Hi, I'm Sarah and this is the Squiggly Careers podcast. In this episode, you'll hear me in conversation with Viv Groscop, exploring the idea of something called happy high status, a new and I think very useful take on how we can build our self-belief. I hope you enjoy listening to our conversation together. Viv is smart,

insightful, and what I particularly appreciate is how realistic and relevant her ideas and

perspective is on how everyone can increase their confidence or, to use her phrase, achieve

happy high status. I hope you find this a useful episode.

Thank you. achieve happy high status. I hope you find this a useful episode. So Viv, welcome back to the Squiggly Careers podcast. It's been a while since we last talked

about it, but you also have one of the very rare privileges, if that's the right word,

of being a repeat guest on the Squiggly Careers podcast. It is a great privilege and I feel like I'm a very squiggly person so I'm always happy to

squiggle again. You are, you are. And you've got a new book out called Happy High Status and I

first came across this concept where you sort of, you touched on it, you'd certainly

introduced it to me when I read How to Own the Room, but sort of, you touched on it. You'd certainly introduced it

to me when I read How to Own the Room. But I feel like you've taken it much, much further,

having dived into it. So I think we do need to sort of start at the beginning, because lots of people

won't be familiar with the concept. What is Happy High Status? And also, why might it be more

useful for us than just confidence when we're

thinking about our careers? Yeah, happy high status was an idea I touched on in passing in

my previous book, How to Own the Room, Women in the Art of Brilliant Speaking. And I guess I would

have loved to have written more about it then but I didn't feel like

I quite had the language to explain it to people and I wanted to do a project where I was

really speaking to women about the difficulties that certain groups of people have speaking

in front of others all the things that hold us back.

And I was so focused on that.

And the feedback that I got throughout that project was tell us more about happy high status.

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