September 13, 2013 • 18 mins
Cristen and Caroline kick off their special four-part series on Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In: Women, the Workplace and the Will to Lead" with a chat about women and negotiation.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you From House to
works dot Com. Hello, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm
Caroline and I'm Christen. Today is the first of four
special addition episodes tied to Chryl Sandberg's lean In Foundation.
(00:25):
That's right in case you haven't heard of Caryl Sandberg.
She is the CEOO of Facebook, considered one of the
most powerful women in the world, which is a title
that you know. I'm sure if there had been ruined
the list, we would have also been on their Caroline, um,
But we are teaming up to focus in on the
book that Sandberg wrote called len In, Women, Work and
(00:48):
the Will to Lead. And we're gonna kick off the
special four part Friday series with negotiation because if you
are in the middle of your career or just starting out,
learning how to negotiate as a woman, it's such a
crucial skill. In Caroline, I'm embarrassed to say that I
(01:10):
really have not done a good job negotiating. Uh. Yeah,
you could say that I haven't done a good job
because I've never done it. Yeah. When I was offered
my first job, I just took it. I just took it.
What about you? Agreed? Also I second that, Um, but
I think mine, you know, not that this is an excuse,
but honestly, I've been so excited to leave past jobs,
(01:33):
you know, And I mean that that has driven like
a gratitude aspect of like, yes, thank you, that's more
than I made, and I'm so glad to get out
of here. I'll take it. Whereas I have a feeling
that if we were to ask a lot of men
about this, they would say, yeah, of course, I negotiated
for my for my first job. I even raised this
issue with my boyfriend and asked him if he negotiated
(01:55):
for his job, and he kind of laughed and said, yeah,
I definitely did, you know, because I just wanted to
make more money and it was so cut and dry.
I was like, well, I mind blowing, Yeah, it was
so it was so simple. Um, So let's dig into
how women can negotiate, because the answer for women of
(02:16):
how do you negotiate is not just do it like
a man, right, because that's really probably not going to
get you the results that you want. And in case
do you have lean In or are listening to the
audiobook version of it, which you can download over from
audible dot com, the book reference for this is chapter three,
Success and Likability, and Sheryl Sandberg shares her own story
(02:41):
about her fear of negotiation when she was getting the
job at Facebook. Yeah, and it it, you know, speaking
of mind blowing, the fact that uh, an impressive woman
like Cheryl Sandberg wasn't out there negotiating, you know, is
quite surprising. But it also makes me feel a lot
better that. Okay, this is something that we as women
(03:01):
kind of have to force ourselves to do against kind
of an instinct, right, And the fact of the matter
is is that when women negotiate, we are putting ourselves
at a higher social risk of making a negative impression
on whomever we're negotiating with. What and that's whether our
boss is male or female. Um, But there are plenty
(03:23):
of ways to adjust how we approach negotiation that can
really factor in those risks and help us get what
we want. Because the fact of the matter is, Caroline,
if we don't negotiate, we're just cheating ourselves out of cash.
And I hate reading these statistics because I know that
I've already done this to myself. Yeah, I mean, the
(03:43):
cost of not negotiating is years of additional work that
you will have to do to make up that salary
gap when compared to a coworker who has negotiated. So
the example that Margaret A. Neil gives he's the professor
of Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and
the co director of the Executive Program for Women Leaders.
(04:06):
One example that she gives is that if two people
are offered a job and one negotiates a seven thousand
dollar increase over thirty years, that person will be making
one hundred thousand more per year. Okay, well, my blood
pressure hasn't gone off a little bit at all. Um.
And this issue of women negotiating or actually not negotiating,
(04:30):
really came up a lot with the publication of Carnegie
Melan economists Lenda Babcox book Women Don't Ask, Negotiation and
the Gender Divide, which highlighted some striking differences between men
and women's workplace negotiation. UM. For instance, she looked at
this giant group of MBA's and she found a seven
(04:51):
point six difference in the salaries that women were making
versus men. And so she started doing some digging and
found that fifty seven percent of men had negotiated for
that higher salary. Whereas only seven percent of women negotiated,
and of those who negotiated, the average salary bump was
(05:12):
seven percent over seven percent actually was seven point six percent.
