Why Ambitious Women Need Status More Than Power (with Alison Fragale)

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In this week's episode of the podcast, I’m joined by Alison Fragale, as we tackle the deceptively simple but life-changing question: What do I really want? If you’ve ever felt stuck, second-guessed your desires, or wondered what’s next for your career and life, this episode will give you clarity and direction. We share why it’s so hard for working moms to answer this question, the cultural and personal reasons behind that struggle, and the exact process I use with clients to uncover their true desires and build a regret-free life. You’ll walk away feeling empowered, grounded, and ready to take your next steps with confidence.  

Topics in this episode:

  • Why figuring out “what do I want?” feels so confusing for ambitious working moms 

  • How culture, motherhood, and people-pleasing disconnect us from our true desires 

  • The difference between want and desire—and why desire matters more 

  • The “internal compass” process: values, identity, and purpose as your North Star 

  • Real client stories of clarity, decisive action, and living without regret

Show Notes & References:

Connect with Alison:

Transcript

Intro

Do you ever feel like you’re constantly proving yourself at work—doing more, staying later, saying yes to everything—just to be seen, respected, or promoted?

What if the key to influence and success wasn’t about working harder or chasing power, but about building status?

In today’s episode, I sit down with Alison Fragale, the author of Likable Badass: How Women Get the Success They Deserve, to talk about why status actually matters more than power, how motherhood changes the way women are perceived at work, and the simple shifts you can make to be admired, respected, and valued without overworking yourself.

You’re going to walk away with a whole new lens on ambition.

So, are you ready? Let’s get to it.

Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms podcast, your go to resource for integrating your career ambitions with life as a mom, I'm distilling down thousands of coaching conversations I've had with working moms just like you, along with my own personal experience as a mom of two and sharing the most effective tools and strategies to help you quickly feel calm, confident, and in control of your ambitious working mom life. You ready? Let's get to it.

Rebecca: All right, working moms. I am delighted to have a guest on the podcast today. I have Alison Fragale, who’s going to talk to us all about what it means to be a likable badass. She wrote a book on it! I’m just so excited to pick her brain around what it takes for us as women to continue forward with our ambitions, our careers, and our goals in the ways that we want—and not feel held back by motherhood.

So excited to have her here today. Thanks for being here, Alison.

Alison: Thanks for having me.

From Negotiation to Empowerment: How Alison Helps Women Rise

Rebecca: Would you just tell us a little bit about yourself so we get a sense of who you are and what you’re bringing to this conversation?

Alison: Sure. So, on the professional side, I am a business school professor. My field is organizational psychology. I’ve been doing that for over 20 years, and within that space, I speak a lot on negotiation and influence.

That’s actually how I came to really work with women, because those were topics where women often felt like they had challenges at work. Through that, I started creating content to help elevate women in a variety of different ways.

I speak, write, and teach working professionals—often women—about how to use behavioral science to do what they do as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Then on the personal side, I’m a mom of three kids—ages 10, 13, and 16. I live in Chicago, but my affiliation is with the University of North Carolina. I joke that I went remote before it was cool, back in 2015. So I have the added degree of difficulty of managing a job that includes commuting, remote work, and travel—and all of those things.

Rebecca: All those things. I’m so delighted that you are here chatting with us today.

So I just want to dig into this conversation around status and power as our launching point. We’ll see where we go from here.

You talk a lot about status being more important than power when it comes to influence. So I’m curious—what do you mean by that, and why is it so important for women?

Power vs. Status: Understanding the Difference

Alison: Yeah. Power is controlling resources that have value. Money is a resource—if you control the budget at work or you have personal wealth, whatever it is, if you have money, you have something that other people want, and often they’ll be influenced by you.

So power is a source of influence, but it’s not just money. Other forms of power include the authority to promote, to give people a raise, to give people a good performance review—or a bad one—to make decisions without having to ask others. These are all forms of resource control, and they often lead to influence.

I joke—so my oldest is 16. I say when I hold the car keys, I hold a valued resource. So he might be more likely to do what I want him to do if he wants the resource.

When we have power, we can often influence people. And that’s why power is something we all seek in our own ways.

Why Status Comes First

Status is similar in that it’s also a source of influence. Status is how much we’re respected and highly regarded by other people.

So when we talk about someone being a high-status person, we’re saying people respect and value that person. That’s also a source of influence—because if you respect someone, you’re much more likely to do what they want.

