by Steve Adubato, PhD

Jane is a manager in a manufacturing firm who very much wants to be liked. She’s like most of us. We want to be popular. We don’t want to ruffle any feathers. We want to make sure that everyone is comfortable.

Except, Jane also wants to move up the ranks in her organization. She wants to be promoted and wants more responsibility and authority, which she hopes will ultimately translate into more income. But here’s the catch. In order for Jane to be promoted and reach her professional goals, she’s got to change the way she sees herself and her obsession with everyone “liking her”. Much of this translates into changing the way she communicates.

Consider this example. Jane was leading her team on a particular assignment. Mary was one of her key people in getting the job done. But, for whatever reason, Mary was behind schedule, missed an important deadline and then went away mid-day Friday for a long weekend vacation. The problem was, the client expected a key report on Monday morning at 9:00 a.m., but Mary never did her piece of the job. Of course, Jane had to jump in and do the work herself. While the report was submitted on time, Jane was frustrated and angry that Mary dropped the ball. Further, because she was doing her direct report’s work, Jane fell behind on other key projects. Her superiors noticed, and called her on it.

Here’s the communication part. When Monday morning comes, Mary and Jane sit down for a meeting. At the meeting, Jane says; “Mary, I was a little disappointed that you missed the deadline on the Jones project on Friday before you went away. It really could have been handled better and I’m not sure I should have been the one who actually did the work to meet the Monday morning deadline.”

After the meeting, I spoke to Jane, who was so angry at herself because she had, in her own words, “softened her communication” with Mary because she didn’t want to “make her upset”. So, instead, what she did was send a weak, ambiguous and ineffective message regarding Mary’s performance.

When I talked to Jane about it, she said, “I just couldn’t bring myself to be more direct and tell her how I felt. I’ve got to change the way I communicate with her because when the time comes for her performance evaluation, she is going to be shocked at what I have to say.”

Here’s my advice to Jane and all readers of this column who have an intense and unhealthy desire to be liked to the point where your communication is seriously compromised. Call in Mary immediately and say; “Mary, in our meeting Monday I did you a disservice and I want to apologize. When we met, I said I was ‘a little disappointed,’ when in fact I was extremely disappointed. I don’t understand how you could have left on Friday without getting the job done and why I had to do your work. It was unacceptable and it took me away from other projects that I was responsible for. We need to change the way you handle future projects to make sure this never happens again. I’d like to know how you see the situation.”

And then, a meaningful, productive dialogue can take place between Mary and Jane that will hopefully produce a game plan to ensure that such sloppy and irresponsible performance won’t be repeated. It will also ensure that Jane can feel confident that she accurately communicated her feelings and perception of the situation. Being liked is nice—we all want to be liked. But, if in an effort to do that, we don’t confront and deal with poor performance with clear communication, nothing good is likely to happen.