TED Talks Daily - Sunday Pick: The secret to success isn’t power – it’s status

Episode Date: October 20, 2024

Each Sunday, TED shares an episode of another podcast we think you'll love, handpicked for you… by us. Many people believe that success depends on gaining power, but it turns out that status is a more sustainable path to accomplishment and impact. In this episode of WorkLife with Adam Grant, another podcast from the TED Audio Collective, Adam is joined by Survivor star Parvati Shallow, organizational psychologist and author Alison Fragale, and Chynna Clayton — former special assistant to Michelle Obama — to break down the best strategies for gaining and maintaining status at work, building stronger relationships, and getting promoted. Available transcripts for WorkLife can be found at go.ted.com/WLtranscripts

TED Audio Collective. Hey, TED Talks Daily listeners, I'm Elise Hu. Today, we have an episode of another podcast from the TED Audio Collective, handpicked by us for you. It's easy to feel powerless at work sometimes, especially if you're not in a position of leadership. But there's a way to gain influence, and it's not just about getting promoted. This week, we're breaking down the importance of status in an episode of Work Life with Adam Grant.

You'll hear how you can get and maintain status at work with the help of expert organizational psychologists and reality TV star Parvati Shallow, who used her own status to win a million dollars on Survivor. And if you want to learn other ways to work smarter, you're in luck. Work Life is back with new episodes. You can find Work Life with Adam Grant wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about the TED Audio Collective at audiocollective.ted.com. Now on to the episode right after a quick break. Support for this show comes from Airbnb. If you know me, you know I love staying in Airbnbs when I travel. They make my family feel most at home when we're away from home. As we settled down at

our Airbnb during a recent vacation to Palm Springs, I pictured my own home sitting empty. Wouldn't it be smart and better put to use welcoming a family like mine by hosting it on Airbnb? It feels like the practical thing to do, and with the extra income, I could save up for renovations to make the space even more inviting for ourselves and for future guests. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. We'll go three, two, one. Ready?

Three, two, one, go. It's Wednesday night, Survivor time. Watching Survivor is a family tradition. We love to analyze the social dynamics of the game and try to figure out who will gain status and who will get voted off the island. The best blindside ever was when the Black Widow Brigade tricked Eric. When was that?

Season 16. The Black Widow Brigade is an alliance of four women, including some of the best ever to play Survivor. I'm Parvati. I am the notorious leader of the Black Widow Brigade. The alliance is so strong that they make it to the final five. The only man left is Eric. They're planning to vote him out. But that day, he wins the challenge, which gives him immunity. And the final puzzle that he wins says, guaranteed a spot in the final four.

So we're all devastated. I'm like, no, I really wanted this to be a final four of all women. And I was crushed. So we go back to the beach. It's me, Natalie, Amanda, and Ceri sitting on a log mourning the loss of the Women's Alliance. It's not just the end of the alliance. Eric is now a strong contender to win the whole season. So then all of a sudden, Seri kind of out of nowhere is like,

well, what if we could convince him to give up the immunity necklace? And all of us look at each other and we're like, no way. He would never. And then we sat with it for a minute and we were like, but could we? To win Survivor, you need the jury of players who have been eliminated to vote for you. So the Black Widow Brigade decides to appeal to Eric's insecurities. Because he knows at the end, if he's sitting there, he needs these people to respect his gameplay. And what we're saying at tribal council is, Eric, no one's going to respect you unless you make this big, bold move of giving up your immunity necklace to Natalie. And then you'll earn the respect of the jury.

How confident were you that the plan was going to work? 10%. I was confident that you were confident. I was not confident. I was like, you know what? We did our best. It's like a quarterback throwing the Hail Mary at the seven seconds left in the game.

