Why It Feels Gross to Claim Value for Ourselves

Clients often tell me, “It feels gross to claim value for myself. It feels like bragging. It’s uncomfortable to assign dollar value to my accomplishments.” 

In this episode, I dispel a persistent myth -- one that was ingrained in me by the patriarchy from a very young age --  that holds us back from generating real self-worth and authentic self-confidence. 

Find out how to generate power, so you can claim value for yourself and become unstoppable as a negotiator. 

Here's where you can access transcriptions of previous episodes and get in touch with me: https://www.jamieleecoach.com/podcast

Your review on iTunes would be super appreciated!

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Hello! Welcome to Episode 52 of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I’m your host and coach, Jamie Lee.

First, I just want to say thank you for listening!

I really appreciate you.

I would love if you would go to iTunes and leave a review because that would help other people find and access this content.

I really appreciate that my listeners are coming back and listening every week, every time I produce content, and I intend to create more podcasts this year, marrying the best of coaching principles, leadership principles, and helping you negotiate so that you can lead, influence, and thrive.

I was away last week. I traveled to Atlanta, Georgia and delivered a negotiation workshop for women who work in the nuclear industry. That was phenomenal!

And today I want to talk to you about why it feels gross to claim value for ourselves at the negotiation table.

When clients come to me, they’re often struggling with speaking and articulating their unique value at the negotiation table, especially when it comes to asking for money.

They tell me, “I don’t want to come across as too aggressive.”

“I don’t want to be seen as arrogant.”

“I don’t want to be seen as selfish or greedy.”

Or the often say, “It feels gross to brag about my accomplishments. It feels gross to assign a dollar to the value I bring.”

Now, I think that this is because, from a very young age, we’ve been trained to seek external validation from others.

I was born in South Korea and I was really trained to seek external validation from authority figures like parents, teachers, basically, the patriarchy.

And we’ve been told that conforming to the expectations of other people will make them feel good about us.

And when they feel good, they reward us with acceptance, recognition, and reward which sometimes takes the form of money.

We’ve been taught this myth that how we do, how we behave, makes other people feel something inside that then causes them to give us what we want and that, basically, the power is in their hands to give us what we really want for ourselves which is acceptance, recognition, and reward.

Take for example this common phrase, “Be a good girl and make mom proud.”

It feels so innocent and yet there is this myth, this lie that when you do something it will make other people feel something.

And I’ll tell you why I think that is not true.

And this line of thinking extends into the workplace where I used to believe that if I work hard and if I keep my head down then my boss will love me, then my boss will reward me with recognition, money, promotions.

When it feels gross to claim value for ourselves, we’re not only experiencing the feeling of powerlessness but we’re experiencing the fear of social rejection and losing the approval of others.

When I was afraid of losing other people’s approval, it was because I was relying on external validation to make me feel good about me on the inside. It was because I was relying on external validation to make me feel that I am worthy and that I can ask for what I want.

I was waiting.

I badly, badly wanted my boss to approve of me so that I could feel good and worthy inside.

So this meant that even though I was a fully grown adult, I was really acting as an emotional child. Emotional child basically means that I was relying on other people to make me feel something good, something worthy, some sense of certainty that I deliver value, that I deliver value and am worth the money that I want.

I believed my boss was responsible for both my positive emotions and negative emotions. I believed he was responsible for my lack of motivation, which I didn’t have a lot of and therefore that he was responsible for my lack of career fulfillment, lack of growth, that I was stuck in my career, and it was all because my boss was not giving me what I wanted so I can feel good and feel certain of my value.

So instead of feeling what I wanted to feel, which was fulfillment and worthiness, I was full of blame, anger, and resentment. They were gross feelings. Those feelings felt really gross.

I was not a lot of fun to be around at this time. I was full of misery. And you know, as the saying goes, misery loves company. I would complain and whine and throw temper tantrums about my boss behind my boss’ back. This is how I behaved as an emotional child.

But here is the truth that I have learned since then. Here is the truth that I think can help us really become powerful from the inside out: It’s that we are 100% responsible for our feelings.

Every moment. In every situation.

Yes, even at work.

Yes, even when it comes to claiming value for ourselves.

And especially when we are negotiating for what we want, for money, for example.

We are 100% responsible for the confidence we bring. We are 100% responsible for the nervousness we feel. We are 100% responsible for the certainty that we want to generate so that we can claim value with confidence.

Now this is because there are only five things in the Universe.

Number one: Circumstances, which are neutral, factual, and provable.

And how we interpret those circumstances is number two: our thoughts, our judgments, our beliefs.

And number three is that our thoughts generate our feelings, our emotions, which is so important in a negotiation.

According to research by MIT professor Jared Curhan, our feelings are the number one factor that is most important to negotiators.

It is not because feelings are fluffy, not because we’re soft people.

It’s because feelings drive number four: our actions. At the root of all our behavior is how we feel, and how we feel drives what we do or don’t do.

And then finally number five: the sum of our actions or inactions creates the results we have.

So, let me give you an example of this.

Back then, when I was acting as an emotional child in the workplace and always blaming my boss and feeling unworthy and therefore I felt gross to claim value for myself, I had the thought that he (it was always a he for some reason) should give me recognition.

At work, which is the neutral circumstance, I want him to give me recognition so that I can feel good about me and my value.

And when I had the thought that he should give me recognition, I felt a lot of resentment. I felt a lot of just this yucky feeling. That’s the phrase I like to label resentment. It’s yucky, it feels yucky to feel resentment, right?

And I was feeling this yucky resentment, I was complaining and whining and throwing temper tantrums behind my boss’ back. I was not speaking up at work. I was not contributing my ideas. I was very passive. I was waiting for him to give me recognition.

In negotiation, this is sometimes called the tiara syndrome, where we’re waiting for people to anoint us with validation and recognition, as opposed to us actively seeking what we want right?

So that’s what I was doing. And the sum of my actions, the result that I was creating by thinking that he should give me recognition, feeling yucky resentment, and not taking any action was that I was not giving myself recognition and I was also not giving him any recognition.

So there was no recognition to go around and it felt even more gross when I thought about claiming my value. There was no sense of power and certainty in this model.

So here’s another model I’d like to suggest:

At work, which is the neutral circumstance, what if you had the thought: I create value?

What if you had the thought: What I do benefits others?

So, don’t make it about other people. Don’t create manuals in which other people have to do certain things to make you feel good. But what if you dropped those manuals, you drop the shoulds, and you came from a place of real authenticity and personal responsibility, emotional responsibility?

I am responsible for how I feel and I can create value at work.

I create value that benefits others.

So, what if you had the thought and you really believed that I create value and I benefit others?

What would that feel like for you?

And maybe at this point you’re hearing this and you’re thinking, “I don’t know, it’s kind of inconceivable for me to think that I just feel that I am creating value that benefits others, period.”

But what if you did?

Because it is a choice. It is a choice for you to think that.

For me, when I think I am creating value that benefits others, it makes me feel valued. It makes me feel like I am worthy. That what I’m doing is worthy.

And from this place of feeling valued, I am motivated to create even more value. I am motivated to step out of my comfort zone and try to learn how I can benefit others.

I would be more willing to listen. I’d be more willing to take action to create even more value, because I feel inspired to think that I create value that benefits others.

And as a result, because I am taking action, because I am taking action from this place of feeling valued and feeling inspired, I would create even more value. And you see how the thought will help support the result that you have.

And the result creates evidence for the thought.

So this is great news because, as I said, we can choose all our thoughts and we can choose all our beliefs. And when we choose empowering thoughts, when choose empowering beliefs without relying on external validation, without relying on other people to make us feel something inside of us, this puts power back in our hands. This gives us that real, authentic power.

And we then can create emotions that we need to drive the actions that we do want to take. For example, claiming value for ourselves at the negotiation table.