Conversely, if you don’t respect someone, you’re highly unlikely to ever do anything they want.

They both matter a great deal.

Where status comes in as being primary is that respect is foundational. If we are not respected, it’s very hard for us to ever get power.

Without status, power is really hard to get, because we don’t want to give resources to people we don’t respect—whether it’s money, a promotion, or the car keys. If we don’t value the person, we’re not going to give them more control.

Understanding and putting a spotlight on status matters. The way we’ve talked about power for women at work, we’ve focused on pay equity and representation equity for a really long time—because those are forms of power.

If you’re underpaid and underplaced, you don’t have as much control as you deserve, and that’s a problem we should solve.

But the other idea—of making sure that people are as respected as they should be—is something I wrote this book to shine a spotlight on, because we don’t talk about it nearly as much.

Women, Power, and the Leadership Gap

Rebecca: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Generally speaking, we all kind of know men hold a lot more power than women do. They tend to be more of the decision-makers—on all sorts of fronts—but especially in our careers.

So, as women start thinking about getting ahead and closing leadership gaps, I would imagine that focusing more on status actually plays a big part in that.

The Science of Respect: Power vs. Status for Women

Alison: It absolutely does. The way we’ve coached and trained people to think about power and negotiation is often as a tool for trying to gain more power—but it can also be used for status.

We tell people, “You should go negotiate for more money. You should negotiate for a promotion.” Those are important things to do and good skills to have.

But it’s also important to understand the toolkit and the science of having your audience really value you. That audience will change and grow over time, but respect remains foundational.

What I try to help people see is that women don’t get as much respect as men either. There’s science behind that. So we have a power problem and a status problem.

To demystify it a bit—power feels easier, because once you get the resources, you have them. You don’t have to negotiate for them anymore.

But with status, you have to continuously earn it, because it exists in other people’s minds.

And it feels like this fine line between building your status and chasing validation—which is something we can talk about. They’re not the same, but they’re both about understanding how other people see and perceive you.

With status, we’re trying to influence how others see us so that they recognize our contributions. And that ends up being a really important resource for doing so many things—building relationships, being influential, and ultimately gaining the power we deserve.

The Fine Line Between Respect and Validation

Rebecca: Yeah. And it’s tricky because we actually don’t get to control other people’s narrative of us—ever.

We’re talking about influencing their narrative, but we never actually get to decide what that narrative is. It’s never fully in our control.

So there’s something interesting about what you’re saying here in the sense that it’s complicated.

And we, as women, I think you’re right—we tend to chase validation.

It's almost like we need that validation in some way. And it can become a real slippery slope when we talk about wanting to advance our career. If we're always trying to chase that something that we ultimately can never control.

Separating Your Self-Worth from Other People’s Opinions

Alison: That’s right. So we can influence it. And I sometimes will use the analogy of investing in the stock market.

We might say making an investment into stocks to increase your wealth is a good thing to do. And when you invest in that way, you are trying to benefit your future self.

But you might have a good day in the market or a bad day in the market. And when you have a good day, if you wake up and think, I’m a better person because now my stock portfolio is up, that’s essentially letting that portfolio validate you.

If you wake up and the market is down and you think, I’m a terrible person and I’m no good, then you’re letting that portfolio validate you.

But you don’t want to do that.

You also don’t want to stop investing. You want to separate the two, which is — there’s a reason to make the investment, and I have to recognize that the investment is going to pay off in the long run, but not in every moment of every day.

And as things go up and things go down, I shouldn’t redefine how I see myself. That would seem foolish — based on how I was doing in the stock market.

So I think about how other people see us as a similar kind of investment.

We want to invest in how our audience views us and how they value us, because that’s an investment in our future self.

But sometimes our investments won’t pay off. And when they don’t, what we’re much more likely to do when we invest in a human is say, Oh, now I’m not a good person if they don’t value me.

If that particular investment didn’t yield anything, now I change how I see myself.

And most people won’t do that with the stock market. They might be a little bit unhappy, but they won’t think they’re a worse person because the market is down.

Rebecca: Thinking how stupid I am..

Investing in How People See You — Without Letting It Define You

Alison: Right. You wouldn’t beat yourself up — you’d be a little bummed. But you wouldn’t beat yourself up and say, I’m a terrible person. I shouldn’t be investing in the market. Forget the market.