And you're like, well, if this lands in the end zone and someone catches it, cool. But it's probably not going to happen. They're all sitting around the fire pit, waiting to see what Eric will do. And he all of a sudden is like, all right, you know, I've been thinking about it. And he unhooks the necklace and my jaw drops. I'm sitting behind him. He can't see me, thankfully. But my jaw hits the floor. Instead of keeping the immunity for himself,

Eric decides to just give it away. And when it happened, time stood still. And Eric hands the necklace to Natalie, giving up his protection. And then we go vote him out. Eric thought giving up his immunity would solidify his standing, but he misjudged his status and it cost him a good chance at a million dollars. Status isn't just a big deal on reality TV. It's a core dynamic at work and we often misread who has it and how to earn it. If you want to get ahead and get along, you need a deeper

understanding of status. I'm Adam Grant, and this is Work Life, my podcast with the TED Audio Collective. I'm an organizational psychologist. I study how to make work not suck. In this show, we explore how to unlock the potential in people and workplaces. Today, status and what it really takes to improve your standing in relationships and groups. At work, status signals are everywhere. We pick up cues about who's important from the job titles people have and from how quickly their emails get answered, from whether they have an assistant, a corner office, and a parking space, and from how much leeway they get to leave early, show up late, or work remotely.

We don't just pay attention to status. We seek it. So it governs so much of how we interact and what we aspire to. It's a fundamental human need. Alison Fregale is an organizational behavior expert at UNC. She's a leading expert on status. It's the subject of her book, Likeable Badass. Her work has changed the way I think about status, a topic that people often hesitate to discuss explicitly. It's always present, but often not labeled. And if you were to admit that you were doing something in the quest to achieve status, I think you would be seen as less likely to get it. So in that sense, I think it has a taboo to it, which I'm actually actively trying to correct because it's an issue that we all navigate. And we can't navigate if we don't know what it is and we don't really know what it is that we're trying to achieve.

Status is a fundamental aspect of social hierarchy, which exists in every workplace. So is power. And we often lump the two together. If someone has a big title in a corner office, we think they have high status. But Allison finds that power and status are not the same. Status is another person or person's opinion about how respected, admired, valuable you are. Power is controlling resources that other people want. So you control money, you control the ability to hire and fire and promote. That's power. If status is respect and power is authority, why do we confuse them?

Well, because they can be highly correlated, right? If someone's very respective and admired, we often give them the resources to control. And so those two things go hand in hand. Sometimes if you're powerful enough, people will respect you. So just knowing that someone is the CEO of insert your favorite multinational organization, you might immediately go in and respect that person and think they got there because they have a lot of really good characteristics and qualities. But status and power often diverge. The particular category that ends up being problematic is when people are high on power, but they're low on status.

So I often will use airport security, TSA, as an example of interacting with what you'd think of as a low status power holder. It's a person who has a tremendous amount of power in that moment. But in the grand scheme of life, based on occupation, which is a source of status, it's not the highest status occupation that somebody could identify. And so if someone has more power than they do status, it's often why, you know,

there's a lot of talk about how people in those roles are mistreated. People in those roles often feel miserable because when they have to interact with the world who sees them as a low status power holder, what we've seen through a lot of my research is they get a lot of mistreatment and it doesn't feel particularly good to be in those roles.

Research shows that when people are given positions of power but don't have status, it threatens their egos. They often respond by trying to assert their authority with behaviors that are controlling and sometimes even demeaning. You've probably seen that happen at work. It's the colleague who vies for a promotion by bad-mouthing peers, and the manager who tries to get ahead by dumping grunt work on subordinates. When people pursue power but neglect status, they become bad apples that spoil the barrel. The outcomes are very different when people have status without power. Think of the junior IT technician everyone respects as knowledgeable and reliable in fixing bugs, or the longtime administrative assistant everyone appreciates for being able to cut red tape.

Basically, what I've found is once you have status, how much power you have becomes irrelevant for the variables that I'm concerned about, which is, you know, how the world interacts with you, how you're treated, the characteristics they assume you to have. Both power and status are really important. Life is a lot easier with them than without them. Living a life without being respected or controlling things is psychologically just as damaging as living a life without friends. So we need both. We seek both. Those are great things. And so I don't want to say, let's forget about power. I acknowledge how important it is. And it's every bit as important as status. But there's a sequence that we can see that if we can pursue status, and we're surrounded by people who respect, admire and value us, then one, it doesn't matter how much power we have. And two, getting power becomes a whole lot easier, right? If I see you as highly valued, I will just start giving you resources to control.

