The Culture of Likability

Lana Van Brunt is the Founder and Creative Director of Sackville, a High Design lifestyle brand known for reimagining everyday objects through the lens of art, design, and materiality. She is also the Founder of GFTT Studios, a creative studio focused on product design and cultural storytelling. After nearly a decade building Sackville, Van Brunt recently navigated a major transition in the company that forced her to rethink not only leadership and partnership, but the cultural pressures that shape how we build, collaborate, and consume.

The essay below is part personal reflection and part cultural observation, examining what happens when approval becomes more valuable than self-respect, and why reclaiming respect often requires a willingness to be misunderstood. 

In business, especially as a founder, being liked can feel like currency. It smooths meetings. It builds rapport. It accelerates momentum. It makes hard conversations feel less threatening. When you’re building something from nothing, warmth can feel like proof that you’re aligned. 

In my former partnership, I believe we liked each other. We shared ideas easily. We built something meaningful. There was familiarity, humor, shared ambition. From the outside, it looked collaborative. And in many ways, it was. 

But over time, I began to notice something harder to name. There was an ever-growing gap that I quietly absorbed, filling it with physical and emotional labor so that things could keep moving.

At first, I interpreted that expansion as closeness. Or trust. It felt natural to give more when you care deeply about what you’re building. 

It took me years to understand that what existed may certainly have been like. It may have even been closeness and trust. But what it certainly was not was respect. And it would take me years to understand why that distinction matters so much.

Like thrives when things are smooth. It flourishes in harmony. It survives on convenience and shared benefit. Liking someone is effortless when they are agreeable, generous, accommodating. It doesn’t demand much of you. It certainly doesn’t require you to examine your ego or tolerate discomfort. 

Respect does.

Respect requires restraint. It asks you to acknowledge someone’s autonomy even when it inconveniences you. It demands that you hold your tone steady when you’re frustrated, that you remain anchored in fairness when power recalibrates, that you engage conflict without trying to dominate or diminish.

Respect reveals itself in moments of friction.

When I finally set a boundary, the warmth shifted. What once felt like familiarity hardened into volatility. What I believed was mutual regard dissolved into defensiveness, then contempt. It wasn’t the conflict itself that startled me, conflict is inevitable, it was how quickly the foundation beneath it disappeared. 

That experience forced me to confront something much larger than one relationship.

We are living in a culture that prioritizes being liked over being respected, and we rarely recognize the difference until the absence of respect costs us something meaningful. I now understand that those two things are not interchangeable.

Women, especially, are raised to prioritize likability. We are taught, explicitly and implicitly, that likability is protective. That being agreeable keeps doors open. That smoothing tension is virtuous. The consequences of being disliked are real: lost access, diminished opportunity, social punishment. So we adapt. We soften. We absorb. We perform ease.

I had internalized that conditioning more deeply than I realized.

But like without respect is unstable. It is conditional. It evaporates the moment you stop being useful or agreeable. The moment you assert autonomy, the temperature shifts.

That confusion between warmth and regard doesn’t just live in personal relationships. What I’ve realized in all of this contemplation and reflection is that it defines our broader culture.

Social media rewards likability: relatability, accessibility, immediacy. Brands are optimized to be adored. Public figures are encouraged to be accessible and charming rather than principled. Products are designed to delight quickly instead of endure thoughtfully.

We have mistaken warmth for integrity. Approval for alignment. Aesthetic for value.

Even in the way we consume, we chase trends that feel socially affirmed and support brands that mirror our taste back to us without challenging it.

Respect moves differently. It is slower. It considers consequence. It asks harder questions. It tolerates discomfort. Whether it’s in partnership, leadership, design, or  consumption, respect demands discipline.

Choosing respect over like often shrinks your world at first.

It builds fewer, stronger partnerships. It produces fewer, better objects. It attracts people who are anchored rather than reactive. It creates work that holds under pressure  instead of dissolving when challenged. You stop consuming indiscriminately. You stop aligning yourself with things simply because they are well received. You tolerate being  misunderstood.

That contraction can feel isolating.

In my former partnership, I had confused being liked with being secure. I thought closeness meant stability. It took conflict to reveal that the foundation had been conditional all along. 

That lesson now shapes how I think about everything from collaboration to design to how I move through the world. We have optimized for applause. 

What we are craving now, whether we admit it or not, is depth. 

And depth requires respect. 

Respect for time. For craft. For the planet. For each other’s boundaries. 

Respect will shrink your world before it strengthens it. It will remove some easy validation. It will test your tolerance for being disliked. It will ask you to tolerate being misunderstood. But from my experience, in that contraction, something steadier emerges. 

Not everyone will like you. That’s important. You cannot be for everyone and also be for yourself. 

But the ones who remain will not just like you. They will respect you. And that, I’ve learned, is the only foundation that lasts.  

- Lana