So it’s that kind of idea, which is — investing in how people see us is valuable, and it’s a resource that we can draw on to achieve things that are important to us. So we shouldn’t abandon it.

But we also can’t get caught up with every ebb and flow of how that resource is doing, to the point where we’re completely re-evaluating how we see ourselves.

And that’s the difference between validation and status.

I say to people, you can’t get married, or get into college, or get a job if you can’t impress another person. So impressing other people is necessary for us to achieve things we’ve decided are important to us — to live a happy life.

It’s an investment we need to make, but we also have to recognize that even if the investment isn’t momentarily giving us exactly what we want, we’re not redefining ourselves because of it.

The Fine Line Between Building Status and Chasing Validation

Rebecca: Yeah. It’s almost like there’s a fine line between when it goes from building status to chasing validation.

I’ve got to know what that line is — so we don’t cross into the unhealthy side of it and create a whole bunch of other problems. Because we start to need the recognition and the validation to validate ourselves as human beings.

And that’s when it gets tricky.

How Motherhood Impacts Women’s Status and Power

Rebecca: So, I really want to get to a place — probably as we move toward the latter part of this conversation — where we talk about what do you do? How do you actually do that?

But before that, I want to dig into what happens with status and power when we become moms.

Because so much research shows the gaps get vastly larger when we become moms in the workplace — on all sorts of fronts, from pay gaps to leadership gaps, and many other things that happen for women when they become moms.

And interestingly, it’s often the opposite for men — things actually increase for them.

So again, statistically, this is what happens to us as women.

And for those women who really want to maintain their status and power, and even continue building more of it, I’m curious — what have you seen as you’ve thought about how parenting affects these dynamics for women?

Status 101: The “Likable Badass” Formula

Alison: Sure. Okay, here’s the quick “how do you get status” 101, which will help answer this question.

I called my book Likable Badass for a very specific reason—beyond that it’s catchy. It’s actually a reference to how we decide how much we respect other people.

Every day, you encounter lots of people—both in person and online—and your brain is constantly updating what you think about them. At the same time, other people are encountering you, and their brains are updating their thoughts about you.

Those thoughts we have about people aren’t random. We’re always trying to figure out the same two things about others.

The first thing we try to figure out is: Are they other-oriented? Do they care about people other than themselves? That’s valued because we don’t want selfish, difficult people—we want generous, helpful, kind people. If I engage with you, will it be enjoyable? Will you try to help me? That’s what we want.

That’s being other-oriented. In psychology, we often talk about it as a person’s warmth—it’s a host of characteristics. On the cover of my book, I call it likable.

The second thing we try to figure out is: Can I rely on you? It’s good that you care about me and your intentions are good, but can I trust you? If I put something in your hands, will it be executed well?

That’s our results orientation—our ability to deliver, to be capable, competent, organized, and persistent. In psychology, we often talk about this as assertiveness.

On the cover of my book, I call this badass.

So the idea is: when you are other-oriented and results-oriented, you have the winning combination. You care about people, and people can rely on you.

And when people believe both of those things about you, respect is guaranteed to follow.

Sometimes you can get respect by being one or the other, but the surefire way to earn it is to have people see you as both.

The Motherhood Penalty: Why Moms Are Seen as Less “Badass”

Where motherhood comes in is that we draw judgments about people on these dimensions based on all kinds of things—gender being one of them.

But being a mother specifically changes how people perceive you.

The motherhood penalty is directly related to these dimensions. Women who are mothers are often seen as warmer—because they’re nurturing and maternal—but also as less results-oriented: less competent, less capable, less driven, less ambitious.

So, you take a hit on that second dimension.

That’s something to be aware of—and it’s one of the reasons a lot of women hide pregnancies, don’t talk about their kids, or downplay motherhood at work.

They have an intuitive awareness—almost as lay psychologists—that if they talk about their role as a mom, others will see them as less capable or competent.

And that’s not true. There’s not one way to do this.

The Hidden Judgments Women Face at Work After Motherhood

Rebecca: Just to be clear, we know that—to be factual on some level. Like, we do actually have cultural views of women as being less reliable. I mean, it’s not like we’re just making that up. That is what we seem to think.

I remember my own experience during my first pregnancy at work. They ran a poll before I even—this is terrible, and nobody should ever do this—and I didn’t realize it at the time.

But now I think back to it and I’m like, Who does that? That’s terrible.

They ran a poll on how likely I was to come back and be as dedicated to my job.

