You soul knows you're meant for EXPANSION, and that's why you want to grow personally and professionally.
But your brain tells a different story when it thinks about actually engaging in negotiation. 

Here are three things to remember when you’re in the grips of negotiation anxiety.

Why checking every box and doing your best work don’t lead to a promotion

• The power of asking the right questions to shift your perspective

• The lightbulb moment that got DeAndra to say out loud what she’d never say out loud prior to coaching

• How DeAndra created clarity in her career and secured her dream job with a salary bump

Dr. Tenisha shares:

• How to deal with feeling intimidated being around other smart people who have more experience than you...and how to answer imposter syndrome with self-confidence

• How coaching is different from doing self-discoveries, reading books, listening to podcasts, and watching Youtube...especially when things get hard and you don't know what to do

• How to become more bold in your workplace communication without worrying about what other people think, and where to place your focus for maximum impact instead

As an executive coach for women, I’m here to point out how familiar or “right” it can feel:

👉🏼 To say yes to redundant tasks to "take one for the team" that lead to burnout

👉🏼 To try to be friends with colleagues, at the expense of becoming a decisive leader

👉🏼 To give up on your negotiating power by assuming a passive voice instead of an engaged and active one in career conversations

Read more to find out why.

Just because Sam or Steve got promoted grinding and hustling for approval, it doesn’t mean you have to do it like them.

Everything is negotiable. Including HOW you get promoted.

For example:

My client Amy is a senior software engineer — the first woman to lead a project in a nearly all male team.

Recently, her boss told her, "I’m relying on you to be a top producer for feature work. This will help you get to the next level."

Read more to find out how she’s going to negotiate her promotion.

Seven years ago, I was scared sh*tless when I decided to ask for a raise and promotion in my former life as an Operations Director at a startup.

I was making ok money and doing well enough to become indispensable, but the lack of agency in my career had my soul feeling suffocated.

Until that decision to ask, I’d let other people decide the value of my potential.

Read more to find out what happened.

The other week, a sh*tty thing — HR oversight— happened to my client.

Because my client is smart and savvy and self-composed, she did not react to her anger in the moment.

But later when she revisited the event, her anger and frustration grew when she thought, "I’m not allowed to be angry, because then people will call me an Angry Black Woman and my career will end."

Read more to find out how I coached her.

I’ve seen countless smart women managers white-knuckle through work beyond the point of exhaustion, while under-communicating their wants and wins.

This is because as women and minorities in male-dominated workplaces, we’ve been socialized to de-prioritize ourselves.

These looping thoughts feel like an imperative rather than internalized oppression…

1 year ago, I celebrated my client Kay, a Director of Data Science, who submitted her application for her old manager’s role.

The ask for a promotion — hitting send on the application— was more momentous than the getting.

Asking is living into the belief: "I AM A PERSON OF POTENTIAL."

People often tell me, “I need to get comfortable with speaking up and asking for what I want.”

No, you don’t.

Comfort is not what creates confidence.

Courage is.

Courage feels awkward AF, vulnerable and thorny. Like in the best yoga stretch that starts with a groan but ends with a deep, releasing exhale.

Jill comes across as increasingly adversarial, demanding you deliver on promises she herself can't make. And Sam is reluctant to commit to the launch deadline, saying it would be better to delay rather than risk getting blamed for unforeseen errors.

Just when you most need your colleagues to come together, collaboration seems to be falling apart.

WHY is this happening?

Your honest no is a kind yes to you and it's in the best interest of everyone.

Even if the folks who ask for your time quibble at your no, you benefit them by NOT going against your integrity. By NOT doing things half-heartedly, while wishing you’d said no in the first place.

So I invite you to borrow, steal or adapt any of the following —

When you practice Intention Neutrality, you can interpret their intentions in the best way that helps you respond with calm confidence.

For my client who wants to grow her visibility at work, Intentional Neutrality led to her consciously choosing to interpret this person's request as, "They're trying to help me."

She's going from frozen and feeling like she's not doing a good enough job, to fluid and feeling calm, supported as she grows her visibility with stress-free, speedy updates.

In college, figuring out a career outside of school felt impossible.

Then in the "real world," feeling good enough at what I do felt impossible.

So did taking credit, feeling confident, comfortable in my own skin, or asking for a raise or promotion — all impossible.

For a while.

Then I did the impossible things.

How do you spend less time worrying about what others think and hit SEND on that brave and tough email?

How do you deliver bad news or share an opposing opinion WITHOUT second guessing your every word?

So that you have more time, faster results and the confidence of a professional?

This was the growth journey of my client Sarah Eadie who generously shares her coaching experience in this 8 minute video. Watch or read the transcript here.

Charlotte Rocker is an Executive Director who works in Life Sciences, and my coaching client who exemplified:

• How to reclaim self-confidence after burnout,

• Create a compelling vision for your career, and

• Engage in brave career conversations to make her promotion first a possibility, then an inevitability
  

No often means something even better is coming around the corner.

This is what my client Sarah Eadie took to heart from our coaching sessions.

After being told she didn't have adequate experience, she flipped no to yes and got hired into a higher-paying role.

A year into that role, she was promoted. Last year she earned a $30K bonus.

She spoke candidly with me in this video interview about how she did it.

In this client interview, Kristine, who works as a software engineer, shares her experience building confidence through coaching.

In this client interview, Roseanne shares how she got promoted and better paid while working on the frontlines of the pandemic.

You’re a smart woman with ideas working in tech / finance / a male-dominated industry.

You share your idea at a meeting.

Here’s what to say when someone repeats your idea and takes credit for it, as if they didn’t hear you.