If you're feeling stuck in your job or you're not getting the promotion you think you deserve, there's another path to advancing. You need to figure out how to gain status. So how do you get it? Well, by definition, it can't be taken. It can only be given. Power can be taken, right? If money is the valued resource and you steal all the dollars and you're sitting on them,

well, then like it or not, you have the power. But status is other people's judgments about how much they value you. Status is a phenomenon that exists only in the heads of other people. You can influence it, but you cannot take it. And so I do think that's frustrating for people because it's like it has to be kind of won and earned, you know, again and again and again. I think the very positive part is it can be done without it being your full-time job in ways that are very authentic and fun for you to do. Sociologists have long found that initial status judgments are affected

by factors outside our control. For example, tall people get more status. So do attractive people. But over time, who gains status depends on our actions. I need to influence the way other people's brains assign value to me. And I only have to work with the variables under my control. So there's a lot of things that your brain might be using, like my gender, like my age, like my race or ethnicity, that I don't have any control over. So I just have to work with the variables that are left. But the good news is we see a lot of science that behavior generally trumps demographics. When it comes to behaviors that work, psychologists have converged around two key drivers of status. I've come to think of them as competence and care.

So status comes from being both of those things. And so the more we can show up to all of the audiences around us, as I am competent and I am giving and helpful, voila. That's all you need to do, right? But it's simple and it's hard. To sum up, you become valued by adding value. And the way you add value is to be competent and caring. That's something Chyna Clayton figured out at the start of her career. So I'm from Miami. Family roots are Georgia. So, you know, Southern hospitality, all the things.

And when I came up to D.C., the biggest shock for me was that before somebody even asked me my name at a happy hour, it was, what do you do? Where do you work? When she was in college, Chyna landed an internship at the White House, and she still remembers her first day. So I pull up in this black Chevy Impala. I get out. I have on this jumpsuit thing. I have my purse on my wrist. And they're just like, oh, wow, where did she come from?

She felt like an outsider. And I come into this space where I never expected to be in a million years, right? I really came into it knowing enough about the White House, but, you know, not nearly as much as I felt that everyone else did. One of the interns actually told me that I didn't deserve the internship because my background wasn't in political science. Oh, yeah. And I did a dual degree. So technically, it was event management and political science. But because, you know, public service wasn't the way I was what I was leading with, that I didn't deserve that internship and that I took the opportunity away from someone else. Chyna knew she lacked power and status. She saw other interns try to gain power.

You do have some interns that come in just because they've had these experiences in high school and in college where they were, you know, the top dogs. And so they come in with this mentality of being able to impact change and make policy and do all the things. But it's just like, no, you got to really understand your function as an intern, which is to listen and to learn and to get things done. Chyna concentrated on status. She wanted to prove that she was competent and caring. I think that a lot of being perceived as someone of status just comes with how you treat people, right? And I am one who always leads with kindness.

And then I think it was a lot of showing people that they could trust me with the work. So when they assigned the task to me, it was putting my all into that one task. It was, you know, making sure I delivered things on time. It was making sure that they understood that, like, you know, I am taking heed to all that you're putting out and I'm showing you results as a part of it. So I think that's what really helped me to build genuine and trusting relationships was come in with the right attitude and showing people that I was capable of the tasks that they were putting in front of me. As an intern, Chyna was focused on connecting and contributing, not getting ahead, which ironically helped her get ahead. A few years later, she got a big promotion. She was hired as special assistant and trip director to Michelle Obama. The tables had turned, right? And now everybody's respecting me and looking at me.

