Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have Her Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. Her Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum.

Erica: We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career in life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside her collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com.

Erica: Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. Are you a likeable badass? Chances are if you are listening to this podcast or watching on YouTube, you probably are a likeable badass. And if not, you are well on your way to becoming one. But today, we have with us Alison Fragale, and she is a professor, speaker, and author of the brand new book called, you guessed it, Likeable Badass.

Erica: Now you might be wondering, what is a likeable badass? Or you might wonder why is it important to be a likeable badass? But Alison Fragale is here to tell us that if you are an ambitious woman, if you wanna climb the ladder and shatter the ceilings, this is for you. Her book is all about how to be both competent and caring, and how being competent and caring is the key to climbing the ladder of success. Y'all, you are listening to the Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floor podcast.

Erica: This is the podcast that will empower you to shatter limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors to uncover infinite possibilities so you can live your best life. I'm Erica Rooney, and I'm on a mission to bring more women into positions of power and keep them there. I'm obsessed with all things growth and abundance, and I'm here to talk you through the tried and true secrets to get you to level up your career and your life. We talk about the hard stuff here, imposter syndrome, perfectionism, fear, and burnout. So, pull the seat, pop in an earbud, and let's dive in.

Erica: Alison, I am so pumped to have you here. A likeable, badass woman that you are with your book out this week, Born Into the World. Girl, how are you doing?

Alison Fragale: I am well, and I'm gonna be better now that I'm talking to you. It's awesome.

Erica: So fun. And I can't tell you how excited I am. You sent me this book. It's incredible, first of all. Love the cover.

Erica: But second of all, I dove into it and I don't think you can see it and all my listeners definitely can't, but you can see it on the YouTube. I have almost every other page dog eared. So clearly, there's a lot of great stuff in here. I'm not done yet, full disclosure, but it is the read of the moment right now. I love that thing.

Erica: But, yeah, I would I would love to just, like, dive into this whole concept of what is a likeable badass. Right? And how can we be a likeable badass?

Alison Fragale: Alright. That's that is the question. I love it. Okay. So it's a catchy term of endearment, but and, obviously, people, react to it positively, generally.

Alison Fragale: But it has a very specific meaning that is tied to psychology, which is my area of expertise. So I'll take one step back and when I tell you what it is and say, at the at the heart of what I do is I help people understand the concept of status. So status is how much other people respect and highly regard you, what's is what other people think about you. And this variable is really important to our quality of life. It's really important to our ability to obtain power.

Alison Fragale: It's really important to our career success. So we can talk about all those things if we go there. But in the idea of getting more respect and being valued for what you do, those judgments that people make about us and that we make about other people, they aren't random. And so likeable badass is my catchy term for the two dimensions that we pay attention to when we decide, do I respect you? And the two dimensions are, you know, the likeable dimension is do you care about people other than yourself?

Alison Fragale: And that is not just are you likeable, but are you honest, sincere, giving, helpful? When you do things that add value to other people, we respect that. So likeable is my catchall term for that. Then the other dimension we pay attention to is I'll I use the badass, but it's, are you capable? If I give you things to get them done, can you execute them well?

Alison Fragale: So do I believe you're competent, you're organized, you're decisive, you're persistent? If I believe those things about you, I think you're gonna get stuff done if I give it to you. And I value that as well. So when we put concern for others and our capability, I can get stuff done, when we put those two things together, that's gonna be the winning combination. Sometimes we can be respected if we're just one or just the other, but when we're both, you have a person and you believe that person is highly capable and very concerned about people other than themselves, you will respect them.

Alison Fragale: So likeable badass is essentially this the catchy term for the science of how do people end up getting the respect that they deserve.

Erica: I absolutely love that. Now what inspired you to write this book?

Alison Fragale: So I've been working on status for the entirety of my academic year, which is, twenty years as a professor. I'll add five years for being in grad school. So, like, twenty five years of thinking about these ideas. I was doing a lot of negotiation influence teaching. So I'm thinking about these ideas of respect, doing a lot of teaching and speaking and negotiation influence.