And in looking at that discrepancy between salaries, you know,
the blame had been placed to a certain extent on
institutional sexism. And that's not to say that that doesn't exist,
but just the fact that scent of men compared to
seven percent of women negotiate, I mean, that is a
(05:33):
major gap. Yeah. And if she even looked at beyond
the NBA group and she found that even when you
control for different professions and educational levels, women working full
time who have not taken time off to have kids
still earn about eleven percent less than men with equivalent
(05:54):
education and experience. So why is that? Yes, we've talked
a lot about the gender wage gap, but it negotiation
probably has a lot to do with it. So what
is going on? Um? This is another thing that Margaret A.
Neil is an expert on and she looked into and
she gave a really great talk on this that you
(06:14):
can find over at Lenan dot org. And she talks
about sort of a stereotype threat that's an action and
we hear a lot about the stereotype threat when it
comes to the gender gap in women in science, and
this idea that you know, girls don't might not perform
as well on science and math because we internalize this
(06:35):
idea that girls read boys do math, we're just not
as good at that. And so in a similar way,
this assumption that whole women are just not as good
as negotiation. Negotiation is kind of a guy thing. We
internalize that as well, and so when we walk into
our boss's office needing to ask for more cash, we
have expectations that are driving behavior, leading us to either
(06:57):
not negotiate at all or not negotiate your you well right.
She basically says that when you have lower expectations, you
get lower outcomes. And we have a lot of fears
that that this is rooted in, including coming across as
to demanding or greedy or even socially awkward, and so
she says that women especially should remain cognizant of three
(07:19):
big things before they start negotiating, thinking about, for instance,
why am I asking, rather than just focusing on the money.
She says that women would benefit from taking a more
communal orientation looking at negotiation is a form of problem solving,
opening up a conversation to find a solution, rather than
(07:41):
just walking in and you know, fist pounding and demanding something. Right,
and also rather than just focusing on what you're good
at and how the more money would help, you, really
demonstrating your concern for your counterpart, whether that's you know,
your boss, or your team or your company. And that
would tie into the second aspect of how how am
I asking for this? So she talked about studies that
(08:04):
have found that male evaluators penalized women more than men
for single issue negotiation asking for more money because they
were perceived as being too demanding and not nice. So
instead of just going in and just pointing straight for
the money, she suggests communal packaging as well, broadening the
(08:24):
scope of your negotiation. Right, but you know what, men
weren't the only ones penalizing women. Women also penalized women. Great, Yeah,
so even you know, it's not even like there's some
kind of sister le bond or you know, like I
get you girl. No, there's none of that. If you
are going in purely saying hey, I need more money
(08:46):
than men and women, bosses are going to consider you.
You know negative well, in the third point of for
whom am I asking? Was something that had never really
dawned on me. But Neil talked about how you're really
that are off negotiating just for yourself if you're a man.
So maybe as a woman, think of yourself more as
a representative not only of your own needs, but of
(09:09):
other people's needs as well. Yeah, and she Neil points
out that women outperformant and representational negotiation between fourteen percent.
And so maybe Caroline, you and I should just tag
team and when I need to raise you can come
in on my bath and represent me. Yeah, because it's
it's an entirely different conversation that has to happen if
(09:31):
you're a woman. I feel like and you know, as
is evidenced by all of this stuff that Margaret Neil
is talking about, I mean, you really have to go
in and kind of lay it out, as you know,
not only I have done this and I've benefited the
company this way, but maybe like, how can we help
each other? What are the problems that need solving? I
can do that, but I need you to help me. Yeah,
And once you adjust that mentality of why I am
(09:54):
I asking? How am I doing it, you know, thinking
more of a communal approach. You also offers four concrete
steps to being more effective at negotiation, the kind of
prep work that you need to do, which starts out
with just assessing the situation of thinking, Okay, can I
have influence on this outcome? Do the benefits outweigh the
(10:17):
potential cost of negotiating and going in and making this
social risk and asking for more. Yeah, And then she
stresses preparation number one, understanding your interests, what you are
trying to achieve by doing this negotiation, and to understand
the interests and preferences of your counterparts. So don't go
in their guns blazing looking out just for yourself. Have
(10:40):
in mind how you can help your counterpart. Yeah, and
it's probably not too hard to put yourself in your
boss's shoes for a minute and think about what their
bottom line is, what kind of needs they might have,
and consider that rather than as I sometimes have done,
you know, mentally trying to prep myself for making an
ask something of just coming coming up with you know,
(11:02):
defenses of of why they'd be you know, shooting me
down to be able to shoot at them back right exactly,
And the next step is the ask itself. You want
to engage with your counterpart with the knowledge that you
have unique information and that they if they didn't need
your unique information, they wouldn't need you. They wouldn't be
trying to hire you or you know, trying to give
(11:24):
you money at all. So you are armed with something unique.
