Michelle: On the highest court in the United States, female justices, who make up a quarter of the court, account for a third of all interruptions. The three justices interrupted most? All women. It turns out, power doesn't protect you from being talked over. Mark: Whoa. Hold on. You're saying even Supreme Court justices, arguably some of the most powerful women in the country, are getting cut off in conversations more than their male peers? Michelle: That's exactly what the research shows. And it points to a fascinating, invisible force at play in our professional lives. It’s this hidden game that a brilliant new book, Likeable Badass: How to be Assertive and Warm, by Alison Fragale, is all about. Mark: And Fragale is the perfect person to decode this. She's a professor of Organizational Behavior at UNC, but what I find fascinating is that she started her career at McKinsey & Company. So she's seen these dynamics from both the rigorous academic side and the sharp-elbowed, real-world corporate side. Michelle: Precisely. She argues that for decades, we've been telling women to solve the wrong problem. We've been focused on a power problem, when we should have been focused on something much more fundamental. Mark: Okay, I'm hooked. So if it's not about power, what is the real problem we should be looking at?

Michelle: It's what she calls the "status problem." We tend to think of power and status as the same thing, but they're not. Power is your formal authority—your title, your control over budgets and people. Status is how other people see you. It's the respect, admiration, and value they place on you. Mark: And why is that distinction so important? Michelle: Because, as Fragale puts it, "Resources follow respect." You can have a powerful title, but if people don't respect you, they won't give you the resources, the information, or the support you need. Power is often awarded based on status. We give power to people we already admire. Mark: That explains so much. It explains why sometimes the person with the corner office isn't the one everyone listens to in a meeting. And why just teaching women to negotiate for a raise might not work if the person across the table doesn't fundamentally value their contribution in the first place. Michelle: Exactly. The book is full of data showing that women ask for raises nearly as often as men, but are 25 percent less likely to get them. It’s not a skills gap; it’s a status gap. Fragale tells this great story about a 41-year-old woman who went back to graduate school. Mark: Oh, I can imagine how that went. Michelle: You can. Her younger classmates on her project teams basically treated her like she was ancient history, like she had nothing to contribute. She had zero status. They’d talk over her, ignore her ideas. She was just the "older student." Mark: That sounds incredibly frustrating. Michelle: It was. But then, during a big class competition, she was randomly assigned to a team. While everyone else was chasing the obvious solutions, she quietly dug into the details and found one key piece of information that nobody else had noticed. Her discovery led her team to a decisive victory. Mark: And let me guess, everything changed after that. Michelle: Instantly. The next day, she wasn't the "older student" anymore. She was the genius who won the competition. Everyone wanted her on their team. Her formal power hadn't changed one bit—she was still just a student. But her status had skyrocketed. She had proven her value, and now everyone wanted a piece of it. Mark: That's a perfect illustration. She didn't get a promotion, she earned respect. And that respect became her new currency. So if status is the real game, how do you win it?

Michelle: This is the core of the book. Fragale's solution is to become a "Likeable Badass." She draws on a classic psychological model called the interpersonal circumplex. It basically says we judge people on two main axes. The first is Assertive-to-Submissive, which is about competence and agency. The second is Warm-to-Cold, which is about connection and agreeableness. Mark: Okay, so Assertive is getting things done, and Warm is getting along with people. Michelle: You got it. The problem is that women are often trapped in what’s called the competence-likeability bind. If they're highly assertive, they're seen as competent but cold—a "bitch." If they're highly warm, they're seen as likeable but submissive—a "pushover." They're rarely allowed to be both. Mark: Right. And a likeable badass is someone who breaks that bind. But that sounds... incredibly difficult. How do you project confidence and warmth at the same time? It feels like you're being asked to be a grizzly bear and a teddy bear in the same body. Michelle: It does sound like a paradox, but the book gives this amazing real-world example of a woman named Kate. Kate started as a young analyst at a company. Her new boss gave her some very vague advice: "Just make my life easier." Mark: That's the kind of advice that can either paralyze you or liberate you. Michelle: For Kate, it was liberating. She took it literally. She started by offering to help everyone, especially senior leaders, with anything they needed. At first, it was small stuff. She tells a story about researching fumigators for her boss's hotel. But then she discovered she had a real talent for making killer PowerPoint presentations. Mark: A truly underrated superpower in the corporate world. Michelle: Absolutely. So she started offering to help senior leaders with their decks. She wasn't just being "nice" or "helpful" in a passive way. She was delivering high-value, competent work. She was solving their problems. She famously said, "I made shit happen. I got shit done." That's the Assertive part. Mark: And the Warmth? Michelle: The Warmth was in the offering. She was proactively generous with her competence. She wasn't waiting to be asked; she was looking for ways to contribute. This combination made her indispensable. People saw her as both a brilliant problem-solver and a fantastic collaborator. Mark: So what happened to Kate? Michelle: She was promoted twice in less than four years. Then she made a two-level jump to become Vice President and Chief of Staff to the CEO. She went from researching fumigators to being in one of the most powerful positions in the company, all because she mastered being both incredibly effective and incredibly helpful. Mark: Wow. Her warmth wasn't about smiling more. It was an active, competent generosity. That reframes the whole idea for me. It’s not about personality; it’s about behavior. Michelle: That's the key. It's not about changing who you are, but being strategic about what you do. And that brings us to the practical plays for how to actually do it.

