The Likeability Trap How to Break Free and Succeed as You Are

It's difficult to achieve across the board because likeability is so wildly subjective, but it's particularly challenging for women.

If you're a woman who strives to lead, you are told one of two things. You're either told you're too much, too assertive, too aggressive, you need to tone it down, or you're told you're not enough.

So women are told they can either be likable or they can be a leader, but there's almost no way for them to be both.

For women candidates, they have to clear both hurdles. Voters have to like them and they have to believe that they're competent.

When women do that, it violates this expectation we have of women that they are communal, that they'll act communally.

In her book, The Likeability Trap, and in this conversation, she discusses this issue and explains how and why both men and women should combat it.

She calls it the Goldilocks Conundrum, where either you're too cold or you're too hot and it's never just right.

I originally imagined the like ability trap to be one of these like eat prey love books where I would go on some incredible life journey and come back not caring about whether or not other people liked me which was sounds way more fun than the book that I actually wrote

The trap two is that you're both being told if you're a woman in the workplace that you need to do this whole dial it up or dial it down thing but then we're also being told that one of the keys to leadership and one of the keys to being likeable is being your authentic self.

The book is called The Likeability Trap and I it's a thing that I would love to be in conversation around so if you do pick it up and you do read it let me know which questions I can answer for you.

She has written a new book called The Likeability Trap which was just published yesterday and it's all about, and I'm going to quote her exactly here, it's all about this dynamic in the workplace where, and I'm quoting women are constantly doing this dance of being told they're too much or not enough and they need to modulate.

I originally imagined the likeability trap to be one of these like eat, pray love books where I would go on some incredible life journey and come back not caring about whether or not other people liked me which was sounds way more fun than the book that I actually wrote...

It means that I couldn't find a good enough synonym for trap because I tried, it was almost The Likeability Paradox, The Likeability, we went through a thousand rounds.