Alison Fragale: I speak in a lot of I had traditionally spoken a lot of male dominated audiences, my MBA classes, organizations. But I noticed there was always a pattern that it was women in the audiences who would disproportionately call me, approach me at the podium, etcetera, and say, I've got a problem. And sometimes it was a negotiation problem, but sometimes it was more fundamental problem, which is, essentially, my audience just doesn't value me. And, therefore, when I go try to negotiate, I can't really get anything. And so in those conversations that I started to realize that there were a couple things happening.

Alison Fragale: One was that women had questions they weren't that weren't being answered in all the training and development that we were doing and that I was in a unique position to be able to combine my expertise in status and power and influence with my lived experience as a woman to say, you know what I do is I really do rely on the science of my field to try to solve my problems. And maybe I could help use the science in my field to help women solve their problems generally and to talk about some of the science that's been most helpful to me, which is partly my research and partly others. So that was the beginning of my creating content and work and working to serve women. And then the book was an outgrowth of years and years of doing that kind of work, predominantly coaching women, being on stages, and speaking to women, and things like that. So that's that's ultimately where it came from.

Alison Fragale: But as always, as you know, right, books are based on a need and also an opportunity. So my opportunity came in COVID when all of a sudden, my very, very busy speaking calendar had a little bit of a gap in it. And this idea that I had said, I gotta write this book, but when am I gonna find the time? And I said, oh, well, there is the time. So that was that was the start of what, you know, what enabled it to happen right now.

Erica: Oh my god. I'm with you a 100% because I have my book right here, the glass ceilings and sticky floors, and I wrote it in the height of COVID. And you're right. It's like all of this time just expanded. So two snaps for us.

Erica: We're capitalizing on that. Right?

Alison Fragale: That's right. A 100%. I know. My adviser my graduate school adviser who's in the book, and she's amazing in so many ways, but she's retired now. And I was working on this, and we were catching up frequently during COVID.

Alison Fragale: And she's like, you're, like, you know, have your foot on the gas, and you're getting all these things done. And I'm and I don't know what she was she was she was doing watercolor or something like that, which sounded awesome. But, it was yeah. It was highly productive.

Erica: 100%. And so one of the things that has caught my attention already in reading this book, and like I said, I'm only, like, four or five chapters in, is you talk about the record number of female leaders who are exiting their corporate roles with one of the top reasons being cited as greater instances of incivility at that rank. And, you know, having their judgment questions questioned, others implying that they're not qualified at their jobs. And I will tell you as a female c level leader, like, I have been told by peers that they wanted to be with somebody who was closer to the business. And it is infuriating.

Erica: Infuriating because number one, would you say that to a man? And then number two, you clearly don't respect me. But my question for you is what kind of advice do you give to women who are sitting in this just place where they're surrounded by the incivility when they have the competence? You know, they're generally liked, but this moment of doubt is just always thrust upon them.

Erica: Hey there, listeners. If you have ever felt like you're stuck in a place, held back by self doubt, perfectionism, or that pesky inner critic, you're not alone. We all face those sticky floors that keep us from reaching the heights we dream of. But guess what? It's time to shatter those limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors to uncover infinite possibilities.

Erica: My book, Glassy Leads and Sticky Floors, is your ultimate guide to smashing through barriers, overcoming limiting beliefs, and stepping into your full potential. This book has been endorsed by none other than the great Mel Robbins, best selling author and motivational powerhouse. It's also been featured in Success Magazine, so you know it's packed with insights that work. Inside, you'll find real life sticky floor stories, practical strategies to help you navigate your own sticky floor moments, and a whole lot of inspiration to keep you climbing. This isn't just a book.

Erica: It's your roadmap to success, confidence, and freedom. Grab your copy of Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors today at www.ericaandersonrooney.com. Whether you're in the boardroom, the classroom, or just starting out, this book is for you because no one, and I mean no one, deserves to stay stuck, no one deserves to feel small, and you have glass ceilings to shatter. Let's do this.

