Naji Gehchan: Hello, leaders of the world. Welcome to “Spread Love in Organizations”, a podcast for purpose-driven healthcare leaders, striving to make life better around the world by leading their teams with genuine care, servant leadership, and love.
I am Naji, your host, joined today by Alison Fragale, a research psychologist, award-winning professor, international keynote speaker, and author, on a mission to help others — especially women — work and live better by understanding and applying the science of people. Alison excels in translating her deep academic expertise is in status, power, negotiation, and influence into actionable advice. Alison is currently Professor at Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina and her research appeared in several news outlets such as Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, to name a few… Alison, I am so excited to have you with me today and look forward to our chat!
Alison Fragale: So excited. Thanks for having me.
Naji Gehchan: I’m really eager to go into discussing your impactful academic work and also new book Likeable Badass, but first I would love to hear more about your personal story, what brought you to researching people!
Alison Fragale: 100%. I always say this was not my childhood dream. I don’t know if I had a childhood dream, but it was not this. So here’s my story. I am growing. I’m growing up. My dad was very raised, very poor and managed to pay for his way to go to college. He was a first generation college student and he was very successful in starting a small business where I grew up, but he had really raised me up.
You need to do practical things, Allison, practical things. And so when I was. Uh, starting out, I was thinking about a career in business because my dad said that’s a practical thing to do. And so I went to school and I was a math and economics major in college because that was the closest thing I could come to, to studying and pursuing a career in business.
And I had always had an interest in human behavior and psychology. There was a class offered in my high school. Every class that I could fit into my schedule in college I took, but at the time I had these words that I had to be. focus on a practical career and I did not have any guidance at the time as to how an interest in human behavior could be turned into my father’s wish for a practical career that could pay bills.
So I didn’t do anything. I graduate and I take a job at McKinsey as a management consultant. I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do in business and everyone said this was a good job and if you could get it this would be amazing because you would see so many aspects of business and you would, if you didn’t want to be a consultant, you would at least learn a lot about where you wanted your business.
career to be. And I was not at McKinsey very long before I realized this was not for me. And I looked at the lives of my clients and I couldn’t find anything that I found inspiring that I wanted to do. And I describe it as my quarter life crisis. I thought, uh oh, I’ve picked this career. I was all set up to go to pursue my MBA and I wasn’t liking any of it.
And I hadn’t at that point. Um, ever really explore, like, what did I really like? What did I want to do? I just was following along, trying to get to the next level of success with what people told me to do. And so I always say, when I talk to younger students, or I talk to people now, and I say, the best job in the world is a job that you love.
And the second best job is a job that you hate. Because when you’re unhappy, is when you start to really explore what do you want out of life, out of work, and you get a lot better answers. So one night I walked, I lived in Chicago, I walked out of my apartment across the street to Barnes and Noble and I went to the psychology section because I knew I liked human behavior and I bought a book called Careers in Psychology and I took it back and as I’m flipping through it, I read Organizational Psychology, which I did not know existed in what I had been exposed to.
I kept thinking I could be a therapist or I could teach psychology, you know, in high school, organizational psychology. And there, all of a sudden I had this Eureka moment. I have this somewhat interest in business, although I’m not really sure I want any of these jobs that I’m seeing, a real deep interest in human behavior.
I was also, that interest in human behavior was very much sparked by being at McKinsey, which is an odd job from an interpersonal perspective, where you’re constantly a newcomer and an outsider in a world where your clients really don’t like you. I mean, they make movies about the consultants, right? No one wants to work with the consultants.
And so I had to think a lot about how do you negotiate with people? How do you influence them? How do you motivate them? So I was having all this real on the job. organizational psychology experience. And as soon as I saw organizational psychology, I thought, that sounds like a great blend of the things I know and the things I don’t know.
And I applied to go get my PhD in organizational psychology and apply. I was, you know, this is 1997. So yes, you can search things on the internet, but not quite as efficiently as you can now. So I had to figure it all out and apply. And I, and I went and got my PhD and then ended up. Uh, as a, as a professor, as an organizational psychologist, and it, I think I picked really well the second time.
