How do Working Women Use Negotiation?

THE PLACE OF NEGOTIATION IN OUR LIVES
Negotiation:

• A discussion intended to produce an agreement
• The activity or business of negotiating an agreement
• Coming to terms

We negotiate all the time (women less than men apparantly). Every time you and your partner agree who is going to put out the trash in exchange for making the dinner. Every time you let your kids talk you into “one more story Mom, then we’ll go to bed; promise”. Every time that you agree to take a smaller rise than you wanted so you can take a little more time off for the kids when you need to.

Negotiation is often unconscious

Negotiating is often more or less unconscious. Take the situation where you agree to answer a colleague’s call so they can get enough quiet time to finish that urgent report. Or you agree to cook all the meals this week even though it is your partner’s turn because they are under huge pressure at work.

Are you doing these things out of the goodness of your heart? Or because you fancy a career as a doormat? No of course you’re not.

The fact is that as you agree to do them there are certain, unspecified and probably unconscious expectations underlying your actions.

You expect that the person you have helped out will remember. You expect they will reciprocate in kind one of these days. We all see this as a kind of bank. You pay into the bank of co-operation with that person and you expect a positive balance when you need to make a withdrawal.

You may feel that you personally are not involved in negotiations very often. But negotiation is only one of a range of words we use to describe this particular activity.

Some of the other words you might use to describe this activity include:

Argue, Disagree Quarrel
Accommodate Agree Assure
Arrange Settle Contract
Quieten Manage Reassure
Dispute Row Clear up
Make certain Mediate Reconcile
Satisfy Work out

Better Negotiation Skills

Improving your negotiation skills does not just help you in once-yearly pay or general contract negotiations. Some of the areas where negotiation skills can help you include:

• Increase your chances of getting work you really love
• Get the salary you know you deserve.
• Get the promotion you want
• Improve teamwork and create a great atmosphere at work
• Achieve your goals through others (shadow negotiation).

If you want to start your own business, being able to negotiate effectively will help ensure you:

• Get access to the capital you need
• Win deals and have great relationships with your suppliers
• Keep customers/clients coming back because they are delighted with your services.
• Get the right staff working for you at the right rates
• Have great staff relations
• Ensure you are on good terms with official bodies (tax/vat, Health & Safety etc) at all times.
• Ensure your neighbours work happily with you to improve your surroundings

In your personal life brilliant negotiations skills would improve things by:

• Keeping your partner contented.
• Keeping the children happy even through the terrible two’s and awful adolescence.
• Maintaining good relationships between all members of your family most of the time (all of the time would be impossible for anyone).
• Ensuring your children know how do the same thing in their lives.
• Helping you to develop a great circle of friends

Who would have thought that improving your physical and mental health would be one benefit of being able to negotiate? Well it is because you:

• Have reduced stress at home and in the workplace
• Achieve more of what you want
• Have more time for activities, exercise etc
• Have improved your own and your family’s diet.

Social/hobbies

• Work to give more back to the community
• Get time to spend on hobbies/activities that you love and get the wherewithal to indulge yourself and your family.

Having better negotiation skills guarantees:

• Healthier relationships
• Greater life satisfaction
• Increased wealth
• Enhanced work outcomes.

Why is this important? Why am I pushing this point? I am pushing it because I want you to see how vital it is to your lifestyle that you are not just good at negotiation, but the very best you can be.

But if you are a woman, the chances are that you are not good at it, at least not nearly as good as the many men around you. A very generalised statement I know, but not only will I stick to my guns and repeat that women are not nearly as good at negotiation, as men, but they also tend to avoid it like the plague, leaving men to pick up all the gains, goodies and tidbits women leave on the negotiation table.
What do you think? Are women less happy to negotiate than men? Are they worse at it?

Are Women Socialised to be Victims?

John Worboys, a London cab driver was yesterday sentenced to an 'indeterminate' jail sentence with a minimum of 8 years to be served. His crime? Drugging, sexually assaulting and raping women. He was sentenced for attacking 12 women, but police now say they believe he probably attacked over 100 women in the last 5 years or so.

How did he do this and how was he able to carry on for so long without being caught?

His method was to pick up young, attractive, professional women late at night who looked as though they had been drinking. He then told them he had won a large sum of money and asked them to celebrate with him by joining him in a glass of champagne. The champagne was spiked with a powerful prescription drug and over-the-counter medicine. This mixture, aligned with the alcohol they had previously drunk, left the women so incapacitated he was able to rape and sexually assault them.

Because of the drugs, many of the women did not remember what had happened when they woke; or their memories were so vague, disorganised or unlikely that they put them down to a drunken nightmare, or were too ashamed to talk to anyone about them.

There is a key aspect to this story. It is the reason Worboys was able to attack so many women. It is what allowed Worboys to continue his appalling activities for so long. It is the explanation of why the police did not take sufficient action when some women went to them with complaints against the malevolent cab driver.

