Negotiation Law Blog

I just spent the weekend with a group of incredibly engaged, brilliant and successful women lawyers at the Vail Sebastian Hotel where I keynoted the annual Conference of the Colorado Womens Bar Association.

Four questions stirred the greatest interest.

1. What are your super powers to get things done?
2. Do you have (or need) the authority to use them?
3. What can you use them to accomplish to further your own career?
4. If you're not using them, why not?

Last night at the cocktail party after my presentation (slideshow below) dozens of women approached me to tell me what their "super powers" were.

• Institutional Knowledge.
• Ability to assign work.
• Persuasiveness.
• Influence over firm power brokers.
• Willingness to study for and take foreign bar exams (a recurring nightmare in my book, but hey! "how is the firm recompensing you to study for and take it?")
• Ability to promote younger lawyers.
• Ability to form relationships with the firm's clients.
• Speaking ability.
• Writing ability.
• Ability to: take a great deposition, write jury instructions, try a case.
• A large social-professional network that can be tapped for favors and referrals.

And on and on and on.

If you have not made a list of your "super powers" please do so now. Ask yourself how they can benefit your career. Then ask yourself whether you're using them effectively to do so and if not, why not. 

Then go and prosper!

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.

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.”

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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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I'd like to take a little bit of your time to talk to you about sponsoring the Annual South Carolina Women Lawyers Conference scheduled for October 21, 2011. 

Why South Carolina? 

Because for the past 19 years the same group of women has been hosting an "I Believe Anita Hill Party." 

This year is the 20th anniversary of the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings which legitimized women's complaints of sexual harassment in the workplace. This is a particularly timely year in women's professional history to revisit the Hill-Thomas hearings in light of the DSK, Schwarzgenegger and Weiner scandals. 

Professor Hill will be the keynote speaker at the South Carolina Women Lawyers' Leadership Summit the day after the Anita Hill "party." Professor Hill will kick off the morning of the Summit on October 21 with the keynote speech.

That same afternoon, I will be leading a panel discussing the intersection of sexual harassment and implicit gender bias with Gloria Steinem (founder of Ms. Magazine and the Martin Luther King, Jr. of the second wave women's movement); Gloria Feldt, feminist activist and author of No Excuses, Nine Ways Women Can Change the Way We Think About Power; Shelby Knox, "star" of the Sundance documentary "The Education of Shelby Knox," now working for change.org, and, Jamia Wilson, Vice-President of Programs at the Women's Media Center in New York City, which trains and promotes women in media, an organization co-founded by Steinem and Jane Fonda.

This panel of two of the most noted leaders of the Second Wave Women's Movement and two Gen-Y feminist activists will talk about solutions to a problem to which no one yet has an answer.

My small start-up company, She Negotiates Consulting and Training, is working to promote women to positions of leadership through their own efforts within a supportive community of women in business and the professions.

She Negotiates is a Diamond Patron Sponsor of the South Carolina Women Lawyers' Conference and we invite you to sponsor this historic event too.

As a former attorney (and current mediator and AAA arbitrator) I am all too familiar with BigLaw's failure to retain and promote their women. We at She Negotiates believe that only by encouraging women to support other women will we finally close the wage, income and leadership gap that seems so intractable. 

The next firm to become a Diamond Sponsor can introduce the Feldt-Steinem, et al. panel and receive four tickets to the event. Here's the Sponsor Form. Please donate today. No donation is too small!

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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The week at our ForbesWoman She Negotiates blog.

From The Japanese Quake, Pearl Harbor, Karmic Payback and Cognitive Biases.

Pearl Harbor is unfortunately a trending Twitter topic because millions of little microphones have been given to people unable to think things through.

People who say the Japanese “deserve” it, like those who believe that AIDS is God’s punishment for immorality, are suffering from a cognitive bias called Fundamental Attribution Error. Here at She Negotiates, we’re deeply concerned with cognitive biases because they cause otherwise kind and rational people to believe that their neighbors are mean-spririted, ill-willed or downright evil.

And that prevents us from being compassionate, helping out in times of crisis or negotiating the resolution of disputes.

