Sara Caputo Teaches "Busyness in Balance" at She Negotiates University

Perhaps you've taken our signature course, She Negotiates, and now you're wanting to take all the fabulous learning and negotiate your personal productivity. In other words, to do something for YOU.

Take a listen to Sara Caputo of Radiant Organizing speaking with Lorrie Thomas of Wild Web Women on BlogTalk Radio today. Sara will be teaching "Busyness in Balance: Tools to Inspire Productivity" for She Negotiates University starting October 4 and she is EXCEPTIONAL!

Listen to internet radio with Wild Web Women Show on Blog Talk Radio

To register for Busyness in Balance, go HERE.

it's a gene eat gene world and, yup! women don't ask

I try not to take too many lessons from evolutionary biologists because I'm told by friends who know better that it's "reductive" and misleading, not to mention divisive when the gene lessons learned suggest a gender war.

But it's not as if the geneticists are making this stuff up.

[M]ice with two male genomes had large bodies and small brains.  With the double female genome mix, it was the other way around.  Evidently the maternal and paternal genomes have opposite effects on the size of the brain.

Creation, like all negotiations, is a mixed motive exchange.

When the mother's and the father's genes meet in the embryo, they begin to compete with one another (surprise surprise!)  The process is called "imprinting."  The gene responsible for the growth of the fetus, for instance (IGF-2)

is active in the paternal genome but . . . inactivated in the genome the fetus receives from its mother.

The leading explanation . . . is that there is a clash of interests between the fetus, whose purpose is to extract as much nutrition as possible, and the mother, whose interests lie in allocating her resources evently to all the other children she may bear in the future.

The upshot on this particular gene (the one controlling for consumption) is that the "paternal copy of the IGF-2 gene always ask[s] for more, and the maternal copy refus[es] to ask at all."

(!!)

It's all much more complex and textured and dimensional, of course, this theory of "gene imprinting" discussed in yesterday's New York Science Times article Tug of War Pits Genes of Parents in the Fetus. And yet as we explore negotiation strengths and weaknesses that are gender-specific, it's good to know as much as we can about our hesitancy to ask for more.  Whether expressed as the genetic level or at the dinner table, we women have been habituated over the course of millions ~ tens of millions ~ of years to sacrifice for the good of the group.  And that, my friends, is the good news!

What is She Negotiates University?

Thanks for asking.

She Negotiates University is online learning for busy women professionals. We teach interest-based negotiation plus we collaborate with other professionals to deliver courses relevant to professional women and entrepreneurs (Productivity, Leadership, Balance, etc.). Now you can get powerful training without the time or expense of in-person workshops.

She Negotiates University is NOT eCourse learning. It's an interactive learning environment. It's like taking an online university course and blending it with social networking features (like Facebook). Course members create journal entries on the learning materials, homework and assignments. Your course leaders comment and coach each journal entry to deepen your learning. Your course is also supported by weekly live tele-coaching calls to assure the learning is relevant to you and consistently engaging and transformative.

Best of all, you can do the work on your schedule!

Here's what you can get for FREE:

You can join the She Negotiates University community for FREE right here. You can connect with other like minded women, participate in our forum, and each week you'll receive a journaling prompt designed to connect you with you. 

If you'd like more information about creating an interactive learning environment for your business, check out the folks at Journal Engine who built our site:  HERE.

Women Negotiating: "I wish I could show up in drag"

During a recent conversation with my sister, an arborist and landscape designer, she landed a still-too-common refrain about getting a fair share of the horticultural pie:

"I wish I could show up in drag."

She, 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 sturdy jeans and workboots. 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 sis, it turns out looking like a woman is a disadvantage--as much of a disadvantage as being perceived as "gay" if she clomps into her clients gardens wearing mud boots.

The Double Bind is a Deep and Abiding Bias, But...

Earlier this year, James Chartrand of Men With Pens came clean about her identity. Yes, it turns out that the uber successful, sharp-witted wordsmith decided that making a living as a single mom required showing up in drag. When she first started out, potential clients balked at her fees and did everything they could to whittle down her bottom line. When she went into business as a man, nobody questioned her rate.

This is an old story. Jane Austen originally penned all of her works anonymously. Aurore Dudevant—aka George Sand—actually went out in public as her alter ego, dressing the part of a man and going to the opera. When J.K. Rowling first began publishing the Harry Potter series, her publishers advised her to use her initials or other pen name because they didn’t think little boys would read her series.

