At work, I try to be a nice guy. Of course it comes from my personal beliefs or philosophy, but there is also another calculated reason: Likability is an important factor for our productivity.
It shouldn't be so surprising. You know everyone wants to work for people they like. However, many people forget that fact when they are working hard and are pressed for time.
A company also finds it difficult to focus on each person's likability. Business management layer usually watches numbers of business like sales or gross profits, but likability is difficult to quantify. Furthermore it doesn't look practical to ask like "Do you like your co-worker?" even if you know it's really important for work.
Many companies try to evaluate each person by interviews but most of those doesn't focus on likability. Some companies advice evaluators not to judge based on likability because it's "unfair". I can understand some, but we shouldn't disregard each person's likability because it affects to our productivity, specifically how big result we can make.
Human resources departments usually defines criteria for evaluating each co-worker, following each organization's philosophy such as "Reliability", "Leadership", "Decision-Making", but I think we can unify those criteria to this question: "Is this he/she a good person?" or "Is his/her work an asshole?"
It's the same with your product. Likability is important for customers to buy. For example, if you love iPhone, you would choose iPhone even Android is cheaper and more customizable. Similarly, you'll prefer to choose your friend's restaurant over an unfamiliar or unpleasant person's restaurant even if your friend's cooking isn't amazing.
Of course we need to make a good product first, but we should consider of likability of the product.
If you're big company that can make your range's market oligopoly, you may be possible to disregard likability. Actually there are some winning companies which many customers hate, but they controls their market. (To be honest I don't want to work like that but I don't care if others so.)
But, if you aren't in huge company, you should keep likability in your mind. People want to be surrounded by favorite items so we should try to make customers like our products.
It shouldn't be so surprising. You know everyone wants to work for people they like. However, many people forget that fact when they are working hard and are pressed for time.
A company also finds it difficult to focus on each person's likability. Business management layer usually watches numbers of business like sales or gross profits, but likability is difficult to quantify. Furthermore it doesn't look practical to ask like "Do you like your co-worker?" even if you know it's really important for work.
Many companies try to evaluate each person by interviews but most of those doesn't focus on likability. Some companies advice evaluators not to judge based on likability because it's "unfair". I can understand some, but we shouldn't disregard each person's likability because it affects to our productivity, specifically how big result we can make.
Human resources departments usually defines criteria for evaluating each co-worker, following each organization's philosophy such as "Reliability", "Leadership", "Decision-Making", but I think we can unify those criteria to this question: "Is this he/she a good person?" or "Is his/her work an asshole?"
It's the same with your product. Likability is important for customers to buy. For example, if you love iPhone, you would choose iPhone even Android is cheaper and more customizable. Similarly, you'll prefer to choose your friend's restaurant over an unfamiliar or unpleasant person's restaurant even if your friend's cooking isn't amazing.
Of course we need to make a good product first, but we should consider of likability of the product.
If you're big company that can make your range's market oligopoly, you may be possible to disregard likability. Actually there are some winning companies which many customers hate, but they controls their market. (To be honest I don't want to work like that but I don't care if others so.)
But, if you aren't in huge company, you should keep likability in your mind. People want to be surrounded by favorite items so we should try to make customers like our products.