‘The art of building your own status with your audience is to convey to as many people as you can, as often as you can, hey, I really care about people. And I’m also really capable.’
Status is a funny thing. We want it, but because it’s what other people think of us, we assume we can’t control it. And we’re pretty sure that we shouldn’t be caring so much what other people think of us, anyway.
But Alison Fragale, organizational psychologist, professor and author of Likeable Badass, is clear not only that status is a fundamental human need, but that you can influence it, once you understand how it works.
She’s also clear-eyed about the realities of writing a successful book: the importance of a well-thought-through proposal, the ruthlessness required to cut material that you as the author love but that doesn’t serve the reader, and the unavoidable truth that nobody will ever sell more of your book than you will.
A masterclass in making ideas accessible, embedding a book in a business, and sustaining the book promo for the long term.
Alison’s site: https://alisonfragale.com/
The Upper Hand on Substack: https://alisonfragale.substack.com/
Alison (Fragale) on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisonfragale/
Alison (Jones) on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-alison-jones/
The 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge: www.proposalchallenge.com
Link for submitting your clip for Episode 500: https://bit.ly/45RfpdY
Alison Jones: I’m here today with Alison Fragale, who is a professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and whose scholarship has been published in the most prestigious academic journals in her field, and also in prominent media outlets like Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.
She’s also a sought-after keynote speaker, and she’s the author of, I love this title so much, Likeable Badass. You’ve got to say it like that, got to put on a slight American accent, How women get the success they deserve.
So first of all, welcome to the show, Alison. It’s great to have you here.
Alison Fragale: Great to be here.
Alison Jones: Tell us about the title. Like, where did that come from?
Alison Fragale: It’s, I did it because it’s catchy, because, as you know with books, 80% I think, of the success of a book is having a title that people actually get curious about and they want to pick up. But I also, as you said, am an academic, and so it’s not just a catchy title, it’s a catchy reference to an underlying scientific phenomenon.
So the book itself is about the science of status, which is how much we are respected and highly regarded by other people, and I talk about why that matters so much to our life satisfaction and how we can influence it. And the “Likable Badass” title is a reference to how those judgments get made. In short, when we believe that people really care about other people, and we believe that they’re very capable and good at what they do, those are the two ingredients that go into our calculation of, “I respect this person,” right? This is somebody who is giving and they’re also really talented.
And “Likable Badass” is my shorthand for it. It’s, as an academic, you often have to find very just more interesting ways to describe what you do to people who care, but they’re not academics. And so I joke that the actual name for those dimensions is in psychology referred to as the interpersonal circumplex of person perception, which would be the world’s worst title for a book.
So it became “Likable Badass” through my attempts to explain that to lots of people who didn’t do what I do.
Alison Jones: And I do want to talk about that interplay between the academic and the accessible, because I think it’s a really important point about how you write, and I’m really interested in the sort of mechanics behind that. But for people who haven’t yet read the book, and I can’t imagine there are very many of them, honestly, it’s been everywhere.
But for people who haven’t read the book, just tell us a little bit more about status, and you make the really interesting point that it’s not something you can… So, you can have confidence, but status is all about how other people see you.
So just talk to us a little bit more about that and why it matters so much, especially for women.
Alison Fragale: It is a what we call a fundamental human motive. It drives all human beings. There are things that we want. One of the things we want is friends. We want affiliation, relationships, right? And we talked a lot, particularly coming out of the pandemic, about how the lack of affiliation is detrimental to our physical health, our mental health.
Status is the same way. It is also a fundamental need, and when we lack it, it’s detrimental to our physical health and mental health. And so what it is, again, is it’s another person’s judgment of how much they value and respect you. And that is one of the things that makes status feel really tricky compared to other things, because one, we’re often told we shouldn’t be caring about what other people think about us, and two, even if we do care, we certainly know we can’t perfectly control it. I don’t get to decide what you think. You do.
And so that makes this really fundamental need feel like something that’s really frustrating and out of reach for people, and particularly for women. So why I chose to write the book for women, even though status is not a concept that only applies to women, it applies to everyone.
