384: Be a Likeable Badass: Power, Status & the Art of Self-Promotion - Alison Fragale

ELLA: 00:00

Welcome! You're on air with Ella, where we share simple strategies and tips for living a little better every day. If you're interested in mindset and wellness, or healthy habits and relationships, or hormone health, aging well, and eating well, honestly, if you're into just living better and with more energy, then you're in the right place. We're not here for perfect. We're here for a little better every day. Let's go! Hey, you're on air with Ella, and today I am joined by Allison Fragale. Allison, my new favorite author, would you kindly tell us who you are and what you do?

ALISON: 00:36

I will. I'm Allison Fragale. I'm an organizational psychologist. I'm a professor. I am a women's advocate, and I am the author of Likeable Badass.

ELLA: 00:45

Alison, I hunted you down and asked you to come on the air with me because I read your book and it's called Likeable Badass. Now, not everybody has read your book, not everybody, but I sure hope they will. I read a lot of books for this show, a lot of books for this show. And it is a privilege and an honor, but not all of them are keepers. Alison, I have not been this excited about a book since I read and applied Atomic Habits. And I have probably referenced that book roughly somewhere around a thousand times on this show. Yours is my new go-to. This is not just a book, it's a manual. I would love for you to tell us what is a likable badass.

ALISON: 01:27

For sure. Well, first I have to pause on that high praise because Atomic Habits has sold, I don't know, like 17 billion copies. And yeah, right? And it is considered a manual for many, many people. It's life-changing. Okay, so what's likeable about us? I wrote this because I care deeply about helping women live and work better. And that's something that I've come to as a passion over 20 years of being a professor. And I've been talking to women for years, mainly from stages, from teaching, from speaking. And one of the core elements of my research that comes up a lot in the work that I do with women is this idea of status. It is being respected and valued. And that is something all human beings care about. It is something women on average get out of the gate less than men. So it's something women have to navigate and manage. And a likable badass is a catchy term. People like it. But it's not just a catchy term. It is my reference. to where status comes from based in science. So when people see you as a warm person who cares about others, I called that likable, and a very capable person who gets stuff done and can be trusted and relied on to execute, I called that badass, those are the two things your audience needs to believe about you to respect and value you. So really what this is and I love being a manual, is to be a guide to help people show up in ways that get their audiences to recognize their warmth, caring, likability, and also recognize and appreciate their capabilities.

ELLA: 03:02

Yeah, and I wanna talk about why this matters before we really jump in. And as I'm doing so, I want you to picture two spectrum. I want you to picture two spectrums. There's sort of a cold to warm spectrum, and there is a passive to assertive spectrum. And I look at them as like an X and Y axis when I think about this. And no matter where you fall on that graph, you have wisdom for each of us. I don't think that I would have gone out to the market looking for a book teaching me how to be more assertive, Allison. That's not something that I, it's not a gap. What I was so surprised about with your work, your research, it's not just about the book. It's about your entire thesis and your life's work is that there is something in here for each of us, no matter where we fall on the spectrum and some really important thought leadership about why this matters in the first place. You've written largely from a perspective of us operating in the workplace. I want to invite everyone to the table because the concepts that you share in your work apply to women full stop, no matter what arenas we're operating in, how you show up in your own home, how you show up in your personal relationships, and very much so how you show up in your career. Would you agree with that? 100%.

ALISON: 04:20

And I've, for a long time, as an organizational psychologist, A lot of the work I do applies human behavior to what happens within the confines of work or organizations, but human behavior happens outside of organizations as well. So status is a fundamental human need. It's something we seek at work and in life, and it's something that matters at work and in life. I mean, I have three kids, and one of the reasons I often lack influence with all of them is because they don't respect anything their mother knows or has to say. And so when you don't have the status, but there are certain things, right, where they know that I know better, and they believe and respect my opinion. And on those little domains, they'll listen, but other things, absolutely not. So it is part of every relationship, parent, child, spouse, friends, volunteering, work, absolutely.