And it sounds like that's sort of another way of saying,
you know, know your value, respect your own value, not
just walking in, you know, groveling, but say, hey, you
know what I have skills? Yeah, I mean seriously, when
you sit down and think about and I'm saying the
(11:44):
general you anybody listening, when you sit down and think
about all of the things you do during the day.
I mean it might be just basic stuff, but when
you really look at the bigger picture of all that
you do and all that you can do, I bet
you are really undervaluing yourself. Yeah. Um. And in terms
of like you're talking about Caroline, sort of considering all
of those things that you do and all the different responsibilities,
(12:07):
big or small, that you might have. Neil then recommends
packaging things. Don't negotiate issue by issue, like a line
item of like money, vacation, et cetera, because that's going
to turn it into a win lose conversation. But instead,
if you package the issues, then you can kind of
make trades with your boss. You can turn it into
(12:29):
rather than a win lose more of an if then,
so say you want ten thousand dollars, Well if the
boss is like, well, I can give you five, and say,
well what if you give me five and two weeks
more vacation, kind of moving things around that way, right exactly, Yeah,
you don't want to make it adversarial, right, this is
(12:50):
a discussion. You're trying to help each other, and I think,
especially if you are a woman, you don't want to
make it adversarial because of those, you know, the studies
talking about how women do tend to be penalized more
for coming off, as you know, very brash and aggressive.
So we did find an entire lengthy discussion on Reddit
(13:10):
about negotiating and the comments under the piece somebody had
basically posted like, women, look, you need to go in
there and you need to negotiate. You know, because I
present women with a number and a lot of times
they just accept it or they awkwardly negotiate. Maybe they
don't even have a higher number in mind, and I
have all this this sack of money that I could
be giving to them, and they're not claiming it. And
(13:32):
the comments under it were right in that same vein
of like, I did this. I took what was mine,
what I deserved, but I did it in a way
that wasn't confrontational because in this conversation people were basically
trading information about how you know men do that in
in a discussion about salary, men are not being like, well,
(13:55):
I don't think you're valuing my worth. It's more like, well,
what about this number? And then they work their way
down to something that they're both comfortable with. Were as
opposed to a lot of women who, like we have Kristen,
I have just been like, okay, thank you. Yeah, And
it doesn't mean that we are incompetent in anyway. Sincerely,
when I got that first job out offer right out
(14:15):
of college, it did not even dawn on me, which
makes me wonder whether a if we just need to
put a copy of Leanin into the hands of every
you know, senior female senior in college. Um, but it
was something that was never taught to me in college.
It was never anything that uh, my parents, you know,
through no fault of their own, but nothing my parents
(14:36):
ever talked to me about. I didn't know to do
it right. I just had, you know, as a print
journalism major in college, I had very low expectations, you know,
like I didn't expect to be making any money. And
so when I got my newspaper job, the amount that
he offered me, although it was not high by any standards,
was so much higher than what I expected to get
(14:58):
that I pretty much did a back flip. Was like, Okay,
where do I find sure? Well, especially making that leap,
I'm sure from you know. I don't know about you,
but when I was in college, I was making lots
of hourly wages, and then once you jump into salary
and those numbers are just so much bigger. You're like, well,
this must be the hundreds of dollars an hour. Where
you're like, wait, no, I should like I should go
(15:19):
back to that hourly job. But I do feel like
negotiation is such an important jumping off point for this
four part series that we're doing on lean In, because
I know that you and I are not alone in
not negotiating and not knowing how to to do it.
