If everyone likes you, you're doing something wrong
As soon as I wrote the title of this essay, my mind debunked me by recalling living proof that the claim isn't true: my husband.
We can’t go to the grocery store without running into someone—an old classmate, a local official, a 70-something-year-old community icon—who genuinely wants to know what Cooper’s up to while genuinely grinning and maintaining eye contact.
We can't go to a social event and meet a new person who doesn't immediately adore my husband. No matter if I try twice as hard to make conversation, smile and listen intently. These strangers' fascination rolls over me right onto the man with the guttural laugh and calloused hands who I married.
Everyone loves my husband.
It's really annoying.
But I won't let this muscled outlier change the title of my essay, because for the rest of us, I do believe everyone liking you is probably a red flag.
When I started to disappear
I once had a boss who became my boss at the height of my productivity. At the time, I'd been cranking out results at the speed and quality of a high-performing maniac. Who in their right mind would focus all their talent on a single area of life, all their HSP-energy on 10 hours of back-to-back virtual meetings, all their physical stamina on finding different ways to sit/stand/hunch at a computer screen? Me. Definitely, me.
My boss joined the company about the time when I was reaching burnout. I was crying weekly, I was so out of whack. My new boss was a genuinely caring and compassionate person who wanted me to relieve some of this pressure. They tried hard to help me delegate, put some boundaries in place. Unfortunately, they didn't really understand the nuances of what I actually did, so there was a limit to how much her support could do.
Given the gap in understanding around my work, the feedback they had for me was political in nature. Directly, and more often through their own indirect communication style, I learned how to say no without saying no, how to (supposedly) win people over. I started to write my emails differently, smooth out my delivery of ideas and criticisms.
In other words, I learned how to sugar coat.
In other words, I learned to shrink myself.
In time, this became an existential crisis. I became fixated on how to say what I meant in exactly the right way, how my peers and those who technically outranked me perceived me. My emails became longer and less direct and full of exclamation points!
It felt gross.
This came to a head while I was out at dinner with my beloved husband.
The cocktail that broke me
We were at a hip sushi restaurant in Hawaii, taking a break from our tent-away-from-home for a night on the town, and I ordered some guava cocktail with a hippy name like Green Goddess.
I didn't like it and regretted not getting a trusty Old Fashioned.
I waited a while for the server to shoot us a glance and when he finally did I waived him over. The words that then came out of my mouth still twist my stomach into a knot:
"Hi! I'm not really a super fan of this drink. Can I have an Old Fashioned, please?"
I don't know if I caught it or if Cooper called me out, but as soon as the waiter walked away, we looked at each other and I was appalled with myself. What did I just say?
I'm not a super fan!? Ew!
Why would I be a super fan of a mixed drink? Why was I acting like the server himself put his life's work into that drink and the news that I didn't like it would make him fall over right there in this Hip. Sushi. Restaurant? And even if he had cared, why did that make me so indirect, which is something I try hard not to be?
With a tiny plate of raw fish in front of me, an identity crisis suddenly hit me like a giant tuna net hits the ocean floor.
Listen, maybe being political is the only way to the top in some organizations. Surely there is an art to giving feedback in a way that positively impacts the person you're giving feedback to. But that's not what this essay is about.
It's about when being palatable takes priority over being yourself.
In work, I've built deep trust and respect by being honest with my coworkers, by being vulnerable, and by speaking up when I don't agree. It has not won me the popularity context, especially amongst those with more corporate backgrounds.
Different people have different opinions, preferences, priorities, weaknesses, strengths, worldviews, senses of humor, insecurities, skill sets, levels of ambition, ideas about who they are.
If everyone likes you all the time, there is a good chance that you're placating to those differences, sugar coating, Oreo-cookie-ing the shit out of anything that might conflict with the other person's specs.
But friction is important. Integrity, even more so.
But wait—what about Cooper?
So what about the person I married, whom everyone likes? Is that a major blind spot of yours truly, this here author?
Pretty sure not. His best man described him as “brutal” during his best man speech at our wedding. He wears saying-it-like-it-is like my sister wears men’s dress shirts:
Well. 🔥
Maybe everyone will like you, maybe only most people will.
The important question is (I bet you can guess!): Do you like yourself?
Becuase I'm definitely down with you being the biggest fucking super fan of you.
TLDR
Personal Take: I tried so hard to be palatable, I stopped being myself.
Bigger Idea: If everyone likes you, it might mean you’re hiding something—like your actual voice.