Alison Fragale: 100%. So what this idea, why does this happen? And what ends up happening is when we are not respected, there are a couple of problems. One is that's simply a miserable feeling in general. Status is a fundamental human need and it affects your physical health, your mental health when you don't have it.

Alison Fragale: But it also makes it harder to advance. So are we going to promote people where what everyone is thinking is, I don't really respect that person, but, sure, let's just move them up the hierarchy. No. So when we struggle for advancement, when we struggle to get fair pay, behind those no's can be status problems where we have an audience who simply doesn't value us. And that might feel even worse news.

Alison Fragale: You're like, oh my gosh. I can't get paid, and I'm not valued. But what I wanna help people understand is if you can change the way the audience sees you and starts to appreciate your value, then these other things will come. But if we end up in a situation where we have a lot of power, we have a high ranking title, we control things, and we're not respected, That's what I term in my work a low status power holder. And being a low status power holder is a uniquely miserable place to be, which is what these data that was from the McKinsey Women at Work Report, showed was that senior for every one woman promoted to a director level or above, two were quitting.

Alison Fragale: And why were they quitting? They were reporting these little slights that they were having to constantly endure. Those slights all come from a status problem where someone doesn't respect your value and but you have power, so they can't out and out go after you, so they just dig in these little ways that are just subtle enough that you can get away with it. Right? They cut you out of the information flow.

Alison Fragale: They, you know, kinda interrupt they interrupt you. They dismiss the idea. They roll the eyes. They say something kinda snide, but a little ambiguous enough that your wasn't sure what that was about. All those things.

Alison Fragale: It's miserable. It's a miserable and anybody can be a low status power holder. It explains why you go to the DMV and the TSA, you end up in so snarky and such a bad mood is because there's a power status dynamic going on there. We have a person with a tremendous amount of control that doesn't have it by societal standards, a highly respected position. And therefore, people get nastier and more curt and all these things.

Alison Fragale: Same thing with, flight attendants. And, when they had to stop serving alcohol because people wouldn't listen to any of the things they were saying, you have a lot of power to, you know, tell somebody to put on their mask, but you don't have the status. And then the pilots were having to get involved because the pilots did have the status and all these kind of things. So it's all to say that when we have power and we lack status, these kind of things can happen. So now I've given you all that, and I haven't even answered your question.

Alison Fragale: Your quest question was, what can you do about it? But that is gonna help you understand as what I love to do as a psychologist is help you understand the psychology of why the problem exists so that you feel more empowered to think about what I can do with this. Like, it's not me. It's being in a situation where one has more power than status is going to predictably get people to dig at us in all of these subtle kinda subtle ambiguous ways that they can get away with, and it's gonna feel terrible. So what would someone do about that?

Alison Fragale: I think one thing to think about is the status issue you or is it the position? So I we might use TSA as an example. It's gonna be a position with a tremendous amount of power and authority, but not one that is extremely high ranking in societal levels of jobs that are highly respected. So most likely, if someone goes into that role, they could get a lot of that mistreatment simply because of the role that they held hold, not because of who they are. So that's one thing to understand.

Alison Fragale: Is it is it me that's creating the status, or is it the position? But if it's you, it's like, no. This is a high status position. I'm the CEO. Right?

Alison Fragale: I'm the c level something. It's not that's not the problem. The problem is how people are reacting to me. Yeah. Then what I would say is you gotta attack the problem you have, and the problem you have is a is a respect problem.

Alison Fragale: Now here's the I'm gonna speak to people in different levels of challenge, bad news and good news. It's a lot easier for us to avoid status problems than for us to solve them. And what I mean by that is when you have another human being who has already decided they do not value you, you need now need to change their mind. And psychologists everywhere will there's book many books written by this. It is not easy to change people's minds.

Alison Fragale: Okay? So you have a much harder problem you have to solve. When you're new in a relationship and someone has not made a decision about you yet, now you just have to shape how they think about you. And that is gonna be easier. So I'm gonna give you the first part of the answer is let's back up and let's try as we understand status not to put ourselves in those situations, which is let's start managing how people see us long before we even care how they see us.

