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Victoria Pynchon

I mediate and arbitrate complex commercial disputes, the former with ADR Services, Inc. in Century City and the latter with...

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She Mediates

ADR Services, Inc.

She Negotiates

She Negotiates

The 33 cent wage and income gap is unacceptable and unnecessary. So is the cliché glass ceiling. Bottom line, our...

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If Your Women's Initiative Isn't Working, We've Got Solutions

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on June 07, 2013

The National Association of Women Lawyers says your law, accounting or financial firm's women's initiative is not working.

You already know that, of course, and many of you have given up on it altogether. It's so well understood that even the ABA knows about it! Check out Do Women's Initiatives Work in this month's issue of the ABA Journal right here.

It's Just Beginning

But I have breaking news for you. It's not over. It's just beginning.

As one AmLaw 50 senior woman recently told me, until '09, her firm's women's initiative was flowery. In '09, the law firm's women decided to grow it some balls. That's what she said. Verbatim. Those are the women lawyers I remember from my youth. Ballsy. No nonsense. Get it done.

If you'd like to put your poorly funded, management ignored women's initiative on steroids, I've got a panel that is going to tell you how to make it fly. For you. Strategically. 

Not A "Feel Good" Session Nor A Pity Party

This is not a "feel good" session, nor a pity party. But you know what? I've never heard women lawyers throw a pity party from the day I entered law school in 1977 until today.

This panel will also not ask you to expend more energy than you're already expending to be the greatest lawyer you can be. This is a session that will tell you what your law firm should be doing to make your women's careers better.

In addition to the law firm piece, we're going to put the strength of other women lawyers behind you. Because this is not "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" or even "lean in." This is activism.

The panel is not only FREE, but the Women Lawyers' Association of Los Angeles will even validate your parking.

So there are No Excuses not to be there. 

Who?

I'll be there but I'm not the main attraction. Sarretta C. McDonough of Gibson Dunn will be speaking. She is a member of the Board and Program Director for the National Association of Women Lawyers. NAWL underwrote the 2012 National Survey of Women's Initiatives.The survey's findings were gloomy as reported in my post There's Absolutely Nothing Wrong With Women in the Law.

Sarretta is appearing to help you help your firm course correct its women's initiative for your individual advantage which quite directly advantages all women lawyers everywhere.

Along with me and Sarretta, Merle Vaughn of Major, Lindsey & Africa will be appearing. MLA is the organization that authored the equally gloomy 2012 Partner Compensation Survey, as also reported in There's Nothing Wrong With Women. 

Merle has enough good ideas fill an entire weekend retreat but we're going to help her squeeze her good advice into this single session. Tackle her after the panel is over and pepper her with your most pressing issues.

Continue Reading

There's Absolutely Nothing Wrong With Women In The Law

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on June 05, 2013

I want every woman lawyer to know that they do not have to work harder, faster or better to achieve parity in the workplace with their male colleagues.

All we have to do is support one another, which this month includes digging into that ABA Journal Magazine that you usually just toss into the trash.

I'm linking to three reports on law firm women's initiatives and they're all a little depressing.

Still, if you read past the pessimism, you'll realize we're at a tipping point - that the disappointing percentage of women in leadership roles in the law, business and finance (less than 20% in all sectors) is also reason to  be optimistic about the future.

As Gloria Feldt of Take the Lead counsels, if each woman in a leadership role would sponsor one other woman who is poised to take on such a role, we could double those disappointing percentages in five years or less.

The Grim Statistics

A recent study on gender and compensation in the country's largest law firms reports that 

The development of two-tier partnerships, the lengthening of the time periods to make partner and equity partner, the reduction in the number of equity partners, the creation of new categories of permanent associates and permanent non- equity partners, the expanded number of permanent of counsel, and the demand for increased billable hours, have combined to increase income for a shrinking group of equity partners and to disadvantage women in large law firms.

A Major, Lindsey & Africa 2012 Law Firm Partner Compensation Survey reports that cronyism at the top which permits in-group gender bias to influence compensation and promotion decisions presents a significant hindrance to women's advancement and has kept the law firm gender pay gap firmly in place for the past decade.

Finally,the National Association of Women Lawyers' 2012 study of law firm women's initiatives tells a story of underfunding, the lack of meaningful goals and the absence of any metrics to measure the success of those initiatives, all of which would lead a cynical person to conclude that most of those initiatives are more window dressing than they are genuine attempts to address the problems not only of women but of high attrition rates that firms in our new austere economy can no longer afford.