On a trip to Vietnam to highlight the Girls Opportunity Alliance, they were joined by various celebrities. Michelle Obama went out of her way to highlight Chyna's status. And she introduces me and said these things. How fond she was of me. How vital I was to her operation. And how any follow-up that these said celebrities needed to do after this event, how I was the go-to person, right? And that was super powerful because Mrs. Obama took the time to emphasize my importance to

her, which then made me also important to them. By earning status, China gained power. But what about her peers? Research shows that people are often threatened by competent peers. My favorite demonstration is a paper titled, Get Smarty Pants. Highly capable people were more likely to be undermined by envious colleagues. But if competent people were also caring,

that risk dissipated. There are many ways to show that you care about others, but the most basic signal of care is attention. Think about your team meetings. There's evidence that lower-status members of a group gain influence if the more powerful people just look at them. Even making basic eye contact is a way

to grant others status. Chyna understood this. She wasn't only focused on earning the respect of the people above her. She was determined to treat everyone with respect. If we are engaged in conversation, and let's say it's three of us talking and you are only making eye contact with the other person of status or the other person who has, you know, a higher title and you are completely ignoring the third person in the room or who is a part of the conversation. That can be perceived as, you know, you keeping that person out of the conversation just because their title is junior. So at the end of the day, status is all about everybody else's perception of you, right? So if I am literally only focused on this one person

of status, then in the third person in the room's eyes, I've now gone down a notch because I'm not giving them any sort of attention. Chyna didn't need the right degree. Her competence and care proved that she belonged and convinced others that she deserved the role she got. But establishing competence and care isn't always straightforward. Sometimes the way you signal competence can make you look uncaring. And the way you show care can make people question your competence. How do you overcome the trade-offs? More on that after the break. Thank you. You need to sound confident. But that can make it look like you're not open to other people's ideas.

That you don't care. To show you care what others think, Alison Fregale finds that it helps to use powerless speech. You could make a disclaimer. This might be a bad idea, but. Or soften your suggestion and ask for other people's advice. So turning something that could be a statement into a question by adding right or you know or what do you think onto the end of it? This kind of tentative

talk is often called weak language, but surprisingly it can be, well, kind of a source of strength. Powerless speech is not a verbal tick that half the population was born with. Powerless speech is a behavior that people can use, consciously or not, that helps them show up as more other-oriented. And in many cases, for many people, not just women, that is to their advantage. In her research, Allison found that powerless speech helps people gain status in collaborations.

So if we are working in a very independent way, I don't really need to rely on you. I don't really care about how giving you are. And so assertiveness wins. But the more we have to start to work together, the more I would care about how giving and caring you are. I always think I don't really need a warm pilot as a passenger, right?

I could care less. Like we are not in an interdependent relationship. You just fly that plane as best you can, and I'm fine with it. But if I were the co-pilot, I might actually want a very different set of skills in the pilot sitting in that chair, because now I have to collaborate with you, and I have to work with you, and I need you to be confident enough. But now, your ability to interact with me and work with me is a much bigger part of what I'm looking for there than when I'm the passenger in the back of the plane. Powerless speech doesn't seem to signal competence.

But competence is best conveyed through what you say, not how you say it. And showing receptivity to others' views doesn't have to suggest a lack of confidence. It can actually boost other people's opinions of your intelligence. Say you have a suggestion for improving your team's culture. If you pitch your idea and then ask for guidance on how to make sure it doesn't get shot down prematurely, you're showing good judgment.

There's evidence that when you ask for advice, it actually makes you look smart. You're a genius. You knew to come to me. Whereas advocating for your views can be threatening, inquiry is empowering. New research suggests that leaders are more likely to adopt ideas when they're presented as questions rather than suggestions,

especially if leaders have big egos. When people are power-h power hungry, you can earn their respect by asking, have you considered, or what do you think, or what would happen if? We don't always get to see these techniques in action at work. They often happen behind closed doors, but you can see them vividly in Survivor, where people talk openly about status and their strategies for acquiring it. From the first time I saw Parvati Shallow on the show, it struck me that she was a power user of powerless speech. Okay, so in Micronesia, I was with the women. I could be super direct with them. They liked it when I was direct with

them. And I was like, hey, here's what I'm thinking. Like now's the time to blindside Ozzy. When I played Heroes Villains, I had an alliance with a power hungry guy who felt insecure about his power and a girl who was a great, like, loyal ally, but also we didn't have that much power. So Russell was our, like, power piece. And we knew if we showed up with directive language, like, hey, here's what I think we should do, he would block it. He would need to come up with the idea. It would have to be his idea in order for it to happen.