I am very much inspired and love what I buy and what, love what I do, and I wouldn’t have found it, I don’t think, if I hadn’t picked, I don’t want to say poorly, if I hadn’t been in a situation that really didn’t fit me and, and prompted me to think about what, what do I really love and gone and got that book.
I wish I had saved it. I feel like it’d be like a great artifact, but it’s long gone in my move. So that’s how I ended up here. Well, thank you so much. It’s, uh, it’s really inspiring and I love how you’re sharing it. I had early in my career and what I discussed now with, uh, as you said with, you know, when I mentor, uh, people, there is sometimes this question, like, I don’t know what I love.
Like, I don’t know what I want to do. And I had this advice very early on. Well, someone who told me, you know what, write what you actually hate doing. And it helped me so much because I, like, it gives you some sort of framing of knowing what you don’t really want to do, and then it opens different perspective on what you like.
Naji Gehchan: So I really relate to what you said. I love that you framed it that way. Yeah. That was great advice. I’ve never heard that said that way. That’s totally true. Yeah. So now, as we’re thinking about organizational psychology, like, how would you frame it overall? And then I will go more into the four topics of your research that you’re passionate about.
But help me understand, like, we all know organizations have some psychology, have some dynamics, sometimes good, sometimes bad. How do you think about that? Yeah, so psychology, broadly defined, of any different kind, is going to be the study of human beings. What do we know about people? How are they similar?
Alison Fragale: How are they predictable? The organizational psychology, specifically, is going to be, what do we know about human beings that’s going to be advantageous to us? to work better, to work more efficiently, to work more effectively. So I always joke when I teach my MBA students, when an MBA students, they’re very focused on the quant classes, uh, my accounting, my finance, the things with right answers.
I need to get good grades in these things. And I would always joke with them, you right now in organizational psychology, organizational behavior, You’re not worried about this because you’re not, you’re not working right now, but I promise you, a decade from now, 20 years from now, everything about work that keeps you up at night is going to be a people problem.
No one lays awake at night worrying about their Excel spreadsheet. Everyone lays awake worrying about people who are not giving them the respect they’re due, who are not giving them the answers, who are, Creating obstacles in their way, you know, not taking the meeting, not respecting the boundaries, whatever it is, they’re all people problems.
And so that’s what organizational psychology is really about is to think about if you understand all the people that you have to interact with and want to interact with, if you understand on average how they’re likely to think, feel, and act, because they’re human beings and human beings are kind of predictable.
So if you understand that science. That gives you a tremendous advantage to think about, okay, well, you know, similarity attraction. We like people who are like us. That’s a well known psychological truth. Well, if I know that I can start to bring that into that knowledge into the way that I show up. Okay.
We have things in, you know, in common, neither of us really like to fly, but we fly all the time. That’s a point of connection. All of a sudden. Yeah. Um, we feel like we have some kinship. So that’s how we can start to use psychology and the, and the truths and similarities of people to how we can authentically show up in ways that are going to get us the results that we want.
And that’s what I try to help people do is I try to help people think about their audience. Like, what is this person doing and what do you want them to be doing? And then how are you going to be able to think about all the variables in your control to get the outcome you want from that? other person.
So that’s why I find psychology so fascinating because it has rules, but then there’s always individual circumstances to think about how do you use that science to work that, get that particular person to move in the way you want them to move. I, I, I obviously love it. And, um, I so believe in it. And as you are talking about, you know, like the technical aspect, the math aspect with your MBA student, we obviously see it like an organization, as you know, like I’m in a biotech word, you have like the high experts who are very scientific driven, et cetera.
So as you think through this, because it’s so, it’s so true, what you said, it all come down to people at the end, the organization of psychology and how things are dealt with. And this is what keeps me up. at night, as you said, way more than the scientific narrative, if you want, or the unmet medical need, which is way clearer.