ELLA: 05:08

Let's get some definitions on the table. And I'm going to start with two words that I don't know that every woman is comfortable with. Those are power and status. You define power and status. So power is the control over resources. Like to what level you have an exercise control over resources. Resources are money. Resources are time. Resources are resources. Okay. So I don't know anyone who doesn't want to optimize their power over the resources that are germane to them. Then status, you say, is how others see you. And I think a lot of women don't think in terms of power and status, and I think you're here to change that. But let me also throw some synonyms on the table that might be more relatable to those who feel a little bit itchy. How others see you includes how respected are you? How admired are you? How valued are you? I don't know anyone who wants to be valued less in any arena that they operate in. How do you explain the concepts of power and status to women?

ALISON: 06:17

You've defined them perfectly as how I think about them. The words at the end of the day are not important. The experiences are very important. So controlling resources, being able to have autonomy over your own life, and to be able to make decisions and even to make decisions for other people. So hosting a podcast is a resource. If you hold the resource, you get to have some say in when we do it, what we talk about, who I want to talk to, who I don't. That's a form of power. So all the resources we control are our power and they don't just benefit us. So it definitely the word can make people uncomfortable. Even the idea of controlling resources might make people uncomfortable, but resources can be used not just to benefit the self, but to benefit other people. And, and, you know, to be able to say, okay, well, if I have the power to hire and fire people, well, what do I want to do with that power? I be, it might be able to use it to hire people who are returning to the workforce after an extended absence to care for somebody or to be a parent or something like that. I can use my power to create the world that I want to see. So it has value beyond the self. And then you're right. Status is the term that psychologists use to talk about respect, value, admiration. While the word status might conjure up ideas of like a handbag or a car or a status symbol, That's not the only meaning of the word, this idea of being respected and valued. And again, if people want to call it respect and value rather than status, perfectly fine, but they need to manage it because it also is really critical to our quality of life. When you feel like someone doesn't listen to you, doesn't respect you, doesn't appreciate you, it's a terrible feeling. You come home from your day and you're depleted and you complain about it and you try not to stay in those environments any longer than you have to. That's what they are, and they're both critical to our quality of life for all human beings, not just women. They are things we all seek, and life is better with them than without them.

ELLA: 08:06

Yes, just to be clear, you have been specific about writing it for women and you address this and your why. But this is a book for everyone. And the next person that's reading my copy is my husband. And I've already bought multiple copies for other people in my life. So I understand target marketing. I understand niches. I'm here to say that your work is universally applicable. You say that resources follow respect. I think that is a critical point. Please elaborate on resources following respect and why we need to understand that.

ALISON: 08:42

Excellent. Thanks for asking. Power status, two important things. We have spent a lot more time, in the case of women, trying to help them understand and get more power than we have trying to help them understand and get more status. And the two most common forms of power that get attention are pay and representation career ranks, like promotions. Those are two important things in a work context that are forms of power. Outside of power, we primarily talk about money or wealth. Outside of work, we primarily talk about money or wealth. But we spend a lot of time trying to help move the needle to get women on par with men in those two areas. We have not done a particularly good job if you look at the metrics. Why haven't we done a good job? Because, as you just said, resources follow respect. And what that means is, when we get resources, it's generally because someone has given them to us. So people have to say, OK, you get to be in charge of this, or yes, you can control this budget, or you get to make this decision without approval. Power can be taken and stolen, but mostly it's given voluntarily from other people, even if they elect you to be the president of your parent association or whatever it is. Someone has said, yes, we're going to put the power in your hands. Well, when someone gets to put the power in your hands, do we ever want to put power in the hands of people? We say, do I respect them? No, not so much. Do I value them? Not really. Do I think that they're really good at what they do? No, I don't. I'm going to put them in charge. No one does that. So the problem is with status, which we're talking about a lot less, which is what I'm trying to change, is if we are not respected, then whether you want power or not, it's super hard to get because no one is interested in giving resources to people they don't respect. So that's what I mean by resources follow respect, is that once we are respected and valued, then when we go out and try to get power, we run for something, we raise our hand and volunteer for something, we ask for a benefit. People are much more likely to go along with it because they say, yes, that's the kind of person I see in control.

