Have you ever wondered why some people seem to effortlessly command respect and get what they want, while others struggle to be heard? In this episode, I sat down with Alison Fragale to find out why. Alison — professor of organizational behavior at the University of North Carolina and the author of “Likeable Badass: How Women Get the Success They Deserve”— is breaking down the science behind negotiation, status, and self-promotion.
If you’ve ever struggled with finding your voice at work, navigating office politics, or just want to understand how to wield power and influence without compromising your integrity, this episode is for you.
Key takeaways:
- There’s power in status: Alison explains that status isn’t about fame or the spotlight but about being respected. Understanding and building your status in any environment is crucial for career success and personal fulfillment.
- Find the balance between assertiveness and warmth: The secret to being both respected and liked lies in balancing assertiveness with warmth. Alison shares strategies for how to blend these two elements to effectively influence others.
- Have a self-promotion strategy: Alison introduces the “brag and thank” technique, where you can promote your achievements while also lifting others up. This method helps to present yourself as both competent and caring.
- The importance of asking: Whether it’s negotiating for a raise or seeking opportunities, Alison emphasizes the importance of asking for what you want. She reassures listeners that success in asking lies in the act itself, not just in the outcome.
Notable quotes
“Money is power at its most liquid.”
“Authentic and strategic are not opposites. You can be both.”
“The boundary between a yes and a no is not always where we think it is.”
“It’s not your job to make decisions for other people. They get to decide if it’s a yes or a no.”
“Status is like airline miles. It should be used to solve problems in your life or other people’s lives.”
Alison’s Links:
Website: www.alisonfragale.com
Book: Likeable Badass
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Meet Alison
Alison Fragale is passionate about empowering people — especially women — to get what they want, at work and in life. Alison applies her academic and corporate expertise in negotiation, power, status and influence to individuals and organizations seeking enhanced effectiveness.
Alison is a professor of organizational behavior at the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School. Her academic research on negotiation, and the determinants and consequences of power, status, and hierarchy, have been published in her field’s top academic journals. She is also the author of Likeable Badass: How Women Get the Success They Deserve, published by Penguin Random House in September 2024. Prior to her academic career, Alison worked as a consultant for McKinsey and Company, Inc. Alison resides in Chicago with her husband and her three children, who are all named after professional athletes. She also loves, in no particular order: cheap coffee, not-so-cheap wine, fabulous shoes, sushi, the Pittsburgh Steelers, Peloton workouts, Hallmark movies, and The Golden Girls.
Transcript:
Alison Fragale:
Over the course of your life, you’re not going to get more than a hundred percent of what you ask for. Like how much are you just sitting in a room one day and someone knocks on the door and is like, here’s this thing you didn’t even ask for. That just doesn’t happen. So if you’re not asking, you’re setting the ceiling on what’s possible.
Tori Dunlap:
Hello, Financial Feminists, welcome to the show. I just returned from Italy. I am both very sad to be home, Kristen just gave the Mamma Mia hands and I loved it. Very sad to be home, but also, I’m not going to lie to you, I’m also very happy to be here. It is like 60 degrees, 62 degrees in Seattle right now. Guys, it was a hundred in Italy for two weeks. It was a hundred degrees. And I got to the point where I was just like, I have to resign myself to just being so sweaty, like swamp ass, under-boob sweat the moment I walked out of the hotel, and don’t go to Italy in the summer. The only reason I was there was for my partner’s family’s wedding, that’s it, and it was beautiful but, oh my God, so hot. We have to go back in October.
So happy to be home. Happy to be back. Hello, you beautiful people. If you are new here, I am Tori. I’m a money expert. I am a New York Times bestselling author. I fight the patriarchy by making you rich. And we are a community of over 5 million financial feminists and we have helped 5 million of you save money, pay off debt, start investing, start online businesses and more. And I’m so excited to be joined by actually a client that I consult who’s coming out with a brand new book. And wow, this episode was so actionable and kind of blew me away. Alison Fragale is passionate about empowering people, especially women, to get what they want at work and in life. Allison applies her academic and corporate experience in negotiation, power, status, and influence to individuals and organizations seeking enhanced effectiveness. Allison is a professor of organizational behavior at the University of North Carolina and her academic research on negotiation and the determinants and consequences of power status and hierarchy have been published in her field’s top academic journals.
She’s also the author of a book that you need to purchase called, Likeable Badass: How Women Get the Success They Deserve. We dive into the importance of status, both on a public scale, but also in your one-on-one relationships. And you’re hearing the word status and you’re like, status is gross and icky. We’re using status in the true dictionary definition of the word, which is power. It’s not like class, right? We’re not talking about class status here. We’re talking about you having power and influence in your life and in your work. We talk about negotiating and the power of understanding how status comes into play when you get to the table to ask for a raise or to negotiate for a new job.
We’re also talking about office politics and why it’s sometimes actually good to participate in office politics and how all of this ties into asking for what you want out of your life and career. This is not just a negotiation episode, this is a, I want to get what I want. I want to get the kind of life that I want and deserve, and I don’t know how to get there, and Alison has so many really actionable tips. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and get into it. But first a word from our sponsors. So you’re in New York recording the audiobook?
Alison Fragale:
I was, and they booked it, as you probably know, they booked it for three days, but then going to day two, they said they think we could finish up in two days. And I said, you’re speaking my language. So we finished up yesterday, I stayed, and then I came home this morning. So now I’m back in Chicago. Originally I was going to do it from the recording studio right after I had finished recording the book, so I’m really glad that I didn’t do any speaking today except talking to you.
Tori Dunlap:
I’m shocked you have a voice at all.
Alison Fragale:
I was surprised too. It wasn’t that bad. Yeah. How long did it take you to do yours?
Tori Dunlap:
Four days plus pickups.
Alison Fragale:
Okay.
Tori Dunlap:
Ours ended up being eight hours, I think, all said and done. Like when you listen to it it’s an eight-hour audiobook, 8:15 I think. Yeah, people don’t realize, so if you’ve ever listened to an audiobook, I mean obviously what’s happening is very similar to the show. We’re sitting on a mic and recording, but you’re in a full recording studio typically, like your favorite musician or something like that. But what people don’t realize is you can pick up, you can hear anything on the mic. So they tell you, hey, if you’re going to eat, we’re going to have some tummy noises and we’re going to need to stop and rerecord or any sort of rasp in your voice, anything, any shuffling of papers you can hear. And so it ends up taking longer than you think, both because you need to get clear audio and you need to say things correctly, but also because your stomach makes more noises than you think it does.
Alison Fragale:
So I did the entire thing with a pillow stuffed to my stomach. It was in the room and everything was growling. And even if you’re not hungry, it doesn’t matter. You eat, you don’t eat, you just become hyper aware of your stomach. I did the entire two days hugging this pillow as if I was in childbirth, and they said, well, you are birthing an audiobook so there we go.
Tori Dunlap:
I have a friend who had to do that too when she recorded hers. And the other thing is you don’t realize, for me, obviously I studied theater, I like to think I pronounce things correctly. There’s a lot of things you don’t pronounce correctly or I see it on the page and because I have a mic in front of me, I completely forget how to say a word. That happens so many times. Like I usually pronounce it, ek cetera, it’s et cetera.
