Likeable badass, p.7
Likeable Badass, page 7
The third false variant of this advice is “It’s cool not to care what other people think of you.” That is, disregarding the opinions of others is seen as a mark of high status. For example, goblin mode—doing what you want, without regard for social expectations—sprang to popularity in 2022, so much so that it won the Oxford Languages Word of the Year. If, like me, you had never heard of this term, just imagine Instagram posts of people eating vats of ice cream in bed or shuffling to the store in their pajamas. Although I don’t pass judgment on anyone for how they dress or what they eat, I find the allure of goblin mode problematic. Its social media rise is rooted in the idea that ignoring the expectations of others is a path to status, but that’s not true. High-status people, by definition, already have the respect and regard of others. This gives them the freedom not to care, or at least pretend not to care, what other people think. But the converse is not at all true—not caring what other people think isn’t an effective strategy for gaining status. Once everyone in the world sees us as likeable badasses—the BHAG we’ll set for ourselves—we can live in goblin mode if we choose. But until that point, this strategy doesn’t serve us well. We should replace the pride of indifference with the pride of effectiveness: “It’s cool to get others to see me as I truly am, a serious likeable badass.”
Likeable Badass Mindset: I DON’T need to obsess or ruminate over how others see me, but I DO need to shape how others see me.
I’m just one of the guys.
“Stop thinking about the fact that you’re a woman…. If a woman wants her gender to be irrelevant [to others], then she shouldn’t consider it relevant or really, consider it at all.”
This is the advice of Amy Trask, who served as CEO of the Oakland Raiders professional football team from 1997 to 2013, and remains, to date, the highest-ranking woman in NFL history. In recognition of her tremendous impact on football, in 2019 she was named one of the “NFL 100 Greatest” Game Changers in history. While most women have been in majority-male groups at some point in their lives, Trask’s experience was extreme. Often, she was the only woman in the room. Despite this, Trask maintains that gender isn’t salient or important to her and encourages others to adopt a similar mindset. As she reflected on walking into meetings full of men, “I hope that they won’t be thinking about my gender. For me to be thinking about my gender, it just doesn’t make sense.”
In one sense, thinking that you’re “just one of the guys” can work to your advantage. When you aren’t worried about whether you lack status, it’s easier to walk into any room and take up the space you deserve, believing that you have every right to be there. This confident mindset will affect how you show up and how others see you, for the better. It’s maddening for women when they’re told to “be more confident,” but there’s truth to this advice (even if the statement is motivated by unconscious bias). Confident people speak more, with a factual tone of voice and a calm, relaxed demeanor. As a result, confident people are perceived as highly competent, and are granted high status.
At the same time, the “just one of the guys” mindset can work against you if it makes you think that managing your status is unnecessary. If the guys don’t need to do it, then why should I? I understand the allure of this logic, but it’s faulty. First, the guys do need to do it. Everyone benefits from high status, including men. Second, the fact that you aren’t focused on your gender doesn’t mean that others won’t take notice. For example, Stacy Brown-Philpot, before she became CEO of TaskRabbit, was caught off guard when she moved to India to run Google’s office there. No matter where she went, people assumed that some man next to her was in charge, even if that person was her driver. As a Black woman in the United States, she had dealt with plenty of discrimination, but she noticed that the relative importance of gender and race were essentially reversed in India. “My color didn’t really matter there,” she noticed, “but there was a much stronger assumption that high-status people were men than there was in San Francisco.” Similarly, Amy Trask recounted a time that she was blocked from greeting the head of the players’ union by a member of the union staff, who said, “Whose secretary are you?” I feel confident that Trask wouldn’t have been physically intercepted and assumed to be anyone’s secretary had she been male.
Despite our collective hope that others won’t judge us by our gender, that decision is—unfortunately—not ours to make. We know, both from decades of research and our own lived experiences, that people notice gender. Consider the well-documented gender bias in job recommendation letters. Even in fields like academia, science, and medicine, where applicants are highly educated and accomplished, men are more likely to be described with standout adjectives, like “exceptional” or “remarkable.” In contrast, letters for women are more likely to contain doubt raisers, short phrases that are designed to plant uncertainty in the minds of employers, such as “Even though she doesn’t have a lot of experience…” Notably, these findings persist even after controlling for the quality of the applicant, and both male and female letter writers exhibit this bias. As the job applicant, you may not be thinking about your gender. But your letter writers might be, and this could have a real impact on whether you get the job.
So, if you rock a mean “I can do anything men can do, but better” swagger, I’m here for it! To the extent it boosts your confidence, you’ll show up better for it. But don’t let this confidence make you complacent. Build your status before you need it.
Likeable Badass Mindset: I’m not defined by my gender, but I am vigilant about it.
I don’t have the time for this.