This was highly effective, at least for a while. Parvati even coaxed Russell into giving her his immunity idol. And I already had one in my pocket, and he was really mad about that. Sure enough, research shows that men are often threatened by female power. When women talk tentatively, they're more likely to gain status with men. It shouldn't have to be this way. It's outrageous that women have to soften their speech to cater to fragile male egos. And it is strategic language.

It's very strategic when a person is aware of a power imbalance in a relationship and a person is aware of a fragile ego. And women can have fragile egos too. But powerless speech is just a tool. Alison Fregale wants you to think about other ways to show care. One of the most common questions I get is, well, what does that mean from, like, should I be using powerless speech? And I said, I think it means you don't have to be afraid of it,

but I don't think it means you need to use it either. For one, trying to control your speech style is a lot of cognitive effort, and I think your cognitive effort is better spent on other things, but I think you should be aware of the signals you give off.

And so if you say, I tend to have a really powerless style, it's pretty natural to me. Great. Roll with it. It's a good signal of warmth. But then what I would say to you is, what are you going to add in that will be an equally good signal of the other things I know you are, which is competent and confident and decisive? Versus you have a really strong dominant speech style. You're really assertive.

You know, you can't add in any of those words. Roll with it. Go. speech style, you're really assertive, you know, you can't add in any of those words, roll with it, go. But then what is going to be your way that you are going to authentically signal that I am giving and that I am caring? One of my pet peeves is when people apologize for things that aren't their fault. I'm so sorry it's raining. Although it shows care, I worry that it undermines competence. So you and I, we will agree to disagree, but for the same kernel of reasons on apologies, right? Apology rejected is your line, right? You shouldn't be apologizing. And I go with, it is for me, way too much cognitive effort to strip those out of

certainly my verbal speech and even out of my emails when I'm writing quickly. And so I've given up on trying because I'd say, look, I'm an apologizer. It's a warm but submissive behavior, but I got plenty of other ways in my life that I can showcase my assertiveness. So I'm just letting that go unapologetically. I'm an unapologetic apologizer. And I will remain that way. I'm going to make you apologize for that. So, so I think, you know, one of the things that I've been able to do, because I understand this science, is to let go things that work for other people that don't work for me, and realize that the game that I'm trying to play is to show up as competent and caring to as many people as possible, as many moments as possible. And that can look different from moment to moment. And the way I do it can look different than the way you do it. And that's the advice I really want women to hear,

which is, I don't think we want to go to how you show up doesn't matter. And it's other people's problem. Like, it's not your fault, but you are left with the consequences nevertheless. And so that's the message that I want people to get, which is competent and caring, non-negotiable, how you get there, highly negotiable. I used to think that instead of telling women to stop using weak language, we should tell men to start using more of it. But now I think what we all need are additional techniques for showing care that don't call competence into question. My favorite approach to demonstrating both competence and care is called prototypicality. Psychologists find that the people who gain

status are the ones who are prototypical of their group. Prototypicality is about exemplifying what the group stands for. If you want to gain status, you should identify your group's core values and then make it clear that your achievements are advancing those values. I remember watching Parvati do it on Survivor. And I think that is the way into any group, is if you come in with a sense of your own inherent worthiness, your own inherent, I belong here, then you already have a solid foundation from which to create a relationship. So it's like, I belong here. Oh, all these other people also belong here.

I don't have to prove myself. I don't have to demonstrate how smart I am or how strong I am. I don't have to control anything. I just need to get to know what these people in this group care about. And I need to show them that I also care about those things. Research reveals that when they advocate for themselves, women in particular face unfair backlash. Their assertiveness is misjudged as aggressiveness. But when it's clear that they're advocating for others too, women are more likely to get the results they want,

and they're also better liked. After Parvati's Black Widow Alliance convinced Eric to give away his idol, she made the final two. She had to stand in front of the jury and convince them to award her a million dollars. She argued that although she tricked Eric, it was in the interest of a greater good. She was looking out for her alliance. She cared about them, and she was fighting for them.