ELLA: 10:44

Yeah. And again, we touched on this, but there are just innumerable ways to use your power for good. Again, if anyone's itchy with these terms, I'm not, I'm perfectly comfortable, but I understand that some people might be like power and status sound so shallow. That's not what we're talking about. To me, it's, it's like the way I talk about money. I want money. I want to create. wealth because money to me is freedom. When I have freedom, I can create opportunities for myself and I can create opportunities for other people. That's something that motivates me very much to build as solid a foundation as I can so that I have freedom. When money is tight, the last word, freedom ain't ranking at the top of feelings that you're feeling. It is so restrictive and you feel under such constraint. I would encourage those of us who might be struggling with the concept to really think about this in terms of, wow, if we talk about power as control over resources, What might I do if I had more power? And what you help us see is that power follows status. That's a shorthand way to summarize the thesis. That's right. And so when we talk about increasing our status, we are improving or optimizing, I think might be the best word, optimizing how others see us. And again, we're talking respect. We're talking whether they consider us to be a high value person or not. Tell me something. How do you align the adage, I don't care what other people think, which tends to be rooted in, like if we're talking about it in the best case scenario, it's rooted in confidence and self-assuredness and not seeking external validation. So someone might say, I don't care what other people think of me. And that is a helpful perspective, a helpful worldview. How do you align that adage or that way of thinking with wanting to be a high value person?

ALISON: 12:45

I don't like this advice, I don't care what other people think, because it ends up getting misconstrued. It's always well-intentioned, but when you think about that, when someone says that, like I've said it to my kids, my parents have said it to me, no one ever says, don't worry what other people think about you when you're accepting an award. People only say it in moments of pain. You've experienced a bad outcome and then you get this counsel or you counsel yourself. Don't worry. Turn away from your audience. Your audience is causing you pain. So if you don't pay attention to them, you'll feel less pain. That's a very well-intentioned thing. The problem is I'm a psychologist. That's just not how the world works. We are social beings. We exist in cooperation and conjunction with other people. And so, so much of how they're going to treat us is based on what they think about us. So you can't get a date or get married or get into college or get a job if you can't convince another person of something that you have positive to offer. So we don't have the luxury of ignoring our audiences. Our audience has a great impact, what they think affects how they treat us, how they treat us affects our quality of life. But that doesn't mean that you have to sit in your room and ruminate and cry over what other people think. Yes, people, we don't get to perfectly control how other people see us. That will always be frustrating, but we can influence it. Not perfectly, but we can have a great deal of influence over it if we know some science And we show up with the goal of trying to get our audience to see us as positively as possible because that will have benefits. It'll have benefits for a smoother relationship. It will have benefits for how they treat us and what they're willing to do for us, our ability to influence them, et cetera. So it's always well-intentioned advice, but I often think it's taken for people's ability to say, I'm just doing what I want. And if my audience doesn't like it, too bad. And that is never a mentality that is going to get anyone very far in life. I always say it feels very teenage boy, because I have one of those, and nobody aspires to manage their interactions like a teenage boy. Instead, it's, you know what? I am authentic to who I am. I will not become someone else solely to make another person happy, but I can show a version of who I am strategically that will get me the best results from my audience and that that will be to my advantage. So it's just a subtle shift in the mindset.

ELLA: 15:03

That's it. being intentional and being authentic are not opposing ideas. So you can be authentically who you are and rooted in your own values and rooted in your worldview and your experiences while still being intentional about how you show up in the world. Is that a fair assessment?

ALISON: 15:22

100%. So I'll give you a specific example. Similarity attraction. We like people who are like us, all right? Anytime you have a similarity between people, whether it's, and it can be trivial, right? You know, we grew up in the same hometown. I have three kids, you have three kids. Like, we both like to ride the Peloton bike. Whatever it is, anytime you have that moment of shared connection with a person, even over something really small. There's this instant, I like you. I trust you. You're a good person. I'm much more willing to do things for you. And that is really to our advantage because when people like us, trust us, they're going to be more influenced by us. They're going to give us more things. They're going to open doors for us. So that can be an example of where strategy meets authenticity. When I see a genuine similarity between me and another person, I can take the time to comment on it. Oh my gosh, that's true for me as well. And then you have this very natural back and forth conversation. You're authentically, you're not making up a similarity that you don't have. You're just knowing that when I bring that similarity into the conversation and we're both aware of it, I will build the relationship. That's the strategic piece. So there's many examples of that where we can take something in science and use it with intention, but never to the point of becoming something that we're not or pretending to be anything other than we want to be. There's no need for that. It doesn't work anyway. You know, you don't have to go that route.