But how would you help leaders see the importance of this, especially if they come from a background of purely technical, like MD, like me, PhD, who usually tend to see this as, you Secondary. Yeah, I think people tend to see it as secondary only until they’ve struggled. So that’s when I would have, when I would have my full time students, they were young enough that they hadn’t really struggled too much.
They hadn’t been managing people. They were in school full time. When you have somebody who’s engaged in working, so you take a physician, for example, if they’re a clinician, right? And let’s say they’re patient facing and say, try to get your patients to do. what you want them to do, what you know is in their best interest, right?
Is the spreadsheet or the data or the study or the paper the thing that’s going to move them? Maybe it should be the thing that moves them, but maybe it’s not, right? Maybe it’s the fact, right, that they’re, that they’re a big, you know, Chicago Bears fan and their doctor can talk Chicago Bears. Okay, now I’ll listen to your recommendations.
So thinking about, um, When people are in the, in the engaged in work and trying to collaborate with people every single day people will have some great successes and every single day people will have great struggles. And so what I help people do is I say, okay, tell me something where it’s hard for you to move people.
No one, everyone can think of an example. And then what I try to do is help give them strategies for how could you use human behavior in addition to. All the other tools that you have, right? So we are not going to, um, I mean, so being an expert is a psychological tool because people trust experts. People listen to experts.
So having expertise, having data, having science doesn’t run against psychology. It’s part of psychology. Why would this person listen to me? Because I come from, uh, I have data I come from, I’m educated, I come from a basis of knowledge, but there are all the other factors as well. And I help people point out what they are.
So I’ll use similarity as an example and then say, okay, well let’s think about how we could use this, or let’s think about how you could, where you could, um, where you’ve seen this type of thing work. And that normally is what I really like about it, is it, everyone is always a psychologist all day long.
So as long as they’re engaged in work, you can pretty quickly point out a problem, or They can agree it’s a problem. And then you can think about, okay, what tools do we have that we can add in to what you’re already doing that would get you more likely to get you the results you wanted. So I listen to you.
It’s a great segue to where it’s, uh, you mentioned it like status, expertise, power, influence, and this is. A big part of your research. So as you, um, as we talk about these four words, status, power, negotiation, influence, those you, uh, have really deeply researched. Can you share a little bit more with us your research on those topics, what comes out and how to think about them?
Yeah. So status and power. Um, status, I’ll talk about what they are first, I’ll spend, I’ll talk about those two first because that’s, uh, I speak about all of these things, but I do a lot of research in the area of status and power. So status is respect. It’s how much we are respected and valued by other people.
That is, if you look at status in the dictionary, that is one definition you’ll see. There are other definitions of how we use the term status, but when psychologists talk about status, we’re talking about that specific definition, which is how much does one person respect and regard another person. So it’s not your standing or your title, but it’s, it’s respect and value.
Power is. Do you control resources that other people care about? So I’m a parent of a teenager. If I have the keys to the car, the keys to the car are a resource that the teenager cares about. That gives me some power. If in an organization I have the formal authority to control the budget, to say yes or no, to hire and fire, those are all valued resources.
They give me power. Those are related but distinct. A lot of times the people who are the, are very highly respected, um, have the resources and they’re the people who get put in the positions to be able to control everything. So you can see them go hand in hand, but they are very distinct. And one of the things I help people understand is how to manage them separately because there’s a misconception that people have that is If I’m powerful enough, everyone will respect me and sometimes that can happen.
We can, we see someone who’s in power, we think we must have done something good to get there and we respect them, but a lot of times that is not what occurs. What’s more likely to occur is the opposite, which is if people respect me, they’re more willing to give me power. So when you think about situations where you have had the discretion to give someone power.
Sometimes we give someone power by electing to work under them. And we allow them to, we say, I’m going to give you power over me by being your subordinate. I’m going to give you power. I’m going to, I’m going to advocate that you should be promoted. I’m going to advocate that you should be paid more. We can give people power.
I’m going to vote for you in an, in a election, or if you’re applying for something. These are ways in which we can say, I’m participating in you getting more power in this world. Well, we’re only going to do that. If we have a choice for people that we respect, you would never put more control in the hands of somebody that you didn’t think would use it well.