That key aspect is how women are socialised. From the time they are born girls are taught to be nice, to care about other’s feelings, not to be rude and not to put others in a position where they would feel bad. A very, very basic summary of a very complicated subject, summed up in the verse ‘sugar and spice and all things nice; that’s what little girls are made of’.

So what has this got to do with the rapist Worboys? Firstly, he was not able to persuade the women to take another drink because they had already been drinking. They accepted the drink because he created an atmosphere that said they would spoil his wonderful day if they refused. And because of their socialisation to keep others happy, they found it almost impossible to refuse his offer.

Secondly, those women who could remember some or all of what had happened to them were probably totally unable to explain to themselves why they would do something as ‘stupid’ as to accepted alcohol from a stranger they were alone with late at night. Because they felt at least partially responsible for what had happened, many of them did not report the attack, or talk about what they thought they remembered.

It is almost certainly the case that no-one around them explained that the vast majority of our behaviour is unconscious. That is was the way they were brought up by their parents, teachers, peers and society that made it almost impossible for them to refuse the drink and ‘spoil his wonderful day’

Thirdly, if little girls are socialised to be ‘sugar and spice and all things nice’, then little boys are ‘slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails’. They are socialised to be top dog. To try and get in a one-up position and put others into a one-down position. In other words, their behaviour comes from unconscious promptings that are almost diametrically opposed to those of women’s.

Without going into too much detail, I must say here that these levels of socialisation are not absolute. They are on a scale and some women tend more toward the male end of the scale, while some men tend more towards the female end.

I am going to take a punt and say it is likely that female police officers’ would on the whole, tend to be leaning towards the male end of the scale rather than towards the very female end purely because of the nature of the job.

I would also like to totally emphasise that neither end of the scale is better, and very few people, male or female, have much control over where they are because it comes from conditioning we undergo as children which becomes totally unconscious.

Female________________________________Male

Where situations such as the one describe above arise, it is likely that men will be completely unable to understand why a women would accept a drink in the first place. Put yourself in the position of a police officer, male or female, who thinks this. They will not have much sympathy for the victim, they will assume most of what happened resulted from her being drunk in the first place; and because her memories will be patchy, they will find her unreliable as a witness. In other words, they will find it easy to dismiss her accusations.

Ask yourself that question again – are women socialised to be victims? Is this another gender gap we can’t breach?

I believe the answer to that question is often ‘yes’, especially in cases like that outlined above. But I do not think it needs to stay that way. As soon as you become consciously aware of why you behave in certain ways, you can start changing your behaviour. And if you are a parent, you can be careful about how you and your family socialise both boys and girls, so that they do not carry on the same patterns that have had such disastrous results in this case.

Negotiated Myself into a new Investment Property

You will probably think I am mad. Buying property at a time like this. Well, whatever, I thought you might be interested to hear about the negotiation side of things.

The first part that was interesting is that I offered a price that was 20% lower than the vendor was asking. I was really tickled to find I felt rude about it. As if I was taking advantage. And you know who the vendor was? A bank. Who can be rude to a bank?

The point is, too many women do feel that way. We feel that way because we have been brought up to be twice nice, sugar and spice. We have been brought up to help others, not to grab, not to do anything that will make people think badly of us, and if we think anyone thinks badly of us, we feel terrible!

But business is business, and unless we women get over these feelings, men will continue to make more money than us, get better jobs than us, and it will be our own fault!

Our own fault because we can't help how we were brought up, but we can overcome that socialisation. I am 56 now and I am just beginning to find out about it and overcome it. Of course my age helps - there are some great advantages to getting older ladies, so don't be afraid of it.

So to help your career development, overcome that gender pay gap and make sure you get the job, pay and life you want, start practicing your negotiation skills.

Did I get the property? Yes, but for 15% off not 20%. Looking back, could I have done better? Yup; I am sure I could. But watch this space to see because the next offer is in and this time I will be hard as nails (it's a bank again - they negotiate through agents so it is very hard to negotiate in a principled way).

Is Your Approach at Work Spoiling Your Career Prospects?

Professor Deborah Tannen tells us men and women learn to deal with the world in very different ways, but very few of us are aware of this fact. Because most workplaces were created by men and men are in the majority in management, it is the male approach that tends to hold sway. Many people are beginning to think that it is these differences in the way men and women deal with the world that are the cause of the glass ceiling rather than out and out male prejudice.

Take this questionnaire to see if your approach at work causes the men around you to see you as less confident, capable and competent than you really are. Be one of the tiny minority who understands how to rocket through the glass ceiling and get exactly where you want to go.

Complete the questionnaire and receive a completely free analysis of the results. You will also receive some outline suggestions as to how you can change your approach if you feel you want to.



Click here to take our Online Survey

How to Ruin Your Career Without Even Trying

Dr Jennifer Peck, University of Queensland, studying the difference between the conversational styles of men and women, said that differences can be seen as early as the age of three or four.

Boys are apparently socialised right from the start to try to get top-dog status. They learn to try and impose their ‘expert status’ on others even at this early age. They are constantly trying to get into a one-up position and put others into a one-down position. Girls on the other hand are taught to create harmony, to be facilitative and to communicate in a way that keeps everyone in the group feeling as if they are of equal importance.