If you really believed in yourself and did not rely on other people to tell you that you are valuable, you would be unstoppable when it comes to claiming value for yourself, when it comes to asking for what you want and requesting what you want because not only are you feeling confident from the inside out, you’re not relying on other people’s responses to make you feel good.

Even when they don’t follow through, even when they don’t say yes, you have the choice to decide what that means.

Again, this puts power right back in your hands instead of disempowering you. Instead of losing the negotiation, you can reframe your thinking and you can come back and try again and again, right?

The best negotiators are persistent negotiators because they can generate their own confidence. They can generate their own self-approval. They can generate their own self-recognition.

So this requires breaking the habit of thinking on default or thinking the way society or patriarchy trained us to thing, which is again relying on external validation, relying on other people to make us feel good and giving them a long list - and sometimes we don’t even give them a long list - of manuals, by which I mean a long list of instructions for how they can make us feel good.

Instead of doing that, we make honest requests, we make bold asks, and we don’t get disappointed, we don’t interpret it as a personal failure when people don’t follow through.

And when people don’t follow through, we can still move on.

And when we have this mastery over our thinking and therefore our own emotions, we create negotiation mastery. We become unstoppable. I really believe that.

And that is because when you lose the need for other people to make you feel comfortable, when you lose the need for other people to make you feel liked, or you lose the need to make you feel valuable, what could you not ask for?

There’s nothing that you couldn’t ask for.

We have full authority 100% of the time over how we feel, over how we think about ourselves, about other people and about the value we bring to the negotiation table.

We don’t have to wait for other people to give us acceptance, to give us recognition, to place a tiara on our head so that we can feel certain of our value, so that we don’t feel afraid of claiming value for ourselves.

We can generate that feeling of certainty within ourselves.

It’s not easy. It takes practice. It takes consistent effort. But it is possible.

We also don’t need to worry about what other people think.

Now, I know when people hear this, they will object and say “But, you know, it does matter because what other people think will impact how I rise or don’t rise through the ranks of this organization.”

But, ultimately, we are not what people think.

We are never limited by other people’s thoughts or judgments about us unless we believe them to be true.

And we are more than what people think of us. We are more than what we think of us.

And, in fact, one of the most powerful things that I do as a coach is I work with a client and I ask her to list all of her accomplishments and when I just play it back to her, the list of accomplishments that she has made, it’s always like, wow, you’ve done all of this. That’s amazing, right?

For a lot of us, it’s hard to feel that what we have done is worthwhile, worth the value that we’re asking for because we tend to be perfectionists, because we tend to wait for other people to give us validation.

But when we drop that need, we realize that what we have done is really valuable.

Who we are is uniquely valuable.

So, we have the power to decide who we are.

We have the power to decide who we will become in the future and that will give you a really powerful focus, a future focus, that will make you influential and make people inspired to change the status quo, which is basically the endgame of negotiation, right?

So, from this place of real and authentic power, we can generate self-acceptance. We can generate self-approval. We can generate real self-confidence.

And I just want to end this by sharing with you that this is the outcome I coach my clients to create for themselves so that they can lead, so that they can influence, so that they can negotiate, so that they can thrive on their own terms.

And I think that is a really beautiful outcome that is possible for everyone at any time because, again, we are 100% responsible for our feelings and we are capable of it.

So I hope that helps you think through why it feels gross to claim value for ourselves. I hope it helps you to put that power back in your hands.

I would love to hear from you: jamieleecoach.com/podcast. If you would leave a review, that would be fabulous.

Thank you so much and I will talk to you next week.

Interview with Vivian Giang: Six Common Negotiation Mistakes

If you're a pragmatic negotiation geek like me, or if you want to improve your negotiation skills so that you can thrive, you won't want to miss this interview with Vivian Giang. 

Vivian is a business writer covering how the changing workplace has impacted the way we work and live, in areas related to automation, robotics, team dynamics, executive leadership, and management. She asks, "How do you navigate these waters while also creating credibility and relevance?" She writes about these topics for business publications, like Fast Company, Fortune, Quartz, Dealbreaker, and Marie Claire.

In this value-packed conversation, Vivian and I addressed each of the six common negotiation mistakes as highlighted in this Fast Company article: www.fastcompany.com/90225908/all-the-things-youre-doing-wrong-in-negotiations 

We discussed: 
- Why it's important to start with your why before asking for the what
- The impact of anchoring effect on the bargaining range
- How making assumptions creates negotiation pitfalls 
- Why you may not want to accept the first offer 
- How to differentiate between short-term and long-term wins
- How negotiators can prepare strategically to avoid these mistakes 

You can find Vivian on Twitter at @vivian_giang.
You can learn more about my negotiation coaching and training services here www.jamieleecoach.com

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Full Episode Transcript

Hello! Welcome to Episode 40 of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I’m your host and coach, Jamie Lee.

I believe that negotiation skills are leadership skills and that through negotiation we can collaborate, unlock more value, and contribute in a bigger way.

And so, when we negotiate effectively, we can lead, we can influence, and we can thrive.

And if you’d like to learn more about who I am, what I do, and how you can work with me, come check out jamieleecoach.com.

I am launching a small group mastermind at the end of this year and into early 2019 to help you set some powerful intentions, goals, and build the negotiation skills to make those goals come true.

And thank you to those of you who have rated my podcast on iTunes. I want to say every single one of those ratings counts and they mean a lot to me.

Today, I have a must-listen episode. I consider myself a pragmatic negotiation geek. I love studying, I love reading about negotiation and thinking about how I can apply it to my life and how I can help my clients negotiate so that they can thrive.

And I read this wonderful article on Fast Company. It’s titled All the Things You’re Doing Wrong in Negotiations and each of the six points that the author brought up resonated with me and it’s something that I teach whenever I talk about and hold negotiation workshops for working women.

And so I reached out to the author, Vivian Giang, and she graciously agreed to come onto the podcast and expound, tell us a little bit more about each of these six common mistakes and how we can avoid them.

Vivian Giang is a business writer and journalist covering how the changing workplace has impacted the way we work and live. And she covers areas related to automation, robotics, team dynamics, executive leadership, and management. She asks the question: How do you navigate these waters while also creating credibility and relevance?

That’s a really good question.

She writes about these topics for business publications like Fast Company, Fortune, Quartz, Dealbreaker, and Marie Claire and I think you would really find a lot of value in this conversation. What I took away is that a lot of the common mistakes that we make are in our minds, in our assumptions. So, without further ado, please enjoy this podcast interview with Vivian Giang.

Jamie: Hello, Vivian?

Vivian: Hi, Jamie. Can you hear me?

Jamie: I can hear you now. How are you?

Vivian: I’m doing well, how are you?

Jamie: Third time’s the charm.

Vivian: Yes, that’s what they say.

Jamie: Yeah. Well, thanks so much for joining the podcast.

Vivian: Thanks so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here.

Jamie: I’m really excited for this conversation.

Vivian: Yeah, me too.

Jamie: And this is a question I ask everyone who comes on the podcast: Would you tell me about a negotiation in your life or career that had the biggest impact on you? And I want to preface that by saying I define negotiation simply as a conversation, not a confrontation, where you’re trying to reach agreement where everyone has the right to say no. So, it doesn’t matter what the outcome was as long as everyone had the right to say no and there was intention to reach an agreement, I would say that’s a negotiation. So, what do you think?

Vivian: Yes, so negotiations…I’ve been thinking about negotiations before I even knew that what I was thinking about was negotiations, I think. I graduated during the economic recession and I was trying to navigate the job market, trying to do something that I love, journalism - already a very low-paying profession. So, trying to convince someone to hire me at the time and pay me a living wage, that was something that I thought about in my first job, I believe. I just didn’t know that it was called negotiations at the time.

But I think, as dubious as this sounds, the negotiation that has impacted my life the most is probably the one that I have with myself. I think that we try to think about what the other party wants from a negotiation so often but we often forget to do that with ourselves because we think we know what we want and I have woken up unhappy before by the fence because I assumed that I knew what I wanted, I assumed I knew myself and what I valued but that’s not always the case.