Alison Fragale: If we do that, then there'll come a day when we do care how they see us and it will already be positive. If we wait until we need to rely on them to care and we don't get lucky, we get unlucky and they don't value us, even though we have done nothing wrong and we are certainly every bit qualified, competent to be there, we've said all the right things, we've done all the right things, and that they get to decide if they value us. Right? Now we have to change their mind. And so it's the same answer.

Alison Fragale: It's just you have to do it for longer because every time you change your mind about somebody, it doesn't happen in an instant. It happens, you know, over time.

Erica: Absolutely. It is.

Alison Fragale: I was

Erica: just gonna say it kinda connects with that idea that trust can break in an instance, but takes time to build.

Erica: You know? I connect

Erica: it to that.

Erica: Yeah. So 100%. So as I

Alison Fragale: said, people always wanna call me when they're in the situation you've just described. Like, something has gone sideways. I'm not getting the results I want from people. Can you help? And I and I say a little bit, yes.

Alison Fragale: I'm not giving up on you. I'm not giving up on anybody, but I sure wish I had talked to you six months ago. Because with six month runway of shaping relationships, you'd have a lot of things you could do that wouldn't derail your day. And now you have an emergency as not as many options.

Erica: Mhmm. I love that. And I do think shaping relationships is one of the biggest keys to unlocking this status game. What are some of the best ways that women can focus on shaping their relationships while doing all the things, being a wife, being a mom, being a badass in the boardroom? Like, how can we focus on shaping these relationships?

Alison Fragale: So the it's the simple thing back to the title of the book is anytime we can take an action that can simultaneously showcase that we are competent and we are caring. We are doing the most controllable thing we can do to show up, right, and influence our status. Now it could be a whole range of things. It doesn't have to be a single behavior that's accomplishing both. But for example, you know, when you're when you're presenting and you are you, you know, you know the facts of the, of the presentation completely cold.

Alison Fragale: You have a you have a confident tone of voice. You're able to be able to, address the questions as they come and have the answers. You could be projecting a lot of capability. Right? I really know what I'm doing.

Alison Fragale: And then, right, you could then have a moment of showing that you're caring that's not in the same necessarily the same words, as the presentation, but you could, you know, be complimenting somebody or telling them, oh, that's under that's a really great idea or a great question or thank you for bringing it up. So you can think about the fact that it doesn't have to be, like, the single utterance or the single action that has to capture both. But then in a given general exchange, I'm sending some signals of capability and I'm sending some signals of caring. But there's so many different ways to do it once you start thinking about the world that way. So an example is offering people advice.

Alison Fragale: When you offer advice, assuming it's welcome, the second you offer advice, you show up as capable and caring. Why? Because you know something, hence, the subject of the advice, and you're offering it for someone else's benefit, not yours. So when you start to see the world through that lens, you're like, oh, that's not that hard. I have lots of things I could give advice on.

Alison Fragale: And I you don't have to scream your advice from the rooftops, but you could keep your eyes open for situations where people might be struggling with something that you know quite well. And, hey, could I help you with that or could I give you give you a tip? That's an example. Updating people about your work while also giving credit to other people who contributed. So sending the weekly, here were the wins of our team, email to your boss, to the to the c suite, whoever it's appropriate to send it to, and saying, you know, we accomplished my team accomplished the following things this week, a, b, and c, all amazing.

Alison Fragale: And special shout out, right, to a, b, and c or x, y, and z who, really went above and beyond. That kind of what we call dual promotion of let me tell you about me and how great I am and let me tell you how great other people are, has been shown through research to elevate your perceptions of capability because you're telling people you've done good things, but also you're caring because you're putting the spotlight on other people. And so there's all different kinds of ways to do it that don't take you out of your natural course of your day. They're just tweaks on what you're already doing to make sure am I, playing up the capability that I have, and am I playing up the caring that I also have?