As that study reports:

fewer than half of all women’s initiatives are evaluated annually by management. Similarly, fewer than half of all women’ initiatives submit written evaluations. Moreover, it is not clear that the reporting and evaluation functions focus on specific goals. Some 40% of firms report no specific criteria at all for their evaluation. Of those who report goal-related evaluation criteria, there is often no connection to concrete advancement criteria. Thus, descriptions of evaluation criteria were often along the lines of “accomplishment of goals and activities identified at the start of each year” or “number of events, quality of events, participation level.”

All of that said, I remain optimistic because I've been here before, when I first started practice and some of the firm's clients said "I don't want a woman on the litigation team." My boss, male, said what we women should be saying today, Then you don't want this firm because Vickie Pynchon is the best associate I've got.

 

Thank you, Geoff.

We can do it. We can do it without tying ourselves in knots to conform to outmoded gender roles. We can do it without offending anyone - clients or colleagues. We can do it authentically within our own unique personalities.

We can do it because women's diverse views destroy "group think" and add women's unique collaborative abilities to an entrenched zero-sum system. Most importantly, we can raise the bar of excellence for every firm where management understands that more women in leadership = a more profitable business.

 

Are You Negotiating From a Position of Weakness or From a Position of Power?

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on June 03, 2013

1. “Think powerful”
Job candidates are rarely in a position of power as interviewers decide the fate of their future career prospects. Yet, the winning strategy in these situations is thinking that one has power, in spite of the situation. As a candidate, how can you engineer a powerful mindset? Well, a simple trick is to remind yourself about a time you had power over a situation right before an interview, and invoke the precise feelings associated with that memory – feelings of confidence and competence, as well as decisiveness during decision making.
One of my recent research projects, Power gets the job: Priming power improves interview outcomes co-authored with Joris Lammers (University of Cologne), Derek D. Rucker (Northwestern University) and Adam Galinsky (Columbia University) tested just that idea: as part of a session of individual mock interviews, we assigned business school applicants to one of three conditions. In the first condition, applicants wrote a short essay about a time they had power just before entering an interview. In the second condition, applicants also wrote an essay, but this time about a time they lacked power. Finally, the last group did not write anything.
Then, we asked interviewers the likelihood that they would accept the candidate into a business school. When candidates went straight to the interview, interviewers accepted 47.1 percent of the candidates. However, the admission rate went up to 68 percent for those people in the group who wrote an essay about a time they had power, and fell to a low 26 percent for those who wrote an essay about a time they lacked power. Importantly, interviewers were unaware of the power manipulation we had given candidates. Thus, merely recalling an experience of high power increased candidates’ likelihood to be admitted by 81 percent compared to baseline and by 162 percent compared to those who recalled an experience of powerlessness.
Of course, there are other ways to engineer personal feelings of power. For instance, candidates can wear objects that make them feel powerful, such as a watch or a particular bag - anything that links you with feelings of power.
2. “Behave powerful”
Power is not only a mindset; it is also a behaviour. Small, almost unconscious moves signal power to an audience and can significantly change the outcome of an interview. In her recent TED talk, Amy Cuddy (Harvard University) provides an excellent summary of how non-verbal language can have a profound effect on how people are judged in contexts as varied as hiring or promotion interviews, a sales context or even a date. As such, physical poses such as wrapping legs, hunching or relying on one’s arms are many subtle signals of powerlessness that cast doubt on what candidates say, regardless of the content of the conversation.
The Virtuous Circle of Power
Interestingly, adopting “power poses” does not only affect how interviewers judge candidates, but also ironically reinforces candidates’ feelings of power. In recent research, Li Huang from INSEAD and colleagues had participants take powerful (for example, expansive postures) or powerless (constricted postures) poses and found the former behaved more powerfully than the latter, by taking action more often and thinking more abstractly, two well-known consequences of power. So, behaving in a powerful way is not only important for how interviewers perceive candidates, it is also a key driver of how candidates will behave!
Read more: http://forbesindia.com/article/insead/power-boosters-how-to-land-that-job-when-you-think-you-cant/35149/1#ixzz2VAQEbLlt

No matter where I go to teach negotiation strategies and tactics, people tell me they feel as if they're bargaining from a position of weakness. You'd think the lawyers at Intel, Qwest Communications, Warner Brothers and Sony Pictures Entertainment or the engineers and managers at Kraft Foods, all of whose people I've trained, would drape themselves in the power of their corporate brand.

Not so. More than 80% raise their hands when I ask them whether they're negotiating from a position of weakness.