I know other girlfriends I've talked to who have been
(15:39):
in similar boats, like, yeah, I really didn't do that,
um and or didn't do it soon enough. Now I negotiate,
but I hate that I didn't do it ten years ago. Sure,
And what I really want to stress, the thing that
opened my eyes most of all in this topic is
that you're not having a fight. You're not going in
(16:00):
there and being like, hey, give me more money. I
deserve it. You're not going in there as some brady,
little whiney kid. You are going in there as a competent,
you know, highly skilled employee who probably deserves a higher
salary because you probably are contributing more than you even
(16:20):
think you are. So what you're doing is you're having
a discussion with your supervisor or your boss or whoever
it is who's responsible for this. You are not going
in there having a confrontation. And that is what I
really am glad I took away from this because it
does reduce that fear factor. Yeah, and the fact of
the matter is, too is it a hiring manager is
probably going to offer you the lowest amount possible. There's
(16:43):
wiggle room in there. That was one thing that was
in that Reddit thread, which was one reason why we
wanted to bring it up because the hiring manager was saying, no, really,
I can give you more money. I can give everybody
more money, but you have to ask for more money.
I'm not just going to hand it over. I'm going
to offer you the bottom of the bear. All so, women,
it's time for us to stop accepting the bottom of
(17:04):
the barrel. And I do highly recommend checking out Margaret
Neil's presentation on lean In. It's about twenty five minutes,
but it's twenty minutes well worth your time, um, because
she lays it out in a in a very succinct
kind of way, and it's twenty minutes that could literally
pay off for years to come. Yea. So we hope
(17:27):
that you've enjoyed this first installment of stuff Mo'm Never
told you and lean In. This will be coming out
every Friday for the next few weeks. And the next
topic that we're going to tackle is fear in the workplace.
All right, you're in. You hopefully negotiated your climbing your
way up there. Now, what about fear of do I
(17:49):
really deserve this? That I really just do all of
that good work? Yeah? You did well. Now we want
to hear from listeners. We would love for you to
over to our Facebook page, Facebook dot com slash stuff
mom never told you and tell us your work experiences.
Have you negotiated for salary? Have you not and regretted it?
(18:10):
Or have you been successful and now you have a
pool full of money just like screwge McDuck. Yeah, let
us know over on Facebook or tweet us at Mom's
Stuff podcast. And if you would like to learn more
about lean In, you can also find them on Facebook,
Facebook dot com, slash lean in, or over on their
website leanin dot org. And I also highly recommend following
(18:32):
their tumbler which is lean in dot tumbler dot com.
And we will see you next Friday for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Doesn't have stuff works
dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you From House to
works dot Com. Hello, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm
Caroline and I'm Christen. Today is the first of four
special addition episodes tied to Chryl Sandberg's lean In Foundation.
(00:25):
That's right in case you haven't heard of Caryl Sandberg.
She is the CEOO of Facebook, considered one of the
most powerful women in the world, which is a title
that you know. I'm sure if there had been ruined
the list, we would have also been on their Caroline, um,
But we are teaming up to focus in on the
book that Sandberg wrote called len In, Women, Work and
(00:48):
the Will to Lead. And we're gonna kick off the
special four part Friday series with negotiation because if you
are in the middle of your career or just starting out,
learning how to negotiate as a woman, it's such a
crucial skill. In Caroline, I'm embarrassed to say that I
(01:10):
really have not done a good job negotiating. Uh. Yeah,
you could say that I haven't done a good job
because I've never done it. Yeah. When I was offered
my first job, I just took it. I just took it.
What about you? Agreed? Also I second that, Um, but
I think mine, you know, not that this is an excuse,
but honestly, I've been so excited to leave past jobs,
(01:33):
you know, And I mean that that has driven like
a gratitude aspect of like, yes, thank you, that's more
than I made, and I'm so glad to get out
of here. I'll take it. Whereas I have a feeling
that if we were to ask a lot of men
about this, they would say, yeah, of course, I negotiated
for my for my first job. I even raised this
issue with my boyfriend and asked him if he negotiated
(01:55):
for his job, and he kind of laughed and said, yeah,
I definitely did, you know, because I just wanted to
make more money and it was so cut and dry.
