Would You Like To Be More Admired? - Part 2

October 24, 2012

Interview with Mark C. Thompson, author of the book Admired: 21 Ways to Double Your Value

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Mike Carruthers:
If you want to be successful and admired by others is it more important to be competent or charismatic? Well research has asked that question and it turns out…

Mark C. Thompson:
Competence and your ability to do the work ended up being more important than how naturally communicative or extroverted that you are – it’ll always trump personality and charisma is your competence.
 

Mark Thompson, author of the book Admired ...

So it’s interesting when we looked at those key characteristics people did want you to be honest and caring and dependable but competency was way up there. Competency is more important than being extroverted or outgoing.

In addition to the characteristics you normally associate with being likeable is one you probably don’t think of and that is guilt.

The response to guilt is usually to do something about what’s gone wrong or to actually take care of something or actually show some accountability or responsibility and people do love competency. But you know what they love even more than that; they don’t expect you to be perfect they do expect you to be responsible.

As part of our normal fight or flight response it’s normal to kind of disappear when things go wrong - but if you want people to admire you…

When things go wrong it is important to be in touch with people and to be responsive to them even if you don’t have all of the answers. You do get admired for being able to step up, be seen, hold up your hands and say I’m going to be responsible for this, and I’m going to take care of this and take care of you. And often we see credibility increases when you do that actually.