Why I chose it was because we do know that certain ascribed characteristics, certain things that we don’t control, that we carry around with us, affect how much people respect us. Gender is one of those things. And so to get that respect is a harder task for women than men, so that’s why I made that choice.
But what I’m trying to do in the book is to be very evidence-based and also extremely practical about what it is, like what, where respect comes from. And once you understand that it comes from people judging you on two dimensions, then it all of a sudden starts to feel like something you could influence because now you’re saying, “Okay how do I communicate to them that I have those two dimensions that they really care about?”
And that’s really the art of building your own status with your audience is to convey to as many people as you can, as often as you can, “Hey, I really care about people, and I’m also really capable. I’m good at stuff.” And that’s what I walk people through, is once you understand the overall science of it, then how do you show up authentically day to day without chasing validation or putting 50 things on your to-do list that you don’t have time for?
How do you show up in authentic ways that help you send more signals to a bigger audience that those two things are true about you? because they are. So that’s what I help people, I shine a spotlight on it, because even though it’s a fundamental motive, and we all know the word, we don’t spend nearly as much time talking about it yet as we did about things like power or affiliation and friendship.
So my goal was to say, “Look, there’s something else out there that’s just as important that we haven’t been discussing.”
Alison Jones: And you do it really pragmatically, which I think is really interesting because I’m sure some of your readers have gone through the same trajectory as me, where that’s “This is ridiculous that we have to work so hard to establish our…” And do you know, it just is a thing, and we might as well– We can wring our hands over it all we like, it is what it is.
And, while we wait for society and people to catch up, we can do an awful lot of really practical things around that. One of the things that really struck me was, and made me feel quite, a little bit sick, was the idea of asking people, like asking people to advocate for you with people where they have status, borrowing their status and stuff.
It’s actually, you’ve got to be quite bold. I suppose you’ve got to be a bit badass. The clue was in the title, wasn’t it?
Alison Fragale: Here’s the thing. You don’t have to do anything, but everybody should do something. And so that is a technique. I come from over 20 years of teaching negotiation and influence, and one of the fundamental truths is if you don’t ask, you generally do not get. So if you want something, you’re going to be much more successful if you ask for it.
And what you ask for doesn’t have to just be a car, a house, or a salary. It can be anything you want. And so sometimes what we want is for someone to help build our status. And if we ask them specifically to do that, perhaps by making an introduction or vouching for us or telling everybody how capable or caring we are, we’ll get more of that.
But that’s not the only way. And yes, as you’ve read the book, I’m a really big believer in everything related to leadership or just skill development in general, is you have to practice. Whatever you’re good at today, you’re better at because you’ve done it more times than when you started.
And so, that’s true with status building and helping people figure out, okay, if you’re terrified of doing that and it makes you queasy maybe that’s not your first move. Do something else, and there is always something else you can do, but maybe eventually you could work to that. And now that I’ve written the book, one fun part about writing books is you get notes from readers, that you do not know, who only have encountered you through the book.
And when people try that particular technique of, “Look, I just asked somebody to go talk about me and it worked.” And they’ll send me these, cute little text messages of them texting their boss, asking their boss to talk them up, and their boss saying, “I did it.” And then it builds your confidence.
You’re like, “Oh my God, that went so much better than I thought it would. I’ll try that again.”
Alison Jones: Yes. And we overthink ourselves so often, don’t we? I really loved actually, talking about that kind of, there’s so many things you can do. You can’t do everything, but you can always do something. And I liked your little analogy about the golf swing, that you can’t have the 20 sort of things in your head when you’re trying to improve your golf swing.
You’ve got to focus on one and embed that in your muscle memory, and then you can think about something else. I found, I felt my heart rate going down a little bit when I read that.
Alison Fragale: 100%. Absolutely. Not all the things, just one thing
Alison Jones: Just one thing. Brilliant.
And now that it is out in the world and you’re getting all these messages from people going, “Ah, it works. It’s amazing,” what’s your kind of favourite bit? And I was reading your blog as well, and that whole kind of, oh my goodness, it’s exhausting publishing a book.
And I really, it’s not just the writing, is it? It just goes on and on, the whole promotion thing. What’s your sort of least favourite bit of the whole book writing experience?