I was like, well, I mind blowing, Yeah, it was
so it was so simple. Um, So let's dig into
how women can negotiate, because the answer for women of
(02:16):
how do you negotiate is not just do it like
a man, right, because that's really probably not going to
get you the results that you want. And in case
do you have lean In or are listening to the
audiobook version of it, which you can download over from
audible dot com, the book reference for this is chapter three,
Success and Likability, and Sheryl Sandberg shares her own story
(02:41):
about her fear of negotiation when she was getting the
job at Facebook. Yeah, and it it, you know, speaking
of mind blowing, the fact that uh, an impressive woman
like Cheryl Sandberg wasn't out there negotiating, you know, is
quite surprising. But it also makes me feel a lot
better that. Okay, this is something that we as women
(03:01):
kind of have to force ourselves to do against kind
of an instinct, right, And the fact of the matter
is is that when women negotiate, we are putting ourselves
at a higher social risk of making a negative impression
on whomever we're negotiating with. What and that's whether our
boss is male or female. Um, But there are plenty
(03:23):
of ways to adjust how we approach negotiation that can
really factor in those risks and help us get what
we want. Because the fact of the matter is, Caroline,
if we don't negotiate, we're just cheating ourselves out of cash.
And I hate reading these statistics because I know that
I've already done this to myself. Yeah, I mean, the
(03:43):
cost of not negotiating is years of additional work that
you will have to do to make up that salary
gap when compared to a coworker who has negotiated. So
the example that Margaret A. Neil gives he's the professor
of Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and
the co director of the Executive Program for Women Leaders.
(04:06):
One example that she gives is that if two people
are offered a job and one negotiates a seven thousand
dollar increase over thirty years, that person will be making
one hundred thousand more per year. Okay, well, my blood
pressure hasn't gone off a little bit at all. Um.
And this issue of women negotiating or actually not negotiating,
(04:30):
really came up a lot with the publication of Carnegie
Melan economists Lenda Babcox book Women Don't Ask, Negotiation and
the Gender Divide, which highlighted some striking differences between men
and women's workplace negotiation. UM. For instance, she looked at
this giant group of MBA's and she found a seven
(04:51):
point six difference in the salaries that women were making
versus men. And so she started doing some digging and
found that fifty seven percent of men had negotiated for
that higher salary. Whereas only seven percent of women negotiated,
and of those who negotiated, the average salary bump was
(05:12):
seven percent over seven percent actually was seven point six percent.
And in looking at that discrepancy between salaries, you know,
the blame had been placed to a certain extent on
institutional sexism. And that's not to say that that doesn't exist,
but just the fact that scent of men compared to
seven percent of women negotiate, I mean, that is a
(05:33):
major gap. Yeah. And if she even looked at beyond
the NBA group and she found that even when you
control for different professions and educational levels, women working full
time who have not taken time off to have kids
still earn about eleven percent less than men with equivalent
(05:54):
education and experience. So why is that? Yes, we've talked
a lot about the gender wage gap, but it negotiation
probably has a lot to do with it. So what
is going on? Um? This is another thing that Margaret A.
Neil is an expert on and she looked into and
she gave a really great talk on this that you
(06:14):
can find over at Lenan dot org. And she talks
about sort of a stereotype threat that's an action and
we hear a lot about the stereotype threat when it
comes to the gender gap in women in science, and
this idea that you know, girls don't might not perform
as well on science and math because we internalize this
(06:35):
idea that girls read boys do math, we're just not
as good at that. And so in a similar way,
this assumption that whole women are just not as good
as negotiation. Negotiation is kind of a guy thing. We
internalize that as well, and so when we walk into
our boss's office needing to ask for more cash, we
have expectations that are driving behavior, leading us to either
(06:57):
not negotiate at all or not negotiate your you well right.
She basically says that when you have lower expectations, you
get lower outcomes. And we have a lot of fears
that that this is rooted in, including coming across as
to demanding or greedy or even socially awkward, and so
she says that women especially should remain cognizant of three
(07:19):
big things before they start negotiating, thinking about, for instance,
why am I asking, rather than just focusing on the money.
She says that women would benefit from taking a more
communal orientation looking at negotiation is a form of problem solving,
opening up a conversation to find a solution, rather than
(07:41):
just walking in and you know, fist pounding and demanding something. Right,
and also rather than just focusing on what you're good
at and how the more money would help, you, really
demonstrating your concern for your counterpart, whether that's you know,
your boss, or your team or your company. And that
would tie into the second aspect of how how am
I asking for this? So she talked about studies that
(08:04):
have found that male evaluators penalized women more than men
for single issue negotiation asking for more money because they
were perceived as being too demanding and not nice. So
instead of just going in and just pointing straight for
the money, she suggests communal packaging as well, broadening the
(08:24):
scope of your negotiation. Right, but you know what, men
weren't the only ones penalizing women. Women also penalized women. Great, Yeah,
so even you know, it's not even like there's some
kind of sister le bond or you know, like I
get you girl. No, there's none of that. If you
are going in purely saying hey, I need more money
(08:46):
than men and women, bosses are going to consider you.