That, I suppose, is because I haven't trained those companies' CEO's, GCs or Boards of Directors. But even then I'll bet I could flip a coin on their answer to the question. The Boards of Directors, after all, have to answer to shareholders and federal governmental agencies. CEOs must answer to their Boards and GCs to the CEO. Sometimes all of them feel intimidated by the lady in HR because Human Resources is the hot nuclear core of conflict in the organization.

What, then, can we do to increase others' perceptions that we have power, a perception that is more than half of our bargaining strength.

Over at Forbes today, we read about some powerful research done by several hot shot academics, including Adam Galinsky whose work I've featured at The Daily Muse and ForbesWoman.

 

Continue Reading

When 1 in 4 Women Ask for Raises 75% Get Them

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on May 30, 2013

A survey released today by Citi and LinkedIn in conjunction with Citi’s Connect Professional Women’s Network on LinkedIn finds that one of women’s biggest obstacles to career satisfaction may be themselves – only 1 in 4 professional women have asked for a raise in the past year, yet of those who asked, 75% received a salary increase.

On the heels of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, the survey also investigates whether women are really pulling back from leadership positions and if so, why? When asked if they could see themselves rising to a leadership position at their current employer, only 38% of women polled said yes, citing lack of opportunity, time and loyalty to their companies as the top three reasons why they’re not planning to advance.

For further insights on these and other statistics, watch Citi Talks Take Control of Your Career or click here for the full article with a cool chart.

To get that raise you deserve, just click here.You have nothing to lose and hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of your career to gain.

You Deserve A Raise - Let Us Help You Negotiate It

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on May 25, 2013

Corporate profits have been soaring for some time now. What/who is the engine of those profits?

You, the American worker, are!

That means you deserve a raise. Have you gotten one lately? Not according to most sources.

We routinely help women negotiate raises between 15 and 30%.

Our success reflects the undeniable fact that our clients deserve these raises but haven't been getting them. We're not rocket scientists but we do know how to assess and then help you negotiate your true market value.

If you don't believe you can negotiate a raise, here's what one of our clients had to say about our services following by what USA Today had to say about your entitlement to a raise now back at the beginning of the month.

Client:

I scored BIG when I hired Victoria Pynchon. She helped me successfully negotiate a job promotion, 40+% raise, and  new title -- all at my current employer. And this was during a recession! Vickie benchmarked salaries for me, realistically evaluated my options, helped me understand the motives and pressure of my employer, and advised me at every step of the way throughout the negotiations. And she guided me in developing a long-term strategic plan for my career.

USA Today:

Stock markets and corporate profits are breaking records. The economy suddenly looks brighter after the government's surprising report Friday that employers added 635,000 jobs the past three months.  

"Hourly wages ticked up 4 cents in April to an average $23.87, rising at about the same tepid 2% annual pace since the recovery began in mid-2009.

But taking inflation into account, they're virtually flat. Workers who rely on paychecks for their income have been running in place, financially speaking. Adjusting for inflation, an average worker who was paid $49,650 at the end of 2009 is making about $545 less now and that's before taxes and deductions.

According to this month's Harpers, "even among the well-educated, the fear of unemployment deters workers from demanding wage hikes, particularly when joblessness is pervasive."

Let's not let the spectre of unemployment, or permit the unsupported corporate excuse of "the recession" deter us from reaping some small portion of the benefit that has flowed to the top of the American economic ladder in the past few years.

As one of those mega-negotiation training firms that advertises in airplane magazines says, "you don't get what you deserve; you get what you negotiate."

Find us and call us at She Negotiates and let us help you negotiate what you deserve.

Despite our focus on closing the gender wage gap, we serve men as well as women because a rising tide raises all ships.

Breaking News! There's Nothing Wrong With Women

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on May 13, 2013

drowning

Join me, Lisa Gates and Katie Donovan, along with co-host Jana Hlistova and Gloria Feldt for Take The Lead's monthly Smart Women Take The Lead webcast. Register here now. The live webcast will be Tuesday May 14th at 7pm BST, 2pm EDT. You can send questions via twitter using the hashtag #swttl – we’d love to hear from you! And if you miss the live program, you can always click the same link and see it on YouTube.  

