Set your political affiliations aside just for a moment. I know it's hard, but play along with me. What is one thing that very few people would argue about President Obama?

Diehards of either party willingly fess up that he's a fantastic speaker (teleprompter or not)... and very charismatic. He has likability. And lots of it.

Consider the speech he gave recently where he broke into a little bit of song... singing some of Al Green's "Let's stay together". The crowd loved it and the video immediately went viral with multiple copies on youTube pulling in millions of hits.

Likeability is a huge factor that I think is lacking on many software teams. Some of the arrogant, antagonistic, or just plain rude responses from team members in the forum world (my lurking grounds) leave me puzzled! What are they thinking?

Unfortunately, I have first hand experience with this misguided behavior. It happened with my own team at vBSEO and took a very focused, continual intervention to improve. Juan, Ilia, and I, all agreed the behavior was not acceptable and was not consistent with our philosophy of how we valued customers. I set out to do a little reprogramming with a very skilled technical support member who was far too often... much too abrasive with customers.

During my time leading vBSEO ops, we had to continually remind this guy to lighten up and be a little more empathic and less aggressive with our customers... the people we, the founding team, hoped to build friendships with! We made progress and it's awesome to see other software teams doing it right!

Nowadays, I'm very happy to observe that our industry thought leaders are starting to gain momentum, enlightening the startup world of the importance of going the extra mile for our users and communities! Obvious examples are guys like @GaryVee (Gary Vaynerchuk) who wrote "The Thank You Economy", Tony Hsieh's "Delivering Happiness", or (a little farther back) Michael Gerber's "The E-Myth Revisited".

My wish for other software teams, in the forum world or elsewhere, is that you find your likeability mojo!

It's not as hard as you might think. It doesn't even require reading a bunch of books! Just do your best to communicate with your users as if everyone of them was your really good friend - even when they're giving you a hard time! We know some users are jerks. It happens in a Myers-Briggs world! The secret is to avoid permitting them draw you into the fray.

If you think that's being fake, it's not. You're allowed to be upset - that's being human. However you will be geniunely doing your best to put on a happy face on behalf of your customer to make sure their experience improves!

You'll soon find that your most difficult users will become much more cooperative... It's a direct result of you establishing likability... listening to them... and convincing them that your goal *really is* to cooperate with them.

Ask yourself what Ned Flander's would say, if Ned Flander's was a cool person like YOU! Put the best friendly, funny, helpful YOU on display. Subtract all that latent negativity. It's what is best for your user, and what is best for your team.

Sooner than later, you might even find yourself calling some of your users "friends"!

After all... if you create software, you want people to use it, right? Aren't you acting in your own best interest by keeping users happy and making them your friends? Of course you are! Establish your likability even when you're grumpy and challenged by an unruly user ready to find out what you're made of! And, maybe, put on a little feel-good-Al-Green! =)