And so we. One of the mistakes that people make is not recognizing how foundational earning respect is to being able to get all these other tangible things that we want. And for some people, and this is, I do a lot of work, I don’t exclusively speak to women or do work for women, but women, working for women is an audience that I care very deeply about, because what we know is that some, um, Characteristics are awarded less status than others.
So generally speaking, woman is awarded less status than man. And so what that means is that some people don’t automatically get as much status as others, and that makes it harder than for some people to get power. So a lot of the challenges we see with women being able to be represented at top levels of an organization, um, being able to be paid at.
you know, for their worth at the same levels as men, et cetera, can have their roots in status issues, which is if we don’t respect two people equally, we won’t reward them equally. And when we understand that, that’s painful, but it’s also gives us a path forward of thinking about, okay, well, as psychologists, we actually, back to this idea of thinking about your audience, we know a lot about how people decide whether or not they respect another person.
It’s not an arbitrary decision. We pay attention to certain things. Particularly how competent and capable they are, and how caring they are, how other oriented they are. And when we see somebody that we think, um, really knows what they’re doing, and really cares about people other than themselves, that’s the winning recipe to be respected.
If you think about, like, your Rolodex of who do I respect? Chances are, every, every single year, you’re like, yep. I think they’re very capable and very caring. Yep. Yep. Check. Check. Um, so that’s status and power. That’s the distinction. And that’s a lot of the work that I do is looking at really how to manage status and how to manage status as a tool for one, living a happy, fulfilling life.
Status and power are both fundamental human needs. I mean, we all human beings seek them and they are critical to our life satisfaction and our physical and mental health. And so I always tell people that. Lacking respect and lacking control are psychologically and physically just as damaging as living a life without friends.
But the, but the message that I really try to convey to people is Um, focusing on status as getting your audience to respect and value you is one of the most important things we can do when we’re interacting with other people, because once we do that, the other things that we really value, like being in control, and then negotiation and influence.
Negotiation is a tool for being influential. If you don’t respect people, it really doesn’t matter how many good negotiation tools and strategies I teach people. They’re not going to be successful sitting in front of their audience. So it ends up being the foundation for anything we want in our relationships.
And you can be respected and still be a poor negotiator, but it’s hard to be a great negotiator if you’re not very well respected. So this is, this is great. And let’s start first with the status and power, you know, like let’s talk. a little bit more. So on the status part, you talked about being respected and valued by others.
And it touches a lot as leaders, behaviors, how you show up, you talked about caring and delivering. But you also talked about, for example, women having this Already like a status that might be perceived as lower and I would say like minority group members not being born in a specific place, the genetic lottery.
We all live, uh, and we named them, right? Like several other pieces of, uh, of diversity that we can talk about. So this piece actually, this is where I would love to hear your thoughts about it because that piece is somehow we can’t control it. It’s who we are, and it’s more I’m feeling like the biases that can come with status that makes your status maybe lower or higher, depending on the society you’re in.
And then there is a piece where your behaviors are making your status to be respected by others, et cetera, because you care and you deliver. So help me understand these two and what part you should influence, not influence as a leader. Right. So 100 percent agree with all. First is many variables influence status.
It’s not just gender. Uh, so there are in status, we think of ascribed characteristics that influence status. So those are things we generally do not control. They have no basis for, for capability or anything, but, and they’re often things that are set. at birth, but they are outside of our control and unrelated to our actual skills and abilities.
So you would have gender, you could have race, you could have other kinds of physical characteristics, height, weight, ethnicity, religion, you name it, you can have a status, can be affected by it. Um, then you have achieved characteristics. So if I have Um, a Ph. D., which I have a Ph. D., so you might say, oh, okay, well, you have a Ph.
D., so I might assume that, although other things being equal, you’re more competent and capable than somebody in your field who doesn’t. Okay, that could be something where I have control over it to some degree, and people will draw conclusions about it as well. And then we have Um, all of the, the behaviors in which, uh, we can exhibit that we show up moment to moment that can affect how we perceive how capable and caring somebody is.