Women in the age of of AnneMarieSlaughterSherylSandbergMarissaMayer are drowning in a sea of unsolicited advice. In recent days, it’s been suggested to me (the generic woman) that I find a way to strengthen my voice (Executive Presence); jettison my womanly emotions in the workplace (don’t cry!); eliminate question marks and exclamation points from my email communications (??!!???); act more like a guy; act less like a guy (in the same article); get the best seat at the conference table; improve my handshake; ask for more money but to do so with a smile on my face andthe pretense that it’s for someone other than myself;  pay more attention to my family than to social networking; devote more time to online social networking;  learn to golf; seek sponsors; seek mentors; brag about my accomplishments, but modestly; conform my behavior to feminine stereotypes while covertly using man-rules; and, for heaven’s sake never, ever to curse in public. Over at Princeton, it’s even been suggested that young women do what their grandmothers did –find a man who is likely to be a “good provider” while the getting is good (before graduation). My generic woman’s head is about to explode. The solution? Start by understanding there's nothing wrong with you over at the Take the Lead blog here.

Are Women's Initiatives Meant To Fail?

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on May 07, 2013

Nearly every law student in the country from the oldest grad to the youngest aspirant, learns the meaning of "intent" in civil law from the case of Garratt v. Dailey.

You may not want to hurt Bill, but if you put an apple on his head, raise your shotgun and pull the trigger, the law will say you intended to kill him in the highly likely event that your William Tell act causes Bill's death.

The rule that Garratt applies to a five-year old's decision to pull out the chair out an adult woman is about to sit in is this - if the defendant knows with a substantial certainty that his act will result in harm, he must be presumed to have intended it.

Which takes us directly to law firm women's initatives. As the National Association of Women Lawyers' 2012 survey of BigLaw women's initiatives concluded, the programing offered by BigLaw to retain and promote women does not achieve its goals. Not only that, but these women's initiatives rarely have measurable promotional goals.

As the Survey reports, even though women’s initiatives have been in effect for at least a decade, "what such initiatives actually do, and the impact they have on women in firms, is all too often not clear and at worst, open to criticism bordering on cynicism." More particularly,

fewer than half of all women’s initiatives are evaluated annually by management. Similarly, fewer than half of all women’ initiatives submit written evaluations. Moreover, it is not clear that the reporting and evaluation functions focus on specific goals. Some 40% of firms report no specific criteria at all for their evaluation. Of those who report goal-related evaluation criteria, there is often no connection to concrete advancement criteria. Thus, descriptions of evaluation criteria were often along the lines of “accomplishment of goals and activities identified at the start of each year” or “number of events, quality of events, participation level.”

 

Continue Reading

Duke v. Wal-Mart at Forbes Woman: Implicit Gender Bias and Social Science Evidence

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on March 28, 2011

For Supreme Court watchers, here's my article on Duke v. Wal-Mart over at the She Negotiates ForbesWoman blog, Wal-Mart Discrimination Case Grapples with Implicit Biases against Women.

As the New York Times‘ Adam Liptak reported today, the Supreme Court will decide on Tuesday whether 1.5 million women will be permitted to proceed with their gender discrimination class action against Wal-Mart.

The high court is being asked to decide what role it believes social science research should play in determining whether implicit bias is responsible for women’s underpay and under-representation in Wal-Mart’s management ranks. At the center of the Supreme Court case is the testimony of Sociology Professor William T. Bielby, at University of Illinois at Chicago.

Briefs and articles for the serious student of Constitutional Law below.

Ninth Circuit Opinion in Dukes v. Wal-Mart

Opening Brief

Opposition Brief

Reply Brief

Thanks to Rex Stevens for passing these links along to me.

The Week at ForbesWoman

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on March 21, 2011

Negotiating for Something You Think You Can’t Get? Show Up in Drag posted by LISA GATES

Jane, like her male counterparts, has a big truck with her company logo plastered on the doors, lots of specialized tools and ladders, a crew of talented helpers, 20 years in the business and several pairs of Carhartt jeans and Timberland boots (NYSE:TBL).

When she shows up to meet potential clients, she dresses like a woman and makes sure there’s no dirt under her fingernails. It’s a “presentation” thing she says. According to Jane, if she clomps into prospective clients’ gardens wearing muck boots, it’s as much of a turn-off to her prospective clients as it is being gay.

Double binds and deep and abiding biases cause many women to make extreme choices.

continue »

What is the SAT’s ‘Jersey Shore’ Essay Question Really Asking? posted by KATIE PHILLIPS

Last Saturday, the College Board served up a mega-curveball for high school students across America: it asked them to write an essay about reality television. The question, one out of three possible essay topics distributed at random, described reality television as programs “which feature real people engaged in real activities rather than professional actors performing scripted scenes” and then asked whether “people benefit from forms of entertainment that show so-called reality, or are such forms of entertainment harmful?”

