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One of the questions that clients often ask us at SPETIV Consulting is: “How do I get my manager to like me?” Or “How do I get along with people, especially in professional settings?”
When you hear this question, you might be tempted to think that people who ask them want to know how to please others. But that is not the point. Instead, such people understand the simple concept that your happiness and your success largely depend on how you get along with people. It is consequently important to ensure that you have the right social skills that will help you to thrive and grow in any area.
We must hasten to state that a lot of this knowledge and wisdom is borrowed from Trophy Kiprono who read from authors like Dale Carnegie, Mark Reklau and other psychologists and philosophers and summarized the following three ways to get people to like you, or to get along with people in a professional setting.
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- Accept people. There is nothing as hard as accepting people who are different from you. In a workplace, there are people of different temperaments, different personalities. Some people are so close-minded. Some are self-centered. Others can be so rude, callous and difficult to understand. You will waste your time wracking your brain, trying to understand why people are the way they are. If you try to change them, they are going to resent you. The most important thing is to figure out a way to accept people as they are. Do not try to change people. Just accept them the way they are.
Think of them as planets. We do not understand how planets revolve around the sun, but we just accept that it is what it is. Force yourself to find the good traits in them because no one is completely bad. There are some traits in them that if you focus on, you’d realise that they are not so bad after all. What you focus on expands, so focus on their good traits. Therefore, just accept people the way they are, and they would like you.
- Agree with people. This can be controversial to you as you may ask yourself why you should agree with someone if they are wrong. It goes back to human nature. Agree with people. There is consensus in the literature amongst psychologists and philosophers that people naturally like people who agree with them. If you think about it, you also like people who agree with you. For example, if someone says, “I agree with this person,” refereeing to you, you will automatically like them. The same thing applies to other people. Agree with them. Do not argue. There is nothing to gain from arguing. As a matter of fact, there are two losers in the argument: the person you are arguing with and yourself because you have not gotten the agreement you want. Before you argue, ask yourself: “Do I want to be right, or do I want peace?” Always choose peace.
- Listen more and speak less: Largely, communication is not about words. Words account for approximately 30%. The rest is body language. When people talk to you, listen to understand, not to reply. Put your whole concentration there. Don’t be figuring out a response in your head. Don’t be there but mentally absent because your body language will reflect it. When you show someone that you truly pay attention to what they are saying, they will like you.
The importance of being liked cannot be overstated. Our ego might want to downplay this fact, but it is what it is. When people like you, they will do business with you. When people like you, they want you in their circles and that is social intelligence, which is a very powerful currency nowadays. Look around you. You would realise that managers hardly appoint people for their competence. They appoint people who agree with them, who listen to them, and who accept them for who they are. Competence comes in 10th place, even though they mention it first.
