This week I want to talk about the concept of likeability.

In my work, coaching women, it is a common theme that one of the hardest parts of being brave and showing up as your truest self with your work and ideas is the risk of not being liked.

It feels so viscerally terrifying to contemplate that someone might not like us.

I imagine even right now, just as you listen, you can recall a recent feeling that related to the fear of not being liked.

Partly this is to do with our human hard-wired need for connection, and with that comes the desire to relate:

– so we see likability as a gateway to connection, but further than that research from the University of Montreal has shown that women in particular are more highly tuned into the emotional feedback of other people

– so in social or work situations we pick up more and more quickly, the cues - both verbal and non verbal – of how other people feel about us or about any given situation. We are always reading the room so when it comes to sharing anything important to us, we are of course more acutely aware of what other peoples body language means or how people respond to us when we speak up or share.

There are so many complex reasons as to why this is so.

There is epigenetics (which is inherited experiences from previous generations) where evolutionary psychologists have suggested that females, because of their generationally ascribed roles as primary caretakers, are wired to quickly and accurately detect any kind of emotional distress in infants – which we have fine tuned and been able to use in any other kind of relationships.

And then there are multitudes of societal or cultural reasons as to why we are more aware of how other people respond to us.

Obviously, women have spent more time in society out of the picture, quiet and small than we have in this brave new world of women’s voices being more at the fore.

So, it’s inevitable that we will still find it tricky and a bit awkward taking courageous steps to talk about what we do, share our offerings and put ourselves out there.

For centuries women have had to operate in an orbit around male visibility, masculine priorities and male-centred power. And for centuries, the safest, most significant way that women could have any kind of say or input or security, was to make sure they were likable.

Likeability has been our currency.

The thing that we have had to use, that our mothers and grandmothers had to use in order to be safe, provided for, understood. Likeability has been the things that women have, historically, had to leverage to have a say, to get into new spaces, to move around in the world or in the workplace.

So it’s very normal and inevitable that letting go of the attachment to likeability will feel scary.

To risk of not being liked, historically, has had big consequences for women’s economic, physical, emotional survival. When we had no access to earn our own money and needed the provision of men to ensure we survived, we stayed in our lane, we did what we needed to, we made people happy and kept the status quo.

But this is not the case any more for women and we can remind our brains of the many ways that society has evolved in our favour when we see the protection of likeability showing up. In case you want some examples of this, here’s a few ways that I can see the fixation on likeability killing our courage:

1. Softening our communication to try to ensure we don’t get labelled—as women so often do—as bitchy, aggressive, or abrasive. Caveating ourselves with actuallys, or justs, or statements like “I’m not an expert but…” or finishing our sentences with “does that make sense?” as a way to soften how we say things and  to make sure we seem humble, nice and likable instead of just saying what we need to say and sharing what we need to share with assertiveness or authority.

2. Asking for everyone and their granny’s opinion on what we are doing. Instead of taking action on the things that we really want to do, often women tend to consult all areas (including putting up all the polls on IG – usually as a way to buffer ownership (because we’ve been conditioned to believe that ownership can come across as threatening or arrogant) and so by getting other peoples opinions, we are making sure that other people are willing to affirm or permit us.

3. Another example might be fixating on metrics – surmising that numbers are a good indicator and that if we increase the metrics, it will mean we are more likeable. It’s a sneaky little way that we fixate on likability by attaching numbers and figure to something that could never be quantified. So then if the metrics don’t come in, we are more quickly willing to scrap our ideas and convictions which is a bad idea!

4. Being an eternal editor is also a way that our fear of not being likeable can show up. Because what happens when we are forever and ever editing and perfecting things? What happens when we spend all our time agonising over our ideas? We never actually let them see the light of day! They stay in draft forever – and what’s more protective for our likeability than hiding what we have to say or do or be?!

5. Contorting and blending – no these are not new makeup techniques – I am not qualified in that dept and that is not the podcast for that, but contorting and blending is what happens when we prioritise being liked over being loyal. When we prioritise other people’s values and opinions and ideas over our own values and opinions and ideas. When we stay silent about things that matter to us, we blend in or contort to protect ourselves from the risk of rejection. 

The reality is, for any women putting themselves out there in any way or doing something that takes some bravery we are activating a magnet – and that magnet both attracts and repels. That’s it’s job.

And we can’t rig it so that the magnet only ever attracts – that’s impossible, but we can equip ourselves with compassion and loyalty to ourselves to show up honestly, authentically and trust that the people who really understand and connect with us as we are are there because we have been ourselves, not a version of ourselves that is hoping to be liked by everyone.

Once we understand that it’s not our job to get everyone to like us, it feels like freedom. Then we get to be ourselves. Once we can begin to shed expectations, people pleasing, metric fixations and endless opinion gathering we can recognise that likability is actually quite a heavy load to carry.

I hope you found it helpful to explore why and how this idea of being likable shows up for us and helps you recognise where it might be killing your courage.