Alison Fragale:
It is?
Tori Dunlap:
That one got me. Et cetera, not ek cetera.
Alison Fragale:
Oh, you’ve taught me something. I think I’ve been saying it wrong for 48 years.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. No, but I panicked in the booth because, and they kindly stop you and they go, okay, it’s et cetera. And then it takes me about six times to say it correctly and then you get there. So it’s just so funny.
Alison Fragale:
I realized how much alliteration I had in mind, and it sounds, it reads cute, but when you’re the one who has to say she sells seashells by the seashore, why did I write that in there? The other thing was people’s names, people that I know, but I don’t say their last names a lot. So even though I feel close with them, I had to text some people. Can you send me a voice note of how you say your name so I say it correctly? So it was good. It was an experience.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, I think it was the most fun part about the book writing and release process for me. Because it felt like a performance.
Alison Fragale:
The recording the audiobook?
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, and I will carry this compliment forever. They literally told me, the producers were like, if I didn’t know any better, you are a professional audiobook narrator, and you could have a career in this tomorrow. And I was like, thank you. That made me feel very good. So I was like, okay, if HFK doesn’t work at some point I got a backup job.
Alison Fragale:
Totally. That’s awesome. Yeah, I felt good that I was, I always, we’re wired similarly, like you just want to overachieve. So they were like, we’ve never seen anyone do it this fast. And I was like, challenge accepted. Yeah, uh-huh.
Tori Dunlap:
And you’re like, thank you.
Alison Fragale:
So when everyone says we can’t understand your audiobook because you were going really fast, I’ll be like, but I finished quicker than anyone.
Tori Dunlap:
I know the people who are going at 1.5 speed are going to have to go 0.8, just slow it down. Yeah, a lot of throat coat too. Again, you talk for two hours, you think, oh, I’ll have a voice. And it’s not so much that you lose your voice, it’s just that your voice deepens or it gets a little raspier. And so then there’s continuity between a paragraph to another if you’re stopping there, anyway, we can talk a lot about audiobooks and how interesting they are, but that’s not why we’re here. We’re here to talk about your book and your work. I would love to talk about your background, organizational psychology. What is that in layman’s terms and why is it so important?
Alison Fragale:
Okay, so first this was not my childhood dream. I don’t know if I had a childhood dream, but it was certainly not being an organizational psychologist. Okay, what it is. Psychology, have you ever taken in school, taken a psychology class? Psychology is the science of human behavior. What do we know about people that’s predictable? And there’s all different kinds. And in organizational psychology what we focus on is things that we know about people that are particularly helpful for the challenges we have at work. So how do we negotiate? How do we influence? How do we advance? How are we influential? All of those kinds of topics would fall under the umbrella of organizational psychology.
Tori Dunlap:
So for you with a background in that, how does that lead you to the work that you do now?
Alison Fragale:
I’m interested in psychology. I go to graduate school, become a professor. So I’m teaching graduate business students, undergraduate business students. I’m teaching them these kinds of topics. Now what I do is I primarily use psychology, behavioral science to help women advance at work and in life. And despite being a woman, I didn’t really think that that was going to be something I would do. What happened was, I always say the women picked me. That I would teach classes often in negotiation to teach people how to negotiate effectively. And people come up to you after you speak and they have questions that they want to ask you.
And I noticed that even though the classes and the programs were 70% men, the lines were always women. And they were saying, hey, here’s my challenge. I’m trying to get paid more. I’m trying to get promoted. I did something, it didn’t work. I’ve used all the tools I’ve learned, etc. And so it made me realize that women had questions that they weren’t being answered elsewhere. And that, one, there was science that I knew that could speak to women’s challenges and that women wanted to talk to somebody who had also lived it and said, I can empathize not just from the perspective of the things that I know from research, but the fact that I face those challenges too.
Tori Dunlap:
I really connect with that because I feel like a lot of men look at my work and they’re like, it’s personal finance education. That’s been done forever. And I’m like, yeah, but the reason I think Her First 100k has been so successful is women want to feel seen and they want to understand that maybe personal finance is not just about math. Why can’t I not save money? Why do I feel shame about my debt? And to your point, I think that there’s so much of course about the way we work and organizations for women that are just, it’s not set up for us.
Alison Fragale:
Exactly, so that’s right. So one of the things that people always say is like, Alison, why are you only giving this advice to women? This is basic human behavior. And I said, yes, well, a couple of reasons. If any man asks me and they do, I still educate men, of course. But one, first of all, wouldn’t it be great if all the best info got to the women first rather than us constantly having to play catch up. So that’s the audience I care about and we deserve to have every advantage we can get. But it’s also why, and I think probably for you, why I feel good about the work that I do.
Because no one pushes back on me, but sometimes people would say, well, Allison, you’re giving women tools to solve a problem that’s not their fault. And in some ways you might feel the same. The fact that women are compensated less, our retirement savings are lower, all those things, you can’t get away with the mistakes that you could potentially get away with if you were a man but the advice is the same. And so that’s one of the reasons that I feel really proud of the work that I do and happy about it is I’m giving women tools, but they’re not a different set of rules than men. It’s just, you don’t have as much luxury to make mistakes. And so I want to make sure that women get it right.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, that’s the lens that is different too. And I think just the acknowledgement that the system or your organization or whatever is different if you’re a woman, I think is just so comforting. Where it’s like, I’m doing all the right things, but I’m not getting ahead, so it must be my fault. And I’m like, no, it’s the fucking system’s fault. It’s, oh, I’m negotiating, but I’m not getting what I’m worth. Well, maybe it’s because we live in a society that deems you ungrateful as a woman if you’re negotiating.
Alison Fragale:
100%. I like helping people understand the science behind the infuriating things that they have dealt with for way too long. Because once you understand that there is a predictable reason that this happens, that it doesn’t have anything to do with you, that doesn’t immediately make it go away, but it is step one for you to start to realize this is not personal. I didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t own any shame about this, but I can now think about, given why it’s happening, that I could have some autonomy and control about what to do about it.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, so you’re saying these predictable patterns, give us some examples in our life of what these might look like. I imagine getting passed over for promotions is probably one of the most common ones.
Alison Fragale:
So the things that people most want to talk to me about, given that I started teaching people to negotiate, I started my career in negotiation, is they want to talk about negotiating for pay and negotiating for advancement, 100%. But more fundamentally, both of those are examples of what I would talk about as power, being able to control resources that are valuable. You help women own their power by saying the more financial wealth that you can accumulate, there was a great saying, that actually got cut from my book but I really liked it, by this former professor that said, money is power at its most liquid. And I feel like it belongs on a T-shirt. So those are forms of power and that’s often what people come to me and they want. But the other thing that’s really important that’s not discussed as much but is incredibly critical, not just to our life satisfaction, our career success, but also our ability to get paid and promoted the way we should, is this idea of status.