But today, we are beyond all that, right? We vote, we have equal rights for the most part, we run fortune 500 companies and we operate successful entrepreneurial adventures and online businesses. No, our political and cultural work is not over, not by far, but in my sister's case and I assert in James Chartrand's case, both could have made headway by honing in on a couple of sturdy negotiation strategies. In other words, we can all take personal responsibility for learning to operate beyond and above not only gender bias, but also our own perceived limitations. We have to begin transcending the road blocks, by choice. And that will take some new skills.

For example, my sister had a client who wanted to hire her for her expertise with Japanese maples. The client wanted her to make the 10 or 12 specimens into a hedge because, "They're just so darned expensive to maintain," and asked her to lower her rate by $40 per hour, since she was a woman and the job "would take her longer." My sister recoiled in horror. She felt that to abide by her client's request was an assault to her aesthetic sensibilities and her ethic as the go-to-goddess of tree pruning to say nothing of the gender bias. Requesting a lower rate was like pouring salt into a festering wound.

What's a Woman to Do? Ask Diagnostic Questions, that's what.

She refused to take on the job. What she could have done, however, is ask some simple DIAGNOSTIC QUESTIONS, the crown jewel of collaborative negotiation. If we see negotiation as a conversation leading to agreement, which it is, she could have employed diagnostic questions to reveal her client's intersts (wishes, concerns, challenges) and thereby gain a client, not lose one. She might have even altered the client's perception of female landscapers.

So what gets in the way? Our feelings. Our sensibilities. Our interpretations. Here's how we can mitigate our tendency to take things personally, using my poor sis as the poster child:

• I understand your concern about maintenance. I'm wondering if you'd be willing to explore how we can keep the aesthetic of the maple in tact, and meet your budget at my current rate?
• How does the hedge fit in with your overall goals for your landscape?
• What garden projects do you feel you're setting aside by taking on the expense of the maples?
• What has been your experience with other landscapers, and how can I help you do things differently?
• What other plants, shrubs and trees do you love that might serve your budget and your landscape goals better? Would it be helpful if I gave you some alternative ideas?

So women, let your lips round into the shape that produces the letter "W" and ask questions like a journalist: who, what, when, where, how, and every so often, why. Perhaps a few well-placed questions will help keep you from the expense (emotional, cultural and financial) of dressing in drag.

 Want to learn the fine art of Diagnostic Questions? She Negotiates virtual course starts today! 

the day after 9/11 we re-visit the problem of the "other"

I had a few spirited Facebook discussions yesterday about Muslims, 9/11, Jihad, city planning, tolerance, and Constitutional law (yup, that's my guy on CRF's Board of Directors).

At the end of a day like that ~ one in which I have made the strongest effort I can to be the peace I want to see in the world ~ I inevitably come back to Dr. Ken Cloke's meditation on stereotyping, a universal cognitive bias that makes it easier for us to take short-cuts in determining who to trust and who to fear but which can turn ugly and violent if the flames of fear are fanned into hatred by people who wish to use it for partisan political or nationalistic purposes. 

I've never been able to say it any better than Ken. 

So here it is.

Ken Cloke, Conflict Revolution Mediating Evil, War, Injustice and Terrorism:  

Prejudice is complex and operates on many levels. It can be found not only in insults and judgments, caricatures and stereotypes, but refusals to listen and communicate, stories of demonization and victimization, inability to experience empathy with others, and infinitesimal denials of humanity. It is reflected in personal selfishness and hostile relationships, bullying and aggressive behaviors, and ego compensations based on poor self-esteem. It is expressed through contempt, disregard, and domination, as well as through low status, inequitable pay, and autocratic power.

Prejudice commonly operates by stereotyping. People form stereotypes, in my experience, in eight easy steps:

1. Pick a characteristic
2. Blow it out of proportion
3. Collapse the person into the characteristic
4. Ignore individual differences and variations
5. Disregard subtleties and complexities
6. Overlook commonalities
7. Match it to your own worst fears
8. Make it cruel

If these steps routinely produce prejudice, it is possible to undo them, for example, by making people more complex than their stereotype permits, or distinguishing unique individuals within a group, or recognizing commonalities between people. It helps, in doing so, to acknowledge that everyone is equal, unique, and interesting; that everyone forms prejudices; that everyone can learn to overcome them through awareness, empathy, and communication; and that everyone can become more skillful in communicating across stereotypes and lines of separation created by fear.

jesus, american express and diversity 3.0

I was born into a segregated, racist and sexist America back in 1952 ~ a time that holds too great a nostalgia for too many Americans.  The television I watched, magazines I read, neighborhood in which I lived and schools I attended were all white, white, white, white.  The teachers, god bless them, were mostly women, many of them single and childless since women were supposed to get married, have children, look pretty and shut up.

