Likeable Badass, page 2
As Mark Twain allegedly quipped, “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.” Well, ladies, we’ve been handed two frogs. And status is the biggest one.
Let’s Play to Win
Deep down, women understand the importance of status. In a clever series of experiments, organizational psychologist Nicholas Hays showed that when men and women were given hypothetical choices about work groups they could join that differed in both power (authority to delegate work, make decisions, and evaluate others) and status (respect and admiration from others, deference to your opinions), women prioritized joining groups with high status, whereas men gravitated to high-power groups. When given a choice, women choose—smartly—to improve their status first.
But how should they go about it? As a professor immersed in this research, with a Rolodex[*7] of fellow experts who are colleagues and friends, I can see the path we need to walk. But so far, too little of our academic knowledge is widely shared. Take “mansplaining,” for example. If you search the internet to find advice on how to deal with this common frustration, you’ll find countless articles defining the issue. I got lost for over an hour reading hundreds of hilarious and cringeworthy examples (men regularly explain childbirth to women, I learned). There were also several articles offering advice, but the few tips I found all focused on how to address mansplaining after it had already happened (use humor, point out the transgression, etc.). Notably absent was any explanation about why it occurs in the first place, or any advice about what to do to prevent it. When it comes to women’s status, we’ve been coached to play defense when it would be easier and more effective to mount a strong offense. It’s time to change that.
The good news, even great news, is that everyone’s status is malleable. You can change yours. The key to managing your status—and reaping all the benefits that come with it—is showing up as a likeable badass, getting others to see you as both Assertive and Warm. While that may sound like an impossible task—it’s hard to find a woman who hasn’t walked the tightrope between competence and likeability—I assure you that it’s not.
The proof is all around us. We all know women, lots of them, whom we consider likeable badasses, highly respected by us and everyone else who knows them. And, after interviewing hundreds, if not thousands, of women in my work, I know what sets these high-status women apart. It isn’t intellect or achievements or charisma—on paper, the likeable badasses look just like everyone else. They aren’t better people. They are simply better salespeople.
What you need to remember about status is that it exists only in others’ minds, so you only get as much as they are willing to give. In this sense, managing your status isn’t much different than selling vacuum cleaners. You can’t force another person to respect you any more than you can force a customer to buy a vacuum. If selling vacuum cleaners was your job, you wouldn’t assume the customer knew why yours was best; you would show them. And, even then, you would expect that some customers wouldn’t be convinced right away. You’d understand that overcoming resistance is part of the process. You’d try different sales tactics until you found one that worked, which might be different than the one that worked with yesterday’s customer. There’s no way to sugarcoat it: Women will always encounter customers who “just don’t get it.” But if we have enough strategies at our disposal, we can always find a way to make the sale.
Likeable badasses are simply women who have found effective, authentic strategies to shape how their “customers” see them. Sometimes, they don’t even realize what they’re doing or why it works. That’s where I can help. I’m trained to see the world through a status lens—to think about my own status and how I can influence it, and to look at another person’s behavior and explain the science of why it’s effective (or not).
Take Stacy Brown-Philpot. After graduating from both the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Stacy climbed the ranks at Google for close to a decade, ultimately serving as the head of Google’s Hyderabad, India, office, before she served as the CEO of TaskRabbit from 2016 to 2020.[*8] In 2015 she ranked on Fortune’s influential “40 Under 40” list, and in 2016 the Financial Times recognized her as a “rare example of a Black, female chief executive in the tech industry.” Stacy now sits on the boards of StockX, Noom, HP Inc., and Nordstrom. Even with that résumé, Stacy recalled being taken aback the first time she was called an “OG” (short for Original Gangster), a “term of affection for someone who is well respected in the Black community.” “I don’t want to be the OG,” she remembers thinking. “I’m not that old!” She knew she was highly accomplished, but also knew that this didn’t necessarily equate with status: “You can’t demand somebody to call you an OG. You can’t fill out an application, you can’t complete a checklist.” As more people used the term to describe her, she warmed to it, but was still a bit puzzled: “It feels good to have it, but how did I get chosen versus somebody else? It feels so amorphous and hard to control.”
As Stacy astutely recognized, status is based on perception, not achievement. No amount of objective power or success—no degree, title, award, or paycheck—will necessarily raise your status unless it also affects how much other people respect and regard you. The challenge is we never know for sure what others are thinking, so when we look only at our own experience it can be very hard to know what we did right or wrong to manage their impressions of us. When we look across lots of women, though, as I have, clear patterns emerge.
