Jamie Lee is an executive coach for smart women who hate office politics. She helps them get promoted and better paid without throwing anyone under the bus.
All tagged confidence in salary negotiation
She was feeling shaky about asking to be paid what she had earned before.
Why? Because she had a story in her head: “I was probably overpaid in my last job.”
So she considered playing it safe, asking for a lower number—just to get her foot in the door.
But it didn’t feel good—or right.
As with so many hard-working, conscientious professionals I've had the privilege of working with, the real challenge wasn’t the logistics of securing multiple offers. It was socialized guilt. Guilt is a learned emotion. It got ingrained in us by authority figures who wanted us to be—let’s be blunt—easily controllable.
Armed with confidence-boosting tools, my client aced the technical and behavioral interviews. When it became clear an offer was on the table, she reached out to me: "How should I negotiate this?" Here's how we approached it with three key steps…
If getting better paid and promoted were simply based on being excellent at what you do, you'd have been a millionaire CXO years ago.
So why shouldn't you be paid at the top of the pay range?