Erica: The key is recognizing the opportunity and then seizing it, doing it. And, Alison, I'm gonna take you not a total left turn, but we're gonna veer a little to the left. Because on this podcast, we talk a lot about the limiting beliefs and the toxic behaviors that hold women back and keep them stuck. And Yep. I wanna talk about what are some of the limiting mindsets that have that negative impact on your status?

Alison Fragale: Yeah. I mean, this is why, you know, we get along so well in that I think about these things a lot too. I put a whole chapter in the book about mindset countless ways. They're incredibly educated. They're incredibly hardworking.

Alison Fragale: They juggle 753 balls every single day, and they don't drop one. They are incredibly likeable and joyous to be around and, experts in what they do. They're and they're working hard. And what's amazing is that we have all this hard work we're putting in and yet sometimes failing to do the simple things that would take seconds that would have tremendous payoff. And I always think it's such an irony because these are not people who are looking to shirk work.

Alison Fragale: Right? The hardest peep working people and I know in my life are women. So it comes down to mindset, which is we hold some stories in our heads that it can hold us back from building our relationships, building the status in our relationships in the way that we should. So, I'll give you a few. We can dive into whichever, you think are interesting.

Alison Fragale: So sometimes the impost the whole idea of I'm an imposter. If I don't respect my own value, it's it's gonna flow forth and limit my ability to get you to respect my value. So that's one challenge. I don't wanna be a status seeker. This idea of I don't wanna manipulate you or I don't wanna be, like, having to, like, strategize about how you think about me, that's not authentic.

Alison Fragale: So we start to think that being strategic and authentic are opposites, and we value authenticity, so it's pulling us back from strategy. Another one that we're socialized with from a young age is I don't I don't care or I shouldn't care what other people think of me. And I sometimes I tell my kids that, and I'm like, I can't believe I'm telling you this. It's terrible advice, but I don't know what else to do at this moment. You know, forgive me.

Alison Fragale: And it's basically saying, like, turn away from your audience, which we just know from psychology is a bad idea. So much of our life is determined by what our audience thinks. I call it sometimes another limiting mindset is I'm just one of the guys. I mean, I was I always say this. I was born I was a firstborn child in an Italian family, firstborn, like, child and grandchild.

Alison Fragale: Everyone wanted me to be a boy. And, you know, there's no ultrasound back then. So it's like the day you're born, there's like, wah. Here she is. And they're like, what are you gonna do?

Alison Fragale: I was just gonna treat her like she's a boy. So, you know, like, they gave me my dad's name as my middle name. I'm like, that was a really weird idea. I don't know why you did that.

Erica: Alright. What's the middle name, though?

Alison Fragale: It's Ray, which is perfectly fine. But let's just be clear, it makes my initials ARF. Okay? Try to grow up in the seventies and eighties when everything is monogrammed and your initials are ARF. Right?

Alison Fragale: And, like, you've got to be kidding me. That's anyway, my point is that there was definitely a, I think, like, a gender blind like, she can do it. She's a girl. Doesn't matter. Let's just charge ahead.

Alison Fragale: And I was like, sounds good to me. So I kinda went through my life, like, gender. I don't know. Whatever. It's fine.

Alison Fragale: I was I was a math major when I was in college. I was surrounded in these very male dominated audiences. I didn't really give gender much thought. So there's a little bit of that where if my gender is not salient to my identity, I might think it's not salient to how you think about me. Like, I don't care about it.

Alison Fragale: So why should you? But we don't get to decide what other people care about. And then I think another limiting one is simply just this idea that I just don't have time. Right? We use the fact that we don't have time as a as an excuse to write off all kinds of other things that we know we should be doing and we don't.

Alison Fragale: Anything from exercise to building our status. And one of the things I care a lot about is trying to help people realize that this is not an issue that requires a tremendous amount of time. There are definitely time intensive ways you can build your status, but there are very, like, time efficient ways you can do it as well.