ELLA: 16:42

Yeah, and I've never articulated this before, Allison, so that means that what I'm about to say could be super interesting. Who knows what could happen. But when I went through a divorce, and I talked about this ages ago on the air, when I went through a divorce many, many, many years ago, that experience was so, was such a defining experience as you might expect it to be. It taught me to stop caring how other people viewed my life choices. taught me to not worry about what other people were thinking in that context. I had to release any idea that I could control how they thought about me and how they thought about that. And it was a really important life lesson, letting go of seeking that type of external validation. So put a pin in that because that is something I think is super useful and it for me was a gift. It was a real gift to learn that lesson quite young. That is not the same thing. What we are talking about is we are talking about showing up in the world intentionally, caring what impact we have on others, Carrying how we are perceived to the extent that we can influence it and then letting the rest go. You can't always, you can't control everything. And showing up with intention. To me, these are not conflicting ideas in the slightest. And I like how you explain it because you essentially say to us, this is my understanding, please correct me after all, you wrote it. You essentially are saying that likable badasses are women who have found effective, authentic strategies to shape how people see them. I don't consider these things to be conflicting ideas.

ALISON: 18:19

I see them as completely consistent, which is to say, if I find out that some of the ways that people see me are not the ways I hope for, I can live a happy life and I can move past it. But I can also think strategically about how do I want to show up and how it matters. So I mean, even in the context, can we go back to the divorce as an example? Please. You could also think about, well, what do I care about? I do want people to still want to be in a relationship with me, to still call me to hang out, for example. And I might say, hmm, how I show up might affect their willingness to do that. So if I show up and every time I talk to them, I go into a 45 minute monologue about how terrible my ex is. It might not be surprising that people stop calling you to go out for dinner because they think you have become a bad conversation partner. And as much as I empathize with what you're going through, I want a fun conversation partner. So you might say, Hmm, I'm going to be strategic and authentic. And what I can do is show up with an equally authentic version of myself, which is the version that is going to talk about what was happening with me at work, the new podcast I'm creating, the three cool books I just read. And so you might do that with intention to say, they can have any opinion about they want about my divorce, but I still want this person to engage with me in a particular way. And therefore I'm going to be strategic about what I'm doing. At any given moment, there are multiple authentic versions of me. which is one of them is completely annoyed about some divorce thing I had to do today, and the other is completely fascinated by something I just read, and another is really, really hungry and would like to talk about what we're going to have for dinner. And those are all different versions, and they're equally true. And that's where I think the strategy comes in, is at any given moment, what version am I bringing to the world so that I can get what I want out of this relationship?

ELLA: 19:56

What an interesting exercise it would be to actually sit down and consider, what do I not care about third party opinions? I'm getting the grammar wrong, but about what do I not care? about third party opinions because I'm putting my body in there. I'm putting my physical appearance in there. I'm putting my, you know, my eating choices in there and my personal business. And I think it's almost useful to determine where am I not seeking validation from others? I just think as a thought exercise, that's got some merit to it. But you are chock full of other tips for us. And I want to just throw some on the table, Allison, so people can walk away and immediately start dialing up their likable badass. Is that cool? Let's do it. You say, in a room, speak first, speak fast.