These behaviours are so ingrained that we have no idea we are using them, and are not aware how differently men and women behave and perceive the world. But why should they matter?

They matter because they can make the difference between success and failure in the workplace. They matter because, for women there is not just a glass ceiling, but glass walls between themselves and their male colleagues, and very little real communication actually gets through those walls.

Let me give you an example. Because men are used to trying to get into the one-up position, it is very normal for them to ‘blow their own trumpet’. They will go out of their way to let their boss know about their successes, and to try and cover up their failures. Women, on the other hand, socialised to keep that playing field level, have been trained from the start not to boast, not to push themselves forward, to look selfish or greedy. So they do not speak to their boss about their successes, and will mention their failures if they think it will make another member of the group feel more comfortable.

How does this affect them at work? Well suppose you are the (male) team leader of my team. You expect people to tell you about their successes, and never to let their failures appear in public, because that is how all people operate in the workplace isn’t it? My colleague Peter does just that. I, on the other hand do not mention my successes (I expect you to notice them), but in a team meeting I do mention a mistake I made because someone else was worried about doing just that and I wanted to help them save face. I thought I was ‘sharing’ and making him feel comfortable, but in your eyes I was putting myself in a one down position.

When the time comes for you to choose your assistant team leader, which of us looks more competent? Peter, who’s successes you know and who (as far as you know) never makes mistakes, or me who’s successes you have never heard of (one down) but who’s failures you have heard about (two down).

So Peter gets the promotion that I may have deserved not because he is male, but because of patterns of behaviour which his boss, Peter himself, and I were totally unaware of.

Now I would like to emphasise here that this is by not a feminist rant. Men and women have a certain approach to the world that are not worse or better than each other, just different. What I am concerned with here is both men and women learn about these differences and make an effort to change their behaviour so that they are not behaving in ways that are incomprehensible to each other!

What are some of the obvious behaviours that act as clues to the differences between men and women? Well how about the most well known, the fact that men will not ask for directions. This is because, unconsciously, they think asking for directions will put them in a one-down position.

This has more serious repercussions in some areas. Apparantly men are more reluctanct to ask for information at work for the same reason. This clearly can be a bad thing when they are in life and death situations such as in the cockpit of an aircraft, or the operating theatre of a hospital, not just for the passengers or patients, but for women as well. Women have no hesitation in asking questions if they don't know something. For the male consultants and captains hearing these questions, the (again unconscious) assumption is that the women are less competent than the men.

Have you ever noticed that women apologise more than men? This is ritualistic, intended to keep harmony in the group, and is not an indication that the woman apologising thinks she is an idiot. But that is the way it comes over to her male colleagues!

Are you beginning to see how these patterns of communication could have an adverse effect on your promotions chances, and how the more 'male' the working environment is (armed forces and financial organisations are just two examples that spring to mind) the more devastating that effect can be.

Have you had any experiences of this kind of 'discrimination'? Whether you are a man or a woman I would love to hear your stories of how communication has tripped you up, interfeared with a relationship or spoiled your chances at work.

Hiring or Being Hired

There are a lot of people out there anxiously seeking vacancies. If you are hiring, it may give you a sense of false security.

The fact is that when people are desperately searching for employment,it is more important than ever for you as an employer to make sure the hiring process is as foolproof as possible.

For the employer, actually replacing an employee who leaves is likely to cost between £5,000 and £20,000. And this figure does not even begin to account for the stress on other employees, dissatisfied customers and general demotivation when an employee leaves because they are wrong for the job or the job is wrong for them.

As well for the potential employee it is very stressful to have to move jobs unnecessarily. They may lose a couple of months pay, may even have to accept a salary cut.

Which is why I decided to put together a free guide to employing people successfully.

Whether you are looking for a job, or determined to make a totally correct decision when employing people, this guide will clarify the process and help you succeed.

Unfreezing a Frozen Negotiation

The weather is frozen, the snow is cold, wet/dry and white (yup, that is the wrong type of snow) and it seems the south east of the country is as static as the housing market, the stock market and the economy.

What, then, has all of this got to do with negotiating? Ask yourselves, what has caused all these areas to become frozen? Basically it is the same thing that causes negotiations to freeze up and that is a lack of proper, prior planning.

In the case of the banks, financiers and mortgage sellers, it has to be said that if they had done any sort of planning and forecasting at all, they could have worked out that the result of their actions would be the state we are in currently.

I focus on the financial sector rather than politicians, commentators or external market experts because only those in the financial industry had the information that would enable them to make the forecasts.

That is a crucial point - good planning can only be done if you have good information!

Transport in and around the capital seems to have come to a grinding halt. This has generally not been caused by lack of planning, but by risk management, another area of vital importance to the successful negotiator.

In this case, responsible authorities and management teams make the decision that the kind of conditions we are facing at the moment are so unusual, that it is not worth spending the money it would need to 'cure' the problem.