Alison Fragale: Oh, that’s a good question. My least favourite bit. So it’s funny. I like the variety of it. I generally liked the process. And the least favourite bit often feels like the part you’re in at the moment, and then you romanticize the parts that you’re not in. So when I was writing the book I’m like, “This feels really hard. When I, when the book is out there and I’m just talking about it, that’ll feel so fun.”
And then you’re marketing, the book is done, and you’re like, “Writing it wasn’t so bad, but this marketing feels really hard.” And then you’re like, “Eh, marketing wasn’t that bad, but talking about it now for years oh, that feels hard”.
So I think whatever stage I’m in feels challenging, and I find myself nostalgic for the other stages, and I think it’s a…
Alison Jones: …like parenting really, isn’t it? A little bit like parenting. Yes.
Alison Fragale: 100%, right? My agent is one of the wisest people I’ve ever met, and what she said to me I put this in the acknowledgments, is, “Books are babies with a very long…
Alison Jones: …long gestation…
Alison Fragale: …and I’m like, it’s the analogy to parenting is so apt, so that’s how I feel about it. Whatever stage I’m in is the one that feels hard.
Alison Jones: And let’s come back to the writing piece because, you obviously enjoy writing and oh, it’s hard work, isn’t it? And how does it feel different when you’re writing a book like this, which really is designed to be accessible, it’s designed to be used in the office tomorrow. How is that different as a process to writing a research paper, say?
Alison Fragale: Yes, every academic that I’ve talked to who’s written a book has said that the process of writing a book feels very vulnerable compared to in academic articles, because in academic articles, there’s a formula to them. And although you have some leeway, it’s really pretty standard as to what you have to write about, and you’re very limited to talk about things just based on your data.
And so you can’t go very far from that. And here in book writing, you have a lot more opportunities to tell personal stories, to talk about data, but to step further afield from what that might mean and how you would practice, to be very practical. We are not really rewarded for telling people how to actually use what we currently know to do things better. We’re really only rewarded for telling them things they didn’t already know.
And I think, a couple things is knowing how much science, as an academic in particular, is interesting to your audience is really important, and to recognize that your audience is not your colleagues. So many people think about their prototypical reader when they’re writing as their colleagues, and I’m like, “First of all, your colleagues are never going to read your book, and by the way, there’s only eight of them.”
So you can’t be successful writing a book to your small academic community. You’re writing to people who are curious and educated and interested, but they don’t know what you know, and that I think is a mistake that I see a lot of people make and something that was helpful to me. I always thought about the fact that I was writing to my students, and I would think, “My students are smart people, but they don’t want their PhD in organizational psychology. They just want to know some things that are going to help them get through the day better.”
And I found that my role, not as a writer was the most helpful thing, it was actually my role as a teacher, because had to think what level of information would hold their interest in class, not what level of information would hold the interest of a reader of an academic paper. And I think that was the main distinction in my head of who I was writing for that changed the process, but also made it, I think, more effective for me that I was able to do that.
Alison Jones: And probably more enjoyable to write as well, that sense that you are writing for somebody who can use this tomorrow. That it’s really immediate in a way that I think often when you’re doing academic writing it’s a slightly hunched defensive posture, isn’t it? It’s a very different state of mind.
Alison Fragale: For sure. And, as I was writing, the whole idea about how much science to put in, one interesting thing about the editing process is very late in the game, my editor, somewhat surprisingly, decided to cut, wanted to cut, the entire first chapter of the book, which was the most science-heavy chapter.
And I was like, how can you– It’s not like cutting off the end, which seems like it would be easier. I’m like, you can’t just cut off the beginning and start at chapter two. How am I going to deal with this? But I did feel really strongly that writing is a collaborative act, even if your name is the only one on the cover, and you really have to take the feedback.
And so I thought, I have to… I don’t exactly know what she’s seeing, but I trust she’s seeing something that I can’t see. So I’m going to do this, but I’m not just going to cut out the whole chapter. I’m going to decide what parts I cannot live without. So I literally took the chapter, I printed it out, and I took scissors, and I cut out the paragraphs that I could not live without. And then I was like, where can these go?