So, one thing that I do - and I’ll give you an example - that is something that I learned from a professor of management at Stern at New York University, Batia Wiesenfeld, she told me this and it really stuck with me. It’s that you should always search for the why and ask yourself why you’re doing something and it allows you to see information from various different angles. It allows you to readily adjust when you need to. So, asking yourself when you make a decision, when you make a choice, why am I doing this? Which helps bring you closer to your goal.

So, let’s say you are teaching a workshop, right? If you asked yourself, “Why am I teaching this workshop?” and the answer is “To get paid,” then you ask yourself, “Why do I want higher pay?” And if the answer is so that you can have a better life, then you ask yourself a third time, “Why do I want a better life?” and if the answer here is “To be happy,” then maybe teaching that workshop isn’t going to lead you to happiness, maybe there’s something else that leads you to happiness.

So, I try to think about that often in the choices that I make and try to be thoughtful about the decisions that bring me the most value in my life and who else it affects - my decisions - who else it affects other than me.

Jamie: Beautiful and I’d also say that that’s an example of self-coaching because, as a coach myself, I ask my clients why all the time and, as a negotiator, not only do you ask that question to yourself, why and why and why, right? You asked it three times in a row. I think it is beneficial to ask of your negotiation counterpart. You might want to use different words because not everyone likes to be asked why. Ultimately, I think what your professor and what you’re trying to say is get clear on the ultimate interest, the why behind the what.

Vivian: Yes because, if you think about it, we go through life whenever we meet our loved ones, our friends, our colleagues, we always ask them about their lives and why they did certain things, right? Like, we push them to think about their actions and how it impacts their lives so that they can be better because we care about them. But we often don’t do that with ourselves because, like I mentioned earlier, we think that we know ourselves but we all change and sometimes we assume we know what we want and what we value but oftentimes we don’t.

Jamie: Yeah, that’s a really good point. Here’s another thing I learned from coaching, is that we have different aspects in ourselves, right? We have the sort of animal brain or I like to call it the Itty Bitty Shouldy Committee that’s pushing you to stay safe and small, not to take any sort of risk. Anything that is a change can be a threat to its identity. And then there’s the so-called higher self where that enables us to have a vision and take action and be courageous and show up, regardless of what that Itty Bitty Shouldy Committee says. So, yeah, that’s a great example. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I just want to reiterate, I asked you to come on the podcast, I’d love for you to share your insights from this wonderful article that you wrote for Fast Company. It’s called All the Things You’re Doing Wrong in Negotiations.

Vivian: Yes.

Jamie: Yeah, and that’s catchy and it definitely caught my attention because I think a lot of us worry that we’ve done something wrong. In any case, the article hits on so many of the key points that I teach in my workshops and so I’d love for you to take us point by point and share what did you really take away from capturing the six key things that people often do incorrectly. So, the first thing in your article is: Not making the first offer when it’s beneficial to do so.

Vivian: Yes, so the common mistakes in this article is from a course that I took. It’s a two-day negotiation course at MIT taught by Jared Curhan which is amazing and the knowledge that I gained from the class just completely blew my mind, so I figured I needed to share. But, yes, the first point is not making the first offer when it’s beneficial to do so.

I think we’ve all been at this place, right? Where we enter the negotiation room and I’m sure a lot of us have heard the piece of advice not to make the first offer, right? It puts you in a vulnerable position. You need to hear what the other person is coming from, where their head is at and, really, giving the first offer is providing information that you’re offering them information but you haven’t received any information in return so, ultimately, that’s giving someone else the leg up, right? However, there’s research that tells us, there’s actually numerous research that tells us that providing the first offer can actually greatly influence the rest of the negotiation so it’s a principle called the anchoring principle.

Jamie: Yep!

Vivian: And it shows that there’s a strong correlation between the first offer, what the other party counteroffers, and also the final results. And in this class, Jared Curhan mentioned that you should only make the first offer if you have a lot of market information, you have a lot of market research, you’ve done the preparation, so introducing that information makes a lot of sense, right? Otherwise, it’s really unwise to do so.

There’s a particular study that he had mentioned in the course from the University of Arizona that tested this anchoring principle on real estate agents who are trained to know property values and also trained not to be influenced by this anchoring principle but the research shows that every single one of them were impacted and this listed price in this study had an effect on all of their final decisions.

So we see that the anchoring principle is very powerful and you can definitely use it to your advantage and you can even do so without tying it to your offer. For instance, if you’re trying to sell something, you can bring up that number without...So, if you’re trying to sell a home, you can differentiate the anchor from the offer by saying, “Hey, there’s another home that I saw with a similar value,” without actually saying that, you know, that’s the offer on your home.

Jamie: So, for example, you could say, “Hey, you know, I know that a home like this will sell for $10 million.”

Vivian: Yes, exactly.

Jamie: “However, you get to buy it for $750,000. It’s a great deal!”

Vivian: Right, right. Or you can just, you know, let the other person infer what they want to infer after you’ve introduced that number. You can do this in a job negotiation by being similar salaries to the position that you’re interviewing for or just about anything. So, it’s introducing and using that anchoring principle but not actually tying into your offer, not saying that it’s your offer.

Jamie: Absolutely. So, you could say...I actually had a client who was responsible for about $13 million in digital sales for her company and so she prefaced her ask by saying, “I brought in $13 million in revenue and in comparison, my salary is less than 1% of that and all I’m asking is to be compensated according to the value I’m bringing.” And that was a very powerful anchoring effect that she had created by mentioning the amount of money that she had brought in for the company.

Vivian: Right, right. Yes. That’s smart.

Jamie: Excellent. Well, thank you so much for sharing that. This is something that is so often overlooked because I think people kind of worry that if they anchor, they’ll encounter pushback and so the strategy that I advise is yes, in fact, prepare for the pushback. Know what you’re gonna say when the say, “Oh, it’s too much.”

So, tell us about point number two. The second mistake people make is: Focusing too much on ideal outcomes. What does that mean?

Vivian: Yeah, so, this actually goes back to the anchoring principle that we just mentioned. Since 90% of negotiations is in the planning, so, if you’re doing a good job of planning, of doing your research, of coming up with everything that you need to come up with to prepare you for this negotiation, oftentimes you’ll have specific anchors in your own brain before you walk in there. So, one of those numbers could be a walkaway point or what’s called the reservation value or number and the other one is what’s called your BATNO or your best alternative to negotiate offer. So, basically, your second choice, right? Your runner up.

But because we have those values so implemented into our brains, sometimes they end up affecting our negotiations because we’re so focused on them we can’t see outside of them. We have no peripheral vision anymore and often we end up rejecting even more profitable offers that could come in the process because we’re so deeply ingrained, we’re committed to these numbers. So, the second point is just to say don’t focus too much on what you consider your ideal outcome because you never know what the other person’s gonna bring to the table.

Jamie: Yeah. I guess, put another way, it’s don’t fixate on the dollar values.

Vivian: Right, right. Mm-hmm.

Jamie: The way a deal can become more profitable is that you expand the scope of agreement to include non-monetary items, things that really satisfy the deeper whys that you addressed at the top of this interview.

Vivian: Exactly. That’s exactly what I was gonna say, Jamie, actually, is it goes back to the why, right?

Jamie: Yeah.

Vivian: Like, if you have these numbers in your head, or they might not be number, they might be something else. Whatever value it is, if you have them there then why do you have them there? And tracing that back and making sure that you are getting the most value as well as giving the other person value, too [inaudible] at the bargaining table.

Jamie: Yeah. So, money is important. Absolutely. Money is awesome and at the same time we have to be clear on what this money means for us and what we want to accomplish with the money so that we don’t just fixate on this dollar value. This is a great point, thank you so much.

Number three is: Accepting the other party’s first offer too quickly. I’ve seen a lot of my clients make this mistake, so tell us more.