Of all the mental obstacles to managing our status, I’m most sympathetic to this one. We all have way too much on our plates. I get up earlier each day to get a “head start” on the day’s to-dos, only to end each day depressed that my list seems to have grown. I’m always looking for ways to multitask or items I can cut. I play “to-do list dodgeball,” ducking and weaving to avoid being hit by new tasks. And on more than one occasion I’ve pondered the maximum number of days a respectable adult can go without a shower. So, trust me, I understand the belief that you simply do not have time to add “manage status” to your list.
Of course, as you’ve come to expect by this point, I have a rebuttal. If you need to make more time in your schedule, you should cut practically everything else before you skimp on building your status. In their brilliant book The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women’s Dead-End Work, scholars Linda Babcock, Brenda Peyser, Lise Vesterlund, and Laurie Weingart provide evidence that nonpromotable tasks—work that helps others but doesn’t advance your own interests—overwhelms women’s to-do lists, more so than men’s. By this definition, though, managing status is the opposite of a nonpromotable task. The sole purpose of building status is to advance your own interests—to get the power you deserve, making it easier to get what you want and live the life you want to live. Investing in your status is a gift to yourself, akin to putting on your own oxygen mask before assisting others.
But wait, there’s more. I’ve saved the best news for last. Managing status shouldn’t cost you much, if any, additional time. Yes, you should still get those nonpromotable tasks off your list, but you can use that reclaimed time to binge Netflix (or take a long-overdue shower). Showing up as a likeable badass isn’t about doing more than you already are. In some cases, it’s about doing what you’re already doing, just a bit differently. In other cases, it’s about eliminating ineffective behaviors, enabling you to get more credit for your greatness in less time.
Likeable Badass Mindset: If I have time to play Wordle, I have time to get credit for my awesomeness.
Plays to Practice
Once you ditch these limiting mindsets, it’s much easier to see yourself as someone who is worthy of status, and willing to go after it. This makes it much easier to act in ways that build your status. Of course, I recognize that this is easier said than done. Controlling our thoughts is so straightforward in concept, but often hard in practice. If you struggle with mindset, like I do, here are a few places to start:
Become aware of your narrative. Listen to your inner monologue today and notice if any of these limiting mindsets arise. Which ones, and when? Try to replace them with likeable badass mindsets.
Think of someone you know who exemplifies the “likeable badass mindset.” Invite them to lunch or coffee, tell them that you admire them, and ask them how they squash their limiting beliefs. Commit to practicing one of their strategies and see how it works for you.
Do it scared, as Felecia wrote on the inside cover of her job search notebook for encouragement. Build your status before you need it by identifying one person that you want to think highly of you and one thing you can do to increase their respect for you (even if it’s already high). Commit to doing the thing, no matter how many excuses you find to avoid it.
Skip Notes
*1 By the way, don’t ever do this again. Yes, the fact that you feel the need to start your message with this disclaimer means you have failed to manage the relationship properly, but no need to call attention to it. Instead, start your message with an anecdote that will jog their memory—ideally one that acknowledges their status (because everyone loves flattery) or reminds them of why you are a likeable badass. For example, “Since we’ve last talked, I’ve been promoted twice, and the great advice you gave me about advocating for myself helped me succeed in both negotiations with my manager. You were the voice in my head through the entire process, and I can’t thank you enough.”
*2 Don’t judge me, at least not for this. This is nowhere near my biggest failure as a parent.
Part II
Master the Plays
Chapter 4
Tell Your Story
Showing up as a likeable badass starts with telling your story. Most of what people know about you comes from you—how you talk and write about yourself, how they see you behave. You are the biggest source of your own press, so you need to make that press as positive as possible. I learned this lesson early in my career—in a very frustrating way.
After college, I took a job as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company because influential people in my life told me I should—it was a prestigious firm, they said, one that purported to hire only the best and brightest. On my first project, I was assigned to work alongside a slightly-more-senior colleague—let’s call him M—who was widely regarded as a rising star. M had joined the firm about a year before I did, after earning his MBA. “He’s a rockstar, definitely on a path to make partner,” everyone told me.
Imagine my surprise and dismay, then, when I discovered that M was not the likeable badass everyone proclaimed him to be. He was neither competent nor kind. I still vividly recall the day when M gave me a set of hastily drawn charts and tasked me with turning them into digital presentation slides. Just like Kate, I knew this wasn’t officially in my job description, but being young, new, and eager to contribute in any way I could, I said yes. As I created the slides, I also corrected the misspellings and grammatical errors in M’s original documents. I returned the finished product to him, mentioning that I had caught a few errors in the hope that I would get some likeable badass credit in his eyes. That hope, unfortunately, was misguided. He was enraged. Who do you think you are? he shrieked. If I wanted you to think, I would have told you to think.[*1] I yelled back: I was a math major, not an English major, but even I know the difference between “there” and “their.”[*2] The argument continued, and it didn’t end with us hugging it out.