And that’s why I wrote this book that I wrote. What I talked to people a lot, status is how much you’re respected and valued by other people. And that’s a problem for women too, not exclusively, but it is a problem for women that on average women are valued less, respected less for the same thing than men. And the challenge is that the resources go where their respect goes. So you go in and you try to get a raise and your audience doesn’t really value you, they don’t really respect you, there’s no negotiation technique that I could teach or you could teach that’s going to make that person successful, because the person looking at you just says, I just don’t really care. I don’t really value you. And so what I help people think about is where, how can you take control over how respected you are?
And because respect, although gender can be a determinant, it’s not at all the only determinant and it is not your fate. So starting to understand that gender can be a reason that people devalue you, but if you take ownership of that, that sets you up not just to live the life you want to live because status is what’s described by psychologists, it’s a fundamental human need. It’s something everybody wants. And I always say that lacking respect is, psychologically, is damaging to your physical and mental health as living a life without friends. And so it’s the precursor to getting paid what we’re worth to getting promoted, but it’s also just on its own, it’s a terrible feeling. And if we look at the data on why do women, particularly senior women, leave their jobs and just say, mic drop, I’m out.
If you look at the studies, what they show is it’s basically the constant incivility that they’re subjected to for being in a position of control but not being well respected. And as a result, they get their judgment questions. People say they’re not qualified for their job, people cut them out of things and then they finally say enough. And so I really help people think about the status element, the respect piece of it. It can feel in the beginning, hard to control, but once I start to give people practical ways to do it, it is a path to not only living a happy life, but getting these things like the pay and the promotions that we care about.
Tori Dunlap:
I have so many questions for you. Okay, so when we’re talking about, obviously your book’s Likeable Badass, and I have questions about that in a second, does status mean likable? Because I am not a likable woman and frankly I don’t want to be. I feel like there is this tension of sometimes you got to play the game, but also, I fucking hate the game, so I don’t know what my question is here, I guess. Is status, that’s my first one, is status I need to make people like me because that feels pick me and just gross.
Alison Fragale:
Okay, this is why you’re good at what you do. ’cause this is the question you should be asking. All right? So being respected by another person is critically important. When you feel disrespected, you feel awful, and it is a path to success. Okay, great. So we agree on that. And then the question is, well, what leads one person to respect another person? Turns out those judgments are not random. There’s predictable things we pay attention to. We pay attention to two things. And in the book I draw a little graph and for anyone watching a video, it looks like this. Okay, you have a vertical axis. That’s how assertive you are. Can you get things done? Are you competent? Are you confident? Are you decisive? We’ve been told to do those things. And then the other dimension is, I’ll call it warmth. Do you care about people other than yourself?
Okay, are you other? Are you giving? Are you sincere? Are you honest? Et cetera. Well, it turns out both of those determine status. They’re both positive. We want people who are competent, assertive, we want to give you a task and you’ll get it done. And we want people who are warm and caring and giving. When you put both of those together, that is the surefire recipe for another human being to respect you. I called the book Likeable Badass because it’s my catchy term for those two dimensions. If I called the book, The Interpersonal Circumplex of Assertiveness and Warmth, no one would buy it. So Likeable Badass captures it, but not literally.
So I’m not telling people to be likable, but what I am telling them is that status is based on two judgments about you. Are you good at what you do? And do you care about people other than yourself? And the beauty is those two are non-negotiable, but there’s a million different ways you can signal it. So you don’t have to be bubbly and smiley, and I’m going to, always agreeable, but I can be helpful. You put a lot of content out into the world that is designed to help other people. Warmth can come from that. It doesn’t have to come from being a cheerleader or doing whatever.
Tori Dunlap:
Or even like a pushover, right?
Alison Fragale:
No, right? Because that’s what I help people think about is you want assertive warmth. You don’t want submissive warmth. And so recognizing and help people understand that you can be both for too long, we’ve been put in one or the other, and a lot of people give up and say, oh, forget it. As soon as I’m assertive, no one will like me. That’s not true. We know a lot of assertive women who are very, very well respected and well regarded, but it’s about thinking about the combo of the two. So that’s why I called it Likeable Badass. And what I help people think about is I always say to people, just because someone expects something from you does not mean it’s a bad idea. So I want my kids to brush their teeth, but I’m right about that. So women have been criticized for so long about this idea of warmth and likeability that we can almost react to it the way my teenagers react when I tell them to do something.
But the science says we respect human beings who care about other human beings. And just because a lot of that crap that we have had to deal with has been rooted in bias, it doesn’t make that fundamental truth wrong. So I always say to people, you do care tremendously about people. You put a lot of good out in the world, but be a little bit strategic about how you get credit for it and how you show it. And don’t abandon that assertive dimension in the process. Both matter, and there’s ways to do both. So what I talk about a lot in the book is how do you get to what we call Friendly Strength, where you are conveying strength, but in a way that also says, I care about other people.
Tori Dunlap:
Everybody listening, I need you to go back five minutes and I need you to listen to that again. That was fantastic. And I think, to your point, let’s say, okay, if we’re looking at this graph, that we’re all the way into assertive. I think for a while, especially in the early 2000s or 90s maybe. The way to get ahead in the corporate world was to be a man if you’re a woman or to be like a man. And we know that doesn’t work. And then on the flip side, if you’re so warm and so caring that yeah, you’re a pushover, you don’t have boundaries, you don’t assert your own worth, and you just expect people to notice that doesn’t work either. So how do we find the middle of those two, where we can have our cake and eat it too?
Alison Fragale:
Okay, so there’s a lot of science that basically says people do exactly what you said. I go into an interview and I need to show up as really competent. Well, all of a sudden I get really serious and I’m not smiling, because I think that the way to show that I’m really good at what I do, I take away all the warmth and then, or if I really want you to like me, then I downplay all my achievements. If I’m going to be nice, then I can’t do it. So sometimes we’re doing this to ourselves, human beings. We are basically going after one dimension and we’re hiding the other part of ourselves. So my biggest piece of advice to people is add, don’t subtract. And what I mean by that is start with who you are. And I always say think about which dimension is kind of the natural easy one for you.
Is it easy for you to show up as really assertive or is it easy for you to show up as really warm? That’s your kind of natural tendency. And then how can you do that? Don’t change a thing, but how can you add something on the other dimension? And so it’s too much of us feeling like we need to subtract from ourselves rather than start with what I do and then I could add to it. So for example, I do show up as very assertive in a lot of cases. And if I’m going to make a mistake, I’ve done every kind of mistake you can make, but if I’m going to make a mistake, I’m going to err on too assertive and cold rather than not assertive enough. So for me, one of the things I think about is that a lot of the things that I add in are sharing personal details.
For example, I have a social presence that’s very personal. I talk about my family, I talk about the things I’ve screwed up, I have all the different likes and dislikes on my profile. I’m a serial apologizer, and I haven’t even tried to stop because I know that when you apologize, it’s a warm behavior, but it’s submissive. But for someone like me who tends to show up as really assertive, but maybe not always as warm, I would say, oh, I don’t have to worry about that. I can apologize. I can think about those kinds of things because I’m starting with what I do and then I’m layering in something else that’s going to get me what I need on the other dimension. And that’s where I encourage everybody to start is you’re not broken, you’re not wrong. You’re not a robot, you’re a human being. But what I want people to think about is authentic and strategic are not opposites.