And they joked about it with me later. And I thought, Whatever, I thought it was funny then. I came back to work and did all the things.

But now I look at it and I’m like, there’s so much judgment involved in that. Right?

Like, who should—you should never judge a woman based on that.

The Motherhood Penalty — and What We Can Do About It

Alison: But anyway—motherhood penalty gone wrong, right? Yes. And so that’s what happens.

Now, at the same time, it’s important to recognize these things. But here’s the really good news—because it’s not just being a mother.

Gender in general affects status, which is why I chose to write this book for women. But so do a host of other characteristics that we don’t control—race, sexual orientation, accent, appearance.

There’s lots of stuff outside of our control that people draw conclusions from about who we are as people. That’s the bad news.

The good news, from psychology, is that how a person shows up ends up having a bigger effect on how they’re perceived than any of those uncontrollable things.

So, when we show up in particular ways, we can overcome these initial biases that people have.

How to Play Smart Without Playing Small

But it does mean that we have to play smart, and we don’t want to unintentionally play into any of those narratives.

Because if we do something unintentionally that makes those stereotypes louder, we validate them.

And so, me personally—for example—I’m a “talk about my kids” kind of person because that feels authentic and natural to me.

The fact that I have kids named after famous Chicago athletes is in my bio; it’s on my social media. I don’t show pictures of my kids on social, but they’re out there.

And I think it also builds warmth because it’s a common point of similarity with other people. And similarity builds warmth. So, you can be building on one dimension while also strengthening another.

Be Authentic and Send the Right Signals

The key here is I always say to people: add, don’t subtract.

Be whoever you are, but recognize that you’re going to have some things going for you that make you stronger on one dimension than the other.

Subtracting would be things like feeling like, I can’t talk about my family, or I have to lie and say where I’m going at 5 o’clock, and things like that.

That stuff feels like you’re living a lie—you’re not being your authentic self. And it leads to resentment, burnout, all the things.

Versus: be who you are and think, Hmm… there are going to be human brains that aren’t out to get me, but those human brains are wired to basically judge me as less capable.

Okay—I can fix that because I am highly capable.

I just need to think about what signals I need to start sending out into the world so that those brains read: very capable, very capable, very capable.

And once you start to think about it, you can find things to do that aren’t very hard, that are very authentic, and that send the signals you want to send, recognizing where people’s starting point might be.

Rebecca: I mean, give us a few examples of those types of signals. I love that I got a great visual on it. So I was like, oh! Tell me more.

Why Self-Promotion Isn’t Selfish — It’s Essential

Alison: So when we talk about self-promotion—which people don’t like; no one likes that term, and I don’t either, even though I do research on it—you’ve got to talk about yourself in powerful ways.

How many people go do great things and then never speak of them to anybody, and then think, “Nobody thinks I’m very capable”?

I was talking to a woman, for example, that I met at an open event—a book talk—and she said, “I just always thought my work should speak for itself.”

And I said, “Okay, let me use me as an example with you. How could your work ever speak for itself with me? Because we’re just meeting right now, and we don’t work together. So if I can’t leave this conversation knowing anything about you unless you tell me, then your only choice right now is to tell me.”

And even when you work with people, they do not have full visibility into you—not all day, not every day. They have mostly no idea.

Rebecca: We're all super self absorbed, so we barely recognize what other people are doing.

Why You Have to Tell Your Own Story

Alison: 100%. One of my favorite studies on that in psychology—this will be a sign of the times—was when they made undergraduate students go meet another student who was wearing a Barry Manilow T-shirt, which at the time was the most uncool thing they could think of.

The whole experiment was to predict how many students would remember what the other person was wearing. And the person in the Barry Manilow shirt said, “100% of people are going to remember that I’m wearing a Barry Manilow T-shirt.”

And I don’t remember the exact numbers, but it was something like 50%. Most people are not paying attention.

So the idea is that we have to tell our own stories. So many people aren’t telling their story—and then they’re really upset that people don’t see them as capable.

And I would say, yes, there’s some initial bias there. Absolutely. But are you doing anything to put that story out there in a way that counters that bias and says to the brain, “You’ve got it wrong”?

As soon as you start telling your story—talking about yourself in ways that feel authentic but also showcase what you can do—that’s when things begin to shift.

Add Value Without Burning Out

The other thing that’s useful is to add value to people’s lives. The surest way to show up as caring and capable is to use your talents to make someone else’s life better. Then they can’t deny your capability.