So, and those are things we can exert a high degree of control over. So, some people are potentially. I would call them at risk. So you come from a medical world, right? And I, as you, I’m not that kind of doctor, but some people can be born with greater propensity for some health, bad health outcome than other people, right?
That’s like an ascribed characteristic. It’s not your fault. You didn’t cause it. But guess what? If you live the same life as your neighbor, Your life statistically may not be as good because you have a risk for a health outcome that your neighbor just doesn’t have. And so therefore, what are the most controllable things you have left to make sure that you do get the life, the longevity, and the quality of life that you deserve?
You may have to change your diet, right? You may have to change your sleep pattern or your exercise or whatever it is, and your neighbor doesn’t? It’s unfair, but let’s talk about what variables you can control. And so in status, we understand the unfair piece, the piece that you inherited. And then there’s the pieces you can control.
And a lot of that is about how do we show up and recognizing that we have this at risk status, at risk situation allows us to be more proactive. And I always, you know, a lot of times what happens with, with people in status is people don’t worry about theirs until they find out they have a status problem.
You show up in an organization, you start doing your work, you’re like, I’m smart, I’m caring, I’m capable, like what’s, what’s to worry about? I’m not really thinking about my gender or my race or anything, like I just doing my work. Until someone undervalues you and then you realize they are not honoring your status and now you’re mad and you don’t like it and you want to fix it.
But now the, the per, the, the person has already decided that you’re not a person worthy of respect. Can you change their mind? 100%. You have changed your mind about people, I’m sure, in the past. I have too. But you know what? It takes a lot longer because once you’ve decided you don’t value that person, they have to consistently kind of prove you wrong enough times until you finally are going to change your mind.
It’s a lot easier to shape it at the beginning. So I always say like if you think you have a risk for having let’s say heart disease, no doctor would probably say just you know what wait and see if the heart disease shows up and if it shows up come back and then we’ll fix it. That’s often when people call me about status.
So what I like to think about is how can you be proactive and know that everybody is at risk at times. Based on some characteristic of being undervalued. The proactive things to do would be to control how you show up in interactions. And the simple advice I give people is in every interaction, ask yourself, like, what can I do in this moment to show up as.
Capable, I’ll often use the term assertive for that. It’s not just about being assertive, but to say I’m a person who has the skills and, and persistence to get stuff done. If you show up that way, that’s really beneficial for your status. And if you show up and say what’s the thing that I could do that shows that I’m very caring and oriented toward other people, that’s really beneficial as well.
A simple example would be offering advice where advice is welcome. advice allows you to show up as an expert. Hey, I know something. And if I’m doing it in service to you, then I can show up as caring. Um, talking about, uh, My, um, capabilities, right? And my, and my, um, qualifications. This is something I always used to feel really uncomfortable with when I stood in front of students.
I stood in front of audiences as I say, I don’t want to really give my resume. I just want to kind of show up and just talk to you. But people don’t know who I am. If I’m not saying to them, hey, um, Here’s my qualifications. Here’s the different things I’ve done. Then they would have no way of knowing and they’re drawing whatever conclusions they’re drawing based on my gender and everything else they can see about me.
Um, but I also want to talk about, you know, Hey, um, I’m, I’m caring as well. So I, even from an introduction on stage, I could talk about both my skills and accomplishments, but also things that create similarity with my audience and talk about my, the personal side of me so that they can see me as a person they’re connected to.
I may think of as. As friendly and other oriented, I tell jokes sometimes. That’s kind of my natural style, but jokes are actually really, um, affiliative behaviors. So you can start to think about how do I show up in interactions where I can bring both the capability and the caring and it’s subtle behaviors and things like that, that we do get a lot of control of.
And for people who are at risk of lacking status, I always say, The quicker you do that in a relationship before anyone has a moment to think about you, you want them to start thinking about you in this most positive way. And you can often do that in 30 seconds, five minutes in an, you know, in an interaction to, to get that relationship often in a way that advantages you.