As I told Stacy, the people who respected her didn’t come to that decision randomly. Stacy influenced her status. She may not have done it intentionally or known what she was doing, but the way she showed up and interacted with people contributed to their impression of her. And her status was not only built through big gestures; more often it was built in small moments—moments that may not have been that significant to her but made an impact on her audience. When I pushed Stacy to identify some of those moments, it didn’t take her long. “I’ve never forgotten to help people.” She recalled her relationship with a former subordinate at Google, one of the people who always calls Stacy an OG. She realized she earned his respect through her kind and direct mentorship. “I told him, ‘I want you to have my job one day, but it’s not going to happen unless you do the following things right.’ I don’t think anyone in his career had ever had that conversation with him. But I didn’t walk away after that conversation and say ‘Good luck, go do it.’ I continued to support him, through the personal things in his life as well as the professional.” And thanks in part to Stacy’s mentorship, he eventually did get her job! As I reflected her actions back to her in my own words, Stacy acknowledged that she had done a lot of things to deserve the OG moniker, including mentoring others. She had always been showing up as a likeable badass, she just hadn’t tried to articulate it before.
By coupling stories like Stacy’s with decades of status research, my goal is to help you see the connections between how you show up and what others perceive, so that you can take ownership of your value. Only then can you repeat what’s working, ditch what isn’t, and teach others to follow in your footsteps. And because status is based on perception, you don’t need to work harder or achieve more. You just need to act intentionally to get maximum credit for the greatness you’ve already achieved.
Together, we will get “solution-focused” on the status problem. While we didn’t cause it and we don’t deserve it, the best solutions are, happily, within our individual control. In the words of famed Peloton head instructor and vice president of fitness programming Robin Arzón, a queen doesn’t wait for anyone to save her. “The queen saves herself.”
Mastering the Plays
This is a playbook for winning the status game—taking ownership of how others see you, respect you, and value you from the get-go. Like any good playbook, there are many plays to choose from. The objective of the game is always the same, but no two games are identical, and no two games use exactly the same plays. My goal is to present more strategies than you need, so you always have one to use when an obstacle arises.
The strategies I offer are based on a combination of science and stories. The science comes from my research, and the work of many others in my field. The stories recount the triumphs of countless likeable badasses I’ve been privileged to meet and coach throughout my career. Some names you’ll recognize, but most you won’t. The world is full of nonfamous women, of all backgrounds, who are just as likeable and badass as your favorite celebrity. If they can do it, we can do it. Our playbook hinges on the wisdom of the everyday women all around us.
My reference to status as a game is deliberate and important. I don’t mean that pursuing status is frivolous, or for entertainment value only. A game is simply a “problem-solving activity approached with a playful attitude.” By this definition, Monopoly is a game, but so is getting into college, asking someone out on a date, and managing your status. Although the status challenges that women have long endured are stressful, frustrating, and sometimes outright painful, the solutions don’t need to be. Games are meant to be fun, and I truly believe that showing up as a likeable badass is fun. I navigate my own status with a “playful attitude”—full of enjoyment and authenticity—and I can help you do the same.
I also think that the game label is apt here because games aren’t always fair. Sometimes referees make bad calls. Sometimes other players cheat or knock you down. Sometimes you just end up with a bad outcome through no fault of your own, twisting an ankle or losing a turn in Candyland. There’s no doubt that women have been asked to play games with unfair rules since the dawn of time, and the rules for women who aren’t white, cisgender, or heterosexual are ridiculously unreasonable. The rules of the game need to be changed. You know it and I know it. Unfortunately, when you’re in the middle of a game, rewriting the rules can’t happen fast enough to level the playing field. Instead, I recommend playing the best game you can, given the rules as they stand right now. But just because I coach you on how to play an unfair game doesn’t mean I’m endorsing the rules. I’m not.
Importantly, “winning” the status game is different than winning at chess or pickleball. With status, we’re not trying to beat other people (most certainly not other women), and our wins don’t need to come at others’ expense. In our context, to win means to overcome. Gender can be a source of status disadvantage, but it doesn’t have to be. When we know the science and use it to enact strategies that remove gender as a barrier, we’ve won. And while we’re winning, the women around us can win, too.
I’ve written this playbook for women. But it’s not exclusively for women. One of the most flattering questions I was asked by men who read this book early on was “Why didn’t you write this book for me? I could benefit by following these strategies, too.” I wrote this book for women because it’s an audience I know, and care about deeply. I know that viewing women’s age-old struggles through the new lens of status provides an actionable path forward, and I want other women to feel optimistic, fierce, and inspired in that knowledge. And, in writing for women, I hope to use my expertise to help them score every ounce of advantage they can get. We sure as hell deserve it.