ALISON: 20:49

Tell me about that. Okay, so I'm going to give you these strategies, but I'm always going to give the disclaimer that if I give you one and someone's listening like I'm never doing that, that's fine because it's about acting with intention and picking a behavior that works. Speak first, speak fast. What that comes from is this idea that we give people status when we see them as very capable. We see them as competent, organized, decisive, persistent. So we look at what they're doing and we infer, okay, how competent, persistent, organized are you likely to be? And so when we see a person that is Speaking quickly, they're getting a lot of words in, they're getting a lot of airtime. We conclude that the person is very competent. And so we are drawing inferences based on speed of speech, entering a conversation quickly, how quickly you answer a question. There's something called speech latency. How long is the delay? If the delay is really short, it's seen as a mark of competence and confidence. I didn't need to sit back and think about it. So that can be really frustrating for people who are like deep thinkers and processors, might be more introverted. They say, I don't do that. I'm slow to speak. I don't have a fast pace. Am I doomed? Absolutely not. But that's why there is that finding that can be really annoying that the person who jumps into the conversation first tends to dominate it and just speak really rapidly and a lot is at the end seen as more influential because the audience's brain has associated that with competence. Now, if that works for you, maybe you lean into it because you think, I do that anyway. And so now I can do it with intention and know that it's going to capture my audience's non-conscious brain. But if it's not you, that's equally fine. You don't need to go that route. But what you do want to start thinking about is, what are the ways that I can show up to my audience and signal to them, I'm really capable. I know what I'm doing. Particularly if I have a behavior that's working against me. And just to give an example on the other dimension, Smiling. Smiling connotes warmth and friendliness. If someone smiles, we think they like us, we like them. Great. If you're a smiler, you might be able to signal your likability that way. But I'm not a good smiler. I have legit documented resting bitch face. And so for years, when I was a kid, like since I was a kid, strangers would be like, are you OK? And I would be legitimately confused. Why would you ask me if I'm OK? Of course I'm OK. And then only when that term got coined did it finally hit me why everyone for decades had asked me. It's because I have such a miserable, natural, resting face that people thought something was wrong. I am not a good smiler. No one is going to look at my face and think, that's a warm and friendly person. OK, fine, but I've got to do something else because I am a warm and friendly person. So I have to find my other ways that I can show that. And I have lots of ways to do it, right, with compliments, with humor, with remembering things about people and highlighting the similarities and those kind of things. Whatever signals you give off, it's really good to become aware of them. And then if you have some that feel very natural that are not very strategic, that's okay. Leave them, but think about a different way to showcase those two dimensions. Yes, I'm very caring and yes, I'm very capable.

ELLA: 24:01

Yeah, you're not talking about having surgery to replace your personality. That's not what we're talking about here. And just like with anything, you can share 20 tools and then we can pick up the six that work for us. So I like that you're reminding people to be who they are, but you can be that person with more forethought, with more intention. And I was about to ask you about smiling and that's funny. You've just stopped worrying about picking that tool up, right? Like you're just like, that's not how I'm going to show warmth. For me, there are rooms in which I train myself to smile less because I will nod and smile. You'll see me doing it throughout this interview. I will nod and smile to show my enthusiastic consent, to show that I'm engaged. And in some rooms in business, That's not helpful, especially if you're in a negotiation or if you're talking about something where you want to maintain a little bit of the upper hand. Nodding and smiling actually lowers my, it has the potential to lower my status in certain corporate environments, if you will. I find the contrast interesting, but also the point here again is to be aware and to be intentional. By the way, I think I'm looking at your resting face right now and you look perfectly pleasant to me. Okay. You mentioned humor. I overuse humor. I overuse humor. It's a character flaw, but I find it to be a very powerful way to establish rapport in large rooms very quickly. I learned from you and the research that you've done that humor is a lever and that we can rely on it to establish credible warmth. We can become a likable badass through the humor lever. What does the research say?

ALISON: 25:48

Before we get to the research, can we explore why you say you think you overuse humor?

ELLA: 25:53

I've just learned, you know, usually it's self-effacing humor and then that can be a double-edged sword. Do you want to speak to that?