Instead of becoming mired in the debate between the  Japan-deserved-it tweeters and those who call the tweeters stupid jerks, let’s use the trending Pearl Harbor-Japanese earthquake topic as a teaching moment.

From Excuse Me for Having to be Rescued: Negotiating Order in Japan.

Today, the newspaper of record for Los Angeles, its own readership jumpy and restless, tells us that the Japanese are maintaining order by exhibiting behavior (“impeccable manners”) that most Westerners would consider overly deferential and needlessly self-sacrificing.

From Please Don't Buy Me Retail - Negotiating with Professionals

The Women Don't Ask author quoted her keynote fee as $10,000, which is an eminently fair price. A man of similar provenance would have asked for at least twenty grand. If you’re skeptical about that, check out the fees at BigSpeak which lists a couple of male Harvard Business Professors at $40,000 + (Clayton M. Christensen) and $20,001 to $40,000 (John A. Davis) while quoting a couple of women at the top of the corporate ladder at $7,500 to $10,000 (former Accenture managing partner and author Susan Bulter) and $10,001 to $20,000 (Kate White, Editor-in-Chief of Cosmopolitan and New York Times Best-Selling Author).

Go to npr here.

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.

Come on over to the ForbesWoman She Negotiates Blog to learn how to improve your negotiation performance by writing about it in advance. Excerpt below. Full article at the link.

In a recent effort to remedy the persistent problem of women performing poorly on math tests, researchers at the University of Chicago asked women to write about their test-anxiety or about their personal values. It didn’t matter whether the women wrote about their values or about their fears, having journaled in preparation for their math tests, their scores improved one full grade. See The Write Way to Reduce Test Anxiety at U.S. World and News Report.

[Researcher] Sian Beilock [said] that “[o]ne small snippet of writing can be enough to boost performance. Writing for eight or 10 minutes before the test put anxious students on a par with students who didn’t worry.”

Here’s the most important finding for women who continue to resist negotiating on their own behalves.

“Women who tended to believe that men were better than women at physics showed the greatest improvement” in test scores when they wrote about their values or fears in preparation for their examinations.

Journal your values and journal your fear

I’m particularly pleased to learn of this research because the She Negotiates training is conducted on an online journaling-learning platform. My business partner and I have long wondered why the women who take this course nearly always report a transformative result that impacts all areas of their lives.

“It’s because of the word journal,” I’ve said to my partner. “It allows women to go deep.”

We cannot simply give women negotiation strategies and tactics, expecting them to go out into the commercial world and use them.

We need to provide women with a community learning experience in which they’re able to connect their fear of negotiation to the culture in which that fear developed like the old consciousness raising sessions of the Second Wave Women’s Movement. We need not only negotiation skills, but the confidence and sense of entitlement to use them.

From Z is for Zen Master in A is for Asshole, the Grownups' ABCs of Conflict Resolution.

Dr. Kenneth Cloke tells us that every conflict “occurs at the intersection, or crossroads, between problems we need to solve in order to grow and skills we do not yet possess. With each level of growth and development, we experience fresh conflicts and transcend old ones that we not only successfully resolve, but develop the skills to move beyond.”

Let’s take marriage, or long-term relationships of any kind. Whenever I complain about a conflict with my husband, my friend the Buddhist reminds me that my husband is my Zen master. Her reminder focuses my attention back on myself and what I have to learn from the dispute I’m having with my husband. The two of us are like the couple in Anne Tyler’s novel, The Accidental Tourist. We sometimes feel like rivals competing for the “better housekeeper” award. Should I win the prize for insight and understanding even though I am haphazard and mercurial in my habits? Or should the blue ribbon be awarded to my husband who is methodical and steady? When we first met, he loved my spontaneity and I his dependable nature. Now his steadiness irritates me and my disorganization angers him.

This intractable meta dispute – the dispute on which all others are based – evaporates when I realize it has something to teach me about my own character and presents a challenge against which that character could possibly develop. What if we solved the immediate problem? “If only you’d put your car keys in the same place every time,” my husband says for the umpteenth time, “you wouldn’t have to spend twenty minutes searching for them.” I could choose to shift the argument to my home court (“you are too controlling”) or take the lesson that a little advance planning might ease rather than burden my busy day.