You can be both. And so here, I mean an example might be something like self-deprecating, cutting down ourselves down. I’m a massive self-deprecator. I had, going through the process of writing this book, and one of the biggest edits I got from my editor was like, you can’t talk about yourself in this book. I wasn’t even aware of how much I was doing it. But me doing that, sometimes people ask you a question like, hey, how’s it going today? And there’s two yous, right? One you is not so great, and the other you is actually a couple awesome things just happened.
And so being intentional about, well, in this moment, which of those things do I want to share given my purpose in this interaction? There’s not just one version of us. We have multiple forms of us and so everything is authentic. So what I help people think about is, in a certain moment, you can pick a version of your authentic self and you can put that version into the world. And doing that is going to be your strategic thing for getting people to pay attention and say, this is a person who knows what they’re doing and cares about other people.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and I think too, and maybe we can talk a bit about this as well, that your dial, like how assertive versus how warm you are, also changes depending on what you’re doing and who you’re talking to. Because I think the average person who follows us would probably put me more in the assertive camp, but anybody who knows me personally knows I cry at anything. I think I’m a very warm person, and especially if you’ve met me in real life at one of my events or something, I think you get more warmth me than necessarily assertive me or even assertive me for the hour I’m talking and then warm me for the hour I’m doing a meet and greet. So I think, let’s talk about that because obviously in a negotiation you need both. But for the average woman, I think you need more assertiveness than she of course might feel comfortable with initially. So maybe talking about our audience as well as different situations where we got to turn the dial.
Alison Fragale:
Yeah. So one thing I would say in the example you’re talking about is, often you’re talking about people who might be meeting you for the first time. They’re coming across you, they’re seeing you at an event. Here’s the beauty. Reputations are really easy to build. They’re a lot harder to change. So one of the things I try to coach women on is we have been told to play defense our whole lives. Offense is better. And what I mean by that is, you go in and you think I’m an accomplished, dedicated, caring person. I go into an environment, I put my head down, I do what’s expected of me, and I don’t think anything about status, respect, gender until something bad happens. I hear that someone’s talking over me in a meeting, I go into a review and I don’t get the feedback I want. Now a bad thing has happened. And all of a sudden I think, wait a second, now people don’t respect me.
I’ve got a problem. And now people call me and they want me to help change people’s minds. And I say, I can try. But how easy is it to change your mind once you’ve decided that you don’t like a person or you don’t respect a person, it can be done. You’ve just set yourself up for a lot of work. So I think in these situations where you’re in an event, for example, one of the reasons that it’s not that hard to end with someone saying you’re assertive and you’re warm is because you’re more of a blank slate than once they’ve worked with you for five years. So what I help people think about is if we could start at the beginning of relationships to say, how can I even in introducing myself, having a five-minute conversation, working with somebody for an hour, what can I do so that the end of that they are left with this impression that I’m good at what I do and I care about other people?
And it can be on all the different kinds of things. It could be a story you tell about yourself. It could be a tip or a suggestion you give somebody. It could be showing up on time, extremely well-prepared. You have a lot of different ways to do it. But if you do that at the beginning, then you can write it. And then, if they get the more assertive version of you one day, the more warm version, none of it matters because in psychology, what we know is reputations are really sticky and they’re hard to change. And so then you don’t have to sweat it. Now if you’re already in a situation and you’d say, okay, people don’t value me as much as they should and I need to change it. It doesn’t change the advice. You just need to be really consistent for longer, and you need to be really thoughtful about how you’re showing up.
But one other tactic I want to bring up is that your reputation and how people think about you, it comes from two sources. One is everything you put out into the world. So we should control that and make it as advantageous as possible. But it’s the things that other people say about us too. So you have a big following, so you’re a public figure of sorts, but a person who’s not a public figure listening to this would say you get all the time, someone says, oh, you should meet Alison. Alison’s great. And in that moment, someone has built my status for me. I wasn’t doing anything. I wasn’t even there. And so starting to realize that other people can help do this work for you, you don’t have to do it all by yourself, but they might need a little nudge from you. They may not know that you are sitting there feeling like person C who’s not in this conversation doesn’t respect you.
One of the things I do is I always say negotiation is not just for cars and houses, it’s for anything you want from somebody. So ask somebody to say, hey, you’re really respected by this audience and you really value me too. I don’t think they value me as much as they should, yet. I need you talking me up. I need you showing my wins. I need you talking about how giving I am, how smart I am, whatever it is, and that can be really effective, and I think that’s a path that we under-utilize. It’s a great feeling when it happens, but I try to help women bottle it and say, it’s not an accident that that happened. You can get more of that if you start to use those people as your microphones.
Tori Dunlap:
We just had a podcast with Lily Womble who’s a dating expert, and one of the things she talks about, the thing she recommends is basically having a wing woman. Whether you’re out in public or just someone who’s actively trying to set you up with people who already… Your friend has to understand what you want, but is out there looking for you and then putting in a good word for you. And it’s the exact same thing. And I met my partner at a bar largely because my friend Kelsey was sitting next to me going, can I show him your Instagram? Can I hype you up while you go to the bathroom? And I’m like, absolutely.
Alison Fragale:
Exactly. It’s not just for dates, right? It’s for any relationship. It’s funny you say wing woman, ’cause there was a good friend of mine and we joked that if… She does have a podcast, but I was like, oh, we’re not going to do this. If we did one together, we would call it Wing Women. That’s what we wanted to call it. I’m going instead for a professional podcast guest. I always joke, what’s better than having a second home? A friend with a second home. And what’s better than having a boat? A friend with a boat. And what’s better than having a podcast? Friends with podcasts.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, what is it? Best three days of your life, buy a boat, sell a boat, friend gets a boat.
Alison Fragale:
Right? Yeah, totally. Anyways, so it’s the same idea. It’s the wing woman idea, which is other people can say good things about you, and we love it when it happens, but we can get more systematic about making it happen, about using the people that we have. And I always say there’s 8 billion people in the world. If you could get 2000 people to love you, who could talk you up to 2000 people who could talk you up to 2000 people, that’s 8 billion. Again, 2000’s still a lot, but I mean…
Tori Dunlap:
But, okay, 50, 20, 20 times 20 times 20. Yep, totally. Okay, so one of the things I’m thinking about while we’re talking is that, it’s my biggest pet peeve but I also have all of the empathy in the world. A lot of women who follow me, and this might be you dear listener, is they see me talk about my accomplishments and they also see me ask for what I want. In case you did not know, the reason I go on Good Morning America is because I ask. The reason I even started a podcast and got a podcast deal is because I talked to people and said what I wanted. Again, I think there’s this misconception that it’s like, oh, well, one, no one’s going to listen to me. And two, it’s like gauche or it’s again, pick me energy. It’s like weird to say the things that I want. Why are we not asking for the things that we want and how can we start doing that unabashedly?