ALISON: 25:59

Yeah, so that is true. Okay, so here's the science of why humor works. Think about the two things we're trying to do, likable and badass. Humor, it's affiliative, it's cohesive, it's fun. So you get, when people make you laugh, you like them. And then the badass, the capable piece, Humor is a sign of intelligence because it's hard to be funny and make a joke land well. And so when people can do it, we see them as smarter. We call it wit, right? Wit is tied with this notion of intelligence. That's why humor as a behavior is a good status building behavior. And we see things that are related to status. So for example, men use humor more than women, people who feel like they have status crack more jokes than people who don't. So there's this relationship that goes both ways between humor and status. So if you feel like, it sounds like we both do, that we are hilarious, then leaning into your humor is really good and you can understand why it works. Now, there's a couple elements. First, your jokes need to land well. So as soon as they go on to like maybe too edgy or inappropriate or not funny, anything like that, then you lose its benefit because it can be considered not warm. Now it's rude. And if it doesn't land well, then it's not smart. The self-deprecating one. Where do you end up when you use self-deprecating humor? You end up in the likable, but not badass. The more submissive, not as competent. Because what we see from the science is you're the ultimate authority on yourself. When people put themselves down, when they say they're not attractive, audiences judge them as less attractive. When they say they're not smart, audiences judge them as less smart. So the second you knock yourself down, The audience believes you, and you can see that in how people respond. I, like you, have used self-deprecating humor as a tool often and it's one of the things that I continue to work on still. I actually feel like I got a lot more aware of it through the process of writing this book because I had editors and the editors, they didn't know me. And so when I turned in the first full draft of this book, the biggest theme that came out of the editor's comments was, oh my goodness, you cannot cut yourself down like this. Like you are the author, you are the expert, including They rejected my dedication. Who gets edits on the dedication page? That should be the one page where you get to say whatever you want. They concluded my dedication was too self-deprecating and therefore could not be used. And so now I have this very generic one to my family because I didn't know what to say that wouldn't cut myself down. I was still getting this feedback of people want to read a book from an expert. And two, these people don't know you. So you don't have the luxury that you have when you're deprecating yourself to your high school friends and they can judge and they would still say, no, no, no, we know you're really competent. These people don't. That one is a challenge. We should both stop doing it. It is hard. Everything's a process. Nothing happens overnight. I'm on a mission to cut myself down less.

ELLA: 28:55

Alison, you are exactly right because we teach people how to perceive us. We teach people how to think about us. So I am taking that feedback very much on board. One more concept that you shared that I just believe in wholeheartedly, and I've seen the impact in my own life is offering help. You call it offering help. People who are seeking to optimize their status, improve their status or establish status in new environments. Why do they offer to help?

ALISON: 29:23

The best way to build your status is to use your unique talents and contributions to make someone else's life better. And I'm going to unpack that because it means that particularly for women, we need to be thoughtful in the kind of help we give. There's no more helpful person than a woman. and who wants to solve everything and take on everyone's problems and make them all better. However, we also know from a lot of science that women get burned out by the world's never-ending requests to have women step in and help. We see this in the workplace. There's a great book, if you haven't already come across it, called The No Club, Putting a Stop to Women's Dead-End Work, about how the office housework and what they call non-promotable work disproportionately falls to women. So there's a fine line between helping strategically and burning yourself out with no purpose in your health. So when I say using your unique talents and contributions to make someone else's life better, the piece we need to focus on is that first one, using our unique talents and contributions. So what we have to look for in relationships where we want to build our status is hitting both. And there's lots of simple ways we can do this and slightly more involved ways. So here's an example of a very quick way. Make an introduction. I know that people like me look for podcasts, but people who host podcasts look for guests. So I might be able to say, would you like me to introduce you to some other people I know who have written great books or doing great work? You may not know them yet, but they might be an amazing guest for you. When I do that, I'm helping you because I don't get anything out of it. I'm helping you, but I'm also doing something that distinguishes me as unique, which is I have a network and my network is now a piece of value that I'm sharing with you. So an introduction doesn't take more than three minutes to type it out in an email, but it's different than simply buying somebody's coffee or helping them pick up something that they dropped on the street or baking them brownies. So that's a very low effort example in intro, but like a slightly but not much higher effort example is take something you really like and think about how you could use it to benefit others. What do you have that you do well that is unique to you? And again, you don't have to be like the person, you just have to be better than them. And what can you offer of service? And as soon as you start doing that, then you can take things that are very authentic to you and turn them into status building behaviors by sharing them with other people. So that's what I mean about being unique talents and contributions to make other people's lives better.