You know negative well, in the third point of for
whom am I asking? Was something that had never really
dawned on me. But Neil talked about how you're really
that are off negotiating just for yourself if you're a man.
So maybe as a woman, think of yourself more as
a representative not only of your own needs, but of
(09:09):
other people's needs as well. Yeah, and she Neil points
out that women outperformant and representational negotiation between fourteen percent.
And so maybe Caroline, you and I should just tag
team and when I need to raise you can come
in on my bath and represent me. Yeah, because it's
it's an entirely different conversation that has to happen if
(09:31):
you're a woman. I feel like and you know, as
is evidenced by all of this stuff that Margaret Neil
is talking about, I mean, you really have to go
in and kind of lay it out, as you know,
not only I have done this and I've benefited the
company this way, but maybe like, how can we help
each other? What are the problems that need solving? I
can do that, but I need you to help me. Yeah,
And once you adjust that mentality of why I am
(09:54):
I asking? How am I doing it, you know, thinking
more of a communal approach. You also offers four concrete
steps to being more effective at negotiation, the kind of
prep work that you need to do, which starts out
with just assessing the situation of thinking, Okay, can I
have influence on this outcome? Do the benefits outweigh the
(10:17):
potential cost of negotiating and going in and making this
social risk and asking for more. Yeah, And then she
stresses preparation number one, understanding your interests, what you are
trying to achieve by doing this negotiation, and to understand
the interests and preferences of your counterparts. So don't go
in their guns blazing looking out just for yourself. Have
(10:40):
in mind how you can help your counterpart. Yeah, and
it's probably not too hard to put yourself in your
boss's shoes for a minute and think about what their
bottom line is, what kind of needs they might have,
and consider that rather than as I sometimes have done,
you know, mentally trying to prep myself for making an
ask something of just coming coming up with you know,
(11:02):
defenses of of why they'd be you know, shooting me
down to be able to shoot at them back right exactly,
And the next step is the ask itself. You want
to engage with your counterpart with the knowledge that you
have unique information and that they if they didn't need
your unique information, they wouldn't need you. They wouldn't be
trying to hire you or you know, trying to give
(11:24):
you money at all. So you are armed with something unique.
And it sounds like that's sort of another way of saying,
you know, know your value, respect your own value, not
just walking in, you know, groveling, but say, hey, you
know what I have skills? Yeah, I mean seriously, when
you sit down and think about and I'm saying the
(11:44):
general you anybody listening, when you sit down and think
about all of the things you do during the day.
I mean it might be just basic stuff, but when
you really look at the bigger picture of all that
you do and all that you can do, I bet
you are really undervaluing yourself. Yeah. Um. And in terms
of like you're talking about Caroline, sort of considering all
of those things that you do and all the different responsibilities,
(12:07):
big or small, that you might have. Neil then recommends
packaging things. Don't negotiate issue by issue, like a line
item of like money, vacation, et cetera, because that's going
to turn it into a win lose conversation. But instead,
if you package the issues, then you can kind of
make trades with your boss. You can turn it into
(12:29):
rather than a win lose more of an if then,
so say you want ten thousand dollars, Well if the
boss is like, well, I can give you five, and say,
well what if you give me five and two weeks
more vacation, kind of moving things around that way, right exactly, Yeah,
you don't want to make it adversarial, right, this is
(12:50):
a discussion. You're trying to help each other, and I think,
especially if you are a woman, you don't want to
make it adversarial because of those, you know, the studies
talking about how women do tend to be penalized more
for coming off, as you know, very brash and aggressive.