These are such amazing advices. So I’m going to keep on getting your advice on another topic, negotiation. Okay. Can you share with us like the one advice. As, as you go into a negotiation, is there one advice or one behavior we should be doing to try and get to where we want to go in a negotiation? So I’m, I’m going to give you a couple, okay, move first, move first, okay, the, the, the first mover, the person who puts the offer or the proposal out there first is going to do better.
So a lot of times we want to sit around and see what the other person has to say generally does not help us out. So when you go into negotiate, go with an idea of what you want. And put it out there, okay? Even if it anchors the others? That’s exactly what you want it to do. You want it to anchor them in a way that’s advantageous for you.
The alternative is they go first, you get anchored in a way that’s advantageous to them. So, now, Again, when we, if we, if I was going to do a whole course on this, we can find exceptions to everything, but in general, the research shows, and this is one of the things that contradicts people’s assumptions a lot, they think the person that speaks first loses.
I should hear what they have to say. And you can, but what’s likely to happen, particularly if you’re not extremely well prepared as to what a good outcome is, is that you’ll start to be anchored to what they’re saying because you’ll think that’s what they want. If I move too far away from it, they won’t say yes.
I also want that person to like me and you’ll start to slowly creep, you won’t creep all the way to where they’re going, but you will start to creep in your own head to be a little bit more concessionary and that’s okay. It just doesn’t end you with an outcome that’s as good for your purpose. your side.
So when we go first, um, we can get all those same effects working in their brain instead of our brain. Now, if you’re nervous about going first, and I’d say even if you’re not, a corollary to go first is go first, with multiple solutions. So three is a magic number. Hoodings, like, here’s three different ways I think we could solve this problem.
I could see it doing A, we could do B, we could do C. And A, B, and C, what they have in common is they’re all solutions that you would find acceptable. But they differ in, um, there are various ways that you solve the problem. Of that strategy, It still allows you to go first, but it also is very good at building the relationship because we like people who give us choices, and when people give us choices, we see them as more reasonable, more interested in solving the problem, and particularly, you know, for, we know of a lot of science, women is one, is one category of people who, when we are too assertive about what we want, we get backlash in negotiations.
So a three strategy, a three solution, proposal is a really good way to do it because it’s saying, I’m still going first, but I’m, but by the fact that I’m giving you choice, I am managing how you think about how aggressive I’m being in a way that is building trust in me. That’s good for, good for me, but good for both.
So I’m going to venture now in a, maybe a tricky space, but since you’re passionate about psychology people, you said we are predictable as humans and like all the science of people and the current word, you know, where we’re going today, like, We’re seeing it all over the place. Wars, unfortunately, in all the parts of the world, extremism, etc.
Can you make sense out of all the ongoing craziness from your psychology of people, and how do you think about this? Yeah, I can make sense of it, um, I can understand it, and I think a little bit like, I’ll use the medical analogy again, um, that you joke, like you joke, like when depending, when you have a medical ailment, the salute, recommended solution depends on the specialty of the provider you go for, right?
You go to the surgeon and the surgeon’s like, yes, this is a surgical fix, and you go to, you’re the internist, and they’re like, okay, here’s the medical fix, um, so as I’m going to tell you, it’s status and power, they’re fundamental human needs. Okay, those are when those things are taken away from people, people will do anything to get them back when people feel like they are not respected.
They don’t behave well. When people feel like they don’t have any control, they don’t behave well, and they are desperate to get those things back. So if you think about things anywhere from world conflicts to, to like political debates at the holiday table, whatever it is, those are fights for status and power.
Um, now you layer in, um, a world in which now there is no such thing as a private conversation. Why I think why it feels like things are getting worse is that When we have an audience watching us, or a perceived audience watching us, all of the, like, lacking status, lacking power, now feel worse because everyone knows about it.
Now we feel ashamed. We feel like we can’t change our mind. It’s what people were saying, like, why are these negotiations now so intractable? Because negotiations involve people starting with position A and position B, and then figuring out how to find position C that works for everybody. But if you’ve gone on record to 10 people, a million people, a billion people, and said, I am going to go get position A, then you end up with position C.
