Do You Have the Disease to Please?

Do you have the disease to please? It's very easily caught and once infected, it's very heard to cure.

Research by the University of Essex on the link between personality and salary has shown that nice guys receive up to £1,500 a year less than their more unpleasant colleagues!

So what to do? Start being thoroughly unpleasant in the workplace and max out your salary by bulldozing through your teams and climbing over the bodies of your colleagues?

Well apparently it all depends upon your personality type -- are you open to experience, conscientious, extrovert, agreeable or neurotic? The research was done on nearly 3000 men aged between 24 and 64 living and working in the UK.

What came out of all this research was that agreeableness in the workplace is penalised by an average of 72p per hour, that is £1500 less a year, while extroversion and aggression are rewarded. Now, as a personal brand and reputation consultant I find this extraordinary.

I truly believe that likeability will prove more valuable to you in the long term in your business than aggressive or neurotic behaviour, but even the latter fell into the higher earning category.

And not only was this a surprise to me but even after taking into account extra characteristics such as education, occupation, training and work experience, it still came out the same way.

I can see that if you are brought in specifically to do a difficult job, then it pays to be strong and decisive, and probably you will have to make some unpleasant decisions. For this you may receive a higher salary than your less tested colleagues.

However, if you are perceived overall as an aggressive, back-stabbing and heartless individual, your reputation will suffer and people will go out of their way not to be in your immediate sphere of influence.

I still believe, and the researchers did end with this advice too, that whatever research has been done on this tendency, the ability to build rapport and your likeability will make you more socially acceptable, help you to increase your social network, add value to your brand and lead to you being mentally healthier and more relaxed in your environment.

So, "do as you would be done by" is a good moral code to live by. Consider how you would feel if you received a less than courteous response to a question or problem, and were rudely rebuffed when trying to offer help or advice, it's a simple matter to be considerate of others' feelings, and it will pay dividends even if those advantages are not of the monetary kind.

(Pic: Unlisted Sightings cc2.0)