Alison Fragale:
Yeah. So a couple of reasons why we don’t. One, the idea of negotiating is itself a very gendered word. It conjures up a model of characteristics that we associate with men. One of my favorite studies, and if this is helpful to the listeners, is that when researchers change the word negotiate to the word ask, they took all the gender difference in this behavior away. The ask is a submissive word. So if it helps people to say, I’m not negotiating, I’m not demanding, I’m asking, and I get asked, feel submissive, that helps, go do it. It’s the fear of this backlash ’cause it creates the assertive warm tension.
Tori Dunlap:
Or it feels embarrassing. Like maybe nobody will see my LinkedIn post where I ask to be connected with potential publishers to publish my book. I think that that’s part of it too, is it’s like, what if nobody responds, but yeah, what if somebody does?
Alison Fragale:
A hundred percent. So it’s a learned skill. I work with people on this all the time. A whole chapter in the book on how to ask for what you want and make people love you for it. And specific things we can do. A couple things I’ll offer here is one, people love choices. So if anytime you’re in a situation where you can ask for like, I’m thinking about something like A, B or C, could you help me out? And you give people a choice, that’s a great way to soften an ask because then people can pick from what they like. So it doesn’t make sense in every ask that you’re going to make, but you could think about how to do that. The second thing is, and this really does speak to women’s desire to help other people, is anytime you have to answer the what’s in it for me question for your audience.
And so as soon as we start switching our argument to here’s why this is also good for you, then we get better results and people enjoy thinking about that. So I always say ask a lot of questions and then talk about what you’re asking for and how it could be beneficial. Ask them, what else could I do for you to make this a win for you? I want this to be great for both of us. But it’s always going to feel scary. I do it for a living, it still doesn’t always feel like the most comfortable thing. But the other piece of advice I would say is go practice in low risk situations. I just put a post on my newsletter about you should never go to the airport without negotiating something. One, shit always goes wrong. So you always have a legitimate reason to actually improve your outcome.
Two, you’ll never see these people again, so if it sideways, no big deal. And three, those little wins that you get, they build your confidence. I see these things happen all the time. Next thing you know, someone gets an upgrade or they switch their seat to the aisle and all of a sudden they feel like a superhero. And the confidence builds on the confidence. And then you can make the next ask and the next ask. So I think of someone has never asserted themselves ever from that to Good Morning America feels big, but go to the airport, do something on the airplane, do something. And I have a lot of ways in the book to help people think about, how they can practice in, and I have low, medium and sort of higher risk environments so that depending on your comfort level of doing it, you can feel like you can challenge yourself without being terrified.
Tori Dunlap:
One of the things I say about negotiation or asking is that success is not getting the answer you want, success is that you did it. I think that reframing that is really important because actually when you do ask, you don’t have control after you ask. So control what you can control, show up while prepared, especially in a job negotiation scenario. You got to show up well-prepared, you got to do your homework, but after that, it’s the universe. It’s your boss, it’s what they think of you, and that’s where the reputation comes in, of course. But I think that’s one thing that I want women to release is it’s like, oh, I didn’t get what I wanted so I wasn’t successful. No success is that you showed up and that you were brave enough to do it. And same thing with you, Alison. I always say it’s, negotiation’s like a muscle where it’s like the more you do it, the stronger your muscle gets. And that doesn’t mean that the weights aren’t difficult to lift, it just means that they’re easier. It doesn’t get easy, it just gets easier.
Alison Fragale:
100%. I mean, I’m totally in agreement. I always think you’re playing a long game. You’re looking at negotiations, all the ones you’re going to have in your life. You’re not going to win every single one of them. You’re not going to get what you want. But over the course of your life, you’re not going to get more than a hundred percent of what you ask for. How much are you just sitting in a room one day and someone knocks on the door and it’s like, here’s this thing you didn’t even ask for. That just doesn’t happen. So if you’re not asking, you’re setting the ceiling on what’s possible, so you have to raise that ceiling. There’s some science on this that I also think is really important for people to understand is that some of the best behaviors that help us negotiate more effectively can leave us feeling really bad at the end. When you set high goals and you push for them, and a good goal is going to be out of reach, right?
It’s going to be a stretch goal. So that means that you shouldn’t be hitting them all the time. If every single thing you ask for, someone says, sure, no problem, the only thing I’m sure of is you have not asked for enough. You need to be getting some nos because you got to push the boundary of where the yes and the no. But what happens is, if we aim for X and we only get 80% of X, the only thing we can see is that delta, like I didn’t get that 20% that I wanted, and it makes us feel terrible. And so what they’ve shown is the higher, the more you aspire to in a negotiation, the better you do, but the worse you feel because you don’t hit it. And so I want to remind people of that is the solution to not is not aim low and always clear your goals because yes, you’ll feel better, but you really want to think about aiming high. And if you’re constantly getting a yes, you’re not asking for enough. There should be some nos in there.
Tori Dunlap:
I could not agree more. I have so many thoughts about this and then we’ll move on. But I literally say in my own book, we talk about goal setting ’cause we have a section in a chapter about that. I’m like, do not set goals that are just like, oh, yeah, I could do that. I need you to set goals that feel a little impossible. Where you’re going, I’m not sure if I can do that. And that’s how we set goals as a team too. And my team knows at this point, I want you setting goals because it’s not a goal if you’re like, oh, yeah, I can do that. That’s just, that’s a Tuesday.
Alison Fragale:
A task.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. I need you setting goals that are kind of like, I don’t know if we can do this, but maybe. And I’ve told this story on the show before, but when I was talking about my 100k publicly and I announced it, I got a call from my dad and he was like, okay, so you’ve announced this huge thing and that you’re going to do it at age 25. What if you don’t hit it? And I was like, okay, I have $80,000. I’m like $80,000 at 25 is still great. And I think that sometimes people would need to see, and I hit my goal, but if I didn’t, and that’s okay.
And so even my dad who was like master negotiator, master goal setter, who also cares about my reputation was calling me and being like, so what if you don’t do it? And I’m like, then I don’t do it. Okay, it’s fine. And I can spin it any way I want to spin it in terms of, it was still great and the progress was still fantastic. So the other thing too is like, okay, let’s say you publicly “fail”, cool, you still, to your point, you didn’t hit the hundred percent, but you got to 90, you got to 70, and that’s better than none of those things.
Alison Fragale:
A hundred percent, yes. But again it’s, yes, it’s a muscle and you start to do that, one of the things I send people out to do, and I talk about a little bit in the book, but I teach it in my class and a couple of people do, is pushing people to get nos. To actually, your task is to get a no. Because what ends up happening is someone says, oh, get 10 nos. I’ll be done in 10 minutes. You know how many people tell me no? And then they go out and people start saying yes, and they realize that a lot of these nos were not actual nos. They were asks they never made because they thought they were going to get a no. And when I forced them to go ask, they were like, huh, I got some yeses. The boundary between a yes and a no is not always where we think it is.
And the other thing that people have said, which is not my piece of advice, but I’ll repeat it ’cause I think it’s good which is, it’s not your job to make decisions for other people. They get to decide if it’s a yes or a no. It’s not your job to make the decision by not even asking them. And I do have to, I’m sure you probably get this too, when you have a certain, especially when you come across as assertive, you have a certain level of success. People are afraid to ask you for things. And then sometimes you hear, I didn’t ask you but, and I was like, I wish you would’ve, I would’ve done that for you. And I always said I’m very deliberate, and so you have a range of listeners here, and some people are thinking about advocating for themselves but other people are thinking about advocating for others at the same time, is I always coach people and I say, please bring me anything that you think I could be helpful with.