But we can’t burn ourselves out doing it.

That’s the challenge with women—we’re asked to do all the non-promotable work—the office “housework”—and we scurry around doing it because we think it’s going to get us points for being warm or capable.

And then we find out, maybe it gets us neither.

So you have to be thoughtful about easy things that don’t take a lot of time but still show you as capable.

The Power of Making Introductions

My favorite example is making introductions. You meet a new person—or even someone you’ve worked with for a while—and you think, What does that person care about? Who do I know in my network that they don’t know, that could be mutually beneficial to connect?

The beauty of making an introduction is: it’s fast, and you get out of the way. It’s a super-efficient way to add value because you’re not sitting there for hours doing someone else’s work. You’re just saying, “Meet this person, good luck,” and they take it from there.

But the other thing is, it distinguishes you as someone of value.

People think, “Oh wait, you’re really connected—you know people I don’t know.”

It’s a simple, authentic way to demonstrate:

  1. I care about you because this doesn’t help me directly.

  2. I’m capable and resourceful because I leveraged my network to help you.

Start With What You Love

I always tell people to start with what they love and what they feel they’re good at—even if it sits outside their job description.

Because you can distinguish yourself as both helpful and capable simply by starting with what you already enjoy.

An example I give: I heard of a guy who just loves reading nonfiction. He naturally takes notes because that’s how he retains what he reads.

He realized his colleagues also liked learning but didn’t have the time or consistency to read as much—and definitely didn’t take notes.

So he started typing up his notes with a little header and sending them out when people expressed interest. It turned into a big distribution list.

Now everyone asks, “What are you reading next?” and they want to talk to him.

And he said, “I was doing nothing other than what I was already doing, except I just hit send on that message.”

That’s what I encourage people to do: find those easy ways to make what you already do beneficial to others.

It allows you to live with authenticity and joy—you’re just being yourself—but with one strategic step forward to make what you’re already doing valuable to someone else.

When I coach people on this, I have them tell me their stories—and almost every time, I can find something they already love that they can easily turn into a benefit for others.

Adding Value in Everyday Moments

Rebecca: Yeah, I love that. Another one that was coming to mind too, as you were talking about it—another way to add value that feels really simple—is this:

I think a lot of us tend to (and I’ll speak for myself here) check out in meetings or conversations when they don’t directly relate to us.

It’s like, “It’s not my time to talk,” or “We’re not talking about my department,” or “This doesn’t interest me.” So it feels like time to wait, and I’ll do something else or my mind will wander.

I’ll quietly start writing about something else—versus thinking, “I’m already sitting here in this meeting; I might as well add value.”

What if I actually listened and then offered my opinion or gave a suggestion?

I mean, I’m already trapped here as it is!

So, taking time in meetings like that can be a really simple and easy way—since you’re already spending your time there anyway—to display the value you already have to other people. Right?

How to Build Status by Amplifying Others

Alison: Absolutely. And the other two things you can do in those meetings—one is to pay attention to the status dynamics in the room.

You’ll see some people are talked over, some don’t get to finish their ideas, and some people’s ideas get ignored until they’re repeated by a higher-status person.

You can amplify those moments. You can say, “Let’s go back to what that person was saying.”

It’s really easy when it’s not your fight to be able to build relationships and add value to people that way.

Then they’ll remember: “Hey, you stood up for me.” And people’s brains will remember that. The next time in a meeting, they might be more likely to speak up for you.

So thinking about investing in relationships through reciprocity—asking, “What would I want someone to do for me in that situation?”—that’s one way we can add value.

And the other thing is, sometimes people say to me, “I’ve gotten the reputation of being kind of aggressive when I’m trying to push ideas through.”

Rebecca: Yeah.

How to Balance Passion and Perception

Alison: And I’d say, well, if people only see you get kind of fired up when it’s your idea, how’s that going to look?

Because you just sit there, sit there, sit there—and then when it’s yours, you’re really passionate about it.

But if you’re passionate about other people’s ideas too, to your point of, “I think this is totally the way to go,” then it doesn’t seem as self-interested when you’re doing it for yourself.

If you’re only speaking up when you’re the beneficiary, you’ll look more self-interested—because you’re acting more self-interested.

Navigating Bias and Building Credibility in Male-Dominated Spaces

Rebecca: Yeah. Yeah. I was just having a conversation with a client actually who is in a very male-dominated industry and struggles.

