wanted to take the role. This was all in written feedback before the face-to-face meeting. And I was excited. I’d really articulated what I wanted and where I felt I need to be mentored and work on upskilling. I wanted personal growth. I wanted to stretch. I didn’t want to keep doing the same things, really well. I wanted to feel out of my depth. And yet, with one glowing piece of praise from my manager, I was thrown. 

Menendez says the problem with likeability is that it’s a moving target — an invisible scorecard that we internalise but that the people around us fill out for us. And the stakes of that scorecard are even higher in the workplace. Because "any time you, as a woman, advocate for yourself in the workplace, you are asking yourself, 'Is the thing that I am potentially getting worth the potential trade-off in likeability?' " says Menendez. "Because likeability isn't just who sits next to you at lunch. It's also about who is seen as a person who is on a path to success. And so those trade-offs are very real.”

I think I didn’t really confront the value I placed on this score-card until I began managing people. And I didn’t have the stomach for the kind of direct feedback necessary to align my team and raise the bar of the work we were producing. I said to my husband, “I’m showing them. I’m role-modelling the kind of work practices we should have. It’s not working.” He’s had many more years of experience managing teams, and I could see that while he couldn’t relate, he was trying to be supportive. “That’s not managing,” he said. “Setting a good example does not get it done.” I knew the was right, but I had no idea how to undo a lifetime of conditioning.  

In this podcast on NPR, Menendez makes the point that this trap is particularly pronounced for women and girls, because across cultures we are socialised to think of ourselves in relation to others. “Now, I think there is a piece of that that is a superpower, which is [that] we are attuned to what other people want and need,” she says. And I do agree with this - it’s both a blessing and a curse to be able to take the temperature of a room as soon as you enter it… to notice that a colleague doesn’t seem to be coping as well with the slightest shifts in their demeanour… and to innately understand how to connect with all the different people you meet, in a way that isn’t threatening or intimidating. However, this is draining too. 

According to Menendez, it crosses over into being a challenge or a burden when we are governed by what other people want or need, when we don't feel that we can be our full, authentic selves or when we don’t feel we can show up in our entirety or complexity because we are trying to be amiable to other people. That’s exactly the wall I came up against with my team. I had to get past the value I placed on being liked… to get the work done.

There is something Menedez refers to her in her book as the Goldilocks conundrum, which she says is one of the biggest issues women run into at work. Too warm. Too cold. Never just right. “As a woman, you will either get feedback that you are too warm: "Everyone likes you — just people don't think you have what it takes." And very often no one can tell you exactly what that is, but what they're most often talking about is a perception of strength. And then a woman who is what we would perceive as strong, who asserts herself, who lobbies for things, will often be told that while she has what it takes to lead, she needs to tone it down lest she ruffle too many feathers.”

And in a particularly cruel twist, many women will find they are given both sets of feedback, depending on the context and the project. “This just really underlines how context[ual], specific and subjective all of this feedback is,” says Menedez. 

Her book also talks about what we can do to address the trap. My advice: buy the book. But in the interest of those struggling, like me, to find a way out of this issue in their own jobs, here are just some of the tips. One thing to do push for more subjective, concrete feedback. She says: “One of my favourite pieces of advice was from executive coach Caterina Kostoula. And when one of her clients gets critical, subjective feedback, like, "Andee, you're just too loud," you ask, "Compared to whom? Can you point someone else out in the office to me that you would give that same piece of feedback to or someone who you think that I should be modelling?" And what that does is it creates this pause for the person who is giving the feedback to consider whether or not they are being guided by some sense of bias or some sense of subjectivity.”

Another great piece of advice, which I think increasingly is one of the most important parts of a job for me: find your people, says Menendez. “Find people who get you, who see you, who understand the inherent value of the skills that you bring, and who are able, when you do get this type of feedback, that you can go to and say, "Hey, does this sound like me?””

Finally, know when it’s time to leave. “I think you need to know when the place that you work doesn't align with your values and doesn't see the potential that you bring in. I think there are a lot of us who believe that if we just work hard enough, then we can make it fit. And sometimes that fit isn't there.” These words are so powerful. I know so many women who put their head down and continue to show up, and wait to be noticed. I think I’m done with that. I think we all need to be done with that.