Mark: Okay, so let's get into the nitty-gritty. If you're not a PowerPoint wizard like Kate, what can you do? The idea of "self-promotion" makes a lot of people, not just women, cringe. Michelle: It does, because we often associate it with empty bragging. Fragale tells a story from her McKinsey days about a colleague, "M," who was a master of self-promotion. He was actually incompetent and uncivil, but he was brilliant at telling everyone how great he was. And it worked, for a while. People believed the story he told about himself. Mark: That's infuriating, but also... a lesson. If you don't tell your story, someone else will. Or worse, no one will, and your work will be invisible. Michelle: Exactly. But you don't have to be like "M." Fragale offers a much better role model: Stacey Abrams. She gives this incredible example from an interview where Abrams was asked if she aspired to be president. Mark: That's a political minefield of a question. Especially for a Black woman, where self-promotion is often judged more harshly. How did she handle it? Michelle: It was a masterclass. First, she was direct and Assertive. She said, "Absolutely." No hesitation, no humblebragging. She owned her ambition. Mark: Okay, that's the badass part. Where's the likeable? Michelle: It came immediately after. She reframed the ambition. She said, "...and even more importantly, when someone asks me if that’s my ambition, I have a responsibility to say yes, for every young woman, every person of color... who sees me and decides what they’re capable of based on what I think I am capable of." Mark: Ah, that's brilliant. She made her personal ambition a communal act of service. It’s not about her ego; it’s about what her ambition enables for others. That's incredibly warm. Michelle: It's the perfect fusion. But Fragale argues that telling your own story is only half the battle. The even more powerful strategy is to recruit what she calls an "army of other-promoters." Mark: People who will sing your praises for you. That sounds much more efficient. Michelle: And more credible. We're more likely to believe what someone else says about you than what you say about yourself. You build this army by making what she calls "small deposits." These are low-effort, high-value actions that build goodwill. Mark: Like what? Michelle: It could be as simple as a strategic email introduction connecting two people who could benefit from knowing each other. Or sharing a useful article. Or, like the academic Kathy Phillips did, simply making a point to walk the halls once a day and have short, positive interactions with faculty. It's about creating visibility and a reputation for being valuable and connected, so that when your name comes up, people have something positive to say.

Mark: When you put it all together, it feels like this book is offering a completely new playbook. It’s not about "leaning in" harder or just being "nicer." It’s about being more strategic, more psychologically astute. It’s about being both formidable and fundamentally human. Michelle: That's a perfect summary. Fragale's core message is one of agency. Your status isn't fixed; it's malleable. You can actively shape how people perceive you. And the most powerful way to do that is to consistently show up as someone who is both undeniably competent and genuinely cares about the people and the mission around them. Mark: And I think it's so important for allies, especially men in the workplace, to understand these dynamics. To become aware of our own biases. To notice when we're interrupting our female colleagues, to make a point to amplify their ideas, and to see a "likeable badass" not as a threat, but as the ultimate collaborator and leader. Michelle: Absolutely. It’s a book written for women, but it’s a lesson for everyone who wants to create a more effective and equitable workplace. It really makes you think. Mark: It does. It leaves me with a question for myself, and for our listeners. Michelle: What's that? Mark: In the key relationships in your life, professional or personal, are you showing up as Assertive? As Warm? Or are you, like so many of us, accidentally sacrificing one for the other? It's a powerful thing to reflect on. Michelle: A perfect thought to end on. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.