Vivian: Yes. As frustrating as this sounds, when someone else accepts your offer too quickly, and when you accept someone else’s offer too quickly, that will decrease the satisfaction. So…

Jamie: That’s counterintuitive, isn’t it?

Vivian: Yes, definitely. I think that happens because negotiation is not something that comes natural to a lot of us. Once we think that we’re getting a good deal or getting something that we want, we immediately agree because we want it to end, right? But research actually tells us that if we accept too quickly, it does not make the other party feel great about what just happened and research also tells us that how we feel, which is a subjective value, actually is worth much more than the objective or economic value that we get from the negotiation.

Jamie: That is so fascinating to me and I know that Professor Curhan also said the four most important factors in a negotiation is how people feel about themselves, about their counterpart, about the process, about the outcome. So, that’s really fascinating and I’ve heard that there needs to be about one or two...going back and forth in a negotiation in order for people to feel like, okay, this is probably the best deal.

Vivian: Yes. It almost feels kind of like a game, right? But, you know, it’s just how you feel that you fared after you walk away from something is going to make a more lasting impression and research also tells us that it actually keeps someone more satisfied if they’re entering a new job, a new position, that economic value is not going to be something that really ties them, right? It’s going to be how they feel. How they feel they fared, how they feel that they are getting the most value for themselves. That’s the most important part, that’s the satisfaction that’s gonna last.

Jamie: I just saw somebody ask this question this morning: I already got an offer. It’s already at the high end of the market range. It’s already more than I was making before. Should I just accept it or should I ask for more? And the advice from career experts is to yeah, ask for more, because it signals to the hiring people that this person is very confident and that...the hiring people would also have the satisfaction that, oh, we really did the utmost we could to get this best talent. And for the talent, it’s also satisfying to know that she did the best that she could and got the most value.

Vivian: Exactly. Because at the end of the day, we all want to feel appreciated and respected when we walk away from that interaction.

Jamie: Yeah and I worked briefly in HR for these little tech startups in New York and people would intentionally create wiggle room because they anticipated candidates to ask for more.

Vivian: Right. Mm-hmm.

Jamie: Right, so this is a really great point that you’re making. I absolutely love it. So, number four is: Using the same tactics in both short-term and long-term negotiations. This is really interesting. Tell us more about that.

Vivian: Right. So, this idea comes from when we’re thinking about how we’re dealing with something in the short term and the long term, there are two different tactics to that, right? And so often we leave that at the door when we’re going into a negotiation room because we think that we should just follow all the same rules but in reality, rational behavior in the short term is not so rational in the long term. This goes back to the prisoner’s dilemma which is a game theory that says it doesn’t make sense for people to act against their self-interest, right? So, the faster they act in their self-interest then the better off they’ll be and whoever acts first has the greatest advantage, right?

Jamie: In the short-term.

Vivian: In the short term, yes. But that doesn’t always work in the long term. So, for instance, if in the short term your best interest is always to choose Option A and it always hurts your opponent to choose Option A, that’s the game theory, right? That’s the Prisoner's’ Dilemma. That might work in the short term, but if in the long term your strategy is to prevent your opponent from choosing Option A because if you choose Option A it hurts them, if they choose Option A, it hurts you. So, if your strategy is to prevent them from choosing Option A, then maybe the best way to encourage that behavior is not to choose Option A for yourself so you might want to choose another option to prevent them from choosing something that will hurt you if that makes sense.

Jamie: In the long term or in the short term?

Vivian: In the long term.

Jamie: In the long term. So, in the long term, even though you’re acting not in your best self-interest, for the long-term picture it actually makes more sense, even if you don’t choose Option A, you’re going to gain more value over the long term. Is that what you’re saying?

Vivian: Yes. Kind of think about it like, I hate this word, but winning, right? In the short term, winning means something different than winning in the long term.

Jamie: Oh, right.

Vivian: So, winning in the long term could mean that you’re all faring well off  compared to everyone else, right? So that’s not you winning by yourself, right? You need people around you to help you do that. So, maybe an option is more beneficial for you in the short term but in the long term, that same option isn’t going to be beneficial for you because you’re just burning everyone else along the way.

Jamie: I think for...again, this is a really beautiful example of people who want to grow their careers in a conscious way and there is the conflict in the short term of oh, I need to make money! I need to make a lot of money! I need to pay off my student loans! And in the long term you also want to be creating a body of work, a reputation, a really strong and healthy network and in the long term you may actually want to, for the benefit of the long-term growth, you may want to take a pay cut.

Vivian: Right, right. Or you want to be creating value, right?

Jamie: Right. You want to be focused on creating value instead of gaining value for yourself immediately. So, yeah, I think that’s the dilemma that a lot of people would experience in their lives. I mean, I have, too. I once took an unpaid internship after leaving a hedge fund because I wanted, in the long term, to make a career pivot out of finance and into entrepreneurship and even though I wasn’t gonna be paid, but in the long term I gained a lot of value because I made some really valuable connections in this new industry.

Vivian: Exactly, yes. What’s the saying? If you want to go fast you go alone, if you want to go far, you go with others, right?

Jamie: Mm-hmm.

Vivian: So, yes, so it’s thinking about how to choose and negotiate and being thoughtful about those tactics depending on the negotiation terms.

Jamie: Right, and where you are in your career as well.

Vivian: Exactly. I mean what you want out of the negotiation, right? If the negotiation is so that both of you leave feeling very respected, high subjective value, then that might mean that you’re using specific tactics that you wouldn’t be using for a one-off type of interaction.

Jamie: Yeah. I’m thinking about the book Give and Take by Adam Grant and he talks about how very successful people are givers and at the same time, very unsuccessful people can also be givers. So, givers who are very successful, they know how to give in a way that is strategic and also mindful, they’re not always just blindly giving away resources and information and contacts. They’re able to set boundaries around that mindfully, so yeah, I think that’s a really important point for a lot of people as well as me. Thank you. So, number five: Judging others based on their actions. This is a big one! How is this a pitfall?

Vivian: Right. So, this often happens because, and I feel like we’ve all dealt with this situation at one time or another, where we’ve asked someone for something and they say no, right? And, in turn, we come up with a dialogue in our head as to why they said no, right? And so, for instance, if you asked your boss for a raise and she says no, despite the fact that you prepared, despite the fact that you brough tin market research, despite the fact that you’re very persuasive, you’ve been working really hard, you know you deserve this raise. You might automatically think that her action makes her a jerk.

Jamie: Yeah. Yup.

Vivian: And, you know, you can go on with your day and never think about that again. But instead, if you dig into why this person said no or what could have led her to say no, the situation that she might be in that might result in her no, that could actually help you get what you want. So, for instance, if your boss is saying no to you, could it be budget restraints? Could it be your boss answering to her boss? If you are able to identify all the potential parties that are involved in that no, even the ones that weren’t there in the negotiation room, right, then you can get to the yes. So, not always judging others based on their actions that you can see but trying to link it back, farther back, as to how they came to that answer.

Jamie: I love this so much. I think it’s one of the most important things in negotiation because we are so easily clouded by our judgment of other people and don’t always make the best kinds of decisions in a negotiation and the trigger word, no, is involved and that is why in all of my workshops, I have people practice hearing no and doing exactly as you say. Not getting defensive but just getting more curious and asking an open-ended question: Okay, tell me more about that. What’s behind your no? Who else do we need to have involved in this conversation? And from there, you can take that information and reframe and re-ask and you can come up with creative solutions that really satisfy their reasons as well as your why.

Another thing that I love about this is I really appreciate how you pointed out we really shouldn’t judge people based on their actions because we don’t know why they’re behaving that way. We don’t know how they really, really feel and what are they thinking that makes them do that?

Vivian: Right, right. Exactly, Jamie. They say that we judge others based on their actions but we judge ourselves based on our situation. So when you are explaining to a friend or a colleague why you made a specific decision, you can say, “Well, I did that because of this. I took that job because I really needed to pay off that student loan,” or whatever it is. But we don’t think about that when it comes to others. So if we’re able to do that, if we’re able to just push ourselves a little bit to be a little bit more thoughtful, we can actually help people help us. We can help people get to that yes by thinking about all of these other factors that come into play when they are sitting right in front of you.