Definitely not what kids who have spent countless hours brushing up on their Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Dickens had expected.

These are the kids that are too busy studying, playing soccer, or taking piano lessons in the hopes of receiving an acceptance letter to a great college — they don’t have the time to watch or interest in the comings-and-goings of Jersey Shore’s Snooki and The Situation. These are, not surprisingly, the same kids who are complaining of the question’s ‘unfairness’ – many of whom have lamented on online forums such as College Confidential that they don’t watch any television, let alone reality shows.

The College Board, in response, has defended its prompt; saying that it was an attempt to “engage students”, and that “everything a student needs to write a successful essay is included in the prompt itself.” Meaning, they’re not grading students on how well they can opine about the Kardashians, but rather how well they can structure an essay.

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Money, Power, and Self-Determination Make Women Unhappy posted by VICTORIA PYNCHON

That’s what author Suzanne Venker’s saying in her new book The Flipside of Feminism.

Forty years have passed since the so-called women’s movement claimed to liberate women from preconceived notions of what it means to be female – and the results are in. The latest statistics from the National Bureau of Economic Research show that “as women have gained more freedom, more education, and more power, they have become less happy.”

Over at Washington Whispers, Paul Bedard has pulled from Venker’s book, Five Ways That Feminism Has Ruined America

It hurt marriage. Women want to wait so that they can keep their identities longer and men are finding easy sex, taking away a big reason for marriage.

Emasculates men. It’s better to be a wuss than speak up or mouth off and face charges of harassment or chauvinism.

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The Internet, Freedom of Speech and the Anti-Gay App posted by VICTORIA PYNCHON

Pressure is mounting on Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) to rid its store of an Anti-Gay App. Over at the Huffington Post, Wayne Bessen writes that Exodus International, the largest Christian organization offering a “cure” for homosexuality, is bragging that Apple gave it a 4+ rating, signifying the absence of “offensive content.”

I downloaded the Exodus App today to see whether it contained something akin to hate speech which has been variously defined as any communication which disparages a person or a group on the basis of some characteristic such as race or sexual orientation; or attacks or disparages a person or group of people based on their social or ethnic group.

At the risk of putting myself at the center of a firestorm of disapproval, I have to say that what I viewed and read on the Exodus app was not hate speech but simply the expression of religious beliefs with which I, and many other people, disagree.

Exodus International appears to be a non-denominational religious organization that believes homosexuality is a sin. It also promotes the idea that this sin can be relieved by establishing a spiritual relationship with Jesus.

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She Negotiates on NPR with Jennifer Ludden

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on February 14, 2011

gesture.jpg

 

Go to npr here.

Yes, You Should Ask for a Raise or Increase Your Rates This Year

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on January 23, 2011

See the series of articles on the topic over at ForbesWoman ~ Why Every Woman Should Ask for a Raise this Year; and, Why We Women Fail to Ask for Raises and What Happens When We Do, most of which is also applicable to men.  Excerpt from the first article below:

You deserve a raise this year because you are working harder, longer and faster than you were before the recession. And as msnbc reported in 2009, you are doing so for less, not more, money.

 That means you are not only doing your own job, you’re also doing the jobs your laid off colleagues were doing. You’ll be difficult to replace because of that. Not only because John and Mary’s jobs are not in your historic employment description, but because fewer people will want to take on the work you’re doing now for the salary you’re now being paid.

 Your employer may need to hire two people to replace you. He or she will also have to incur the expense of hiring one or more new employees.

 You are more valuable than you believe yourself to be. You therefore have more bargaining strength than you believe yourself to have.

How to ask for a raise over at She Negotiates tomorrow.

The Week at ForbesWoman's "She Negotiates" Blog

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on January 07, 2011

We kicked off the new year over at ForbesWoman this past Sunday with my short think-post on gay marriage and the razor's edge on which we women negotiate for ourselves - both of which I tied to our fear of losing the benefits and the restraining influences of traditional gender roles.  See Negotiating Sex and Gender here. There's also a bit of instructive back-and-forth in the comments on the question whether the income gap is a systemic problem or simply the result of women being . . . well . . . lazy bitches. Those who know me well can marvel at my admirable restraint.

On Monday, The Daily Asker, Roxana Popescu, penned the most popular She Negotiates post of the week - Six Things Every Woman Should Ask for in 2011. Roxana is a black-belt "asker," taking the opportunity to negotiate literally everything. She'll be adding six more categories of "asks" over at our ForbesWoman blog today so keep an eye peeled for it.

