She Negotiates: Part Two

Have You Ever Asked for a Raise?

I have a confession. I write a lot about the wage gap. And while I firmly believe that old-fashioned sexism is a contributor to the fact women still earn, on average, just .77 cents for every dollar a man earns, I also know there are other factors as well. Many who study the issue say women don’t negotiate as much as men do and therefore aren’t setting themselves up to earn what they should. And so I often urge women to advocate for themselves. Here’ s where the confession happens: I have never asked for a raise. Not once.

This dawned on me two weeks ago while I was role-playing a raise during an intensive virtual course I took, aptly named “She Negotiates.” I bumbled through the negotiation, stuttering and stammering, my palms sweaty, even though my negotiating partner wasn’t my boss — it was another woman enrolled in the course – and we were just pretending.

In lieu of asking for raises, I have always just worked very hard and hoped my boss noticed and rewarded me. It seemed to work pretty well for me, but who knows how much money I left on the table over the years.

I’m not the only who does that, am I? How many of you ask for raises? And how many of you ask for those raises, not just at your annual review, but whenever you’ve added significant value to your organization? If you haven’t, you should start. And before you do, you need to practice.

The importance of practicing my negotiating skills, was a key take away from the She Negotiates course. Here are some others:

• Lose the guilt or shame about your current lot in life. If you want to negotiate successfully, don’t waste your time thinking about where you should be or what might have been in life. Good negotiating starts from accepting where you are today and using that as your starting point. So what if you didn’t a accept transfer years ago? Who cares if you took three years off from your career after the birth of your child? You are where you are. Now what are you going to do?
• You are not negotiating from a place of weakness, so stop thinking you are. If those negative thoughts persist, call your best friend and – here it is again – practice with her or him. Have your biggest fan remind you of what you bring to the table.
• Stephen Covey was right: the best possible outcome is win/win. Negotiating isn’t about besting someone else. It’s about building relationships – or what the founders of She Negotiates refer to as “interest-based” negotiating. The person with whom you negotiate, isn’t your adversary, they are your partner. And together, you find away to serve both of your interests. (Hint: the best way to get someone to cooperate is to be cooperative. And most of us women are skilled in that department.)
• Which leads me to my final take away from the course, I’m not a bad negotiator. The first week of the course, I felt like a first grader in school with a group of college students. How was a freelance writer going to practice negotiating with a group of professional women, many of whom were lawyers? They had real skills and I had no clue, or so I thought. I was right about their skills. But I was wrong about me. I negotiate all the time and I’m not so bad at it. I just never realized that what I would consider being kind or thoughtful – asking someone about themselves, taking an interest in other people’s needs and interests, is actually part of the negotiating process.

So Ladies, try it. I am confident that with a little practice, you’ll discover just how good at negotiating you really are.

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