Here’s the transformative part. When I change in a fundamental way, the people in my life inevitably change in relation to my change. Once my husband and I resolve the order-versus-chaos problem, he will have to find someone else to play the "I'm more orderly than you" game or give it up altogether. If his desire is truly to help me lead a more efficient and productive life rather than “trying to control me,” the two of us can move on to greater, more interesting challenges than this one on which we have been stuck for years. The same is true for relations between workers, members of extended families, red states and blue, and America against the rest of the world.

If we were finally able to resolve our differences over, say, the separation of church and state, we could free up our energy to address other pressing problems, like poverty and intolerance, the environment and health care, and full employment for anyone with the desire to work as a contributing member of the society. Conflict among human societies has caused incalculable loss and suffering. It is also the way in which people have finally stood up for human rights, self-governance, peaceful dispute resolution, independence, and tolerance of differences.   If we encounter conflict with courage and self-reflection, it can and will lead us, and those who surround us, to greater freedom and authenticity, to greater self-reliance, acceptance, accountability, forgiveness and, at long last, a far more peaceful world.

"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

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

From today's "She Negotiates" lesson.

If negotiation is a conversation with agreement as its goal, we should not be wasting our time arguing with one another about whose point of view is the best. We should be talking to one another about how we can both achieve as many of the goals we both want to achieve as a result of our conversation.

You do not have to change anyone's mind to give them what they want to get. And you don't have to grudgingly accept half a loaf (a portion of the pie) if, unbeknownst to one another, you possess five items of value your bargaining partner wants or needs, and your bargaining partner possesses a dozen items of value you want or need. In a really effective negotiation, you may find that together you and your bargaining partner can whip up a dozen pies and end up with more than either of you had imagined.

Wouldn't you like to be learning how to do this instead of working on that sanctions motion for your adversary's bad faith refusal to answer interrogatories?

The next game-changing She Negotiates month-long coached course begins on September 16.  Stop trying to change people's minds and start changing the world!

And gentlemen, tell your women friends.  Husbands and significant others benefit from this course as well!  My own happily came back from the gym the other day saying "I did what you taught me; I got two extra months of gym membership free."

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)

Pictured:  Chere Estrin, Chairperson, Board of Directors, The OLP;  Editor-in-Chief, SUE for Women Litigators; Editor-in-Chief, KNOW the Magazine for Paralegals; CEO, Estrin Education, Inc.

I've written about happy and unhappy lawyers before - here and here but I've rarely framed the issue as succinctly or as well as Chere Estrin at the Organization of Legal Professionals.  In the sidebar to her article The Secrets to a Stress Free Career, Estrin says work does not give you stress. Feeling bad about work gives you stress. 

What does Estrin know? 

Quite a lot. 

"I used to be the most stressed-put person I knew," says Estrin.

I averaged 90 hour weeks in the legal field as an executive in a $5 billion corporation, traveled three weeks out of four, answered to some big shots who thought they owned the planet, and managed hundreds of people.  It wasn’t much different when I was a paralegal manager.  There were critical deadlines to meet, difficult attorneys to juggle, anxious clients to handle and something called a “minimum billable hours” requirement, now referred to as “suggested” hours in a more politically correct and less actionable environment.  I recently looked at a picture of myself during that era.  I was holding my new-born niece, Cristina, a joy to behold and I looked like I just escaped from a train wreck and stopped by to say howdy.

Sound familiar?  After debunking some stress myths (you should go right over there now to read them) Estrin suggests the following:  

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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.

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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Join Roxana at the Daily Asker- Take the challenge:  Can I ask for something everyday for a year?

I've just signed up for 365 days of asking.

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We’re celebrating Mothers Day by posting Blawg Review #263 at the She Negotiates Blog for one obvious and some not so obvious reasons.  The obvious reason is the word “She.”  The not-so-obvious reasons are:  (1) Mother’s Day was a peace and reconciliation movement before it was a holiday; and, (2) peace exists only when we have the political will to seek and the negotiation tools achieve the resolution of conflict.

In addition to the main post, we've also posted Blawg Review #263 on our She Networks, She Succeeds, She Transforms and She Resolves pages (up at the top of the blog).

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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