She also is not American, and there’s a dialect issue, an accent issue, and all these things that make it more challenging in her workplace.

And she’s often told that she’s too abrasive.

She feels like she has to speak up a lot, and she’s spoken over a lot. She doesn’t have people around her who are trying to elevate her or stand up for her.

So she struggles with both status and power in these moments—trying to figure out how to overcome some of these barriers, from being an immigrant, a woman, a mom, a person of color, with an accent—all of these things that are already biases not in her favor.

I’m curious what you’d say to her.

Changing How People See You Takes Time — and Strategy

Alison: Yeah. So I’d say, I’ll talk to her first, and then I’ll talk to people who are not yet in that situation but don’t want to be.

Once you’re at this point, you’re already in a hole. You’re saying, “People are not viewing me the way I want them to, and now I need to change their minds.”

Okay. You just need to be realistic — that’s a harder task.

Think about people you’ve known that you weren’t initially that keen on, but eventually you warmed up to them. That doesn’t happen overnight.

If someone wants to change how others see them, they have to be really consistent. It’s going to take longer than you think, and most people give up too early.

Use Your Allies — Don’t Go It Alone

The other thing that will speed it up is using your allies to speak on your behalf.

If you’re trying to do it solely on your own, you’ll have a hard time.

But if there are people who see your true value and who are high-status and respected in those networks, go to them and say:

“I need your help. For whatever reason—maybe it’s my fault, maybe it’s not—these people don’t see the value I bring.”

Then tell that story in a way that’s not woe is me but rather, “If they don’t see my value, it limits how much I can contribute—and that hurts all of us.”

You always want to spin the story back to others, not just me, me, me.

Be specific about what you need:


“The next time we’re in a meeting, could you amplify this idea so they don’t just hear it from me?” or “Could you talk about the great work I’m doing?”

If people believe that’s true, it’s not a big ask—and you’ll almost always get a yes.

So I tell people: map your network. Identify your allies who are highly respected by the people whose minds you’re trying to change, and start using them as intermediaries.

Don’t Wait Until You Have a Problem

What I would say to everybody listening who’s thinking, “Oh goodness, I’m glad I’m not in that situation,” is: don’t get in that situation.

And the easiest way to do that is from the very beginning of a relationship—start building your status as broadly as possible, long before you need it.

You can’t avoid every bias—because, as you said, we don’t control other people—but you can avoid a lot by thinking early on:

“How might people see me, and how can I show up in ways that signal—consistently—that I care and I know what I’m doing?”

The challenge is that most people don’t think about this until something goes wrong—until they have that realization, “People aren’t seeing me the way I want to be seen,” and now they want to fix it.

Build Status Early — Before You Need It

I always ask: What were you doing six months, a year, or a few years ago to shape your audience’s perception before they formed an opinion?

When you meet someone for the first time—even if they carry some implicit bias—it doesn’t take much to overcome it. A small gesture like, “You’re great,” “Thanks for helping me,” can make a huge difference.

But the longer someone has undervalued you, the harder it is to change their mind.

That’s why I coach people to build their status early—when you don’t need anything from anybody.

When you’re new in a relationship, building status is fun. It feels natural, generous, joyful—“I can help you out; it doesn’t matter if you help me back.”

Those little moments add up. Over time, you build a larger and larger base of people who see your value, talk about it to others, and help it magnify and amplify across your network.

Rebecca: Yeah, I love that.

Alison: Thank you.

How Women Overcompensate — and Lose Authenticity at Work

Rebecca: Thanks for sharing that. I wanted to go back to something that you mentioned earlier and just touch on it a little bit — which was how we, as women (and I think particularly after we have kids), ramp this up.

Because again, we feel like we’re making up for something — for not being as “reliable,” for not being as available.

So we overcompensate by saying yes to too many things, doing the admin work, filling our schedules with things that aren’t necessarily our priorities.

We start to delay being a mom. We don’t want to talk about that part, so we stop mentioning that we need to leave at 5 o’clock to go get our kids.

And in doing that, we stop showing up authentically.

I think this is a pretty common experience for women — particularly as we rise in our careers and look to go further.

We start to feel like we have to look less and less like a mom, and more and more like a male colleague on some level.

And I’m curious what some of your thoughts are on how we start to shift that for ourselves — and maybe what kind of reframe would be helpful to us.