And so then I rehomed them in different spots of the book. So some of them are in the preface, some of them are in later chapters. But here’s the thing, I was really worried about that because most of what was on the cutting room floor was the science. And I was going to think, did this book have enough scientific heft for people to say, “I believe you and this works”?
And so one of the very validating things that happened when readers came to me is they were like, “Oh my gosh, I love how you give us the science.” And I thought, you should have seen what’s on the floor.
Alison Jones: So much more science.
Alison Fragale: What I realized was they didn’t need to know all of that. They didn’t.
My editor was right. They had enough in what I had given them, and what they really needed was, what am I going to do with that?
And so, that balance of how much does the reader find interesting relative to what you think. And my, again, my agent also told me, which I thought was great advice, she always said, “Everything in service to the reader. If the reader doesn’t know, need to know a sentence, it doesn’t go in the book.” And that was also really helpful for thinking about, okay I think this is true and I think it’s cool, but the fact that it’s true and cool is not actually a sufficient reason for it to be in the book. It’s does it serve the reader?
Alison Jones: Yes. There’s a humility involved in that process, isn’t there? It’s I’m not actually doing this to make myself look clever. I’m doing it to help people. And actually, it is very substantial. I think the science and the, your endnotes are really comprehensive and detailed and, you, you can tell that it’s got that academic rigour behind it, but it doesn’t whack you in the face with it, and it’s very readable.
I, I enjoyed it hugely. I always ask my guests, Alison, for their best tip. So if somebody’s at the start line of this whole business, if they’re writing their, particularly their first book, what do they need to know?
Alison Fragale: I would say spend some time writing a really good proposal. The– you can write a book in different ways. The process that I used was that I sold my book on proposal, so I actually had to put a lot of effort into that. And a lot of times that feels like like, I just want to get to writing the book, and what my, agent, again, she’s brilliant, she said to me was, “If you do this well, it will serve as a really helpful guide for you whatever the chapter you have to write. And essentially what you’re going to do is when you go to write a chapter, you’re going to pull out the proposal and say, ‘What did I say I was going to say?’ And then you’re going to say that thing.”
And because I had a proposal that we had spent a lot of time on, probably nine months or so on it, that it did become a guide for me. And if you read my proposal and you read the book, you would recognize that they are referencing the same thing. It’s not identical.
There were some changes, but I used that proposal as a guide, and it made it feel like nine smaller projects rather than a whole book. When I see people who have gone through an editing process and they’ve had to rip the entire thing apart and completely start over, I think it’s always people who went from an idea to starting to write chapter one without really thinking about it.
So I really recommended that piece of it. And then I think the other thing that, a good piece of advice I got from a fellow author was, “Nobody will ever sell more of your book than you will.” And you have to be really the marketing engine behind it. You do this work and, but you realize, like wherever you buy your books, whether it’s in a local bookstore or whether you go to an Amazon or something like that, you’re inundated with more choices than you can ever process, right?
The way that people find books is that they find them through word of mouth and network and what they see. And where does all of that originate? It originates, it has to originate with the author. And if you don’t talk about your book no one will know about it. And that part was really helpful to me because it realized that the writing is a lot of effort, but then where I see people make mistakes is they write great books and they’re like, “Book is written,” and they send two emails and they post one time on their social media like, “I have a book.”
And they’re like, “No one’s really buying it.” And I said, “People don’t know it exists yet.” And that part, the more you lean into that part, the better results you get. And no one can do that, will ever do that for you as well as you. You can have partners, and you can have paid or unpaid people who will support you in that journey, but you cannot completely outsource the responsibility for letting the world know that book exists.
Alison Jones: I think that the barriers to buying a book by somebody you’ve never heard of have grown almost insurmountable for all sorts of reasons. Reading itself is declining and books are– we’re selling fewer books, there’s just all of that is on. I was really interested actually looking at your website about the ecosystem that you have around that.
Your speaking, your writing, the programs you run. I– Maybe just could you outline that a little bit just for people so they get that sense of how the book works within the bigger picture of what it is that you do?