And though Roxana doesn't know it yet, we're planning on having her lead day-long bargaining expeditions in 2011 for those who don't notice the dozens of opportunities that present themselves to us every day for a little haggling. Stay tuned for that announcement over at our home She Negotiates site. For more information on Roxana's "asking" quest, see Day One:  Can I Ask for Something Every Day for a Year.

On Tuesday, She Negotiates rested so that Wednesday could bring you Forget Resolutions: Disrupt and Execute in 2011, by She Negotiates co-founder Lisa Gates. I'd just been telling a book publicist how I'd been dying the death of a thousand book promotion cuts. A couple of hundred here, a thousand there, went out to consultants in 2010 who simply threw me back on my own promotional resources with a little advice about working different or harder. That's what I hired you for! If you're suffering from a similar consultant-overload dis-ease, go no further than consulting with Lisa Gates where the focus is implement and execute. She changed my life. Let her change yours for the better in 2011.

Yesterday, our Gen-Y blogger Katie Phillips, recently graduated from the Tisch School of Arts at NYU, wrote in despair and celebration of entering the unknown in Negotiating Uncertainty: Gen-Y Women are Busy Being Born. Our boomer readers will see themselves in the same circumstances thirty or forty years ago, but this post is not for us. It's Gen-Y to Gen-Y and one of the finest pieces of writing you're likely to see anywhere on ForbesWoman. Really. Check it out.

With part 2 of Roxana's six tips for 2011 today, we'll close the week in asking, haggling, bargaining, negotiating, trading, and bartering for the first week of the new year. Please let us know which topics would be most useful to you for us to cover as we make 2011 not just the Year of Recovery, but the Year of Abundance! 

Closing the Wage Gap by Negotiating for Ourselves

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on October 21, 2010
South carolina annual women lawyers meeting

Who's Too Big to Fail? We Are!

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on September 15, 2010

Cross-posted at She Negotiates

What does this man have that you don't?

A year-end 2009 salary of $21,340,547 during one of the worst year's in the history of his industry ~ banking.

Listen!  The recession is just another excuse for not paying you what you're worth.

How do we know?

Because the most effective negotiators on the planet ~ corporate CEO's ~ are finding the downturn to be the best time to squeeze every last living dollar out of their employers.

If they can do it, so can you!

 Here's the evidence:

Bank of America Corp.
Thomas Montag
2009 Total Compensation: $29,930,431
JPMorgan Chase & Co.
James Dimon
2009 Total Compensation:
$9,274,494
Citigroup Inc.
John Havens
2009 Total Compensation: $11,276,454
Morgan Stanley
Walid Chammah
2009 Total Compensation: $10,021,969
The Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
Lloyd Blankfein
2009 Total Compensation: $9,862,657
Wells Fargo
John Stumpf
2009 Total Compensation: $21,340,547

 Whhaaaaaatttttt? do these men have that you don't have?

  • Social networks with rich and powerful people who sit on their Boards of Directors and influence policy makers and Wall Street power brokers
  • The self-created illusion that they are "too big to fail" /1
  • The persuasive argument that only they, with their unique combination of experience, education, knowledge, savvy, can-do-spirit, and leadership qualities can pull these banks out of the sinkhole of the recession.
  • Friends in very high places.
  • Chutzpah and shamelessness (not that we'd want to encourage this second character flaw in our readers).
  • Self-satisfaction.
  • Entitlement.
  • An employment history of asking for and receiving increasing levels of compensation based upon their salary negotiations at every career point possible (and every career point impossible)
  • the demonstrated ability to produce results (our readers do possess this strength but haven't used it to their greatest advantage yet)
  • the tendency to measure their market value by their value in the hands of their employer, not by what they "need" or what they are "worth" according to some internal metric that depends upon how they feel about thier accomplishments.

__________________

1/  This is where collective action comes in.  When we aggregate together America's employees, small business owners and homeowners, we get a non-corporate "entity" that is waaaayyyyyy bigger than some little piss-ant bank and it is we who are too big to fail.

the nice things some people say about she negotiates

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on September 10, 2010

"Victoria Pynchon's negotiation skills crush cultural bias, gender barriers and even fears about the tumultuous economy. She taught me to conquer my fears with courage and navigate contentious negotiation, while demanding my market value.  Her one-on-one supportive coaching techniques trump transformation. Working with her has triggered a personal evolutionary spiral into a new way of doing business with confidence, the fruits of which have knocked down walls in every part of my life. I felt supported through the entire process and experienced immediate results."