Erica: So first of all, love all of those. Second of all, I'm married to a very Italian man whose father's name is Ray. So how many parallels can we draw there? But I think what I would love to dive into is caring about what other people think. Because what I will tell you is that has been a sticky floor of mine in the fact that I've let it hold me back.

Erica: Right? So on the flip side here, you were saying it's important to talk about and to care about what other people care about and how they think about you, which I see that side of the coin as well. So talk to me a bit more about not caring about what other people

Alison Fragale: think. Yeah. So, I think we offer this to people is when we're not getting the outcomes that we want, it's hurtful to hear that somebody doesn't hold you in high regard. So one, just, like, knowing that they don't respect you is in itself a wound. So that's how important status is to us.

Alison Fragale: And then we don't know what to do about it or if we can do anything about it. And so there's a natural tendency to turn away. So when like, I think about as a parent. When do I tell my kids not to worry about what other people think? It's not when they won an award and they were being cheered on.

Alison Fragale: You shouldn't care that they, like, clap for you. That was it's always when they're hurt. Right? When they didn't get an outcome that they wanted. And those moments we turn away.

Alison Fragale: Now I what I what I try to make the distinction is you don't need to be obsessing over how other people think or sitting in your room crying about it. But we do wanna be aware of it because what other people think about us impacts our outcomes in so many ways. We need things from other people. We have to cooperate and collaborate with other people. And so if people don't, you know, respect us and appreciate us, it's gonna make it hard for us to get things done.

Alison Fragale: And so it doesn't mean that we have to go to the lengths of the Earth to get every single human being to see our value. But what I don't like is this automaticity of as ever time I get feedback that somebody doesn't respect me, I just go use the adage, don't care about what other people think, and I turn inward rather to be more of a detective, which is, why do they think that? How much control do I have over, what they're thinking? How important is it to me in the things that I wanna get done in my life that this person is an ally and respects me? And sometimes the answer might be not at all.

Alison Fragale: Right? And other times it's yeah. It's it's right now, this is a pretty important one. How do I change that? It's not my fault, but how do they end up how did we end up in this situation where they didn't see my value?

Alison Fragale: Are there things I could do about it? So I want people just to recognize that status is what other people think about you. Your status exists only in other people's heads. So therefore, what other people think about you is critically important. That does not mean that you need to run around simply trying to be a yes person and giving everybody what they want.

Alison Fragale: But if you start to think about, what do you think about me? I can influence that, and I will influence that. And you start to have that be your lens. And to say even in moments where you haven't been successful in influencing somebody, not to give up on it. So I, you know, I think about even, like, trying to change the messaging to my kids a little bit about this when something painful happens rather than don't care about what they think.

Alison Fragale: I try to go with it's extremely painful when other people do not see the greatness inside of you and when they don't respect you. It's an awful feeling. And if you know, I understand there's a reason it feels bad because it is bad. But you do have greatness inside of you. You are very talented and you care about other people.

Alison Fragale: And I guarantee you, if it matters to you to convince them that is true, they will eventually come to see it. Right? If it if you if it matters, and it may not, and you can let it go. And it's just a shuttle shift to the messaging that is about acknowledging the fact that other people's opinions of us do matter. So just a subtle shift in the messaging to acknowledge the impact of others' thoughts and how they impact our success without becoming obsessed with them because that's not necessary.

Erica: Well, without this turning into a full ass parenting podcast here, I love that because I do I do have a son who very much has what I call FOPO, the fear of other people's opinions. And I've been trying to figure out what the right messaging is for him because I know it hurts. But, like, I just I love what you said because you're acknowledging the emotion. You're acknowledging the feelings, which I think is incredibly important especially for this little boy who will be a man one day. But also Yep.

Erica: It gives him a little bit more of the power back. You know? It's

Alison Fragale: That's right.

Erica: And that's a big piece of it. Right? Because when someone doesn't like you at any age, right, whether you're my nine year old son or working next to me alongside of it in the trenches, it is painful when someone doesn't like you, and it hurts. And we have just been taught to don't worry about it. Sticks and stones can break your bones, you know, but names will never hurt you.

