An Excerpt from Likable Badass

Over decades of research, speaking engagements, and mentorship, psychologist and professor Alison Fragale encountered recurring questions from high powered and early career women alike: How do women thread the needle of kindness and competence in the workplace? How can women earn credit for their accomplishments, negotiate better, and navigate complex office politics without losing the goodwill of their peers?

Fragale investigated and determined that many women's workplace issues boil down to what psychologists call status: the perception of them by others. No amount of power-- no degree, title, or paycheck-- will raise a woman's workplace stature unless it also affects how others see her. Acknowledging this roadblock, Fragale pulls back the curtain on how we can change how others see us by developing our standing as a "likeable badass." By cultivating perceptions of warmth and assertiveness, women can achieve the kind of reputation that leads to a seat at the table and a fulfilling career path.

Likeable Badass is equal parts behavioral science and life hacks, weaving together rigorous research with actionable advice and impactful stories from a diverse array of women. This is a warm, heartening book written for women, their allies, and anyone who struggles to rise, and wants evidence-based, practical strategies for success, served with a side of inspiration and humor.

The excerpt below is the opening of Chapter 4: Tell Your Story.

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Showing up as a likeable badass starts with telling your story. Most of what people know about you comes from you—how you talk and write about yourself, how they see you behave. You are the biggest source of your own press, so you need to make that press as positive as possible. I learned this lesson early in my career—in a very frustrating way. 

After college, I took a job as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company because influential people in my life told me I should—it was a prestigious firm, they said, one that purported to hire only the best and brightest. On my first project, I was assigned to work alongside a slightly-more-senior colleague—let’s call him M—who was widely regarded as a rising star. M had joined the firm about a year before I did, after earning his MBA. “He’s a rockstar, definitely on a path to make partner,” everyone told me. 

Imagine my surprise and dismay, then, when I discovered that M was not the likeable badass everyone proclaimed him to be. He was neither competent nor kind. I still vividly recall the day when M gave me a set of hastily drawn charts and tasked me with turning them into digital presentation slides. … I knew this wasn’t officially in my job description, but being young, new, and eager to contribute in any way I could, I said yes. As I created the slides, I also corrected the misspellings and grammatical errors in M’s original documents. I returned the finished product to him, mentioning that I had caught a few errors in the hope that I would get some likeable badass credit in his eyes. That hope, unfortunately, was misguided. He was enraged. Who do you think you are? he shrieked. If I wanted you to think, I would have told you to think.¹ I yelled back: I was a math major, not an English major, but even I know the difference between “there” and “their.” ² The argument continued, and it didn’t end with us hugging it out. 

As I endured the three-month project, I was subjected to countless examples of M’s incompetence and incivility. My suffering was made even harder to bear as I continued to hear others praise him. Interestingly, though, I soon realized that the people praising M had never actually worked with him. Perplexed and angered, I worked up the courage to share my experiences with another teammate, J. J was a true likeable badass, but he didn’t have nearly the positive reputation of M. To my great relief, J agreed with me on all counts: Yes, M had a stellar reputation at the firm, and no, it wasn’t deserved. 

Months later, after my hellish project had ended, J came to my office with a Eureka! expression. “I’ve discovered the source of M’s great press,” he exclaimed. Every time J heard something positive about M, he would ask the messenger, “Where did you hear that?” Many times, the trail would go cold; the person didn’t remember. Sometimes, though, the person named the source. J would then go to that source and ask the same question. He eventually traced M’s story to a few people who remembered that they heard it from—wait for it—M himself! M would brag to them about how his clients and colleagues loved him and the great work he was doing. Never having worked with M, they took his self-praise at face value, and then passed this information on to other colleagues, who then passed it on to even more people. Thanks to a game of office-gossip telephone, M had self-promoted his way to a likeable badass reputation. Accordingly, he was praised, paid, and promoted at levels and rates above his peers. 

Even with the mystery solved, I was angry about the whole experience; my only solace came from planning my eventual escape. It wasn’t until years later, when I was immersed in the science of organizational psychology, that I heard the saying “People don’t leave companies, they leave managers.” I immediately understood the truth of that statement and flashed back to how my experience with M had been pivotal in my decision to leave McKinsey. 

I realize that hearing this story will likely trigger some serious imposter fears. This is why I don’t like the idea of managing my status, you protest, because others will gossip about what a fraud I am. The last thing I want is to be like M. However, my objective in retelling this (still) painful story is to make the opposite point: We should all be more like M. 

Obviously, you don’t aspire to be overconfident, undercompetent, and cruel. But what I learned from M, a lesson that still benefits me to this day, is that how you talk about yourself matters—a lot. Fortunately, unlike M, you have the goods, so you can use his strategy without fear of being exposed as a fraud—because you’re not. 

Your story is any information about you that originates with you: Things you say to people in conversation, your emails, your social media profile and posts, your bio, your résumé, and more. The goal is to use every opportunity to share information about yourself in ways that convey both Assertiveness and Warmth, so your audience respects you more as a result. To be clear, this is self-promotion. Like it or not, self-promotion is critical to building status. If you don’t tell a good story about yourself, no one else will either. 

When I meet women who have advanced more quickly than their peers, particularly at a young age, I often find that it’s because they learned early in their careers, usually the hard way, to tell strong stories about themselves. This is what happened to Meghana Dhar. After graduating with her MBA from Harvard Business School at age twenty-nine, she was hired by Instagram as the head of partnerships for Instagram Shopping. As the first hire on this new team, it was a coveted role with a lot of responsibility. A few months into the role, she went into her first performance review “guns blazing” because she had “crushed it”—working night and day, she knew she had delivered results. She was excited to hear the praise her manager was sure to offer. Instead, he said that other teams had complained about her and her lackluster performance. Meghana was confused and devastated. However, even though she didn’t get the review she wanted, her manager believed in her and wanted her to succeed. He offered her a piece of advice: “Look at what Walt³ is doing.” Walt was Meghana’s same-age peer who was widely considered a rockstar performer. It took Meghana only a moment of observation to see the difference between them. Walt was sharing his accomplishments widely—on the internal messaging network, in weekly update meetings, in a newsletter he created, and more. Meghana had an epiphany—Walt’s “wins” were just conversations he was having as part of his job. “I was having ten of those a day,” she realized, “but Walt had done all the work to give everyone around him the narrative.” Walt was telling a better story. 

Meghana started “beating the drum,” but in her own way. She began sending out a weekly email update and hosting one cross-functional meeting every other week where she would showcase the great work of the people on her team. She also would ask members of her division to lead the meetings, which gave them an opportunity to shine while also supporting her story. Within one quarter, her boss gave her an “exceeds” performance rating, the highest possible mark, and shortly after that she was promoted. She also realized that she was reaping more rewards with less effort. Doing 90 percent of the work with self-promotion was better than doing 150 percent of the work without it. This realization was a turning point for Meghana: “I had never talked about my wins before then. It felt improper.” But once she saw the payoff, it became “muscle memory” for her and set the foundation for her entire career. “I became a player in the game,” she recalls.  

Excerpted from Likeable Badass: How Women Get the Success They Deserve with permission of the publisher, Doubleday.
Copyright © 2024 by Alison Fragale.
All rights reserved.

Endnotes

1. Yes, that is an almost-exact quote, as best I can remember it over twenty-five years later. 
2. When I err, it’s almost always on the side of too Assertive, rather than not Assertive enough.
3. Name change.