Career growth is very important for everyone.

It doesn’t matter Whether you have a job in a consulting firm such as Deloitte, a learning institution like the Professional career development institute, a bank such as sterling, or even in a purely online company such as New Horizons or Amazon, the approach remains the same.

When you make a choice to choose from one of the long lists of careers in the Uk, USA, Australia, you must find a way to grow and achieve your career plan.

Even if you just came into the country and trying to grab one of the urgent jobs in the UK for foreigners, to help your career progression you must still find a way to train yourself to become a likable person.

What determines whether you will get the job at an interview or get promoted on the job even faster?

Research shows that people who are likable make faster career ascension than those who are not even if they are more qualified. And the good thing is that there are research-backed factors that can help you achieve more likability in the workplace.

Is likability important at work?

likeability is having qualities that bring about favorable regard. When you are an agreeable and pleasant person who tries to win by appearing like a person who will make choices that will benefit others which in turn will make such people pick interest in you and provide you with opportunities that will help you grow and succeed with your own goals.

This is why likable persons are more successful. Just like products likable people are more successful even though they aren’t as intelligent, skilled, or experienced as others.

If you’re likable, you’re more likely to receive that important introduction, get that meeting you want or close that deal your career needs to succeed
If you train yourself to be pleasant, you could use the likeability bias to your favour where you are judged to be more competent and therefore deserves more career growth opportunities.

9 likeability factors that you can develop likeability for career growth

Knowing how to develop likeability naturally is important in helping you achieve your career plans.

Here are 9 ways to make yourself more likable in your workplace for career growth:

1. Ask Relevant Questions.

Be genuinely curious about other people and ask them questions that are relevant and related to the conversations at hand.

Research shows that people who ask more questions during conversations are perceived as more responsive and are better liked by conversation partners.

When you ask follow-up questions like “What was that experience like?”, “How did you get to handle that situation?” and the likes, you show that you’re actively listening and interested in what the other person is saying.

This will make you an interesting conversationalist with who people will love to share things with including career growth opportunities.

2. Remember and Say People’s Names Correctly.

Someone’s name is the most important song you can sing to him. And when you sing it well by learning how to spell and pronounce their names well, it goes a long way in buying you a special place in their hearts as it signals that they are important to you.

On the other hand, failing to remember someone’s name—or other important details about them—undermines the closeness of the relationship.

One way to make this strategy more effective for you is to really pick interest in the person especially at the point introduction.

Repeat the name as you talk, associate the name with something you are already familiar with and find ways to retrieve the name many times from memory, and over time, it will stick.

The more you do this, the better you become in remembering people’s names which eventually gets you a lot of likeabilities.

3. Make People Feel Good Around You.

According to the reward theory of attraction, we like people who reward us, or whom we associate with good feelings. If you want to grow in your career, make your colleagues feel good in your company.

Beyond being friendly and warm, be the bearer of good and positive news. Choose to be the happy good vibes guy and people will be drawn to you.

With covid ravaging the USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and many other European countries, it is easy to have a lot of bad news to share.

But try to keep more of them to yourself. And if anyone must share bad news in the first place, let it not be you.

4. Discover and use similarities to your advantage.

No matter how different we might be, we have more similarities than we can imagine.

If you make it a point of duty to find and explore the similarities that you have with others, you will be more liked than them since people are drawn to similarities in values, values, personality traits, and the likes.

Understand the similarities you share with the key people of influence in your organization and capitalize on that to make yourself interesting and more likable.

5. Take a Genuine Liking to People.

Naturally, people like those who seem to like them. And one of the things that will determine how many opportunities someone will get is how much people tend to like him.

Therefore, use every opportunity that you have to show people that you like them by how warm you are towards them.

Keep a happy face always, give compliments freely, share relevant information and tips with those around you and you will be liked by them.

6. Be an empathic colleague. Try to put yourself in other people’s shoes so that you sympathize with them.

Ability to make other people see that you understand them and what they feel puts you high on the likeability table.

7. Be helpful and valuable.

Everyone has something that another person could use. Find out the things that you have that could help make the lives of your colleagues easier and share them.

 This sets the law of reciprocity into motion in your favour, making it likely that someone will also share career-relevant information with you.

8. Be Visible and Available at the right places and to the right people.

Psychology makes us understand that the mere exposure effect can work to anyone’s advantage because the more we are exposed to a thing or person, the lesser our bias toward that thing and the more we tend to like it.

In any organization, the people who are making massive career growth are those who constantly make themselves available to be seen in the right places by the right people.

So make an effort to be available and seen—repeatedly by the key decision-makers in your organization.

And if you have to work remotely, make sure that whenever you attend virtual meetings that you put your camera on so that you can be seen. Also, make sure that you are available for meetings and do so early.

But make sure that you don’t overdo things as Too much-uncalculated exposure can backfire.

9. Smile.

People are judged by appearance and smiling is one thing that can work in your favour if you master how to use it.

Smiling makes you attractive and We tend to assume that attractive people are more competent and socially skilled which makes them more likable than others.

In a recent study, Jessika Golle and her colleagues asked people to rate the attractiveness of computer-generated faces.

The results showed that faces were viewed as more attractive when they were smiling. Even the less attractive but smiling faces were rated as highly as attractive faces without a smile. The researchers concluded that “smiling can compensate for relative unattractiveness.”

If you want to be perceived as more likable and given more career opportunities—just flash a smile often to your colleagues.

Learning how to make yourself more likable should be an essential aspect of your career growth plan. Therefore, use these tips to arm yourself properly for the many opportunities that await you.