Jamie: Beautiful. So good. This is so good. So the last point is assuming you know what’s most valuable to the other party.

Vivian: Right.

Jamie: So this is tied to number five where we judge people by their actions and then we also assume we know what’s most important to the other people. Tell us more about that.

Vivian: When I learned this, it just blew my mind, like, my mind just exploded. I feel like I can never explain it well enough but it’s...what happens to all of us when we are coming to a negotiation table with someone, we think that in order to get something it comes at the expense of someone else, right? It’s this win-lose mentality. If I win, you lose.

But thinking about it from a different lens - a win-win - so, you can’t assume you know what’s valuable to the other party. You can only assume, when you assume this, then it actually affects what you’re also giving, so it can affect...you might think that if you accept a lower offer that your boss will be happier, right? Or walk away with a higher subjective value, they don’t like pushing back with you. You think that you’re giving them something but you actually don’t know what’s most valuable to them.

Jamie: That’s true.

Vivian: So assuming that isn’t going to help you get anywhere, really. So, for instance, if you want to...you might assume that, in a job offer negotiation, your boss doesn’t want to give you flexibility, right? Or your boss or the other party doesn’t want to give you a higher salary. It’s only through clear and trustworthy communication can you actually determine what the other party’s preferences really are. So, one way to do that is ask open-ended questions. You mentioned earlier trying to really figure out what the other party values. If you ask a few questions based on their responses, you can determine what the patterns are, right? You can sort of guess what they may value most out of the negotiation but assuming you know actually is sort of a lose-lose type of situation because you have no idea what the other party wants coming into negotiations.

Jamie: This is so good because can we ever really know what is going through someone else’s head? And I think the answer is no.

Vivian: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Exactly.

Jamie: The art of communication, it’s almost like we’re trying to do magic right? We have something that we want to say inside of us. We say it. People hear it. But people don’t always hear everything we say. Often they mishear what we say.

Vivian: Well, yes!

Jamie: And then they interpret that to mean something and what they interpret that to be can be something so different from what you originally intended. Yeah, so for you to assume that you know what’s going through other people’s head is such a fundamental mistake, I think, that we often make, pretty much on a constant basis, on default. I think about my most common miscommunication defaults that I have with my partner, right? And I always think I know what’s going through his head it’s like, “Does he mean to make me feel bad?” Of course, he never intends to make me feel bad and so this is such a good one.

Vivian: Yes and they say that if ten different people walk away from the same conversation, they all have different interpretations as to what was communicated, what was the message of the conversation takeaway, right?

Jamie: Yeah. Ten different interpretations.

Vivian: Exactly, right? So, when we assume that someone wants something before we even get there, we assume that we know what’s most valuable to them, that actually affects the way that we approach the negotiation with them, right? We go, we bee-line in, we think that we know exactly what’s going to be most valuable to them, what’s going to be most valuable to us and this actually hurts in the end. Especially if it’s negotiating for more a long-term relationship or something that’s a little bit more complex than choosing Option A, B, or C.

Jamie: Yeah. This is so good. The way I help my clients to get clear is that often we make assumptions, we don’t even realize we’re making assumptions because we feel that what we think is true.

Vivian: Mm-hmm.

Jamie: But the facts of the situation are usually very simple and facts are something that everyone will agree to be true. It can be proven in the court of law. But our thoughts, our opinions, our judgments, our assumptions are what is most often in our heads and cloud our judgment and how we perceive the situation. So, usually I have my clients just write down their thoughts on paper and then separate the facts and something really funny happens. It’s like they have a long list of thoughts. Oh, this person thinks I’m this. I am not good enough. Or It’s gonna all not go well, blah blah blah. You know, all the thoughts that we have so often and then we just write down the facts and the facts are like, there was a conversation. This person said x. I said y.

Vivian: Exactly, Jamie. Yeah, it happens so often. It really does and I think if we just think about negotiations as more of having both parties walk away feeling like they got the most value out of the conversation, out of the negotiation, I think that’s really important. Especially today, when it seems like we’re gridlocked over everything, right? Whether that’s business or social, political, whatever. I think it’s really important to think about how we approach these conversations and to ask open-ended questions so that we can have a better idea of how we can come out of it, both of us coming out of it feeling like we’re appreciated and valued and respected.

Jamie: I am so appreciative of this article. I’m appreciative of the research, the length you went to to gather this valuable information and how you made it succinct, relatable, useful to the audience. So thank you so much, Vivian. Where can people go to learn more about what you do?

Vivian: People can go...and thanks so much for saying that, I’m really happy that the article resonated with you. I had a lot of fun putting it together. So, People can learn more about me by either following me on Twitter. I’m @vivian_giang. Or they can read my stuff on Fast Company.

Jamie: Excellent! Well, thanks again, Vivian, for your valuable time and for this great article. I will be sharing it in the podcast notes as well as with my newsletter audience. Have a wonderful day!

Vivian: You too. Thanks so much for having me Jamie.

Jamie: Bye bye!

Vivian: Bye bye!

Why Do We Suck at Advocating Our Value for Money?

But first a reality check: Is it true that women don't like to negotiate for ourselves?

And why do we still choose to believe that we suck at negotiating for money?

I look at my own career for answers and explanations. 

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But first a reality check: Is it true that women don't like to negotiate for ourselves?

Last week, I gave a keynote on the topic of negotiation for Women in Auto at the NY Auto Show.

Before I went on stage, organizer asked the audience, “How many of you enjoy negotiating?”

To her surprise, half the room raise their hands.

Some women do enjoy negotiating. In October 2017, Wall Street Journal reported that more women are asking for raises than before. Lean In published a similar report.

With Equal Pay Day around the block and the gender wage gap pressing on our minds, it may not seem that the tide is rising fast enough for women, but I believe the tide is changing. Slowly but surely.

Why do we still choose to believe that we suck at negotiating?

I don’t have to look too far for an answer.

When I look back on my own career, I see that I did once dread negotiating my salary.

Mostly because I had no idea...

• What it is (a conversation that leads to an agreement), 
• How to do it (like a human being engaging with another human being through language) and 
• Why I had to do it (because my career is mine to grow and develop, and getting paid my worth feels incredibly good, and when I feel good I do even better work) 

From my personal experience having bungled salary negotiation in epic style, I see that I was once under the spell of Tiara Syndrome.

Have you heard of the Tiara Syndrome?

It’s when you believe that if you just keep your head down and do really good work, some authority figure will come and place a tiara on your head.

You know, like in a fairy tale.

In this fairy tale, it would be unbecoming, or unladylike, to speak up, “ruffle feathers”, or “make waves.” Fairy tale princess (or prince) would never stoop so low to advocate for the value of her contributions.

I’ve certainly fallen under the spell of this Tiara Syndrome.

Early in my career, I once worked as a buyer for a fast growing beauty company. I came up with a plan that had the potential to save the company $100K.

I got to present this plan to the big shots in a boardroom. Everyone in the senior management team was there. After that I was on a high.

I thought, “This is it! This is how I’m going to be promoted and get a big raise. Things are made for me.”

So, I didn’t ask.

Because I thought someone was going to place a tiara on my head. Yes, I was that naive.

Can you guess what actually happened?

No promotion. No raise. Just a pat on the back. “Good job. Keep it up.”

Hey, but I get it. I relate to my clients who seek my help with this stuff. It IS uncomfortable to advocate for our value...especially for more money.

After all, we’re socialized to think that recognition for our value is supposed to come from OUTSIDE of us.

The tiara, the validation, the praise, and the money -- we think it's supposed to come from external forces, or figures to whom we assign power and authority.

Here’s the thing, though:

Owning our value, creating value, and advocating for our value -- it starts from WITHIN us.