Judy Martin, Business Journalist & Founder WorkLifeNation.com

"Lisa Gates reached into the very core of my being in order to bring me back into the reality of my dreams. Her talk is real and her methods concise. I no longer doubt what I'm doing...instead I speak, write, and live, knowing exactly why I do what I do and I realize that the goals I have set for myself are entirely up to me and attainable." 

Cicily R. Janus, Writing Away Retreats

She Negotiates the End of the Glass Ceiling

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on August 27, 2010



How do we "sell" the nation on the idea that women's work is as valuable as men's? Despite the fact that 90 years have passed since women were given the vote and 40 since an entire generation of women raised their voices against unequal treatment under the law, we continue to make a third of what our men do.

What's up with that? and why the Coke ad?

What's up with that is this: we're not negotiating our true market value because we believe it is worth one-third less than men believe their true market value to be. That's what the research shows. Instead of getting angry, let's finally "get even" by learning our true market value; gathering the tools to ask for it; and, then just go get it.

That's what Lisa Gates and I are up to over at She Negotiates ~ our four-week online coached negotiation class for women. First, we give you the tools to re-calibrate your market value. Then we teach you how to get it. It's a simple as that.

Why the Coke ad?

Coca-Cola, one of the most successful products ever to grace our planet, wasn't always a world-wide beauty pageant winner. It once had to sell itself. It's SODA POP for goodness sakes. But it didn't sell itself as soda pop. It sold itself as the staff of life ~ bread. It wasn't a luxury ~ something our then-post-depression post-war parents were not keen on buying. It was a necessity.

So how do we sell ourselves as necessary to the economy and as valuable as bread and butter? Come on over to She Negotiates and we'll teach you how.

Our next course begins on September 13 and you can take it in your jammies! A warning: this is no ordinary e-class. It's a lot of hard work.

If you're ready to upset the apple cart and apply a little elbow grease to the gears and levers of a society that still fails to recognize our value, come on by!

Our best for yet another new beginning,

Vickie Pynchon and Lisa Gates
She Negotiates Consulting and Training

yes we can! negotiate our jobs back! at ForbesWoman

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on July 29, 2010

Please don't buy me retail

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on July 20, 2010

My friend's Women's Bar Association is looking for a speaker. 

They wanted that other woman who speaks on the topic of women negotiating.  You know the one . . . what's her name.  Yes, that's her.  The annual meeting committee gave her a ring and she quoted them $10,000 for an hour keynote.  To be fair, an hour keynote takes all day.  First, you've got to travel, then stay over night, then, if you're really serious about being of service to women lawyers, you get up early and listen to the morning speaker, talk to your table mates, find out what their challenges are, and, then alter, ever so slightly, your noon keynote to deliver exactly what this particular unique group of women need to hear.  You stay after, of course, to answer questions and sell copies of your book, which is, after all, your time, the time you'd be spending anyway spreading the good news that women can negotiate away the glass ceiling and the pay gap and their kids' private school tuitions.  Because that's just how you roll.  So it's never just an hour.

Still.

$10,000. 

"Did you negotiate with her?" I asked.

"The search committee didn't even try," said my friend.  "They figured her price was retail."

I don't mind being second choice.  That other woman, well, shoot, she pretty much started the whole women-negotiating-revolution.  I get it.  So I gave my quote and added, "but I'm not a suit on a hanger at Bloomies.  You don't have to buy me retail.  Remember some of what I taught you about money and value."

"Uhhhhh, make an aggressive first offer?"

"Well, yes.  But that's not what I'm talking about here.  I'm talking about the money is meaningless lesson.  You remember.  You can't eat or drink it.  It won't actually do the surgery nor build an addition to your house.  Remember how it just evaporated overnight right before George Bush left office?  Remember how your house was worth $500,000 on Monday and two fifty on Tuesday?

'Money has a value only because we give it value.  It's only worth what we say it's worth.

"Uhhhh . . . . "

"O.K.  I know.  I talk too much and too vaguely."

Here's the deal.  My price is X + expenses.  That's negotiable.  I don't tell you it's negotiable because as soon as I do you'll start negotiating!  And since it was me who taught you to negotiate, I'm not wild about bargaining with you.  The desire to teach is way to strong in me.

