Likability Doesn’t Belong in Business

Popularity is not Performance

Author

Samuel Anderson
January 01, 2026

Happy New Year.
New calendar, same “We’re restructuring, but this is really an exciting opportunity” email in your inbox.

Somewhere right now, a corporate leader is saying, “It’s not personal, it’s business,” while quietly circling the names of people they personally cannot stand. In a year where beverage is already cutting and consolidating, that quiet circling can be the difference between still building brands in June or updating your LinkedIn headline in February.​

2026, layoffs, and the likability trap

Let’s ground this in what is actually happening, not just vibes.

In October 2025, Molson Coors announced it would eliminate about 400 salaried positions in its Americas business, roughly 9 percent of its salaried workforce in the region, as part of a restructuring to create a “more streamlined and agile” organization. At the same time, roundups of food and beverage layoffs highlighted big names like Nestlé, General Mills, and Molson Coors among the most visible companies making cuts or closing plants in 2025.

On the brewery side, Anheuser‑Busch announced plans to close multiple U S facilities, including long‑standing breweries in Fairfield, California and Merrimack, New Hampshire, and to sell or shutter other sites, affecting roughly 475 full‑time employees nationwide. Zoom out further and trackers show companies across food and beverage, including Starbucks, Denny’s, and others, making significant headcount reductions to “align with market conditions” and “streamline operations.”​

When the pie is not growing, the question of who stays and who goes stops being theoretical. That is when likability quietly stops being a nice‑to‑have and starts pretending to be a legitimate performance metric.

Why do the good ones get let go?

You know this story because you have either watched it or lived it.

You promote someone who takes the ugly route, cleans up the neglected accounts, and actually runs the playbook. Customers like them, they move cases, they stabilize chaos, and they send recaps with numbers instead of mood boards.

Then a manager decides, “I just don’t like their style.” Suddenly:

  • Every small mistake becomes “a concerning pattern.”

  • Every honest disagreement becomes “not a team player.”

  • Every direct question becomes “aggressive,” “abrasive,” or “not aligned.”

You can go from hero to zero faster than a January RTD darling goes from “must‑have feature” to “bottom‑shelf clearance.” That is not leadership, that is ego in a branded quarter‑zip.

“If your boss doesn’t like you, you’re done”

Those videos about “how corporate really works” blow up for a reason: they describe a playbook a lot of people recognize:

  • If your boss doesn’t like you, you are vulnerable.

  • They start documenting only the negatives.

  • They lean on words like “fit” and “style,” not “results.”

  • Process gets used to push you out instead of protect fairness.

The uncomfortable truth is, the poster is often right about what happens. The bigger question is why any serious company is okay with that being the norm. That is where HR, policy, and leadership are supposed to step in, not disappear like a seasonal SKU.

Where the hell is HR and policy?

HR is supposed to be the brake pedal, not the hype squad for bad managers.

In a healthy organization, you see:

  • Clear performance standards tied to each role.

  • Documented feedback and real coaching.

  • Progressive discipline before consequences.

  • Real review and justification when jobs are cut or people are exited.​

When someone is let go and leadership cannot connect it to performance, behavior, or a clearly defined business change, that is not “tough leadership,” that is a popularity contest with a laptop collection at the end. Good HR and leadership know that culture, clarity, and employee commitment are directly tied to performance, especially in food and beverage operations.​

If the only explanation for a decision is “it just wasn’t working,” that is not a reason, it is a red flag.

Likability vs. being effective

There is a real difference between:

  • Someone nobody wants to work with because they are toxic, disrespectful, or abusive.

  • Someone certain leaders don’t like because they challenge lazy thinking or say, “Show me the data.”

The first hurts the business. The second often helps it.

What should matter:

  • Respect, reliability, and collaboration.

  • Owning your impact on others.

  • Delivering what you say you will deliver.

What should not decide your career:

  • Being in the “inner circle.”

  • Laughing at every bad joke in the sales meeting.

  • Nodding along with every broken program.

  • Never raising your hand when something doesn’t make sense.

Research on leadership and culture shows that organizations with strong culture, clarity, and employee commitment outperform, particularly in service and food and beverage sectors. None of that research says, “Keep your most popular people and your performance will magically follow.”​

Here’s a simple way to visualize the gap between how people decisions should work and how they often feel in real life.

How this shows up in the beverage industry

Beverage amplifies all of this because so many roles are outward‑facing, political, and under pressure: supplier reps, distributor managers, chain and national account leads, brand and commercial leads, on‑ and off‑premise specialists.