I am really good at saying no if it is not a fit for me. But I would much rather say no to you 10 times than have you be quiet and not have a conversation with me. And sometimes that needs to be said out loud because we think it’s implied. But other people, you wake up one day, one of the weirdest things is to wake up one day and realize other people in the world are intimidated by you. And you’re like, how the hell did that happen? And I think you are, you’re coaching people, I’m coaching people that, there are already people, a lot of people in that category, but that’s kind of what we want. But then when it hits you, it’s a surprise. And you’re like, well, wait, I’m the same idiot I was in high school and now people are scared of me? But that means you have to tell people, you can ask me things because then people don’t negotiate with you.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, it was very interesting when we started hiring people, especially as we got bigger and bigger at HFK. And people who were familiar with our work who ended up getting hired had a perception of me as public Tory. And public Tory is a part of me, but again, I think Boss Tory is a different Tory. And so it’s just, yeah, it’s interesting, and again, to your point about reputation, there’s only so much of that you can control.
Alison Fragale:
Yeah, you have to help people see the same. I actually had to put, I have a very casual professorly style, and even my students, I like having good rapport with them and I have students, I’ve gone to their weddings and haven’t been maintaining these relationships, but I had to actually put a paragraph in my syllabus that basically said, in class, I crack jokes, I’m real easygoing. But let me just tell you this, you do not do what you’re supposed to be doing, I have no qualms about failing you in this class. And I actually had to write it in because I think that some people when they got a bad grade, were so shocked by this version of Alison, this version of Alison still has high standards. We can crack jokes, but you still need to do what you’re doing.
So yes, I think the more you can help people understand, this is generally, understand what you want from them, whether it’s as a boss or just in negotiating with you, et cetera, you’re giving them a huge gift. And to help people, including telling people, I really want your support in helping to build my status with other people in a way I cannot do alone. I need you. And I think, as I always say, people are really grateful if you come to them with a very specific need that’s easy for them to fulfill. They like you, they want to be helpful. They’re not running around thinking about things they could do and they don’t want to overstep. And a lot of times you might think, I could do this thing for this person, but is it even welcome? So when you tell people it’s welcome, you start to get more help.
Tori Dunlap:
So we’re talking about status a lot, and I appreciated the definition. I think again, misconception, another one is that status is about being in the spotlight, but you talk about how it’s not always that. Can you share more about status for someone who is not interested in fame, is not interested in the corner office, is not interested maybe even starting their own business or these big accolades, how does that work?
Alison Fragale:
Yeah, so that’s true, there’s multiple, if you look up the dictionary definition of status, status as respect is in there, but there’s also this idea of status as esteem or the standing or spotlight. I talk about it as respect. So you could throw out the word status and you could say it’s about being respected. And I would say, again, I know that that is valuable to everybody because we just see from the science that it’s something fundamental to human existence. But I always say even if you don’t want to, you’re happy where you are, you don’t need more money, you don’t need more promotions, you don’t need more recognition, then you might have the amount of status you need to be able to live the life you want.
So that’s great. That people can need, or you have it from the right people, the people that you need to respect you do, and you’re set. Then I think the next step in that is, okay, well how are you going to give to other people? What are you going to use your status for? So you know you get the airline miles or the hotel points and you never want to spend them on anything. I know you spend yours, but you’re like a hoarder.
Tori Dunlap:
No, I still, I have to force myself to spend them.
Alison Fragale:
Right? Because someday you don’t want to be a status hoarder. The status is like airline models. It should be used to solve problems in your life or other people’s lives. So what I would say is even if you feel like I’m good, the question is then how can you use the status you’ve built to go make other people’s lives better, to be influential on their behalf, to lift them up, to be the other promoter and get people to pay attention to them.
Tori Dunlap:
And to be the anti-one seat at the table. It’s like, no, there’s seats for everybody. We’ll build our own tables, exactly.
Alison Fragale:
Exactly. So I always say just like wealth, people have different levels of wealth they might need to feel like they’re okay. But I would say is if you had more of it, you can choose what you want to do, but if you have more of it it doesn’t necessarily, there’s not one way you have to actually use it. You could use it to give it to charity. You could use it to create something that you really believe in in the world. You could use it for consumption. You could do whatever you wanted with it. It’s just a resource. But the one analogy I wanted to make, given that you talk about money and I talk about respect, is that they both need to be built before you need them.
So we have to think about managing relationships the way we manage money. And a lot of times I get calls that would seem preposterous if you took out reputation and you put money in. Like imagine someone’s closing on a house tomorrow and they’re like, I have a small problem. I don’t seem to have any of the money for the down payment that I have to leave it closing. Tori, could you help me with that? And they’d be like, I don’t know, maybe, you want me, yeah, right? In a day? You want me to give you a nest egg? No.
Tori Dunlap:
I feel like that happens, actually, that’s a huge chunk of our listeners. And sorry, maybe you, I’m calling you out listener, but like, oh, there’s so many people who are like, I am tens of thousands of dollars in debt and I don’t know where to start. And I’m like maybe the start here page on our website, my eye twitches a little bit, maybe the podcast episodes that are free, maybe the book that’s accessible at your local library if you can’t buy a $20 copy, that is actually the vast majority of messages we get. And I’m not going to lie, it drives me up a wall.
And then the people who are successful, and we’ve been talking about doing an episode about this for a while, but I have to do it with, again, the huge asterisks of empathy of, if you are sending me those kind of messages, you will never be successful. Because you’re asking me to do it for you. And I can give you the roadmap, but I can’t do this thing for you. And it’s a lot of, yeah, the last minute, I have to do this tomorrow and I don’t know what I’m doing. And I’m like little too late for that, babe, yeah.
Alison Fragale:
Okay, so maybe the analogy is not as crazy as I thought.
Tori Dunlap:
No, but the down payment on a house one, I don’t think we’ve ever gotten that one of like, oh, hey, I put an offer on a house and I don’t know how I’m going to afford it.
Alison Fragale:
It’s basically like with status, if you have a year versus you have a day, you have a lot more choices. And so what happens with status is people don’t care about how they’re seen by others until it starts to matter and then they want to change it.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, let’s call it an emergency fund. That’s probably the easy metaphor here is it’s like, you only realize that you need an emergency fund or a will or life insurance when something terrible happens. And then you’re like, fuck, that thing that Tori has been talking about ad nauseum for a really long time, I probably should have done. So, yeah, it’s a lot harder to then say, oh, I should have been doing this, but the urgency wasn’t there before.