"I'm negotiable.  So is that other woman, the one whose book title is Ask for It!  And money isn't the only measure of value.  It would also be of value to me for your women's bar association to sell my book.  Of course I'll bring it with me to autograph and the like.  But you could also include it on your invitations.  If someone in your Bar Association blogs, they could give it a review.  If you haven't already pledged that you wouldn't give away anyone's email address, you could give me your mailing list so I can stay in touch with your members.  Each of your members also has her own network.  We could brainstorm about ways that you could give me the benefit of my pre-speech networking acumen to get more women to your convention.  It's hard to sell seats these days.  How many people are you expecting?  What if we double that?  Could you pay me my full fee then?

"None of us is a suit on a rack.  And what we can do for one another is so much greater than opening our wallets and shelling out a few dollars that money sometimes seems just laughable.  So let me say this again.  I know you've heard it before but I want to highlight it here again.

"I am a store of value and you are too.  My network, my social capital is a store of the store of value of each member in it.  And in that, you and I are both rich.

"Got it?"

My friend, my student, is smiling, even though I can't see that over the telephone.

"I got it."

"Now what was that offer again?"

 The next game changing She Negotiates workshop is still open for a few last-minute members.  We start on Monday.  Don't be a suit on a rack.  Join us!

(cross posted at She Negotiates)

Negotiating Women's Leadership with the PLUS Foundations

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on July 15, 2010

Fincher on Diversity on Mid-Summer Night's Eve

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on June 21, 2010

Women's Attitudes, Skills and Fears about Negotiation

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on June 11, 2010

The numbers below represent an unscientific poll of women in business concerning their skills, attitudes and fears about negotiation.  The women were asked to rate their agreement with the statements on a 1-10 scale with 1 being the least agreement and 10 being the greatest agreement.  The numbers represent the average answer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is an Excel spreadsheet of the data collected in this assessment.

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Closing the Wage Gap Rocking Your World

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on June 02, 2010

As the July She Negotiates workshop nears, I realize that the one force that might discourage women from participating is the same force the workshop is designed to (and will inevitably) resolve: the effect of the recession on women's already reduced earning power.

But let's take a look at what's at stake here - your economic future.

Why this is Mission Critical

The wage and income gap is stuck at 33% despite the gains made by women in business and the professions over the past thirty years. That's simply unacceptable to me. And because I know the reason why, I've committed myself to spreading the word and teaching the skills necessary to close that gap NOW.

You Know Why the Wage Gap Persists?

I believe I do.  I'm no social scientist, but I am an expert negotiator with a master of laws degree in conflict resolution and five years of full-time experience facilitating the negotiated resolution of commercial litigation.

I've been teaching women to negotiate for the past two years and here's what I learned - both on the ground and through extensive research.

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No Woman, No Matter How Successful, Ever Has a Pure Business Negotiation

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on May 31, 2010

Yesterday at the She Negotiates blog, I posted two quotes by a woman executive (President and CEO) who is blazingly successful in one of the most male-dominated industries in the world - construction of sports arenas.

Here they are again:

After she’d been in business for 15 years, a colleague told [Alvarado] she had two problems.

[Y]ou have a Hispanic company name, so you may be stereotyped [and] when you walk into a conference room to negotiate, you look like a woman.

When her son was five and asked if he wanted to grow up and be a “contractor like your mother and build sports facilities and schools,” he said “with disdain,

“No, that’s women’s work.”

Ba ba bump! (rim shot). Or as the old feminists used to say, "click."

My partner in negotiation-for-women crime is life-balance coach, Lisa Gates. 

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Why Should Women Learn How to Negotiate? A Call to Action

Posted by Victoria Pynchon on April 19, 2010

Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, in the must-read Ask for It!, define negotiation as "a tool to help change [or preserve] the status quo when change [or preservation] requires the agreement of another person.

Why should women learn to negotiate?  Here's the succinct and powerful message Babcock and Laschever have for us:

The consequences of not negotiating in the workplace are pretty extreme.  First and foremost, women earn much less money than men over the course of their careers. We calculated that just by not negotiating her first job offer—simply accepting what she's offered rather than negotiating for more—a woman sacrifices anywhere from half a million dollars to one and a half million dollars in lost income over the course of her career. This is a massive loss for a one-time negotiation—for avoiding what is usually no more than five minutes of discomfort—and it's an unnecessary loss, because most employers expect people to negotiate and therefore offer less than they're prepared to pay. And far more men than women negotiate their first offers. Since men also negotiate more than women throughout their careers—or negotiate more aggressively—the financial losses to women can be truly staggering.

Once upon a time, several generations of women all decided at pretty much the same moment that they did not wish to be economically marginalized anymore.  They didn't want to see themselves portrayed primarily as air-heads who couldn't successfully drive a car to the market, let alone manage a hedge fund.

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