Alison Fragale: For sure. So my history is I’m an academic who is in a business school, so I’ve been doing for 20-plus years a lot of speaking in companies, and that’s part of my, the bigger job that I have and what I like to do. So I already have a lot of speaking that I’m doing. And then I decide then that the book is going to come in later in that journey to be able to, one, have a new creative avenue for me to talk about the same ideas, to reach a broader audience.
And also for me, one of the things that I had started to really enjoy was to work specifically with women in organizations to help counsel them. And I wanted to have a brand that said, “Hey, I’m for women.” And books are good for brands in that way. Like I find this funny. There’s not really anything in that book I have not said out loud to many audiences over the years, but the second you write it down, everyone thinks it has more credibility.
They’re like “as Alison says in the book…” And I’m like, “People, I was saying that to you for decades and you did not listen, but now it’s written there on a page.” So it creates a credibility. So I wanted to shift my brand more towards serving women, and I thought that it would be– the book would help do that.
So what I did, if you look at my website, that whole website as it is now did not exist before the book launched. I had a website, but it was much more focused on me as a behavioral scientist and general leadership things. And when the book launched, everything came to it screams women, like women, right?
All over it. Then that created more opportunities for me that people found me through the book, and so I got more opportunities to speak to audiences of women or to speak about these topics. So that continued, but the book created more ways for people to find me, and it also created legitimacy because a lot of times for speakers, people like authors, and a professor is a form of legitimacy, but as I said, an author is even better.
So I do that, and then I– then you can do a lot of media around the book. Podcasts are becoming a huge way that people get information now and often a substitute for reading books. And so I did a lot of podcasts both when the book came out and ongoing. And then I, I– one thing I try to do is I try to capture all of that and catalog it so it doesn’t just get lost.
So if you if you look at my website, you’ll see I have a media page, and like every time someone sends me, “Here’s the link to our recording,” I post that up there. And it’s almost overwhelming, but it’s like I want to be able to capture it for people.
And then and then I’m trying to do a better job, I’m on social media, but I’m trying to do a better job with my newsletter community as well to do some shorter form writing there to be able to continue to write and talk to people even when you’re not writing a book. Because I think that’s one of the other hard things. It’s a conversation with the audience, but then when that conversation has happened, how do you– else do you stay engaged with your audience?
So that’s part of a lot of what I’m doing. But I also say to people, “There’s not just one way to do this,” and there’s– books serve multiple purposes in life. There’s more than one reason to write them. And I think to figure out if your book process was successful, you have to decide what your goals are.
So a lot of people will ask me for my advice, and I, first thing I will say to them is, “What do you want out of this?” because if you want to tell me how you want to get more speaking business, I can give you some advice. If you want to tell me how to sell more books, I can give you some advice. If you want to tell me like, how you want to use it to get promoted and give you– but whatever it is.
Or you could just say, sometimes people are like “I just wanted to write the thing.” And then I will say, “You don’t need any advice because you’ve written it.” If that’s all you wanted to do, your task is complete. That’s part of my world is a lot of speaking a lot of dropping into book club chats, a lot of podcasts things like that.
But part of it is also, I’m an introvert but part of this is also the idea that, that when you stop talking about your own book, people will generally start forgetting about it. And your book is always new to someone. So when you keep talking about it, you keep finding new people.
Sometimes I’m like, “I can’t believe I’m still talking about this. People cannot want to hear from me anymore.” And then I’ll meet somebody and they’re like, “You wrote a book?” And you’re– I mean, right? A- and so you realize and even if people have heard of it, it takes people forever. I always say to people, “I have never yet read ‘Atomic Habits.'”
You would think, who in the world has not yet read “Atomic Habits? A billion people have read Atomic– Not me. I want to, just haven’t made it yet. So you’re always, no matter how big your audience or how many people have read it, there’s always someone new that you can be talking to.
Alison Jones: That’s a masterclass in how to embed the book in business and also how to think about your book long after publication. because you’re right, there’s this little rolling deep niche of people that have suddenly become aware of it and you have to be there to tell them about it. Love it. I’m going to ask you for a recommendation as well.
I’m really interested to hear what you will recommend us. It doesn’t have to be a business book, but w- if they haven’t read it yet, what should they read? You’re not allowed to recommend your own.