It starts with YOU being kind to you.

It starts with YOU investing in your growth.

It starts with YOU honoring what feels good from the inside.

It starts with YOU dreaming of what is possible from that feel-good place.

It starts with YOU creating solutions in your mind that helps other people, and THAT, my friends, is the definition of value that results in money.

Value that generates money is in creating solutions that benefits others.

So how do we get the gumption and the guts to negotiate for money?

Tactically, don't give a range if you want to get something in the middle. The bottom number in your range will become your starting number.

Not because employers are evil, but because it's in there interest to retain the best talent for as little money as possible.

Find your target number, go a step or two higher and anchor there. If you'd be happy with $100K, then ask for $120K. If you want $150K, then ask for $175K.

After all, you'll only be negotiated down from there.

But most importantly, focus first on value, not money.

If you create value for other people, money will follow.

I once heard that it was extremely hard to keep Mother Teresa and Ghandi poor because they generated tremendous value for other people even though they committed their lives to live in poverty.

So to become a powerful negotiator, create value. Create solutions that help others and own your value.

Don't apologize for being awesome. State your unique value. 

Know your target, anchor high, and make your ambitious ask for more money. 

Because if you're creating value in the world, money will follow, like a magnet. 

Three Surprising Negotiation Insights From Women in Auto

What are the negotiation secrets of women leaders in the automobile industry?

I share inspiring insights from the Women in Automobile Networking Breakfast at the New York Auto Show and talk about how you can apply these insights to gain the upper hand in your career negotiations.

Click here to download the free script: How to Ask for a Big Pay Raise. 

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Full Episode Transcript*:

(*This transcript has been edited for accuracy) 

Hello! Welcome to the twelfth episode of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I am your host, Jamie Lee. I work as a negotiation and leadership coach for women on the rise. 

Yesterday, I got to give a keynote at Women in Auto. This was a networking breakfast held at the Javits Center where the New York Auto Show is happening right now. I got to meet and hear from some really amazing, impressive women leaders in the auto industry, and to provide some context as to how impressive that really is, I’ll share some information with you.

In America, women influence 85% of car buying decisions, and that’s equivalent to $550 billion in car revenues. That’s a lot of money that women influence, and yet only 26% of the jobs in the auto industry are held by women. So, the women leaders, executives in the auto industry, they truly are pioneers in a male-dominated industry. 

Something really interesting that I observed yesterday was that right before I got on the stage, the organizer asked the audience a question. She said, “How many of you enjoy negotiating?” And half of the room raised their hands. That’s admirable and also unusual.

Maybe it’s my stereotype, but a lot of women do say that they don’t like to negotiate, that they don’t enjoy it, but half of the room yesterday at Women in Auto said they do. I think this is indicative of their attitude toward negotiating.

So, women who say they do like negotiating, they are more likely to see it as a fun challenge that will help them grow their skills and help them gain value and engage, connect, collaborate.

Whereas women who say that they don’t like to negotiate, they see negotiation as a “rough” conversation. That it’s a game rigged against them, that they’re going to lose something. That they have to compromise, and they feel sort of let’s say, like they’re already at a disadvantage before they go into the conversation, because they see themselves not as somebody who’s going to learn and grow from the conversation, but somebody who has to give something up.

So, how do you see yourself? Do you enjoy negotiation or do you dread it? And if you dread it, maybe you can start thinking of it in different ways, so that you wouldn’t dread it as much.

So, let me share with you some of the really inspiring insights that I gained from listening to the leading women in auto. There were two speakers in particular who really touched me, who really moved me. 

The first speaker, her name is Suzanne, and she is the GM, she is the General Manager at Helms Brothers Auto, which is one of the biggest Mercedes resellers in New York, and she said she started as a receptionist more than thirty years ago in the auto industry and she worked herself up to become the General Manager.

She emphasized two points. One is the importance of improving yourself every day. She said that she improves herself every day so that she can have a positive influence on others, and I thought that was really inspiring.

The second was the importance of being consistent. Being consistent even when there are so many changes in the industry, and every day there are unknowns and curveballs thrown her way, but every day she is consistent in her effort to add value. I thought that was really inspiring, too.

She was asked, “So, how do you negotiate? What is the secret to your negotiation success?” and that really got my ear and I jotted this down.

She shared three tidbits which I thought were all amazing.

The first is that knowledge is power. The more you know, the more confident you will be. I think that makes total sense because 80% of your negotiation success is your research, is how well you have prepared and what you know going into the conversation.

The second secret to her negotiation success was that she knows her value and she knows how to articulate it. If you’re curious about how to do that, again, you can check out the previous podcast episodes number 8 and number 9, as well as number 10, all around how to articulate your value and how to speak your value without fear and anxiety.

Number three, the third secret to her success, was that you get back what you give. I thought that was really powerful, and that also reminded me of another inspiring quote by motivational speaker Zig Ziglar, who said,

You can get everything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.

And I think that is a really great definition of adding value. How do you gain value? You gain value when you have contributed value to others. 

And, finally, there was a speaker, her name was Kathy Gilbert, and she is the Director of Sales and Business Development for this major organization called CDK Global, and she talked about how to define success for yourself, and the importance of integrity, diversity and culture.

She is a black woman, and she rose through the ranks as well to become Director of Sales and Business Development for this major organization that works with the automotive industry, including women dealers, manufacturers, vendor partners, and affiliate organizations. She was very authentic in her speech, and in the middle of the speech she said, “Here’s how I know I am a success. It’s because I am here. I am here with you on a Thursday morning at the Javits Center, celebrating my birthday. I’m speaking at the New York Auto Show, telling my story to women in the automotive industry, and that’s how I know that I am successful. Because I am here.”

I thought that was really powerful, and so did everyone else. We all applauded, because we realized: Oh, yeah! We’re here. We’re right here and we are successful with you, Kathy.

And what she showed us by her example was that you get to define success for yourself, and it’s so powerful to see people do it, because it gives us permission to do it for ourselves. And what that clued me into is that, like success, which we can define for ourselves, we can also define what is valuable or what is value.

Now when you hear me say that, you might be thinking, “No, Jamie, you don’t understand. It’s just about the money!” Yes, money is definitely a yardstick of success that a lot of people agree on.

If you contribute value, money will come your way. However, money is not necessarily success.

Money is not the definition of success, nor is it the definition of value.

So, what is value? We talk about value all the time in negotiation. How do you create value? How do you articulate value? Collaborate to gain value? I’ve been listening to The Life Coach School Podcast by Brooke Castillo and recently she did an episode about money, and it came to a really surprising conclusion that illuminated what value is and where it comes from.

Basically, she says, value is created in the mind. I’ll say it again. Value is created in the mind. That makes a lot of sense to me, because you can have the same object, let’s say a beautiful dress, and the same dress can be of different value to one person and completely no value to another. It’s how we define value in our minds, and even money.

I’m traveling to Asia in the spring, and the currency, the value of a dollar has changed over time because people have decided that a dollar is now less valuable than a Japanese yen. And again, that’s because we made that decision in our minds. Value is created in the mind. 

So, I’ll wrap this up with a helpful tip. How can you apply all of this so that you can negotiate successfully in your life? I think two things.

First, really get clear on what you value. What is important to you? What is worth the effort, what is worth the aggravation of engaging in a negotiation for you? How do you define value?

And also, how will you define success for yourself? In other words, what do you want and why is it important to you?

Secondly, find out what your negotiation counterpart values. This will help you gain the upper hand. If you understand what they value, what this money or this contract or this deal or getting a yes, what it means to them and why it is valuable to them, you will be able to get through, you will be able to influence, and you will be able to get that yes.

So, I wish you great success in your negotiation and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.
 

Five Minute Exercise for Speaking Your Value

I share a quick and fun exercise for crafting your unique value statement so you can negotiate with power and poise. I also offer my free script “How To Ask For A Big Pay Raise”.

Click here to download the free script.

