When she first mentioned the book’s title, I physically cringed.
“Not gonna lie, I’m having a visceral negative reaction to that title right now.”
“I know,” my friend Jill said, “So did I. But I discovered practical ideas that are helping me navigate my career.”
So, I picked up Likeable Badass: How Women Get The Success They Deserve by Dr. Alison Fragale on Audible.
Fragale’s premise is built on the concepts of power and status. Power is your title, position, and authority. Status is your perception and reputation, which build influence. You can’t always build power. But you can always build status. Regardless of gender, a “likeable badass” improves their status through an equal balance of warmth and assertiveness. Those who overindex on one or the other fail. Warmth without assertiveness: you’re nice, but not respected. Assertiveness without warmth: you’re a bitch. The balance of the two: the sweet spot.
Strolling through the park, I listened to the first few chapters. Female rage was my walking buddy that day. With each sentence, I felt my feet stomping more firmly in resistance to the book’s message: play by today’s rules, build status to rewrite them later. As Fragale outlined the warmth and assertiveness dynamic, I bristled. The hackles of my experience as a woman in corporate America raised, formulating furious questions with each footstep:
Has anyone ever referred to a man as a likeable badass?
Why should women be specifically burdened with building status through warmth and assertiveness?
Why should it be my job to accumulate status and just hope that power magically shows up?
When will we address the broken systems of power?
And, pray tell, why is it my job to fix them?
And while we’re at it, can someone take some accountability here? Preferably the guys that have been running this shit for centuries?
The full doom spiral only required about three steps.
As soon as I was ready to dislodge my earbuds in exasperation, Fragale pointed to my frustration. She stated the facts:
Is it fair that women are underrepresented in positions of power? No.
Is it fair that women of color are even more underrepresented in positions of power? No.
Is it fair she’s encouraging us to take on more? No.
But she clarified that her purpose wasn’t to educate on structural barriers; it was to provide practical strategies. She writes her advice for women because she believes women deserve more. But the advice is applicable to all. Her expertise isn’t centered on how to dismantle the power system itself.
Okay. Fair point.
I carried forward. Over the course of multiple chapters, Fragale shared the small, not-so-small, and rather massive efforts one can deploy to demonstrate warmth and assertiveness, and thereby accumulate status. In some examples, I recognized myself. In other examples, I learned something new. Practical advice: received.
But, as I closed out the last chapter, I remained… bothered. So bothered that I sought input from multiple people, including my husband.
During a less rage-fueled stroll around the park, I told him how the book got under my skin, and how I couldn’t pinpoint why. Seeking to understand, he asked for examples. I shared one that particularly irritated me.
As part of the dual-pronged status-building effort to demonstrate warmth, Fragale advocated for seeking and highlighting commonalities with others. She suggested mining for and calling out ways in which we share perspectives, beliefs, likes, and dislikes with those around us. In one real world example, she recounted the story of a Black woman showing up to a final interview among an all white, mostly male panel. Before diving into the heart of the meeting, the interviewee opened the conversation by connecting with her interviewers on their shared love of fall—sweaters and soups. The interviewee, Fragale noted, deployed a connection strategy that builds warmth and commonality. All of us, she reminded, can find something in common.
I hate soup.
But she’s right.
Still, I felt… bothered.
As he listened, my husband’s eyes lit up. The previous week, he attended a fundraiser for Access Mode, an organization focused on uplifting and funding BIPOC entrepreneurs. The keynote speaker’s speech centered on the concept of homophily.
If, like me, you have no idea what that word means, here’s the gist:
Homophily is the sociological tendency for people to gravitate towards those who look, talk, and act like them. In other words, birds of a feather stick together.
I can relate. I tend to flock towards other women—particularly those who are smart, thoughtful, and driven. My deepest friendships are forged among women who share similar thoughts, beliefs, and actions as me. Based on the research and my sociological experiment of n=1, homophily tracks.
As we circled the park and headed home, my husband circled his point and connected with my frustration. The seat of power resides with the man—specifically, the white, middle-aged man. And for those of us who don’t look the part, the effort to forge commonality is greater. So long as the scales of power swing more heavily towards white cisgender men, the weight of responsibility for forging commonality will rest on the shoulders of people of color and women. The Black woman interviewing in a panel will still be illuminating sameness via soups and pumpkin spice.
Those in power choose who occupy positions of power. Homophily increases the likelihood that those in power will surround themselves with those who look and act like them. In fact, homophily has different levels of strength depending upon the category of differences. Race and ethnicity create the strongest divide— followed by age, religion, education, occupation, and gender.
When Fragale encourages that we all can benefit from finding commonalities among each other, she’s not wrong. But, the level of effort required, and the criticality of that effort, falls more heavily on those of us who do not fit the power seat’s mold.
I’ve experienced this firsthand for decades. When I’ve smiled and identified solutions as a more titled colleague sulks or snarks. When I’ve circumnavigated an unrespected manager to cultivate influence—and eventually, a lateral move to another department. When I’ve ignored inappropriate comments to stay focused on the team and the task at hand. Among many others, those actions earned me status and reputation. But they didn’t always earn me an equal seat at the table.
While anyone can accumulate status, power is brokered by those who hold it. And power dictates when and how status-building efforts pay off.
From a practical perspective, this amounts to more work for those who, statistically, occupy less powerful positions. If homophily is true, and if power is heavily weighted towards white cisgender men, those who are not white cisgender men will need to do more than just perform as well, or better, than their white male peers. They’ll also need to stand out. They’ll also need to identify commonalities. They’ll also need to build bridges. They’ll also need to be warm; to be assertive; to be warm and assertive in equal measure. Not too hot, not too cold, just right.
In doing so, they’ll take on unseen labor. The labor of forging social bonds without equal rewards. The labor of finding commonalities among the interview panel, despite no one visibly relatable on the other side of the screen. The labor of dancing on a tightrope of not enough, too much, just right. This labor might result in status and achieved ambitions. But it doesn’t come with the promise of power, title, or money.
The onus falls on those who don’t have power. Those who do are already seeing plenty of familiar faces around the table.
Apparently, the twinge of frustration I felt isn’t news. Duke conducted a series of studies asking participants to read two styles of passages from Lean In: one focused on individual actions women can take to improve their professional standing; the other focused on structural barriers to women’s professional advancement. Those who read the individual action passages concluded that women were responsible for causing and fixing their professional barriers. The structural barriers passages were insufficient to counterbalance this conclusion.
As I found myself roiling with rage in a walk around the park, I grappled with my own version of this dilemma. Why is it on me to fix this?! I’ve done my part. When is someone else going to do theirs?
But, to Fragale’s point, we can’t wait for that. We can’t hold our breath, stomp our feet, demand it be different, and leave it there.
Instead, we must go further. Stomp our feet. Demand it be different. Navigate. Bob. Weave. Influence. All without a clear timeline or promise for structural change. Collective action and individual action, day by day by day. It’s exhausting to consider.
And yet, we all gotta go to work tomorrow.