Why Work-Life Pressure Isn’t Just a “Women’s Thing”

Alison: Yeah, I would suggest that it’s not—I mean, there’s a gendered component to this as well.

But I’ll take my husband and other men I talk to who definitely feel these same types of pressures.

Anytime you feel like you’re doing something different from the “work, work, work all the time” culture, you feel highly visible.

I think about this. My husband thinks about this. He’s senior enough now that he doesn’t have to care as much, but it occurred to him at one point—he said, “I’m the only guy (and this is all guys in his finance firm at a certain level) who has a spouse with a career. I’m the only guy who says no because you’re out of town and someone needs to be home.”

It didn’t bother him, but it made him realize: the pressures are actually shared.

And I remember thinking, “I never thought about that for one second.” I always thought, “It’s hard on me, it’s hard on me.” But of course, male colleagues expect that other men will always be there too.

So there’s a lot of this that everyone feels.

A Lesson from an Air Force General

The story I always think of is from a general in the Air Force.

I’ve done a lot of senior leader education with the Air Force and the Army—mostly men—and there’s this culture of “the military is your life.”

A lot of guys say, “I never see my family. I have no balance.”

This general stood up and said, “Unless I was at war, I was home with my kids for dinner at 6:00 every night—and I still became a general.”

He said, “I don’t think it’s because I was incredibly talented. I just decided it was important. I started acting like it was important. I didn’t make a big deal about it, but I didn’t lie about it either.”

He said, “I’d get back on at night if I had to, but from six to eight, no—I’d leave. And eventually, people learned not to come looking for me at 5:45 because I wasn’t available.”

He trained people that way—from the time he was junior to when he was senior—and he did it without repercussion.

You Train People How to Treat You

So I think one of the things we have to consider is: What’s important to us?

And if something’s important, say so—and protect it.

When things don’t get protected, it’s often because we’ve trained people that it’s not important.

When you respond to emails at all hours, I always say to people: Are you doing it because you’re 100% sure it’s expected?

Have you ever actually tried not doing it and seen what happens?

Or have you simply trained people that that’s how you work—and now they’re just interacting with you accordingly?

Be the First Mover — Don’t Wait for Permission

Here’s where negotiation skills come in: be a first mover.

If you’re a second mover, you’re reacting—you wait to see what the other person wants, then feel like you have to say yes.

Like, “Hey, how about a 7 a.m. meeting?” And you think, “Well, that’s not convenient, but now I have to say yes.”

Don’t put yourself in that position.

The more you can get out in front of the thing that matters—whether it’s your schedule or your availability—say:

“Here are three times that work for me. They’re all between 10 and 2. If none work, let me know and we’ll find an alternative.”

By giving people bounded choices, you’re taking control while still being collaborative. Most of the time, they’ll just pick one of your options.

We underutilize that as human beings, but it’s particularly useful for women: be the first mover.

If there’s something you want, don’t wait for others to protect it for you.

Decide it’s important, then organize your world around it. Block the hour on your calendar. You can always remove it later—but make it visible.

Boundaries Aren’t Punishment — They’re Experiments

All that said—I’m sixteen years into parenting, and I’m reevaluating daily.

Nothing works forever, nothing works perfectly. It’s chaotic sometimes.

But the difference I see between women who feel like it’s good chaos, manageable chaos, and those who feel like, “This is driving me into the ground”—is this:

Nobody has it all together.

But the women who cope better are the ones who’ve learned to recognize their boundaries and experiment with them.

They’ve stopped assuming that setting a boundary means they’ll be punished for it.

Sometimes that’s a story we tell ourselves—and we’ve never actually tested it to find out if it’s true.

Taking Ownership of Your Priorities and Power

Rebecca: Yeah, yeah, I love that. And I coach on it all the time. I talk to people all the time — you have to start with the priorities and the non-negotiables in your life. Right? It has to start there.

And it’s not anybody else’s job but your own to protect it.

If you’re in a workplace or an environment that doesn’t make that easy for you, you always have the option to leave it. On some level, we always have choice in all of these things — as difficult as that might be.

But what I’m hearing in a lot of this conversation is: sure, we might be starting at a deficit or with bias in some way — and yet, we can still take ownership over the way we’re viewed, over our status, over our power, over our trajectory, over our priorities.

We can be strategic in how we show up and effective with our time, our energy, our positioning, and our influence — all the things that are actually going to be big at the end of the day.