You worry that the world is going to think that you lost, when in fact that’s not at all what happened. And so when we’ve created Uh, a world in which there’s no such thing as a private conversation. We’ve made it very hard for people to change their minds. We’ve made it very hard for people to pursue interest based bargaining, which is, okay, if you want A and I want B, C actually gets you everything that A gets you, it gets you everything that B gets you.
It’s a good solution. It’s just a different one than we both came in with. That’s actually what smart negotiators do. But if the world doesn’t understand that, then I’m now very concerned about how I’m going to be perceived. What am I concerned about? My status. Are people going to respect me less based on this?
So I am like the surgeon who thinks everything can be operated on, okay? Status and power can explain all of it. Adding in the fact that all of it is now done in front of essentially a worldwide audience is, is making these things feel fundamentally different than I think they felt to us at a point like earlier in our history or when we were kind of growing up.
That’s an incredible perspective. I’m going to give you now a word. And I would love for a reaction, like what first comes to mind. The first one is leadership. Difficult.
I think being a leader is really hard. I think it’s one of the reasons why it’s, you know, a, um, a topic that people can endlessly want to read about, learn about, be better, um, because it requires us to set vision. Um, I think that’s probably the easier part. And then mobilize people to follow that vision.
And that’s the psychological part. And that’s trying to reach a lot of different people, um, who want a lot of different things and get them all to act in concert on a, on a, on a vision. It is really, really hard. Um, and so I think, uh, it’s one of the things that gets me like excited about doing the kinds of work that I do is to know that to lead is challenging, predictable psychological reasons.
So I have a question on this. How do you reconsider leadership with status, uh, and power? Is it, are they totally related? Is there different types of status and power depending on your leadership position? Like, how do you think about this? Yeah. So, again, the, the academic in me thinks of a leader as somebody doing these two things, setting vision and getting people to follow them.
Not everybody then, and then there’s power is do I control resources? So again, if I go back to, if I have the car keys and my teenage son wants the car, I have power, but I’m not a leader, right? There’s no vision. There’s no followership. Right. Um, and you could say, and, and, and then status being respected.
Alison Fragale: Now, a lot of people who are well respected, people want to follow them. But then they also have to have the second component, which is, am I setting the vision and a direction for people to go? So that’s where you could find a Venn diagram, if you will. There’s certainly an overlap in the center where a successful leader is going to set vision and get people to follow them.
They’ll control the resources and they’ll be highly regarded and respected, and that’ll be part of mobilizing people to follow. So you have the space in the center, but you can always find people who are just one or two out of three, depending on what’s What’s going on? I would, I would say, could you have a leader that had you, you can, it’s hard to have an effective leader that has no status.
Cause I think you’d have a hard time mobilizing people to follow if nobody respects you and the vision. Um, but certainly you can have people in power who don’t have status. And then I would say, it’s not really clear. They’re actually leading anything. So you can get, I think you can get all of them. I think I, I can, I can draw the Venn diagram and put a person in each of those, each of those spaces.
The second one is influence. Um, yeah. So, I mean, I think about what comes to mind. Um, I think it’s what we’re what we’re doing all day long is getting other people to do what we want. And all of these things are tools. So status, power and negotiation are just different tools for influence. If you think about it, right, negotiation, if I’m going to move first, or I’m going to present three solutions, those are just specific techniques to get somebody to do what you want them to do, right?
I control the resources, so you’re a little bit afraid of me, and you need to do what I say, so that I get the resources, and I get rewarded. That’s a tool for influence. It’s why people want Uh, care about power. And same with status. If you really respect and value me, you’re going to more likely do what I say.
One because you trust it’s right, and two because you care what I think and what I think about you. And so all three of those come together and um, influence kind of sits at the top of the pyramid of our, our, our human goal when we’re interacting with other people. The third one is Likeable Badass. The title of the greatest forthcoming book on September 3rd, um, Likeable Badass.
