Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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April 21, 2009

Hidden Assumptions and Business Likeability

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 9:08 am

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Twitter Conversations and Reality

One strength of Twitter is the speed, reach, and ease of connection that is social business. In a few tweets and direct messages, we can gather a team and make a project happen.

The Likeability Factor as Tim Sanders defined it — friendliness, relevance, empathy, and authenticity — is a critical component to online social business. We make business relationships and referrals from our “friends” list on Twitter.

Social business connections happen so quickly and easily. It’s not hard to develop a false sense of a person’s abilities. Extended online business conversations that explore theory, philosophy, and expertise can overshadow the reality that we’ve never actually seen or worked with a person.

Hidden Assumptions and Business Likeability

As a young manager making my first hire in the offline world, I was swayed by whether I liked the candidates sitting across from me.

But when folks can’t or don’t do the job, they become problematic no matter how likeable they are in a more social context.

Tim Sanders suggested likeability was necessary, not a replacement for, traditional skills sets. It’s easy to get caught in hidden assumptions about these equally important business “abilities.”

BUSINESS LIKEABILITY - competent, trustworthy, and a pleasure to work with.

No time before has any culture had the power to build deep, strategic networks so efficiently. The connections have incredible potential to keep our businesses growing with minimal overhead and maximum accomplishment. No time before has business been so global and fluid. We’re learning to navigate a new reality.

We have to keep remembering to ask questions.

Do online conversations to lead to hidden assumptions more often than the offline equivalent?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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3 Comments to “Hidden Assumptions and Business Likeability”

  1. April 21st, 2009 at 1:47 pm
    Donnell King said

    J.C. McCroskey years ago identified three subfactors in credibility, and has since, through numerous studies, refined how he would define them: competence (qualification, expertness, intelligence, authoritativeness), trustworthiness (character, sagacity, safety, honesty) and goodwill/intent. He discussed these in an academic paper available from http://www.jamesmccroskey.com/publications/180.pdf, a paper that focuses on the third dimension (goodwill), which explains why it did not yet have the parenthetical refinements of the other two.

    To cut to the chase, it seems that McCroskey and Teven would include likeability as a subset of goodwill/intent, making it completely independent of competence. That’s an interesting insight in light of your experience and observations here. Chances are that the “contact” elements involved in tweets and such lend themselves more toward an assumption of goodwill than does, say, a brochure, which is perhaps better at establishing a perception of competence.

  2. April 21st, 2009 at 1:51 pm
    King’s Corner » Blog Archive » Likeability and competence are related, but not the same said

    [...] Liz Strauss has some good insights into the relationship of these two elements of credibility, as well as some good observations about the possible effect that social networking media have on perceptions we develop of people through those media. Check out her article “Hidden Assumptions and Business Likeability.” [...]

  3. April 21st, 2009 at 2:30 pm
    Steve Olson said

    Some of the people I’ve met in business (especially in IT) have little social skill but are still technically brilliant. Having both is highly valuable but scarce. Some of these same people with poor social skills are quite social online, so meeting them in person can really surprise you.

    Most of us have had to work with people who aren’t likable but are credible and competent. And we find ways to work with them. Some likability issues are related to social skills others are related to core values which differ for each of us.

    The biggest danger I’ve seen in hiring is hiring too many people just like you.

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