So we did find an entire lengthy discussion on Reddit
(13:10):
about negotiating and the comments under the piece somebody had
basically posted like, women, look, you need to go in
there and you need to negotiate. You know, because I
present women with a number and a lot of times
they just accept it or they awkwardly negotiate. Maybe they
don't even have a higher number in mind, and I
have all this this sack of money that I could
be giving to them, and they're not claiming it. And
(13:32):
the comments under it were right in that same vein
of like, I did this. I took what was mine,
what I deserved, but I did it in a way
that wasn't confrontational because in this conversation people were basically
trading information about how you know men do that in
in a discussion about salary, men are not being like, well,
(13:55):
I don't think you're valuing my worth. It's more like, well,
what about this number? And then they work their way
down to something that they're both comfortable with. Were as
opposed to a lot of women who, like we have Kristen,
I have just been like, okay, thank you. Yeah, And
it doesn't mean that we are incompetent in anyway. Sincerely,
when I got that first job out offer right out
(14:15):
of college, it did not even dawn on me, which
makes me wonder whether a if we just need to
put a copy of Leanin into the hands of every
you know, senior female senior in college. Um, but it
was something that was never taught to me in college.
It was never anything that uh, my parents, you know,
through no fault of their own, but nothing my parents
(14:36):
ever talked to me about. I didn't know to do
it right. I just had, you know, as a print
journalism major in college, I had very low expectations, you know,
like I didn't expect to be making any money. And
so when I got my newspaper job, the amount that
he offered me, although it was not high by any standards,
was so much higher than what I expected to get
(14:58):
that I pretty much did a back flip. Was like, Okay,
where do I find sure? Well, especially making that leap,
I'm sure from you know. I don't know about you,
but when I was in college, I was making lots
of hourly wages, and then once you jump into salary
and those numbers are just so much bigger. You're like, well,
this must be the hundreds of dollars an hour. Where
you're like, wait, no, I should like I should go
(15:19):
back to that hourly job. But I do feel like
negotiation is such an important jumping off point for this
four part series that we're doing on lean In, because
I know that you and I are not alone in
not negotiating and not knowing how to to do it.
I know other girlfriends I've talked to who have been
(15:39):
in similar boats, like, yeah, I really didn't do that,
um and or didn't do it soon enough. Now I negotiate,
but I hate that I didn't do it ten years ago. Sure,
And what I really want to stress, the thing that
opened my eyes most of all in this topic is
that you're not having a fight. You're not going in
(16:00):
there and being like, hey, give me more money. I
deserve it. You're not going in there as some brady,
little whiney kid. You are going in there as a competent,
you know, highly skilled employee who probably deserves a higher
salary because you probably are contributing more than you even
(16:20):
think you are. So what you're doing is you're having
a discussion with your supervisor or your boss or whoever
it is who's responsible for this. You are not going
in there having a confrontation. And that is what I
really am glad I took away from this because it
does reduce that fear factor. Yeah, and the fact of
the matter is, too is it a hiring manager is
probably going to offer you the lowest amount possible. There's
(16:43):
wiggle room in there. That was one thing that was
in that Reddit thread, which was one reason why we
wanted to bring it up because the hiring manager was saying, no, really,
I can give you more money. I can give everybody
more money, but you have to ask for more money.
I'm not just going to hand it over. I'm going
to offer you the bottom of the bear. All so, women,
it's time for us to stop accepting the bottom of
(17:04):
the barrel. And I do highly recommend checking out Margaret
Neil's presentation on lean In. It's about twenty five minutes,
but it's twenty minutes well worth your time, um, because
she lays it out in a in a very succinct
kind of way, and it's twenty minutes that could literally
pay off for years to come. Yea. So we hope
(17:27):
that you've enjoyed this first installment of stuff Mo'm Never
told you and lean In. This will be coming out
every Friday for the next few weeks. And the next
topic that we're going to tackle is fear in the workplace.
All right, you're in. You hopefully negotiated your climbing your
way up there. Now, what about fear of do I
(17:49):
really deserve this? That I really just do all of
that good work? Yeah? You did well. Now we want
to hear from listeners. We would love for you to
over to our Facebook page, Facebook dot com slash stuff
mom never told you and tell us your work experiences.
Have you negotiated for salary? Have you not and regretted it?
(18:10):
Or have you been successful and now you have a
pool full of money just like screwge McDuck. Yeah, let
us know over on Facebook or tweet us at Mom's
Stuff podcast. And if you would like to learn more
about lean In, you can also find them on Facebook,
Facebook dot com, slash lean in, or over on their
website leanin dot org. And I also highly recommend following
(18:32):
their tumbler which is lean in dot tumbler dot com.
And we will see you next Friday for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Doesn't have stuff works
dot com
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