Alison Fragale:
That’s right. And so I think about you need to invest, you need to diversify, you need to prioritize. Those are three things with relationships. You need to put things into your relationships. You just can’t show up on day one saying, I’ve never done anything for you, but can you help me? And so I help people think about easy ways that they can be investing in lots of different relationships so that they can diversify, and say I have a lot of different people that I’ve done a lot of little things for and including, social media is a great example. If you put content out on social media, that’s a small investment in the day of somebody else who sees it. And they see value in it. And I help people think about how to do that. You got to invest and diversify. And then you have to decide when is it worth using the respect that you have earned in the communities where you live to get something that really matters, either matters to you or you stand up and fight for somebody else or do something that’s worth doing.
But you have to prioritize because you don’t also want to frivolously spend your wealth and you don’t want to frivolously spend your reputation. And I help people think about those kind of things. And I think the analogy is pretty good, which is that you have a lot of choices if you’ve got time. But people don’t want to think about it until they have a thing that they want all of a sudden, like I see the bag or I want the house, or I have a bad thing happen to me.
And then I think, I wish you would’ve called me a year ago because I would say, you knew this conversation was coming. You’re going into a conversation about a raise tomorrow. How long have you thought that was going to be an issue since you took the job? So probably people back up and think about a longer runway just like you, it’s like, we have a lot more choices. But I do want to tell you, I have an idea for I think the collab that you should do for this podcast episode you want to do. Do you know any of the Peloton instructors? Are you a Peloton fan?
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, I actually do.
Alison Fragale:
Okay.
Tori Dunlap:
Ally. Ally Love is a friend.
Alison Fragale:
Ally Love, she’s amazing, but Cody Rigsby, He does that XO Cody where he reads relationship cards. I feel like there should be a collab with the two of you on bikes where he’s reading off the infuriating finance emails that you get and then he tosses them like he does with the cards. I can a hundred percent see this.
Tori Dunlap:
I’ll call him up. That sounds great.
Alison Fragale:
You should totally do it.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s going to be hard to get me on a Peloton bike ’cause I hate them, but we’ll see what we can do. I don’t hate them. It’s more that it’s, I enjoy Peloton, I just realize how sore my ass is after.
Alison Fragale:
Yeah, that’s like the limiting factor, I think.
Tori Dunlap:
I’m just not used to it, ’cause I don’t do it a lot. And then I do, when I get excited they’re at hotels, I’m like, yes, I’m going to use one. And then after I’m like, oh my God, my actual ass, not my glutes, my ass is sore.
Alison Fragale:
Totally, totally, yeah. But I think that’s the collab.
Tori Dunlap:
You got to love it. Anyway, they used to sponsor the show. It’s fine. Okay, one of the things that I think as I’m just saying it is going to sound a little controversial but we were talking about this before. You believe that we should play a little bit of office politics. Explain that to me.
Alison Fragale:
Well, okay, what is office politics? Office politics is understanding the network of relationships so that you can be influential. One thing I do want to say is that the term office politics is often used to describe bad things, but by definition it is neutral. That we might think about, I’m information hoarding, I’m backstabbing, I’m keeping someone down.
Tori Dunlap:
I’m playing kiss-up to my boss. Yeah, I’m Andy Bernard.
Alison Fragale:
Right, it doesn’t have to be any of those things. Office politics is a neutral term, but if you don’t like it, replace it with something that you consider more neutral. I need to be influential. Every human being needs to work with other human beings to accomplish or get anything. So this idea that I can just ignore everybody else and just meander my way through my day and do any good for anybody, myself or others is obviously false. So that’s why I say strategic and authentic are not opposites. I would say, okay, what’s your goal? What are you trying to do? Okay, I have an idea that I really believe in in the organization and I think it is the right thing that we should be doing. I think it’s the thing that’s going to help us succeed. Great, you believe in it with your heart. You think it’s great.
Okay. You need some supporters. So now office politics is how do I get some people on board? How do I think about, if I go into a meeting with that one person who always just likes to be the naysayer and they shit all over my idea in the first five minutes, this idea might die before I even get enough support for it. How about this? How about I try to go one-on-one and get my allies first. And once I know that I have enough influential people supporting me, then I call the meeting and then we kind of all strategize what are we going to do with that naysayer?
That would be an example of falling in the category of office politics. You are being strategic to get an outcome, but that no part of that is being dishonest, is pursuing inappropriate ends. It is simply saying, I have goals and I’m going to be as strategic as I can about achieving my goals while still acting with integrity and honor. So I want us to reclaim office politics as something that we all do. It’s not a bad thing, and if you just influence without authority, sounds more neutral, we can call it that.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s about being strategic. It’s the same thing with sales, right? It’s like there’s a certain misconception about sales. We think sleazy, snake oil, we think gross used car salesmen, and I’m like, I’m a salesperson. That’s really what I do. Like yeah, I’m a finance educator. That’s really actually not the majority of my job. It’s actually about getting people to care about this thing that I want them to care about and then eventually, whether that is with their money or with a subscribe on this podcast or, I’m trying to get them to do something that of course I hope helps their life, but helps me too. And so I think that yeah, it’s what you have to do in order to get ahead. Now, it’s not about back stabbing, it’s not about sucking up, it’s not about being an inauthentic person, but it is about understanding who you’re working with, who’s going to advocate for you, who’s going to shit on your idea before you even open your mouth and understanding that you’re going to have to navigate all those personalities.
Alison Fragale:
Totally. And I’ll give one tool and one analogy. One tool for people who feel like this all seems so abhorrent, I don’t want any of it, science about networks is that knowing what the network looks like is in itself a source of power. Knowing that this person is friends with this person, this person hates this person. Just knowing what it looks like is really useful. And so if all you do at work is sit back and pay attention to the relationships, you’ll get a tremendous amount of information that should you want to then go in and start to navigate those relationships. You will know how to do it effectively. Just pay attention. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this happen. Have you ever had somebody say something like snarky or bad about you to a person who likes you and knows you way more than they like the person that’s complaining and then the person just runs and tells you?
And I think that person who was trashing me doesn’t understand what the network looks like because if they did, they would’ve trashed me to someone else. They wouldn’t have trashed me to my friend because they didn’t know the relationships. Once you know what they are, you have a tremendous amount of power. But my analogy is I do have three kids and they range from nine to 15. But for parents, and I think even for non-parents this would resonate but certainly for parents, I always say this, you have multiple kids. Do you parent each of them the same? Absolutely not. Because you’re not going to get the same results. And I would say if I care about each of their well-being and success and I want you to do A, B and C, I can’t just blindly go in and be the same person. I won’t get the results.
So I’m a different parent with each of them. And when you say that to a parent, no one thinks that’s being sleazy or inauthentic. They just think that’s smart parenting. That’s, of course, what you have to do. It’s no different than three people you work with. That you have to use a different approach with each of them to get what you want. It doesn’t have anything to do with being, with raising a human. It’s just the idea of how do you get the best out of somebody or how do you serve your own goals that you truly believe are also good for other people? You got to navigate. You got to change your approach. You got to pay attention to what the people want.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s the same thing with being a leader. The way I communicate to one of my team members when not work with somebody else, and again, a part of it is status. The way I communicate with our COO who is the closest unilaterally to me is very different than how I communicate to people who might report to me or report to her. That’s very, very different because she and I have a different relationship. We have different expectations. If I just send her a thing that has no sort of emojis or couching, that’s fine. That’s how she prefers to communicate. But I can’t send that to somebody maybe on the rest of the team without being like, oh, Tori hates me. I’m going to get fired. Yeah, and I’ve gotten better at that and they’re still learning that I’m doing around that. No, I love that example too because I’m not the same friend necessarily to certain people.