Releasing the “Good Mom” Narrative

Alison: Yeah. I also think that we equally, at the same time, hold a bunch of narratives about how we’re supposed to be as parents that create guilt about things we might not actually feel guilty about.

I get asked a lot—I travel a lot for work—and people say, “Oh, that must be really hard.”

And I’m like, “It’s hard in some ways, but you know what? It’s actually easier in a lot of others.”

Guess what I get to do when I travel? Only get myself dressed in the morning. I don’t have to rush out in heels during school drop-offs, worrying about getting to a meeting on time.

Guess what I get to do when I get back from wherever I’m traveling? Be in a hotel room by myself. Work, sleep, work out, etc.

But a lot of what I had to contend with was the feeling that I was supposed to be doing a certain set of things—and then I had to release myself from that.

It’s one thing to be pressured by colleagues to be at work all the time when that’s not what you want. But it’s another thing entirely to feel pressured to be at home in a certain way.

That creates a different kind of boundary—one you don’t actually need, but you hold onto because you’ve bought into the idea that that’s what a “good mom” is supposed to do.

Like, a good mom is supposed to pick her kids up from school, or have dinner with them every night.

But maybe you’re like, “You know what? I’m fine working through dinner. It suits me. It doesn’t bother me.”

It’s a narrative. And once we get really aware of those narratives, we can start to release them.

Using Status as a Resource for Better Decisions

One of the things I talk about in the book is the idea of status as a resource to support your life and decisions—especially around boundaries, parenting, and work.

The dilemmas we face in the present become much easier to resolve when we have a clear sense of what we’re working toward in the future.

What’s the future version of you five years from now? At the end of your career?

I have exercises that walk people through getting clear on:

  • What do you want to achieve in certain time frames?

  • What do you want to be known for?

  • How do you want people to describe you?

Once you’re clear on those things, a lot of today’s dilemmas start to feel easier—because you’re filtering them through a long-term vision, not a momentary pressure.

Redefining What Matters Most as a Parent

One realization that helped me a lot was understanding that having strong relationships with my adult children was a really important goal for me.

But having strong relationships with my toddler children wasn’t as important—unless I believed it would affect how they’d feel about me later.

So I was fine missing the first step or first word. That didn’t bother me.

But now that they’re older, I’m less fine missing things—because the connection feels more meaningful and formative.

When I made the decision to move to Chicago and go remote from my job—which was very unusual at the time—it was actually easy.

Making Decisions Guided by the Future

I wasn’t even 40 when I decided to move, but it felt simple because I had clarity about my long-term goal.

I thought, If I live in Chicago, which is the third biggest city in the country, my adult children will have a greater chance of being employed and living near me.

They may not—that’s their life—but at least there’s a chance.

So a hard decision became really easy because I could see how it supported my future vision.

That’s what I’d encourage everyone to do: look past today.

Think about what you want your life to look like in 1, 3, 5, or 10 years.

Then ask yourself: If I do this today, will it make it more likely or less likely that I’ll have those things I want in the future?

When you start guiding your choices by that future vision, all the “Should I? Shouldn’t I?” struggles start to feel a lot easier—because they’re guided by something bigger.

Rebecca: Yeah, I love that. The concept I usually talk about is like, laddering up to a vision. We got to make our decisions today that ladder up to a vision.

Alison: Exactly.

You Can Have Both — Career and Motherhood

Rebecca: Definitely. I love that. So good. Oh, Alison, I feel like we could just talk about this forever.

Thank you so much for being here and for coming on this podcast and talking to us about this.

I think it’s really helpful for women to have another frame of reference to think about—because we, as women, don’t have to choose between our career and being a good mom.

We can have both. Right? That’s what this podcast is all about. That’s what this community is all about.

So, Alison, if people want to learn more about what you do or read your book, where should they go?

Where to Learn More About Alison Fragale

Alison: I think the easiest thing for people to do is go to my website, which is just my name, allisonfragale.com.

On there, there’s all the media and podcasts and things I’ve ever done, there’s my book, my newsletter (which is called The Upper Hand — it’s free), and you can connect to my socials there.

All the things. So that’s a good place for people to go.

Rebecca: I love it. And of course, that will be in the show notes as well if you want to check that out.

All right, working moms — thank you so much for being with us in this episode this week.

And until next time, let’s get to it.

Rebecca Olson