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Full Podcast Transcript: 

Hello! Welcome to the tenth episode of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I am your host, Jamie Lee. I work as a coach, speaker, trainer and I believe that we are all born to thrive. And I want to help you thrive. I want to help you close your wage gap.

If you write me an email at jamie@jamieleecoach.com, I will send you my script on how to ask for a big pay raise. This script is based on a real life scenario. I will call my client Karina for the purpose of this podcast. And Karina, she used this script, a version of this script, to ask and get a 44% increase in her salary with stock options. So this script worked for her, and if you are somebody who contributes undeniable value at work but is underpaid for the value you bring, I think this script can help you. So please write me at jamie@jamieleecoach.com (or click here to download the script).

Lately, I’ve been working on my own website. I was working with She Negotiates for the past year and a half, and I have decided to strike out on my own as a leadership and negotiation coach for ambitious women.

So, today I’ve been working on crafting my own unique value statements. If you listened to the previous episode, you would know that articulating your unique value is the first key practice for negotiation success.

What is your unique value?

Today I had to ask that to myself many times over, and I just come back to this over and over again: that I am here to help other people maximize their potential so that they can thrive. So that other people can thrive.

I really believe in serving others. I believe in making a contribution. I believe in doing work that has meaning, that is bigger than myself, and I’m really excited to do the work that I do, and I hope that you are excited, too. If you want to work on your unique value proposition statement, I have a really quick and fun exercise that I shared with Smith College alums on Monday night that I’d love to share with you.

So, here’s the exercise: Grab a piece of paper and pen. I’ll wait. If you have a piece of paper or if you are on your smartphone, if you can open your Notes app while you’re listening to this, do it. You’re going to make some very simple lists, and then at the end of it, you’re going to distill what you learn from this exercise into a succinct and cogent statement of your unique value. 

So, here’s the first list: What are you most proud of? What are you most proud of accomplishing in the past year, past month, past quarter? Don’t think too hard about this, just whatever comes up, write it down. Write as many as you can fit. And try to be specific, and if you have facts and figures, all the better. 

Then the second list is: What do you stand for? What are your values? And if you do have a specific negotiation conversation, and for the purpose of clarity, negotiation is simply a conversation where you’re trying to reach an agreement. So if you’re trying to get somebody to agree with you, and if you know them, what do they stand for? And what do they stand against? And what do you stand against? If you stand for something, then you’re definitely against some other things, right? So, just write those things, and compare your list against the things that you know the other side, your negotiation counterpart, also stands for or also stands against. In other words, find where you share values. So, that’s a list. 

And then the third list is where you can go really crazy. Crazy imaginative. What are you capable of? What is your future potential?

In the last episode, we talked briefly about how us women, we don’t always get rewarded for our future potential as much as men do.

This is something that Dr. Johanna Barsh found out in her gender research, and something that Sheryl Sandberg also talked about in her book, Lean In.

What is your future potential? What are you capable of? What’s possible? Be as imaginative as you can be. Don’t hold yourself back by the voice of the Itty Bitty Shouldy Committee that tells you, “Who do you think you are?!” If you can quiet that voice down, and just let yourself imagine all the things that you can do, what’s possible?

Okay, so now you have three lists.

The first is things that you are proud of having accomplished.

Second is the list of your values, and if you have a negotiation counterpart, and you do know them, and if you do know what they stand for or what they stand against, then you also know where you share values with the other side. So this is really important and useful.

Third, you have a list of your potential, your future potential. What can you do? What kind of leader can you be?

And finally, now that you have drawn this exhaustive list, I want you to distill the common themes, the key themes, the things that just keep popping up over and over again in terms of your proud accomplishments, your values, and what you are capable of and want to achieve. 

You’re going to distill this into one specific statement that goes like this: I _______________ , and this blank is an active verb, so that _____________________. 

I drive partnerships so that we can exceed our goals.
I connect the dots for our donors so that they can see the tremendous value that we deliver to our constituents.
I teach negotiation skills so that women can lead, influence and thrive. 

So those were three specific examples. I’d love to know what you come up with when you do this exercise. This was really fun to do in person earlier this week, when I led a negotiation workshop in Philadelphia. When people did this exercise and they got to share it with each other, there was this great sense of empowerment. They were like, “Yeah! This is what I’m capable of, and this is my unique value!”

And then, the second part to this is dovetailing it with your reasonably ambitious ask. So the unique value statement, if it is cogent, if it is to the point, if it is relevant to the listener, then what you accomplish by speaking your unique value statement is framing for mutual benefit. And then you can dovetail it with your ask by saying, “And that’s why I believe I deserve the high end of the going market rates, and that is $150,000.” Or whatever you want to ask for.

So to wrap this up, I hope that this quick and fun exercise helps you clarify your unique value, and helps you negotiate with confidence and power so that you can thrive. Thank you!
 

Articulating Your Value for a Big Pay Raise

How do you articulate your value at the #negotiation table, so that you can ask for a big pay 💰 raise?

How do you craft a compelling unique value proposition statement that captures your accomplishments, values, and potential? 

Here's the link to download the script I mention in this episode. 

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Full Episode Transcript:

Hello! Welcome to the ninth episode of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I am your host, Jamie Lee. Tonight, I have the awesome privilege of hosting a negotiation workshop for Smith Alums in Philadelphia, and in about twenty minutes, I have to go catch the train to Philadelphia, so this is going to be a quick but powerful one. I believe that negotiation skills are leadership skills, and that we are all born to lead, influence and thrive. 

We’re talking about the five key practices for negotiation success, the first of which is articulating your value. How do you articulate your unique value so that it is compelling to your negotiation partner? I think it’s really important to think about it in three concrete ways.

• The first: What is the worth of your contributions, your strengths, your skills?
• Number two: What do you stand for?
• Number three: What is your potential?

A really compelling, unique value proposition captures all three of these. The worth of your contributions, what you stand for, and your future potential.

Number one: What is the worth of your contributions? 

Take for example, my recent client. I’m going to call her Karina for this example. She works in digital marketing, and she has contributed undeniable value to her employer. It’s undeniable because she exceeded the revenue goals for her department, and the revenue goals were $10 million and she brought in $12 million. So, that’s value, right? That has undeniable worth.

And yet, she was being compensated below going market averages, and she wasn’t even making six figures. And so, we came up with a negotiation strategy, and it centered around her unique value proposition, which is, “Hey, I want to be compensated according to the value I contribute to this employer, and I’m contributing and I’m exceeding the targets and yet my compensation is not even 1% of the value, the $12 million  that I brought in. So, could we have a conversation about bringing me up to market, so that I’m being compensated for the value I bring?”

You might be listening to this and you think well, I don’t work in sales, I don’t work in a capacity where it’s tied to revenue or figures like that. I don’t know how to articulate my value.

So, think about not just what you do, but how does your employer benefit from what you do? I talked about this in the second episode, Salary Negotiation FAQs.

It’s not just because you do your job that they hire you, they hire you for the end benefit. Because you do your job, there is more security. Because you do your job, there is consistency. Because you do your job, there is smooth operation, happy customers, returning customers, etc.

So, if you’re not sure how to articulate your value, the worth of your contributions, strengths and talents, think about all the things that you do contribute.

In fact, I would strongly suggest you list them. Make a list on paper or in a Google Doc. What have you done? What have you accomplished?

And ask, so what? Because you did this, they benefited by X, Y, Z. Think about, I generated the reports, so they have visibility into operations, and because they have visibility into operations, they can make decisions faster, and because they are making decisions faster, we are more profitable.  

Number two: What do you stand for?

So in other words, I’m asking about your values, not just what is your value. What are your values? What do you stand for? Most of my coaching clients, they stand for serving others.

I had a client who worked in the government contractor industry, and for this person, it was the value of serving the needs of others that really shone through, that was really important for him.

