Boost your friendliness and likeability factor

In the age of the Internet, establishing quality relationship and meet new friends became both easier and a bit complicated. Although most of us can connect to each other with tools like Plurk, but doesn't mean that you already earned one's friendship.

In the field I'm in, establishing quality relationship and friendship is important. That is why I enjoyed Tim Sanders' earlier book, "Love is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends". I learned one must strive to be a great source of information and share them as the opportunity or need arises to a pool of contacts that are important to you.

Another book that Tim authored is "The Likeability Factor: How to Boost your L-Factor & Achieve Your Life's Dreams." This is where I realized that friendliness is a communication event. It is not you who will say that you are friendly, but the people around you instead.

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Mind map created using MindMeister.

Becoming friendly and increase your likeability factor requires working on the following four areas:

1. Friendliness.
   Overcome traits that makes you unfriendly. If these traits, the good and bad ones, are unknown, ask a friend and those close to you for feedback. Work on them.
   
   
2. Be relevant.
   Once a connection is establish, your friendship will only matter if one can establish a sense of relevance in other people's interest, wants, and needs. The strength of connection depends if you meet a high-interest or trivial need.
   
   
3. Empathy.
   Are you able to see, feel, or experience concerns to another person's point of view? According to Tim, turn-off style are those who keep referencing to themselves or their experience as it shows lack of genuine interest.
   
   
4. Realness.
   Tim said that time flies when you spend it with a real person. That sensing a person's realness is not based on what others say but more on the trust that you feel inside and out for the other. What kills this element are factors like lying, hypocrisy, and insincerity.
   

Of course, the above four aspects are mentioned in a brief manner here. Tim's book contains step-by-step guide on how each one can be worked on. Tim believes that likeable people have the capability to:

• Bring out the best in others.
• Get recognized.
• Outperform.
• Overcome life's challenges.
• Enjoy better health.
• Be a top choice (win life's popularity contests: job, relationship, friendship).
  

Two thumbs-up for another simple and yet great Tim Sanders book.