Alison Fragale: So that’s my book, uh, uh, how women get the success they deserve. Um, it, uh, is really my catchy term for that stuff we just talked about with status, which is how do you get status? You get people to think. That you care about people other than yourself. That’s the, that’s my, I use likable for that. And then this idea of you’re capable, you get things done, I put something in your hands, you’re going to succeed.
That’s, badass is my term for that. I always joke that if I called it, you know, capable and caring, no one would buy the book. But, It, uh, it, it is, it has a specific meaning and I, I break it down in the book. I say that’s the way to remember it, but it’s really rooted in psychology of person perception is these are the two dimensions that people are paying attention to when they decide are you a person that they respect.
And the good part about this is that although it feels unfair. That some people have to be more strategic about getting the respect they deserve than others. This is what everyone wants to be. When I say likable badass, no one ever says, nah, not interested. Everyone’s like, yes, that’s exactly what I’m going for.
That’s how I want to show up. Absolutely. I, that’s how I want people to think about me. So there is an authenticity that can exist with this strategy, which is getting. Getting status is being, is showing up the way you really want to show up anyway and being perceived the way you want to be perceived. So that’s how I got the title.
Alison Fragale: And what I do in the book is break down the science of where does status come from, from these two dimensions, and then most importantly, how can people start to use the variables in their control to influence how people see them on these two dimensions? The last one is spread love and organizations.
amazing mission and goal. So I, when you, when we got introduced and you were telling me about spread law, I like, I was like a hundred percent, um, signed me up of thinking about how to be, and again, just like likable badass, right? I, have you ever found someone where you said spread love and someone said, no, not interested?
It is a universal, um, goal of things, things that we’re striving for, of thinking about, um, how to have, like, psychologists often talk about task significance, which is a much less, like, fun way to talk about it, of, does the, do the things I do matter, right? Do I, um, make a positive impact on other people’s lives?
And we see in psychology that the, when people have task significance and they think the things they do matter, it is one of the. biggest intrinsic motivators that human beings have. And when people feel like their significance is threatened, it does not matter what other perks, how much money you pay people, whether you have a foosball like table in the lobby, how many free drinks and snacks there are.
When people feel like the things they’re doing don’t have significance and don’t matter, it’s a, it’s a huge deterrent. It’s normally, it’s normally when people exit. So I think spread love is the, like one of the biggest. human motivators we have that gets us to show up every day and be excited about our work.
Any final word of wisdom, uh, Alison, for leaders around the world?
Alison Fragale: Final word of wisdom. Okay. Um, Be yourself in the most strategic way possible. This is one of the things that I always, um, say is that strategic and authentic are not opposites. You can and should be both. So, you know, just as an example, when I said we like people who are like us, like you can be strategic and say, hey, Hey.
We have a lot of things in common. I’m going to talk about those things that we have in common, but there are things we legitimately have in common that we can tell we both light up when we start to talk about. That’s the very authentic piece of it. So that would be my advice is, um, you know, don’t reject it.
being strategic because we have to be strategic with thinking about other human beings. But that does not mean, strategic does not mean the opposite of authentic. Look for ways to bring those together and one of the things I love to do when I talk to individual people is to say, tell me who you are and what do you naturally like to do?
And then let’s think about how we tweak that on the margin to get you better results without you abandoning the way you like to show up. And I always promise people there’s always a way. There’s always a way to layer that in. So strategic and authentic. You can be both. Well, thank you so much. I can really stay with you for hours discussing it.
Probably we need to do another follow up discussion after the book is out, likeable, badass. I’ll be waiting for it, reading it. I think it’s in September, right? September. Awesome. thank you again for being with me today and for this incredible chat.
Alison Fragale: Likewise. Again, I round to any time you want. I love it. Thank you.
Naji Gehchan: Thank you all for listening to SpreadLove in Organizations podcast. Drop us a review on your preferred podcast platform
Follow us on LinkedIn and connect with us on spreadloveio.com. We’re eager to hear your thoughts and feedback. Most importantly, spread love in your organizations and spread the word around you to inspire others and amplify this movement, our world so desperately needs