He was doing his job, not just so that he can say he did a great job, he did his job so that other people’s lives improved. And so he articulated that in his unique value proposition. "I’m here to serve others. I’m here to serve the mission and goal of this organization, because the goal and mission of this organization is to improve the lives of those we serve." That’s kind of a circular statement, but you understand what I’m saying. 

Finally: What is your potential?

What can you accomplish? I think this is so important for women negotiators, because we tend to be rewarded for the work we have done, not necessarily for the potential that we bring. Not everyone sees our leadership potential unless we have already done all the work and exceeded targets.

So, it behooves us to articulate what that potential is. What can you do? What can you contribute? We think about potential, and we think about all the great things we can be doing, and sometimes instead of having this become an inspiration or a motivator, it can become a de-motivator for some people.

It can be like, oh, I’m not living up to my potential. But here’s the definition of potential: potential is doing what you can. What can you do? I think that potential is probably tied to your sense of purpose. Why are you here? What are you serving? What are the values you’re honoring? So it’s really closely tied to your values. 

For me, when I do this exercise, I see that my potential is to help unlock other people’s potential so that they can thrive. And when I see that because of the work I do, women are closing their gender wage gaps, people are asking for what they want, people are making decisions that are self-empowered and give them a sense of greater joy, fulfillment and happiness, I see that I am doing my job. I see that I am living up to my potential.

And that’s why this podcast is called Born to Thrive, because I believe that we are all born to lead, influence and thrive, and learning negotiation skills can help us achieve that purpose. 

I’ve written a script that outlines the process that Karina went through, what her negotiation conversation was like so that you can see for yourself what it is like to articulate for your value, and to respond to pushback, to excuses like oh, we don’t have the money in the budget or whatever, if you are negotiating for bigger pay, promotion etc.

And I would like to share this script with you. If you email me at jamie@jamieleecoach.com - and I spell my name J-A-M-I-E - jamieleecoach.com, I will send the script to you because I believe it is my purpose to help other people live up to their potential, and if it helps you, if it contributes value to your negotiation to see how this one successful negotiation went, then that’s great!

I love that. I’d love to help you close your wage gap. I’d love to help you live up to your potential. So, feel free to write me at jamie@jamieleecoach.com to get this free script on how to ask for a big pay raise. Thank you, and I hope that this helps you thrive. Bye!

What are the 5 Key Practices for Negotiation Success?

Negotiation skills are leadership skills.

Conscious leadership and value-creating negotiation both require self-awareness, learning agility, communication and influence.

I share my definition of negotiation and five key practices for negotiation success.

Enjoy!

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Full Episode Transcript:

Hello! Welcome to the eighth episode of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I am your host, Jamie Lee. I work as a negotiation and leadership coach for ambitious women. I believe that we are all born to thrive.

I looked up the definition of the word thrive in the dictionary, and it said it means to grow with vigor. I looked up the word vigor, and vigor means vitality, life force, energy.

The word thrive kind of makes you think of something really happy and joyful, but for some reason I keep confusing the word vigor with rigor. It might be because English is my second language, I don’t know, but I got curious and I looked up rigor, too.

Rigor is harshness. Something difficult. Constraints. It kind of makes sense to me that to thrive requires both vigor and rigor. Yes, you need life force. Yes, you need energy. But you also need to overcome something difficult. You need rigor in order to truly thrive. 

I say that because negotiation is difficult for a lot of people. We’d rather not do it. We’d rather avoid it. We’d rather resist it. Or we’d rather approach it with this attitude of defensiveness, anger, righteousness. We put up a fight.

I don’t think this is really constructive. I also don’t think that negotiation is a fight. Negotiation is not about manipulation, confrontation. It’s simply a conversation. A conversation where everyone has the right to say no. A conversation where we try to come to an agreement. That is it. That is my definition of negotiation. That means we negotiate all the time, for little things, big things.

Who’s gonna do the dishes? What are we gonna do for dinner? How are we going to resolve peace, how are we going to come to peace in the Korean peninsula? These are all negotiations, and we have been engaging in these conversations ever since we were able to say the word “No,” ever since we were able to express our desire for autonomy, for self-expression, when we were either one and a half or two years old or for some people three years old.

So, whatever your age is, subtract two from it and that’s how long you have been practicing, that’s how long you have been negotiating for what you want. 

I believe that negotiation is a leadership skill, and so every time I teach negotiation, I start with, “What kind of leader do you want to be?” Next Monday, I have the great privilege of leading a hands-on, interactive negotiation workshop for Smith alums in Philadelphia, and for that workshop, I prepared a one-sheet with five key practices for negotiation success, and I thought, “You know, why not share it with my podcast audience?”

So, a quick preamble here. There’s a wonderful book called The Fifteen Commitments of Conscious Leadership, and it says there are four core competencies of conscious leadership, and I find that these four core competencies are also the core competencies of value-creating, problem-solving negotiation. I learned this from Lisa Gates at She Negotiates, my business mentor, and I think it’s phenomenal, because it really teaches you what you need to bring in order to have problem-solving, value-creating, negotiation conversations. 

So the four competencies are: 

Number one: Self-awareness. Are you aware of your skills, your strengths, your qualities, your tendencies, your conflict style, your communication style? The more you know, the better you will handle, the better you will manage yourself in and throughout the negotiation process.

Number two: Learning agility. The goal of negotiation is to 1) gather information, and 2) influence the behavior of others. So, throughout the conversation, you want to be learning and learning in different ways. So, improving your learning agility will really help you negotiate with success.

Number three: Communication. Negotiation is simply a communication discipline. It’s a communication with a goal, right? So, how do you communicate? You listen. You express yourself. You reflect on what you’ve heard and you try to express your desires so that it is receptive to the listener. Much earlier in this podcast series, I think it was Episode 3, when I talked about the traps of perfectionism, I talked about how there are four elements within communication: What you want to say, how you say it, what people hear, and what they make it mean. So, that’s communication.

Number four: Influence. You want to influence the other’s behavior in a negotiation, right? You want them to say yes* (In the podcast, I say "no," but I mean "yes." Mea Culpa.) or you want them to change their minds if they’re saying no. The thing about influence is it’s not about telling people what to do and in negotiation it’s not always a debate where you want to prove yourself right and prove the other person wrong. Real influence doesn’t work like that, because real influence is when you have an indirect impact on the other person’s perception, decision making process, and in which they feel that they have come to the decision on their own. So, it’s not about telling people what to do. That’s not negotiation, that’s making demands. It’s not about proving the other side wrong. That’s debate, right? It’s really about influencing. In order to influence, you really need to be able to put yourself in the shoes of the other, see their perspective, and of course that requires empathy.

So, I will wrap this up with, as I mentioned earlier, the five key practices of negotiation success, and what I would like to do in the subsequent episodes is go a little bit deeper into each of the key practices. 

So, number one: the first key practice of negotiation success is to articulate your value so that they see the value of you as a benefit to them. 

Number two: build your alliance. Lisa Gates calls it building your influence posse. I love that. Reaching out to your network. Identifying who are champions who can advocate for you, allies who will go to bat for you, and influencers who will create inroads with the key decision-maker in this negotiation. 

Number three: dig and listen deeply. I know there are a lot of combative negotiators who feel like the point of negotiation is simply to get more than the other side, and it’s all about me, just let me make my point, and I am right. No. Real negotiation happens when you listen and dig deeper into the hidden interests of the other side. 

Number four: anchor first and anchor high. Really good, masterful negotiators understand the magic of telling people what you want and dropping that anchor. It’s a cognitive bias that can work towards your favor.

Number five: get genuine buy-in. That’s what I was talking about earlier when I explained influence. It’s not about telling people what to do, that’s making demands. It’s not about proving other people wrong, that’s debating. Negotiation and true influence is when the other side come to see your point of view, and the other side come to decide for themselves to go along with your proposal. So that’s real, genuine buy-in. It’s how you really get through to people and connect.

I’m really excited about going deeper into these key practices with you in the subsequent episodes, and I hope that you have a wonderful day where you thrive. Talk to you soon!