Negotiation Law Blog

We've been talking about women's negotiation deficits for so long that we've completely neglected the men. This post is an attempt to cure that omission. Listen guys! We care about you. And we'd like to help you with your negotiation problem. 

But let's start where we've been for the past ten years ever since Linda Babcock of the Heinz Negotiation Academy for Women published Women Don't Ask. 

In Speaking Out About Women And Power, U.C. Berkeley Psychology Professor Tania Lombrozo describes a study in which women experienced gender blow back when they voiced their opinions “too ardently.” The social scientists conducting that study asked a group of men and women to evaluate a hypothetical CEO who was described as offering opinions as much as possible or as withholding opinions.

Unsurprisingly, female CEOs who offered opinions frequently were judged less competent and less suited to leadership than their sister CEOs who withheld their opinions. Equally unsurprising was the way in which the study judged the men – as more competent and better suited to leadership if they spoke up often and less so if they didn’t.

Too many people have concluded from studies like these that women are stuck between a gender rock and leadership hard place but men are not.

As Lombrozo is quick to note, however, men faced a complementary danger: of being perceived as poor leaders if they didn’t voice their opinions. Members of both sexes were penalized for failing to conform to traditional gender stereotypes.

Listen. We are all judged according to the culture’s expectation for our behavior. Women are expected to be kind, patient, tolerant, loving, giving and self-effacing. Men are expected to be judgmental, tough, self-seeking and self-promoting. We all suffer social sanctions – from harsh judgments to electoral defeats – when we step outside of society’s expectations.

Those who would caution us to “act our role” or suffer the consequences, however, are missing the bigger picture, as are those who urge us to ape the style of the opposite gender. Let’s take negotiation as our example.

In a recent article at Huffington Post, Joan Williams writes that women don’t negotiate because they’re not idiots, citing yet another study confirming the imposition of social sanctions on women who negotiate outside their gender role. Sara Laschever, co-author, with Linda Babcock, of Women Don’t Ask and Ask for It, immediately dropped by to assert that Williams’ article mischaracterized Babcock’s findings, explaining that the "study used only used one negotiation script, in which both the male and female negotiators asked for higher pay in a fairly aggressive way.

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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.

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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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We've had a busy week over at ForbesWoman in articles and blog posts covering:

The Davos World Economic Forum

The paucity of women at the Davos Economic Forum despite how rich the ones who attended are as described in this post by Forbes staff writer Louisa Kroll, The Richest Women at Davos.

Women's Davos Wardrobe Dilemmas covered by Moira Forbes as an unfortunate but still critical factor for the display of power necessary to be a player at the World Economic Forum.

A photo gallery of the executive conferences women CEOs love best.

The Continued Assault on the Glass Ceiling

Aman Singh's post on Why So Many Top Women Don't Make it to Executive Leadership.

Jenna Goudreau's Jobs Outlook:Careers Headed for the Trash Pile

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Whether we’re working on the transformation of women’s lives in the workplace, the home, or on the national stage, an unbelievably powerful network of women is growing, most of it under the radar of today’s power structure. There are numerous ways into this network – through finance, law, leadership, science, entrepreneurism, politics and dozens of others.  And there’s no better place to start than by buying, reading, and applying the lessons of Gloria Feldt’s No Excuses.

For a short review of Feldt's book, click here for post at ForbesWoman.

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! 

• UNCOUPLE YOUR PRESENT VALUE FROM WHAT YOU MADE LAST YEAR
  
  • your present compensation serves as a powerful anchor of your value to your employer's advantage
  • the following suggestions are a way of re-anchoring that value so that your starting point is greater than what you made this year
  •  recalibrate your value according to what you are worth in your employer's hands, i.e., what does your employer save or make based upon the work you do (this may require research on your part)
  • use that value in setting your desired compensation (also include the cost to your employer of replacing irreplaceable you)
• ASK DIAGNOSTIC QUESTIONS
  • begin asking your employer and superiors diagnostic questions (questions designed to learn what your employer needs, desires and prefers and what your employer is most concerned about in regard to the continued profitability of his/her business)
    • "how's business" is a great open ended diagnostic question that does not assume the answer
    • more specific questions include "what does the company need to accomplish in the first quarter of 2011 to meet its financial goals?"; "what are the company's first quarter financial goals?" "what do you see as the primary obstacles to achieving those goals?" "what do you see as the primary drivers of success in reaching those goals" etc. etc.
    • don't ask these questions impromptu; write them down as a way of brainstorming the most powerful questions and those that would be easiest to ask

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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.

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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.

Can we afford not to learn and teach these skills?  Cross-posted at She Negotiates.

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

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)

In  Workplace Negotiating Secrets From Bethenny's Shrink over at Forbes.com, Xavier Amador, the therapist on Bethany Getting Married? gives his "secrets" for "winning" workplace arguments.  What Amador suggests (below and at the link) is really just collaborative interest-based negotiation, but his catchy acronym - LEAP - is a good one to remember for all negotiations, whether you're brokering peace in the Middle East or getting your guy to put the toilet seat down.  If you read the article, and I highly recommend doing so,  you'll see that no one is "winning" any "argument."  Rather, people are finding ways to accomodate all of their needs simultaneously.