As I endured the three-month project, I was subjected to countless examples of M’s incompetence and incivility. My suffering was made even harder to bear as I continued to hear others praise him. Interestingly, though, I soon realized that the people praising M had never actually worked with him. Perplexed and angered, I worked up the courage to share my experiences with another teammate, J. J was a true likeable badass, but he didn’t have nearly the positive reputation of M. To my great relief, J agreed with me on all counts: Yes, M had a stellar reputation at the firm, and no, it wasn’t deserved.
Months later, after my hellish project had ended, J came to my office with a Eureka! expression. “I’ve discovered the source of M’s great press,” he exclaimed. Every time J heard something positive about M, he would ask the messenger, “Where did you hear that?” Many times, the trail would go cold; the person didn’t remember. Sometimes, though, the person named the source. J would then go to that source and ask the same question. He eventually traced M’s story to a few people who remembered that they heard it from—wait for it—M himself! M would brag to them about how his clients and colleagues loved him and the great work he was doing. Never having worked with M, they took his self-praise at face value, and then passed this information on to other colleagues, who then passed it on to even more people. Thanks to a game of office-gossip telephone, M had self-promoted his way to a likeable badass reputation. Accordingly, he was praised, paid, and promoted at levels and rates above his peers.
Even with the mystery solved, I was angry about the whole experience; my only solace came from planning my eventual escape. It wasn’t until years later, when I was immersed in the science of organizational psychology, that I heard the saying “People don’t leave companies, they leave managers.” I immediately understood the truth of that statement and flashed back to how my experience with M had been pivotal in my decision to leave McKinsey.
I realize that hearing this story will likely trigger some serious imposter fears. This is why I don’t like the idea of managing my status, you protest, because others will gossip about what a fraud I am. The last thing I want is to be like M. However, my objective in retelling this (still) painful story is to make the opposite point: We should all be more like M.
Obviously, you don’t aspire to be overconfident, undercompetent, and cruel. But what I learned from M, a lesson that still benefits me to this day, is that how you talk about yourself matters—a lot. Fortunately, unlike M, you have the goods, so you can use his strategy without fear of being exposed as a fraud—because you’re not.
* * *
Your story is any information about you that originates with you: Things you say to people in conversation, your emails, your social media profile and posts, your bio, your résumé, and more. The goal is to use every opportunity to share information about yourself in ways that convey both Assertiveness and Warmth, so your audience respects you more as a result. To be clear, this is self-promotion. Like it or not, self-promotion is critical to building status. If you don’t tell a good story about yourself, no one else will either.
When I meet women who have advanced more quickly than their peers, particularly at a young age, I often find that it’s because they learned early in their careers, usually the hard way, to tell strong stories about themselves. This is what happened to Meghana Dhar. After graduating with her MBA from Harvard Business School at age twenty-nine, she was hired by Instagram as the head of partnerships for Instagram Shopping. As the first hire on this new team, it was a coveted role with a lot of responsibility. A few months into the role, she went into her first performance review “guns blazing” because she had “crushed it”—working night and day, she knew she had delivered results. She was excited to hear the praise her manager was sure to offer. Instead, he said that other teams had complained about her and her lackluster performance. Meghana was confused and devastated. However, even though she didn’t get the review she wanted, her manager believed in her and wanted her to succeed. He offered her a piece of advice: “Look at what Walt[*3] is doing.” Walt was Meghana’s same-age peer who was widely considered a rockstar performer. It took Meghana only a moment of observation to see the difference between them. Walt was sharing his accomplishments widely—on the internal messaging network, in weekly update meetings, in a newsletter he created, and more. Meghana had an epiphany—Walt’s “wins” were just conversations he was having as part of his job. “I was having ten of those a day,” she realized, “but Walt had done all the work to give everyone around him the narrative.” Walt was telling a better story.
Meghana started “beating the drum,” but in her own way. She began sending out a weekly email update and hosting one cross-functional meeting every other week where she would showcase the great work of the people on her team. She also would ask members of her division to lead the meetings, which gave them an opportunity to shine while also supporting her story. Within one quarter, her boss gave her an “exceeds” performance rating, the highest possible mark, and shortly after that she was promoted. She also realized that she was reaping more rewards with less effort. Doing 90 percent of the work with self-promotion was better than doing 150 percent of the work without it. This realization was a turning point for Meghana: “I had never talked about my wins before then. It felt improper.” But once she saw the payoff, it became “muscle memory” for her and set the foundation for her entire career. “I became a player in the game,” she recalls. When she took a new job at Snap Inc. (formerly Snapchat) as the global head of brand partnerships, she made storytelling her top priority from day one.
