Becoming Unlikable - Digital Book

Becoming Unlikable - Digital Book

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Becoming Unlikable - Digital Book
  • Becoming Unlikable - Digital Book
  • Becoming Unlikable - Digital Book
Becoming Unlikable - Digital Book

STOP PAYING THE LIKABILITY TAX

Becoming Unlikable

For every empath who ever softened her voice to keep the peace — a field guide to finding it again, leading with empathy, and becoming unapologetically, unshakably you.

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ABOUT THE BOOK

The most expensive tax you're paying isn't on your paycheck.

Empathetic leaders are caught in an impossible trade: be warm at the expense of being direct and authentic, or be unlikable and feel like you're losing your identity. Becoming Unlikable names this trap — the Likability Tax — and shows you how to stop paying it.

Drawing on three decades leading early and late-stage businesses, sitting in boardrooms, and coaching hundreds of women executives, Dawn Halkuff offers a different equation. Not "be tougher." Not "be softer." Something more honest: the Heart-Head Leadership Model — a way of leading that pairs genuine empathy with unapologetic decisiveness, so you can be deeply human and fully in command.

Inside are nine hard-won lessons, including how to:

Deliver bad news without flinching — say the hard thing clearly, kindly, and without apologizing for reality

Choose reality over fantasy — admit what isn't working, even when everyone expects you to stay the course

Stand up for the unpopular opinion — including the one that says the business model has to change

Let someone hate you — because sometimes being the villain in their story is the most humane thing you can do

Listen to the agitators — the people everyone else has written off often see what no one else will say

Believe in yourself enough to take the big job — and to say, with confidence, exactly where you'll need help

And woven through every lesson: how to survive it all without losing the kindness and humanity that make you you. This isn't a book about becoming cold. It's a book about becoming clear.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Written by someone who's sat in the seat.

Dawn Halkuff has spent her career in rooms where the stakes were high, and the playbook was written for someone else. She's led businesses at Pfizer and Weight Watchers, run companies as a CEO, served on corporate boards, and coached leaders through her advisory practice, Halkuff Enterprises. But the through-line of her work has never been the titles — it's a conviction that people do their best work when they stop performing someone else's version of “best” and start leading as themselves.

Becoming Unlikable is the book she wishes someone had handed her decades ago: nine hard-won lessons on how she learned to be tougher, clearer, and more authentically herself — without surrendering the empathy that makes her who she is.

She lives between South Florida and Connecticut, and she's still learning, still evolving, and still occasionally unlikable — on purpose.

Dawn Halkuff

PRAISE

“Dawn writes the way the best leaders actually lead: honestly, with heart and without pretense. This book is an authentic reflection of her journey, and that's exactly what makes it so powerful. It will push you to look at your own leadership and ask: what's actually working, what am I clinging to out of habit or fear and what do I need to embrace to move forward? As a CHRO, I see this as exactly the kind of tool that gets leaders out of their heads and into real growth. I'll be putting it in front of every leader I work with.”

— Anjana Pursnani, founder of Ishitaan Ventures, CHRO

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