Dr. Alison Wood Brooks

All of a sudden, the conversation shifts to talking about, oh, should we update our maternity leave policy?

And all of a sudden, if you're the only woman in the room, you're all of a sudden, you're at the top of the heap, okay?

You have the most lived experience, the most knowledge to bring to this conversation.

So even if you're feeling low status on many topics, if all of a sudden it switches to something else, you might...

all of a sudden become high status.

And we shouldn't underestimate the value of that when we have value to bring.

Really.

Okay.

Okay.

So if you're on a topic and you're feeling like you don't know anything, it's always valuable to ask questions about even people who know everything about it.

It's helpful for them to have a sounding board and someone who's asking questions.

They don't know what other people don't know.

So sometimes when you're at low status, you're in this privileged position to say, look, nobody here knows what you're talking about.

Define this for us.

What do you mean by status?

Yeah.

Before we get on to Kay, I have one more thing to say to these low status friends.

Yes.

We are with you.

We have all been low status.