At the same time, the industry is not dealing with hypotheticals. Molson Coors is cutting about 400 salaried roles in the Americas, roughly 9 percent of that salaried workforce. Heineken has been trimming hundreds of head‑office roles in Amsterdam to simplify its structure. Anheuser‑Busch is closing or selling breweries and affecting hundreds of workers across multiple states. Broader food and beverage layoffs also include companies such as Nestlé and PepsiCo, reinforcing that “right‑sizing” is a real theme, not a rumor.​​

On the ground, that can look like:

  • The rep who pushes back on a promo that will not execute is now “negative.”

  • The manager who says, “This chain commitment is fantasy,” is “not on board.”

  • The person who wants real data instead of gut feel is suddenly “not a culture fit.”

Meanwhile, the person who nods along to everything, misses the number, and leaves operations or the street teams to clean up the mess is praised for “great energy.” That is how you cut the person who moves cases and keep the person who moves slide decks.

Yet sales performance management guidance in alcoholic beverages is very clear: transparent KPIs, structured scorecards, and aligned incentives improve profitability and team alignment because decisions are anchored to contribution, not charisma. Leadership development in the beverage space emphasizes people‑centered leadership, coaching, and culture as drivers of both performance and retention from plants to field teams.​

What could actually be different in 2026?

If 2025 was the year of quiet restructurings, 2026 can be the year some companies finally get serious about how they lead.

That would look like:

Performance over popularity

  • Clear scorecards for roles tied to distribution, velocity, mix, profit, and execution.​

  • Visible expectations so people decisions can be explained in business terms, not “I just feel this way.”

  • Promotions and exits tied to outcomes and behavior, not whether someone wants to hang with you after the trade show.​

If you cannot tie a people decision to observable performance or conduct, you are not managing, you are managing your comfort level.

Leaders, not hall monitors

Real leaders do not need everyone to be their favorite; they need people who make the business better. They:

  • Develop people they don’t naturally “click” with.

  • Turn healthy tension into better decisions.

  • Shield high performers from petty politics instead of feeding them into it.

If a manager has a pattern of losing strong performers who challenge them and keeping agreeable underperformers, that is not a cute personality quirk, it is a business problem.​

Culture with a spine

All the “people first,” “do the right thing,” “act like an owner” language means nothing if:

  • Politics beat performance.

  • Favorites beat fairness.

  • Silence beats honest feedback.

Organizations that intentionally shape culture and commitment see better operational and financial performance in food and beverage. That requires holding leaders accountable for how they treat people, evaluating them on team health and development, not just top‑line revenue, and treating people decisions with the same discipline used on pricing, programming, and portfolio.​

If you are stuck under that boss

Now let’s talk about you. If you are in beverage and you feel that “there is a target on my back” feeling, you are not imagining it, and you are not powerless.

Make your work undeniable

  • Track your numbers: distribution, velocity, mix, margin, execution wins.

  • Capture account feedback: emails, texts, and “we couldn’t have done this without you” notes.

  • Share your wins beyond one person using recap decks, cross‑functional updates, and simple dashboards.​

You want a scoreboard that tells a simple story: this person produces.

Control your narrative inside the building

  • Show up professionally even when you know someone is trying to ice you out.

  • Build relationships with other functions and tiers: operations, finance, marketing, suppliers, distributors.

  • Let your reputation travel; consistency, follow‑through, and results are your brand.

Industry career and salary reporting shows people moving across suppliers, distributors, and adjacent platforms to find better culture, compensation, and growth. If your current setup chooses politics over performance, there are other places that will not.​

Protect your options outside the building

Your ability to launch brands, build routes, win chains, stabilize messy territories, and lead teams is portable across bev‑alc, NA, and adjacent categories. Restructurings and market shifts are real, but so is the demand for people who can actually execute and deliver against a plan.​

Sometimes the smartest move is to stop trying to convince a rigged room to see your value and take that value somewhere that is actually running on a scoreboard.

Resources worth pursuing

If this feels a little too familiar, here are some places to go deeper, protect yourself, and plan next steps:

Understanding your rights and protections

  • U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, information on discrimination, retaliation, and how to file a charge: https://www.eeoc.gov​

  • U.S. Department of Labor, general workplace rights and protections: https://www.dol.gov​

HR, culture, and leadership

Beverage industry career and performance insights

Use these to sanity‑check what you are experiencing, tighten how you document your work, and build a real plan for what is next.

A final note

Likability makes the ride smoother. It makes ride‑alongs less awkward, it makes sales meetings slightly less painful, and it makes that last stop of the day a little easier. But it should never decide who keeps their livelihood when the spreadsheet turns red.

In 2026, the beverage companies that actually win will be the ones that keep the people who deliver and live the values, that hold leaders accountable for how they use their power, and that bring real discipline to people decisions, not just to price, promo, and portfolio.

If you are one of the “good ones” who has ever felt one opinion away from being erased, let this be the year you remember that your value is not defined by a single insecure manager or one messy reorg. Keep your receipts, guard your reputation, and do not be afraid to bet on yourself somewhere that measures you by your impact, not your popularity.