I don't want Eric in the end with me. I want these women who I've played with, who I've aligned with, who I have this emotional, very deep connection to, and this is what I'm willing to fight for. And the way she did it was prototypical of a survivor winner. She outwitted everyone. I think I earned the respect of the jury by just standing in the truth of, here's what I did that you guys didn't like. And I did all those things. I own up to it. Like you can vote for me or not vote for me, but I played by the rules of Survivor. And I think they liked that. Spoiler alert, Parvati won. In real life, unlike Survivor, there isn't just one winner in the end.

As Alison Fregale notes, it's possible for everyone in a group to gain status and maintain it. It's not completely zero-sum, but it's not something that we can all have equally because then it loses its meaning. If everyone has the same amount of status, then there's no status at all. But that said, the piece that we haven't talked about as much is that status is very context-bound. I can have a certain amount of status at work. I could have a certain status when I go onto a stage and talk to an audience. I can have a different status when I go into a faculty meeting.

And then I can come home and deal with my kids and have a different status still. So where I think there's room for everybody is to say everyone is going to have their domain where they have been able to really achieve on this competence and this caring. But then if we switch domains, it's someone else's turn. And so we're not all equal all the time on our status, but we can all be high status in certain situations. And I think that's the thing that we can all work toward and feel like it's not just you or me.

It's you have your context, I have my context. And as we switch between them, our status will switch and we're okay with that. I think it's really empowering to think about status as something that doesn't require us to jockey for position, as long as we can agree who earns the most respect or deserves the most respect on a given task. Exactly. And that the other thing I think that is hopeful is that even if one were jockeying for position, the way you do it with status is by adding a lot of value in terms of your competence

and being really given. And so when we do those things, we are also making our groups better off. Status shouldn't be a dirty word. If you understand it better, you can be more genuine and more effective in your quest to get it. Seeking status is not about keeping up with the Joneses. It's not about how much money you make, how many fancy titles you collect, or how many prestigious organizations you join. It's about earning the respect of the people around you. Support for this show comes from Airbnb.

If you know me, you know I love staying in Airbnbs when I travel. They make my family feel most at home when we're away from home. As we settled down at our Airbnb during a recent vacation to Palm Springs, I pictured my own home sitting empty. Wouldn't it be smart and better put to use welcoming a family like mine by hosting it on Airbnb? It feels like the practical thing to do, and with the extra income I could save up for renovations to like the practical thing to do. And with the extra income, I could save up for renovations to make the space even more inviting for ourselves and

for future guests. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host. Thank you. on Power Without Status, Tim Judge and Dan Cable on Height and Kelly Nault on Attractiveness, Susan Fisk on Competence and Care, Eugene Kim and Teresa Glam on Get Smarty Pants, Sohyang Shim on Eye Contact, Mohamed Hussain and Zach Tormala on Receptivity,

Katie Lilienquist on Advice Seeking, Chakfu Lam on The Power of Questions, Linda Carley on Gender, Alison Wood Brooks on Apologies, Don Van Nippenberg and Michael Hogg on The Power of Questions, Linda Carley on Gender, Alison Wood Brooks on Apologies, Don von Nippenberg and Michael Hogg on Prototypicality, Melissa Williams and Laura Tiedens on Gender Backlash, and Hannah Riley Bowles and Linda Babcock on Overcoming It. You just left out one important detail. I'm a mom.

I have a five-year-old daughter. Try again. I am writing a book. Okay, those are all important, but this is important in a different sense, which is you also play in a Survivor Fantasy League with me. Oh, yeah. How could I forget?

How could you leave out the fact that we're in a Survivor Fantasy League together and that you've never beaten me? Adam, let's take a beat, okay? Let's land this in reality for a moment. You and I, we're going to fly to Fiji, and we're going to put it to the test. First of all, is there enough sunscreen for you, Adam, to make it 39 days without turning into a bubbling lobster?

Do you think you could survive just the sun alone? Because the baldness would burn. What else would be a challenge for me in Survivor other than the sun? Eating bugs and fish. You could never do that. Looking for a fun challenge to share with your friends and family? Ted now has games

designed to keep your mind sharp while having fun. Visit ted.com slash games to explore the joy and wonder of Ted games.