I remember the exact moment I learned this lesson. I was a few years into engineering management. One of my most experienced developers was shipping consistently buggy code and deflecting every code review with excuses. Other team members were frustrated. The situation was obvious to everyone in the room.
I knew what needed to happen. And I waited another month before doing it.
Not because I was gathering evidence. Not because I was waiting for the right moment. I was waiting because I didn't want the discomfort of being the bad guy. I wanted this person to like me. And I let the comfortable choice win.
In choosing approval over action, I let my team down.
The month cost us two production incidents. It cost me credibility with the people I was supposed to be leading.
The Trap
Being liked feels like success. Every time someone agrees with you or praises you, your brain logs it as working. You get included. People talk warmly about you in rooms you're not in. It feels productive.
The problem is being liked and being effective are not the same thing. The higher you climb in your career, the harder it becomes to ignore the gap between them.
I've seen technical leads who never challenged anyone because they wanted to keep the peace. Managers who gave glowing performance reviews across the board to avoid the awkwardness of a real conversation. Leaders who approved bad ideas in planning sessions because they didn't want to be the person who slowed things down.
All of them were liked. I'm not sure any of them mattered.
Approval feels like trust. It isn't. Approval is what you get when you give people what they want. Trust is what you earn when you tell them what they need to hear.
What the Army Taught Me
I spent time in the US Army before my tech career. One thing the military gets right... mission comes before comfort. Not cruelty. Not indifference to people. But the mission is the mission, and individual popularity is beside the point.
In a civilian context, leaders often invert this. Comfort becomes the mission. Being easy to work with becomes the measure of success. And the actual work... suffers for it.
The leaders I respected most in the Army weren't the popular ones. They were the ones who were clear, honest, and consistent. Who told you when you were off course, without drama. Who would go to bat for you when it mattered, not because you'd earned their friendship, but because it was the right thing to do.
You trusted them because they said what they meant. Not because they made you feel good.
What Mattering Costs
Mattering means doing what needs doing, even when it's uncomfortable. It means telling someone their work isn't good enough. It means disagreeing with your manager in a room full of people when you know they're wrong. It means making the call upsetting half the team today because it's the right one for the next six months.
Mattering has a price. You will not always be the most popular person in the room. You will have conversations people don't thank you for immediately. You will make decisions which, in the short term, make things harder.
Early in my career I avoided paying it. I optimized for being easy to work with, agreeable, never a problem. I told myself I was being collaborative.
I was being cowardly.
The moment things shifted came at Curve. I was leading seven cross-functional engineering teams. One of my teams was struggling with delivery. I knew the root cause: one person's attitude was creating a culture of learned helplessness across the whole team. Nobody wanted to flag it because this person was technically skilled and widely liked.
So nobody did anything.
I had the conversation. It was not pleasant. There was a period of weeks where this person made it clear they weren't happy with me. Others on the team weren't sure what to make of it either.
Six months later, the team was shipping consistently. We hit our best delivery quarter on record. And the person I'd had the hard conversation with later told me it was the most useful feedback they'd received in their career.
This is what mattering looks like.
Engineering Culture Gets This Wrong
Engineering culture is particularly prone to this trap. We celebrate harmony. We pride ourselves on psychological safety, and worth celebrating... but we sometimes confuse it with conflict avoidance, which is not.
In tech, the need to be liked shows up as:
- Endless consensus-building leading to no decision
- Pull request reviews where everyone approves mediocre code to avoid friction
- Roadmap planning where nobody pushes back on obviously unrealistic timelines
- One-on-ones with no honest feedback in either direction
The result is teams feeling good but not performing. Cultures where honesty has been quietly replaced by politeness. Leaders with plenty of friends but not leading anything.
The approval-seeking leader doesn't look like a coward from the outside. They look collaborative, warm, and easy to work with. The damage shows up six months later in missed deadlines, disengaged teams, and the quiet departure of your best people who've figured out nothing is going to change.
How to Know Which Mode You're In
Ask yourself this. When you walk away from a difficult conversation, what are you thinking about?
If you're thinking "I hope they're okay with what I said," you're optimizing for being liked.
If you're thinking "I said what needed to be said," you're mattering.
Neither is a fixed state. I still catch myself hedging feedback. Still feel the pull toward the easier path. The difference is I notice it now, and I name it.
A check I've started using: before a difficult conversation, I ask "Will I be glad I did this in a year?" If yes, I have the conversation. If the answer is no, I reconsider whether I'm doing it for the right reasons.
What I've Seen on the Other Side
I've been on the receiving end of this too. The people who shaped my career weren't the ones who told me I was doing great. They were the ones who told me I wasn't... at exactly the moment I needed to hear it.
One conversation stands out. Early in my career, a senior colleague told me I was hiding from the leadership work. Not unkindly. Not at length. About three sentences, in passing. I didn't enjoy it at the time.
But he was right. And I changed.
He mattered to my career. I have no idea if he ever knew.
The leaders remembered fondly by their teams years later aren't the ones who made everything comfortable. They're the ones who made things better. Those are different jobs.
The Real Question
Think about one decision you've been putting off. One conversation you've been avoiding. One piece of feedback you've held onto for too long.
Why haven't you done it?
If the honest answer is some version of "because it'll be awkward" or "because they won't like it"... you're in the trap. You're choosing being liked over mattering.
You don't need to choose between being liked and being respected. But you do need to choose between being liked and being honest. And the choice shows up every day, in small ways, in every conversation you're part of.
When people look back at their time working with you, what will they remember? Being easy to be around? Or making things better?
Those are not the same thing.