Alison Fragale: Oh, so two books that I like, neither of them are specifically about business, but I love them for business people. And– actually three of them. None of them are brand new, but they’re all excellent. One is “Why We Sleep” by Matthew Walker. Have you read “Why We Sleep”?
Alison Jones: No, it’s one of those that I’ve– one day I’ll read that book, but yes.
Alison Fragale: I find it interesting. I’m looking at your beautiful color-coded shelves. It’s green, so that’s where it’ll go. It is basically, he’s a sleep scientist from the from the University of California Berkeley talking about the science of why human beings sleep. But it was one of the most habit-changing books I ever read, both as a, as just a functional worker and a human about the importance of sleep, where you’ve been lectured about this for so long.
You know you should be prioritizing your sleep. We don’t. And this book is makes the case about a variety of interesting scientific things, but also like how important sleep is. And I felt like it changed the way I started to live in a way that hopefully made me more productive, healthier, longer able to contribute more.
Another one I really like, which is again, not business per se, but I think it really applies, is “Unreasonable Hospitality,” which is, goes in the yellow section if you…
Alison Jones: …thank you…
Alison Fragale: Unreasonable Hospitality, by Will Guidara, who led the US restaurant Eleven Madison Park to be the number one restaurant in the world at one point.
And I just think this idea about giving people more than they expect from you is a really important lesson both for humans but also for leaders, right? And I think that’s a very good message. And so my final one, also not brand new, but he’s well-known, is “Deep Work” by Cal Newport, also in the yellow section.
It’s a very quick read, and basically the idea is we are just so attention like strapped because our attention is pulled in so many different ways, right? I’m almost always like working with my phone next to me, and a kid will call and ding, et cetera, and you get to work in three-minute increments.
And he just talks about what a, what an issue that is. And I it’s, he doesn’t talk about it from a perspective of gender, but I think that women are more challenged to to experience deep work because of how many external demands are all placed on us from both our colleagues and our families.
And I think that it has helped me really think about prioritizing time to do the work that matters. So writing a book is deep work, right? And for many people, I can’t– you know this too, right? How many people when they talk to you, they’re like, “I so want to write a book one day.” And for many people, one day will never come.
And why won’t it come? because they won’t actually block out the time to do that deep work to make it happen. And I always say, if you want to do it, you have to carve out that chunk to make it happen and to think about your life of like, where is your deep work time going and how do you do it?
And so that book is a very quick read, but I think it’s very helpful and very apt for people who actually want to create something as meaningful as a book.
Alison Jones: I’d pull your two of your tips together there, and you need the time and the space, and you need to carve it out because you’re never just going to find it. But you also need the clarity, and the proposal is a great way of going. And once you have those two things then you’ve got a fighting chance.
Alison Fragale: Exactly. Exactly
Alison Jones: Amazing. Thank you. Great recommendations. I think I can make room for those on my various bits of color charts.
Alison Fragale: There you go.
Alison Jones: Alison, if people want to find out more about Likable Badass, have a look at this fabulous website, which really is, as I say, a bit of a masterclass in how you do this as an author, find out more about the work that you do, where should they go?
Alison Fragale: Yes, the website is a great place to start. So I have a fairly unusual name, so I’m easy to find, alisonfragale.com. When you go there, you can see, learn stuff about the book, you can see lots of podcasts and short articles if you want to d- experience that stuff, see my speaking. But then the three places that are easiest to find me on an ongoing basis, you can also get there from the website.
I’m on two social media platforms, LinkedIn and Instagram. I’m more experienced on LinkedIn. Instagram’s a bit of a newer thing since the launch of the book. I’m learning. And then I also have this newsletter called “The Upper Hand” on, free on Substack where again, I’m trying to put out content that is related to behavioural science that helps people excel as much as I can.
So those would be three places where people could click the button to connect with me, and we could stay connected
Alison Jones: Amazing. I’ll put those links up on the show notes at extraordinarybusinessbooks.com. It’s been an absolute joy talking to you today, Alison. Thank you so much for your time.
Alison Fragale: Likewise. Thanks for having me.
