From the bestselling author of Love Is the Killer App You can win life’s popularity contests The choices other people make about you determine your health, wealth, and happiness. And decades of research prove that people choose who they like. They vote for them, buy from them, marry them, and spend precious time with them. The good news is that you can arm yourself for the contest and win life’s battles for preference. How? By raising your likeability factor. The more you are liked, the happier your life will be. In The Likeability Factor , business guru Tim Sanders shows how to build your likeability factor by teaching you how to enhance four critical elements of your personality: • Friendliness: your ability to communicate liking and openness to others • Relevance: your capacity to connect with others’ interests, wants, and needs • Empathy: your ability to recognize, acknowledge, and experience other people’s feelings • Realness: the integrity that stands behind your likeability and guarantees its authenticity When you improve these areas and boost your likeability factor, you bring out the best in others, handle life’s challenges with grace, enjoy better health, and excel in your daily roles. You can win the close calls and tight competitions that define and determine success and happiness at work and in life— The Likeability Factor can show you how! “Mr. Sanders is on to something here.” — New York Times “This book will enrich your life, and more important, the lives of those you touch.” —Anthony Robbins, author of Awaken the Giant Within and Unlimited Power “An intriguing book that will teach you about the four building blocks of likeability.” — Dallas Morning News Tim Sanders is the author of the New York Times and international bestseller . He is a frequent guest on radio and television programs around the country and is an irrepressible advocate for good values in the business world. He lives in northern California. 1: LIKEABILITY If you’re like most people, you’re neither at the top nor the bottom of the likeability scale. If you were at the top, you’d know it, because your many friends would constantly tell you what a charmed life you lead—and you’d have to agree. You can imagine what this life might look like: You’d still have your share of bad news and bad luck, but it would seem as if all of life’s close calls fell firmly in your favor. But what would life look like if you were at the low end of the likeability scale? Probably something like this: You wake up, roll out of bed, shower, dress, and leave for your job. On the way you have an eight thirty appointment with your internist, Dr. Smith. Dr. Smith is, as always, overbooked and harried. You sit in her waiting room for what seems like an eternity, yet you know that only one patient was scheduled before you. You’re angry because Dr. Smith always seems to give other people a great deal of time, and in fact, when the patient emerges, you see that he and the doctor enjoy a solid rapport—they’re chatting amiably, exchanging restaurant recommendations, and Dr. Smith is promising to call him later that day. You, on the other hand, snapped at Dr. Smith during your last visit because you were so angry that it took so long to see her. Now you do it again, and after a brief and unpleasant appointment, you’re out of the office with a quick diagnosis and an absentminded promise to call you sometime in the future. (1) You drive off to work. Already upset, you’re dreading the day’s first appointment, which is with your assistant. Your company’s direct competitor, the Widget Corporation, has been on a hiring binge. Both your assistant and your coworker’s have been offered jobs with better salaries at Widget’s headquarters. Yesterday you found out that your coworker’s assistant has decided to stay, because the two of them are truly bonded—the assistant loves her boss and knows he’ll try as hard as possible to match Widget’s offer. You’re hoping your assistant will make the same decision because he is industrious and effective and you don’t have time to train someone new. Unfortunately, he tells you that he is taking the Widget offer after all. You wonder if the fact that you humiliated him in front of his peers last week has anything to do with it, but you doubt it—he deserved to be dressed down. You sigh and comment about how hard it is to find a loyal secretary. For the umpteenth (and last) time, he reminds you that he is not a secretary. “Whatever,” you mutter. (2) Your mood increasingly foul, you now march off to your late-morning meeting. Here you find that your client has given you low marks in your annual account performance review. You can’t believe it—you think he’s scum, and the idea that he thinks the same of you is shocking. The world is so unfair. And it seems more unfair when your boss tells you that there isn’t enough money in her budget for the raise you were expecting. (3) The rest of the day is unpleasant