Women sometimes tell me, “But I don’t know how to negotiate for myself,” as if it’s a fact as obvious as the sky.

I don’t buy that for a second.

As a coach who’s helped women earn over $3 million and counting in additional compensation—the issue is not that women are somehow inherently inferior at negotiation.

The real truth is that we’re operating in systems that penalize us for using negotiation skills, and we’ve been socialized to doubt what we already do brilliantly.

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.

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?