That said, the advice in this book is science-based best practice for everyone. Although gender is a determinant of one’s status, it’s not the only determinant—far from it. Some status characteristics are “ascribed,” which means they’re usually determined by birth or lineage—such as race, age, caste, appearance (e.g., height and weight), ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation, to name just a few. Other status characteristics are classified as “achieved”—such as credentials, awards, occupations, and educational degrees. Because so many variables influence status, everyone experiences higher status in some situations and lower status in others. Managing status is a fact of life for everyone.
I also hope that many people will come to this book as allies. Although it doesn’t always feel this way, women aren’t the only people who care about women. Several years ago, I developed a new MBA course focused on gender and negotiation to create a safe space for women to discuss negotiation challenges that I thought only they worried about. The first time I taught it, I was surprised that half of the students in the class were men. I didn’t dare ask why they were there because I was convinced they would just get up and leave. However, at the end of the semester, one of the men emailed me that he enrolled in the class because he had daughters. He wanted to see the world “through their eyes,” and help them enter a workforce where their gender wouldn’t hold them back. I was so touched I almost cried. I soon realized he wasn’t alone. Once I got up the nerve to ask them, I found that almost all the men in my class told a similar story—they cared about women’s experiences, were committed to their advancement, and wanted to do their part. Like my courses, this book is designed for all who enter—women, their allies, and anyone else who’s curious enough to invest the time.
And, while I often compare women’s status challenges to men’s, based on the research that has been done so far, I recognize that this binary comparison fails to capture the full spectrum of gender and identity. When I refer to men and women, I’m really making a distinction between people who typically have more status and those who have less. Despite using gender terms that are sometimes inaccurate and insufficient, my intent—and most sincere hope—is to create a community of inclusion and belonging for everyone in these pages.
* * *
Our playbook is organized in three parts: (1) understand the game, (2) master the plays, and (3) coach others. As you read, you’ll likely identify ways that you’re already managing your status very well, and others that you’d like to improve. For your growth areas, I encourage you to embrace the idea of practice. Ask any athlete, from novice to elite, how they improve their skills, and they’ll give you the same answer: practice, practice, practice. Professional golfers, for example, have played hundreds, if not thousands, of rounds of golf, but that’s not all they do. To get to that level, they’ve spent untold hours on the driving range, in sand traps, and on the putting green practicing the same shot over, and over, and over again. Managing status is as much a learned skill as playing golf—the more we practice, the better we become.
Options for practice are endless. To spark your thinking, I offer some suggestions at the end of each chapter, which range in “heat level” from (very low risk) to (requires some courage). By no means do you need to limit yourself to these ideas. My intent is simply to inspire you to find a way to practice that feels fun. That doesn’t mean you’ll have instant success. Any worthwhile practice should challenge you at first; if it doesn’t, you’re wasting your time. But if it never gets easier or you despise it, you’re better off abandoning that effort and finding a new way to practice. No two people are likeable and badass in the exact same ways. Keep experimenting until you find ways to manage your status that you truly love. When you do, you’ll see that showing up as a likeable badass is doable, enjoyable, and the key to winning the status game.
Skip Notes
*1 For example, in 2018 women in the United States earned 57 percent of the bachelor’s degrees, 60 percent of the master’s degrees, and 54 percent of the doctorates.
*2 Another meaning of the term status is an “official position in a group,” such as when we refer to someone’s social status, socioeconomic status, marital status, employment status, and the like. This is not the definition of status I’m discussing. From here on out, every time you see the word status, I’m referring to how much a person is respected and regarded by others.
*3 According to the authors, this analysis excludes interruptions between Justices Scalia and Breyer, who would frequently talk over each other (specifically, Scalia interrupting Breyer).
*4 Possibly the greatest word invented in the twenty-first century. Credit goes to astronomy professor Nicole Gugliucci, who tweeted in 2017, “My friends coined a word: hepeated. For when a woman suggests an idea and it’s ignored, but then a guy says the same thing, and everyone loves it.”
*5 For what it’s worth, I also think “comfortable shoes” deserves to be on the list.
*6 The specific dates vary each calendar year. In 2024, the average across all women was March 12. Segmented by race and ethnicity, the dates were April 3 for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander women; July 9 for Black women; October 3 for Latinas; and November 21 for Native American women.
*7 Even my middle-aged self is too young to have actually used a Rolodex, and my kids have never even seen one. Yet, I’m still not aware of a better term to describe a list of contacts. If there’s a catchy term for the digital equivalent, please tell me!
*8 If you’re not familiar with TaskRabbit, the online labor marketplace, you must check it out. It will change your life.