ELLA: 31:46

Yeah. Imagine if we developed the ability to say no to the low value tasks and to the non-promotable tasks, as you say. Imagine if we developed much more of a muscle to say no to those. You'd have so much more capacity to do the things that serve you. You talked about the usefulness of introductions. I just, I gotta underscore that because it's so easy and it creates such ripples in the pond, especially when you're sort of become known for it. If I talk to you, I immediately want to introduce you to two other people, like right off the bat. That's a gift that keeps on giving. What I have found in my experience, Allison, is that even when we work that muscle and we become promoters and connectors of other people, and we use our gifts to help other people instead of focusing on the low value task, we still struggle with one thing. I think it's fair to say that we consistently struggle with self-promotion. And when I say self-promotion, I don't necessarily mean selfies posted on social media. I mean the ability to raise our own name in a room of opportunity, the ability to share with people what we're good at, the ability to share our wins so that we can build our own credibility in the arenas that we operate in. Why do we struggle so much with self-promotion, Allison? What does your work say?

ALISON: 33:10

Because if you go back to these two dimensions, we care about how we show up on our warmth and we care about how we show up as capable. Self-promotion generally is designed to give us a boost in capability. I tell you about a great thing I've done. But if it's bragging, it's seen as immodest, it's at the expense of the warmth. So generally our reluctance is we cannot find a way that we can put this information out there without worrying that our audience will see us. as immodest, they will like us less. And that desire to preserve the likability is often what holds us back. To this, we will say two things. One is that hiding your successes does not make you as likable as you think. And the research on this, when I read it, I thought, oh my God, it makes so much sense.

ELLA: 33:50

Say that again for the people in the back.

ALISON: 33:54

Hiding your successes does not improve your likability the way you think. Because the research on this is this, okay, you and I are together, we're talking, we know each other, and I have something good news to share, but I don't share it because I don't want it to be seen as bragging, right? And so I hold it back. But the world is efficient. The grapevine is efficient. So eventually you're going to hear about my life from someone else, somewhere else on social, whatever it is. Now, when you hear that something good happened to me and I didn't tell you, does anyone then think, Alison is so modest for not telling me that? No, that's not what anyone thinks. They think one of two things, neither is good for you. One is, oh, I guess we're not really close because she didn't think that that was something she would want to tell me. So now I feel like our relationship is less good. That's bad for you. And the other is, did she think that I'm so pathetic or envious that I could not be happy with her? Like, what does she must think of me? That's a terrible judgment. Well, I don't like her either. So that's what the research shows, that when we actually hide things, we do not get credit for likability. So it's actually the worst possible outcome. And because we're solely doing it to be liked, and then we're not even liked. So the way to think about it is to think about natural opportunities to get it into conversation that don't involve walking up to a person who's minding their own business, tapping them on the shoulder, and telling them great things about you. That's not what it involves, right? But I think that's what people think they have to do to self-promote. Yeah, screaming from the rooftops, right, how great we are. Yeah, you have to do that. But here's an example. Many people in a work context do work that other people want to be updated on. OK, well, send a periodic update email that lists the great accomplishments of things that have happened since the last update email. Here's all the great progress we've made. And then in that email, also extend thanks to some other people, who you should also CC, who played a great part in these successes. So you say, we've done a great job, and here's who we got to thank for that. That is called dual promotion, or I call it brag and thank, which is I'm telling you something good about me, and I'm also telling you something good about other people. When we self-promote that way, the research shows you get the boost in competence because you talked about yourself, but you also get the boost in warmth because you are spotlighting other people. So that is a specific way that you could use a tool that allows you to self-promote without it being seen as me, me, me. And then another one to just to wait for your moments. Like I always say, like Hamilton, I'm not throwing away my shot. It's perfectly fine to sit quietly and wait for a door to open for you to tell your story as long as you're willing to walk through it when it does. And one of the ways that doors open is when people ask us, How's it going? What's new? How you doing? What's up? Okay. We get asked those questions multiple times a day. Yes, are they generally just greetings, forms of greetings? Yes. But they do often lead to conversations if you can say something in response that is socially appropriate, but also causes the person to stop. and have some curiosity and have a conversation with you. So when you say something like, I'm fine, I'm good, I'm busy, those are not responses that prompt curiosity. You're like, okay, and you just keep walking. A couple of weeks ago, I'll give you an example. A guy that I consider a friend, but we have not only probably met in person three times and I have not known him all that long. He came to an event I was hosting for my book. He came in and I very sincerely said, hey, like, how was your day? And without missing a beat, he said, Alison, I had the best day today. Now, all human beings, not just me, would get super curious and then would say the exact same thing I said. What happened? Tell me about your good day. And then with total joy, in just two or three minutes, he told me about the fact that he landed a new client and that he was really excited about this new client's work and this big vision the new client had and what he was starting. And he was able to basically tell me, one, I landed business today. I'm successful at what I do. But also, I'm really excited about this client because this client is really working to change the world. And so like with this client, I am going to be able to like support him as he does all this good in the world. So it also came across as really caring. Again, it was only two or three minutes, but because I had asked him why his day was good, he was simply responding to my direct question rather than telling me. If he had walked in and said, guess what, Allison? I got a new client today. He's my friend. I still would have been happy for him. But the way that this came out was so much more natural and authentic of people asking questions, celebrating other people. So this is what I mean by you can wait for your moment. But when someone gives you an in, you also have to be willing to take it and then let out a little bit of your story. And as they ask you questions, then you get to let out a little bit more.