Erica: And it's like, but it does, you know. So I think that is incredibly helpful.

Alison Fragale: From a good place.

Erica: It does. It does.

Alison Fragale: I mean, I yeah. I you know, you I use this analogy is if we started to think about ourselves like vacuum cleaners, we would have better intuition as to what to do. So I say if you were sold vacuum cleaners, that was your job, you would not expect whether you sold a vacuum cleaner or any other product, no salesperson of any worth would say, I have a good vacuum cleaner. It's the customer's job to figure that out. If they don't see that it's a good vacuum cleaner, well, hell with them.

Alison Fragale: You know, I'll just move along. You're gonna be a broke salesperson. You would say, some people can never be convinced. They will never be my customers. So I do have to decide at some point it's worth moving on.

Alison Fragale: But I can't move on from everybody just because there's a little bit of doubt or resistance. It's my job to say, I really believe in what I'm selling. It's amazing. I need to figure out the way to convince you how awesome it is because and once you see it, I know you'll love it as much as I do. If you substitute vacuum cleaner for yourself, it's all of a sudden, it's the same idea, which is not everybody can be won over.

Alison Fragale: There are some customers you gotta let them go. But this idea that people should get who I am and love me from the get go, and if they don't, forget about it, is not any more successful than it is when you're trying to move a vacuum cleaner. You'd say that's an audience. That audience has a set of beliefs. As a skilled salesperson, I need to understand what's influential with them.

Alison Fragale: And I really believe in what I'm offering, and I have to figure out for that audience how to communicate that message so they believe it too. And we would never criticize a salesperson for doing that, but there's a resistance back to this limiting mindset to have that same approach when we are the product. But we are the product.

Erica: We are the product. And, Alison, I know, you know, a lot of people write books for the person that they were ten, twenty years ago. Did you write likeable badass for the for the Alison twenty years ago?

Alison Fragale: That's a really good question, and I've never been asked that before. Yes and no. I mean, I wrote Likeable Badass with a lot of the advice that I was privileged to get both from the science of my field and from people who mentored me that I thought made a tremendous difference in me being able to navigate my own status. So I didn't have necessarily a massive status struggle that was I was trying to have to, like, recover from or figure out. But I lucked out a bit in that before I got too far in my career, I ended up learning a lot of behavioral science and had some really very brilliant and caring mentors who gave me a lot of good advice about how to think about succeeding as a woman.

Alison Fragale: So it's not so much the what I needed, twenty years ago, but more what I've relied on for twenty years that when people are asking me for help are the things that I am most often offering them that are helping that I've had the benefit of getting a head start on knowing.

Erica: I love that. And then so as you know, this is the Sticky Floor podcast. Right? We talk about all things impostor syndrome, perfectionism, fear, burnout. You name it.

Erica: It's on there. When you think about your journey and, you know, your education and your background because I look at you and I hear you, and I'm like, damn. This woman's smart. She's capable. She's likeable badass.

Erica: Right? What was your sticky floor story?

Alison Fragale: Yeah. I mean, I think the book is my sticky floor story. I mean, it exists now. It came out. It's published, so it doesn't feel that way.

Alison Fragale: But it wouldn't have I mean, so, yes, there was COVID, and, yes, I was giving this advice, but it took a lot to pull that out of me. And I that book wouldn't exist if I didn't have an agent who believed in me long before I decided what book I was gonna write or if I was gonna write one. And she had almost, I mean, when I say pull it out of me, it's it's an almost literal statement. It took me a tremendously long time to write it. And I wanna think about what was I doing those long days when I was writing, it was maybe 40% writing and 60% talking to myself in a really unkind way.

Alison Fragale: You know, this won't be good enough. You know, is this gonna be interesting, etcetera, etcetera. And so what ended up happening was it just it lengthened the whole process, and then it forced other parts of the process to be short of, of, like, not having as much time to sit with it and edit it. And it was all because I was allowing it to expand because what if people don't like this? And even for academics who write for a living, there's such a formula and sterility to academic writing that you don't feel vulnerable, and it's all you can never go more than one inch past your data.

