How to negotiate
12 steps to be less negotiating kitten and more negotiating tiger, because you're worth it!
Following on from the November Saving Challenge, there is another way to boost your income — develop better negotiating skills!
Whether you’re negotiating your salary at a new job, asking for a pay raise or overseeing a business deal, negotiation is a critical professional skill. But it’s not easy. And, at the risk of making a sweeping statement, I think women find it particularly hard. Note, I don't mean we’re intrinsically bad at it, just that it’s harder for us? We tend to assume that we will be recognised and rewarded for working hard and doing a good job, instead of assertively asking for what we want (where assertiveness is understood as understanding and advocating for your own needs). For many of us, we just weren't taught that we can do this. After all, women have been historically conditioned from an early age not to promote their own interests and to focus instead on the needs of others.
Or perhaps it’s because we see negotiation as a conflict, with two parties or more starting on what seems to be opposite sides of the table. However, according to Aaron Shabari, an instructor on a Women’s Leadership course at Harvard, “Conflict is neither negative, nor positive. Conflict is neutral and is needed to reveal the interests, goals, and needs of each negotiating party. Negotiation brings people who might have different views together. There should be a shared common goal between them. Conflict is a natural part of figuring out what that common goal is.”
Hmmm. Certainly if negotiating for myself, I would do a kind of internal math and talk myself down to what I felt was “reasonable” rather than what I was worth. And when I managed teams, and did pay reviews, it was par for the course for the female members of my team to either not even mention the possibility of a raise, or to ask for something pitifully below what they deserved. This never happened with the male members of my team. Never. And this isn’t just reflective of the ‘creative’ magazine publishing industry — in one study only seven percent of women coming out of business school negotiated their starting salary, compared to 57 percent of men.
Therein lies the gender pay gap.
So, here’s my 12-step guide to be less negotiating kitten, and more negotiating tiger (in a velvet glove). Basically, you know the adage, fail to prepare and prepare to fail. Here’s what you need to do…