Be More Unlikeable

> Personally, I've long idolized Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. But most of our heroes got to where they are by being unlikeable, not likable.

I fundamentally disagree with that view of being an asshole as an important part of success, but I also feel it has been rehashed an incredible amount of times already.

A slightly different take on this is the "don't rock the boat" mentality. This is usually a counter productive advice for anyone in a creative field, and pushing against settled ideas, trying things that people are not comfortable exploring is a valuable trait.

It can mean confrontation, refutal from a majority of people, and pushing these ideas requires a strong character. But I think there is a fine line between being firm and strong on ones opinion and being a jerk.

It's hard to think of a situation where being unlikable is an advantage, today. Even in situations pg likes to point out – for example, if you think for yourself, you often upset others – you can do that privately rather than publicly, and still get the same advantage.

EDIT: there is one situation where you must be “unlikable” in a certain sense: if you think a company should do x, and someone else with equal authority thinks it should do y, and the decision is important. But even then, it’s probably easier to convince them with social aikido (or to let yourself be convinced), not assert dominance.

I agree with the general message (don't unquestioningly accept the status quo just because you want to be liked). I disagree with the idea that being a pioneer in your field will necessarily make you disliked. If anything, the society of 2020 reveres people who go against the status quo in a push to innovate, even if they fail.

The trap is when people confuse being a jerk with being successful. Or when they assume that being creative or successful is a license to be a jerk. Neither are true. People like Steve Jobs are the exception, not the rule. If you want to accomplish anything in a modern organization, you need to make an effort to be at least somewhat friendly. This doesn't mean you should become a pushover, a yes-person, or otherwise flatter people around it. It does mean that you need to listen, demonstrate mutual respect for others, and behave in a professional manner.

The central point: "praise by the masses won't make you successful" and within the same breath, "Movie stars, professional athletes, and a business visionaries–we all want to be them." Perhaps they're more likeable than you think? I promise you you're not alone among the legion of boys who idolize Elon Musk.

Conflating being likeable, popular, and conformist, is reductive and wrong -- but maybe it's accurate through the narrow lens of how Silicon Valley defines "success" and "progress."

It is an ideology of individualism and cancerous growth, and it is a culture that hates difference, community, and visible flaws (from the article: "Change comes from differences", "Society can't exist without collectively agreed upon rules," "Be likable and hide your 'flaws'"). Of course you'd associate the rejection of those traits with success if you've measured your self worth in units of Elon Musks.

You can be likeable, even with flaws and differences. You don't have to be an asshole about it. Be better.

   "Work on unimportant problems"
   "Be more unlikeable"
   "How to cope with <insert worksplace horror>"
   "Why you should kill your parents"

In terms of the content, I was hoping for more concrete data rather than speculation. I myself come from a worldview where this is somewhat alien, in that, in my understanding of Christianity I am not trying to be this big achiever that the article wants to be. Likeability however is not directly a virtue in itself for us, and indeed our other virtues like being present in the moment and authentic with others sometimes require unlikeable conversation, for example “hey, I noticed that you have been on your phone composing this post to tell someone on the internet that they are wrong for about an hour, and I don't think you are getting as much out of that as maybe you seem to think... maybe let it go and let them be wrong and have the last word and trust that onlookers will judge properly without trying to sway their judgment?” rarely goes over well until sometime gets some more distance from the addiction.

So, like, I would have been really interested in the precise deployment of unlikability to further wisdom, but this article is about the shotgun deployment of unlikability to further personal achievement.

There's more than one way.

The advice to be more unlikable is akin to the Galileo defense. "Galileo was persecuted for his correct beliefs. I'm being persecuted for my beliefs, therefore they must be correct." They believe that something is related when it is not. Because as Sagan later said, "But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

I think the key to being successful is to be ok with not being liked.

The big difference with people like Galileo is that he was right. Jobs may have been an asshole, but he was right more often than wrong. Gates was an asshole, but he was often right as well. They were not concerned with being liked, they were concerned with being right. And not "being right" as in "winning the argument", but "being right" as in "coming to the correct conclusion".

You don't have to be a contrarian to be successful, but you can't be afraid to be either.

These are people who have consistently been able to recruit, hire, and retain a lot of very high-performing people... the kind of people who can choose where to work. And as leaders, they have been liked and admired by the vast majority of their staff, and millions of customers and fans.