ELLA: 38:34

Yeah, because you can be authentic and intentional at the same time. That's right. In my opinion, one of the greatest gifts that women can do for one another in, well, hell, in a professional or a social environment is tee up their friend, tee up their peer to create an opportunity to share a win. And I say, or share a brag, but I mean it with a small B. I mean that quite Tongue in cheek. So that's something that my creative partner and I do for each other all the time is I'll say, well, you know, Tilly's been working on this project, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I shut up and it's very clear that the ball is teed up for Tilly to now take that and to run with it. And my husband does that for me all the time in social environments. It's so empowering and so lovely to be a part of these relationships where you can tee up the ball for someone else. So I would encourage women in a professional environment. I think one of the best things that we can do for each other is put that ball on the tee for other women in these environments. Sorry?

ALISON: 39:37

I didn't want to talk over you, but I got so excited by that, I just couldn't even hold the words in. It's such a good idea, and I wish if we had had this conversation before the book, that would have been in the book with your name on it as that idea. It'll be in the next book. But 100% because you can talk somebody up, but the idea of teeing somebody up is a slightly different thing, which is allow them to talk about it, but you intro it. And therefore, they then have to, out of politeness, be like, well, since Ella mentioned it, like, here you go. The tee up. I love it. Oh, my God. I'm unapologetically stealing it and sharing it with the world. Book two. 100%.

ELLA: 40:11

I just have to direct people to book one because, Allison, you say things, I'm just going to throw some of these out, and I'm sorry that I'm giving away some of your intel, but you say things like, when you create online documents at work, include your name in the file name so that every time that thing gets circulated, your name's in the file name. Like, duh. I never thought about being intentional about something like that. What a brilliant small tip that is. You have so many tips like that throughout the book. And what I found really interesting is it's backed by research. And then you explain some of that research and some of the experiments that take place. Anyway, I just found this in case you can't tell. I found this an incredibly useful book, something that I will, and I mean it, treat like a manual going forward. And I just want a copy for every single woman I know.

ALISON: 41:00

Amazing. Well, I want a copy for every single woman you know, too. Thank you so much. I mean, it's so gratifying to hear that. And it's really what I hoped when I put it out into the world, because I care deeply about making women feel like they can control the controllables, right? There's lots of things in life people don't control, but there are lots of things we do. And with science and some intention, then we can start to feel like we have a lot of choices of how we want to show up and influence our environment.

ELLA: 41:24

Yeah, Alison, the world needs more likable badasses. Thank you so much.

ALISON: 41:29

You're amazing. Anytime. Thank you.

ELLA: 41:32

Okay, if you enjoyed today's show, please share it with someone you care about. And be sure to check out our new YouTube channel and head to onairella.com for today's show notes. You can also learn about how to work with me there, onairella.com. And I would love to hear from you. So if you DM me on Instagram, I promise I will reply. P.S. All the links you need for us to connect are right here in your podcast app in the description for today's episode. Check them out. Thanks for listening, and thanks for inspiring me. You are, quite simply, awesome.