I’ve realized actually about my partner’s sister hates being touched. I noticed this at dinner. I just put my hand on her leg to talk to her, and I didn’t get a visceral reaction from her, but I could just tell that was not comfortable. And I was like, okay, great. I know that physical touch is not her thing. And also my partner has told me, hey, she doesn’t like being hugged that much. She’ll do it like two times a year. And so I remember that after and I was like, okay, so the way I communicate is not going to work in that way with her, and now I’m more intentional about it.
Alison Fragale:
That’s right. And I think this is a good example of saying, look, once you know what someone wants, that’s strategic and authentic, which is it’s not a requirement that I have to hug everybody. It’s not a requirement I have to touch everybody’s leg. It might be my more natural style. And so it is, there’s an authenticity to it, but I can be equally authentic non-hugger. And so I’m going to go to that version of myself because that version is better for you. And that’s what I want to help people think about in terms of building their relationships is I really believe in not doing anything that is just because it feels like a strategy, but I don’t think that means we don’t do anything that is strategic. We have to find the space.
Tori Dunlap:
I also want to acknowledge I touched her leg in a non-creepy way. It was just one of the like, okay, I don’t know. We keep talking like touch her leg, and I’m like, it’s not okay.
Alison Fragale:
I know, well, yes, ’cause you can see us with the visuals. If someone’s listening only…
Tori Dunlap:
I know you can’t see it. So yeah, it was a non-creepy way.
Alison Fragale:
Right.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay, we talked about this a bit, but I just want to reiterate. Self-promotion, for folks who feel that icky feeling when it comes to self-promotion, let’s talk about some things that they can do either in their brains or through habits that get them more comfortable with that.
Alison Fragale:
So I have a whole chapter on self-promotion in the book. I talk about the science of why it shouldn’t scare you, but let’s just acknowledge it still feels scary. So a couple of things, one particular strategy that has science behind it, I’ve always used and I really like, and I call it the brag and thank. Which is to say something good about myself while also lifting other people up. So an example could be, you send an update to your boss about some good wins that you’ve had at work. And in the email you also shout out the good work of other people who have contributed but haven’t written the email. So you could say, here’s something that’s happening. It reflects well on me. It was also supported by A,B, and C. You may not necessarily know about it, an update email, something like that. That is a good strategy. When we combine praising ourselves, self-promotion, with praising other people, the research shows that you get credit for being assertive and warm, ’cause it’s a caring behavior and a behavior that shows you. So that can be one tool that we can start to use.
Tori Dunlap:
And it also probably feels better at the individual level too ’cause it’s not just like me, me, me. It’s like, hey, I’m rising tide, lifts all boats here.
Alison Fragale:
Exactly. So people often like that one where you can say it in person or you can deliver it in an email. Another tool for people who are really fearful is I tell them to start using their out of office messages. So I am not a person who traditionally turned on my out of office very often. I would just kind of sneak out, sneak in, do what I was doing. But I see some people who are really very thoughtful and strategic about it. And an out of office message is a great way to convey information about you without you having to look anybody in the eye.
And when the ostensible purpose of the message is, my response may be delayed. So I am headed to Good Morning America. I’m headed to New York this week. I’m going to be at Good Morning America. I’m going to be recording my audiobook. It’s going to be a whirlwind, amazing trip. Can’t wait to share all the details when you’re back. Because of that, my response might be delayed. Here’s three tips to tide you over while I’m away. Or here’s a cute picture of me and, I don’t know, like a kitten, whatever it is, but you basically just…
Tori Dunlap:
Me and Robin Roberts last time was there.
Alison Fragale:
But when you do that, you get to put, without having to look anyone in the eye or say anything, you get to put a lot of information and storytelling about what you’re doing. When people read those, they’re always kind of entertained. Like, oh, where in the world are you? You can tell a joke, you can do something friendly. And so that’s another thing that we can start to do is just, and you don’t have to be out of the office to turn it off. You could just be working for the day and you could start to use it. So I tell people to start to use their technology to help. And then the other thing, a third tip I’ll give is prepare at least one decent answer to what I call throwaway questions. Things like, how are you? What’s up? How’s it going? People always, that it’s a throwaway and someone’s like, fine, busy, okay.
It’s like that person gave you a chance to tell a little bit of your story, and you could either do something really warm like today’s really good now that I’m talking to you. Or this was the best email that popped up in my inbox all day. You could say something warm or you could say something like, today was actually a pretty good work day. I had a couple wins. That makes people curious. What? Well tell me, what wins did you have? So that’s another one to think of is don’t throw those questions away because just with one sentence, you can spark a little curiosity and conversation that can get people asking questions about you, and then you could tell them about what’s going on in your life.
Tori Dunlap:
Or my day wasn’t great, this happened. I would actually love to get your perspective on it. Do you have a second? Hey, can I tell you what just happened? Yeah.
Alison Fragale:
A hundred percent. And I say, don’t throw away those chances. So those are a couple of things that you can start to do to start to get more comfortable.
Tori Dunlap:
Alison, that was fantastic. I’m so excited for your book. I’m so excited for everybody to read it. Okay, Likeable Badass, where can we get it? How can we support your work and what you’re doing?
Alison Fragale:
Oh, you’re amazing. You can get it anywhere you buy books. It’s on all the places. The other thing I will say is I have a Substack. I have a newsletter, it’s a free newsletter. It’s called The Upper Hand, it’s behavioral science to help women excel. So I highly would welcome anybody who wants to join women, allies, anyone who’s curious about it, nothing at all is women-specific, but I focus on things that women care about. That’s where I did my post on negotiating at the airport, things like that. So I invite everyone to join me there and on social, but this is awesome. I’m sad we’re done.
Tori Dunlap:
I know, I want to talk to you for another hour. Thank you so much.
Alison Fragale:
You’re the best. Thank you.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you to Alison for joining us. You can get her book, Likeable Badass, wherever you get books. Including ebook, audiobook, all that jazz. We appreciate her being here and sharing her expertise. Thanks as always for you being here. You can write, subscribe to the show, you can share it with a friend. We really appreciate you as always. Thank you. Thank you. And we’ll talk to you very soon. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First 100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields and Tamisha Grant, research by Sarah Sciortino, audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalf, marketing and operations by Karina Patel and Amanda Leffew. Special thanks to our team at Her First $100K, Kailyn Sprinkle, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Taylor Chou, Sasha Bonnar, Rae Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Claire Kurronen, Daryl Ann Ingram, and Meghan Walker, promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolfe, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound.
A huge thanks to the entire Her First $100K community for supporting the show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First $100K, our guests and episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com. If you’re confused about your personal finances and you’re wondering where to start, go to herfirst100k.com/quiz for a free personalized money plan.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over five million women negotiate salaries, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of over 2.1 million on Instagram and 2.4 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.