Furthermore these are people for whom being popular is incredibly important, and they have spent a tremendous amount of energy on it. Steve Jobs was famous for how much personal time he put into marketing, press relations, and his own personal brand. Same with Elon Musk, which is why he is so active on Twitter, for example.

Were they nice to every single person they ever met? No, and sure, that's good advice: don't feel like you need to suck up to everyone. But IMO that's very different from the idea that one should strive to be unlikeable.

PLENTY of people are unlikeable already, with not much to show for it. What made Steve Jobs and Elon Musk remarkable was that they were right so often, about complicated and important things. So: maybe we should instead strive to be more right about things that matter.

Were you raised to have a pathologically strong need to be liked? Find it prevents you from speaking up when something needs to be said? Does your need to be liked control you?

Then you should probably fix that.

But not by going to the other extreme. The criterion for success shouldn't be whether you are ruffling feathers often enough. It should be whether, when you need to, you are willing and able to do it.

Everybody loves simplicity and certainty, but with social interaction you need to navigate complicated situations and make a lot of judgment calls. If a source of info (whether people respond positively) is weighted too heavily and your response is to completely remove it from the equation, then you've thrown out a simplistic rule that you were taught and replaced it with a simplistic rule that you invented.

Also, whether you are liked is a very self-focused way of evaluating others' reactions. Sometimes being positive/nice/friendly/whatever is about building rapport, encouraging cooperation, etc., not about how it affects your feelings.

To get things done you can't be afraid of disagreeing with people. You can be a jerk about it or not. If you're a jerk you likely free up resources for getting things done since you're not spending energy being sensitive to other people's feelings. On the other hand, if you're a jerk, people might work against you just because they don't like you. Also, it's easier to effectively lead if you're not a jerk, which is more effective than working on your own.

Most people can be adults about it, disagreeing civilly, and laughing about it afterwards. But the people who change the world are the ones who care enough to risk becoming jerks over the things they care about.

Here's my question: Did Jobs and Musk allow their employees to berate them as much as they berated their employees? If so, then good for them! But I suspect not, in which case, they're just hypocrites and bullies. If some belligerence is required for success, who gets to succeed? Only the boss?

this is not entirely true. Humans evolved to crave attention from their tribe or extended family. Since we don't have tribes anymore we try to please random people who do not care about us. The instinct to be likeable is a correct behavior from evolution point of view, but is bad in a modern society.

What a load of BS. Maybe in some specific cases. But in almost all of corporate culture and politics, success is mostly a popularity contest. The more popular you are, the more likely you'll have people not p*g over your success.

Here's my take:

If you place a premium on pleasing everyone around you all the time, you have effectively taken away your own agency and given to them. You are under the control of everyone else's emotional reactions. That's not mentally healthy for you, nor is it good for achieving your own goals. It also makes you a giant target for the kind of emotional vampires who prey on people like this.

At the same time, if you simply disregard the consequences that your actions have on the emotional states of the people around you, you become a selfish sociopath. Remember, for every Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, there are a million petty assholes who make the world worse every time they open their mouths. If you are unlikeable, the odds are very much not in favor of you being a visionary genius. You're probably just that jerk that no one wants on their team.

If you are choosing to be unlikeable because you think it improves the chances of you being great, I think that is a sign that you are less likely to be that. Real visionaries don't decide to be unlikeable. They are unable to be likeable because they are so consumed by their passion. Opting to be a jerk is not going to magically create space in your life for brilliance. If the brilliance is there, it will have already driven out the compulsion to be a constant people pleaser.

The advice I would give is this:

1. Surround yourself with a small group of trusted friends and family whose regard deeply matters to you. These people exist to help maintain your moral compass. If you do something they don't like, you really did fuck up and you want them to hold you accountable.

2. Try to be a good person who improves the lives of all people you encounter. Default to likeable.

3. Sometimes you will have to make choices that harm some people. Pay full attention to the cost to those people and make sure the benefits to the world and not just yourself clearly outweigh it.

4. Accept that some people simply won't like you through no fault of your own. These people are relatively rare. If you find yourself frequently placing people into this category, reflect that it may be you who is the asshole.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRRvjZ_XNog

tldr; You don't have to be a dick, but being a strong and passionate leader will result in making tough choices that will inevitably not make everyone happy.

tldr 2; People don't want a boss who is a friend, they want a leader with a vision.

I cannot fathom how this logic even works.