Alison Fragale: So it's like, my data says this, so I can tell you because it's just it is what it is. It was a vulnerable experience. And, I felt impostory in all the ways when I was when I was doing it. And it just it slowed me down. It slowed me down.

Alison Fragale: So everyone says, like, if you did it, would you do it again? I was like, I'm not saying I wouldn't do it again. It's a little bit like asking somebody if they've had another kid while they're still in labor and delivery. You're like, I'm not saying no, but, like, you gotta pick your better moment. But what I will tell you is I'll tell you this.

Alison Fragale: If I do it again, my absolute biggest lesson is that floor was way too sticky, and it was unnecessary. Because the like, most work product is a collaborative effort. Show it to somebody, get some feedback, iterate, and do it before you're too exhausted or you care too much, and then you'll be much more willing to iterate it. And, that was my big lesson. I will make my floor less sticky next week.

Erica: It will make your floor less sticky. And then the last question I always ask every single one of my guests, if you could go back to that, Alison, who is sitting there pouring out her vulnerable feelings into this now masterpiece, what piece of advice would you give her now that it's out in the world?

Alison Fragale: I think trust yourself because the reality was that I was coming from these were not stories I had never been told. These were stories and things that I had shared with people, just not in this format. And the fact that people resonated with it was the thing that called me to do it in the first place. So trust yourself. The reaction that you were getting when you say these things verbally and the fact that they were helping people, that's not true just because now you're putting them, you know, into a into a document.

Alison Fragale: So I do that yeah. Trust yourself.

Erica: I love it. I love trust yourself. And, Alison, thank you for being here with me today. Thank you for writing the book, and thank you for staying true to writing the book for women. I just saw one of your Instagram posts where you said there were two nonnegotiables, one being the title, which nobody fought because how could you?

Erica: It's a great title. But the second one being that this was a book for women. And I think that there are so many people that think, oh, you're niching down and you don't need to, and this is great for men. And guess what? It is great for men too.

Erica: But women need this help, and we need to be able to read things like this that are tailored to us so that we can all become likeable badasses in a world that's quite honestly still built for men. So thank you. 100.

Alison Fragale: I said if the you know, why shouldn't women get all the secrets first? I mean, with the secrets.

Erica: Let's do

Alison Fragale: it. Two seasons. Why not?

Erica: Alright, girl. I'm gonna link all of your great stuff for likeable badass y'all. You know where you can find it wherever books are sold. You can get it everywhere, and you can follow Alison on our website. All of that will be linked in the show notes.

Erica: But, Alison, thank you.

Alison Fragale: You are the best. Thank you.

Erica: Alright, y'all. I don't know about you, but that was the absolute best conversation ever with Alison Fragale, author of likeable badass. And as an HR executive,

Erica: as someone who has sat up

Erica: in the C Suite, I know that being a likeable badass is critical to you climbing the ladder and shattering the glass ceiling. So I really hope that you go out there that you snag this book because this is the book that every woman everywhere who is ready to step into their plow into their power and claim the respect that they deserve in corporate. Y'all you need this in your life. And if you loved today's episode, y'all know the drill rate review, subscribe, do all of the things. Follow me on YouTube.

Erica: If you're listening, if you're watching on YouTube, check out the podcast on apple and Spotify. It really helps the podcast land in the hands of the woman that needs to hear it most. And do not forget the glass ceilings and sticky floors. The book is available for pre order right now. It is released on November 12.

Erica: So please head to Amazon or wherever books are sold and pre order today. It really is important for us authors. It will really help me out. And also y'all, it is a damn awesome read. Mel Robbins has endorsed it and y'all know she is the queen of all things.

Erica: Right? So please rate, review, subscribe, grab my book, hit me up. If you were interested in talking about it, I would absolutely welcome any conversation. And y'all I'll see you next time.