So how did I, suburban American girl, grow up to be a slightly left of liberal ruckus-raiser?

Church.

Jesus, I was told, "loved the little children,"

all the children in the world

red and yellow black and white

they are precious in his sight

Jesus loves the little children of the world.

As Annie Dillard wrote in her affecting memoir of mid-Century American childhood,

The adult members of society adverted to the Bible unreasonably often. What arcana! Why did they spread this scandalous document before our eyes? If they had read it, I thought, they would have hid it. They didn't recognize the vivid danger that we would, through repeated exposure, catch a case of its wild opposition to their world. Instead they bade us study great chunks of it, and think about those chunks, and commit them to memory, and ignore them. By dipping us children in the Bible so often, they hoped, I think, to give our lives a serious tint, and to provide us with quaintly magnificent snatches of prayer to produce as charms while, say, being mugged for our cash or jewels.

My mother worried that the Communists had infiltrated California's public schools and were in the process of quite literally "brain-washing" me, as if I were The Manchurian Candidate.  My elementary school was north and my Church south.  And it was from the South that my lefty-pinko-civil-rights-loving-freedom-cherishing-color-blind-Jesus-worshipping soul was being washed of all out-group 'isms by my best friend's dad, Kenneth Grant, pastor of the La Mesa Presbyterian Church.

That's the Jesus part.  Now I'll marry God to mammon with the following on Leadership in Diversity and Inclusion from this Sunday's New York Times (an advertisement no less).

Diversity 1.0 was about compliance and abiding by government regulations.  Diversity 2.0 revolved around ethics, morality and social responsibility.  Today, diversity 3.0 is about business integration and globalization, and ensuring that diversity operations are core to business operations and processes and, ultimately, producing increased employee productivity and new revenue streams.  Diversity activities cannot be a separate stand-alone activity; it has to be a part of the lives of employees, middle managers and company leaders.  It has to be a value creation activity - especially now as we emerge from the recession.

My childhood church taught diversity 2.0 back when it was all about "ethics, morality and social responsibility" and those are the values that continue to motivate me today as a partner in She Negotiates.  I count myself lucky to have lived during the Great Civil Rights Era in this great country and lucky to be entering an era when the lessons I learned in Church are also the lessons of an efficient global market.

So whether you're picking up negotiation, diversity and inclusivity skills as a 2.0 or 3.0, you've come to the right place!  But don't stop here at the She Negotiates blog.  The explosion of opportunity for women as reflected in the American Express ad will remain conceptual only until we all learn just precisely how to move the gears and levers of the American ~ excuse me ~ the global economy.

Join us tomorrow here and today at 2 p.m. PDT here! 

free mini-course sunday september 12

Lisa and I got so enthusiastic about teaching an hour on-line class to a group of entrepreneurial MBA students at Drake University this morning that we spontaneously decided to do it again tomorrow FREE for anyone interested in tasting the goods for the upcoming course starting on Monday, September 13.

• If you have trouble coming to agreement with your significant other, friends and family (think children and homework) then you want to be on our call TODAY at 2 p.m. PT.

• If your business depends on fee setting, pricing products or services, or deal making, learning to ask diagnostic questions will put you in the zone of collaborative, win-win agreements.

• If your job and/or salary depends on generating bottom-line results--dollar signs or human creativity and engagement--diagnostic questions will unclog your process.

HERE'S THE LINK FOR THE FREE MINI-COURSE

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 AT 2 PM PDT

She Negotiates FREE mini course

Discover She Negotiates University: the community is free and the education, peerless.

hilarious from the carpe factum blog (just because)

Thanks to Tim Johnson at Carpe Factum.

are we diverse and inclusive or are we just trying to fool somebody?

Most law firms state their commitment to diversity and inclusivity, prominently featuring on their diversity pages the pathetically few women and minorities in positions of genuine economic power in the firm.  Are they walking the talk?  Let me count the ways.

O'Melveny & Myers ~ We attract, retain, and promote people of all backgrounds, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, age, religion, disability, or any other group characteristics.

201 male partners and 21 women ~ 10%.  In the legal realm, you win awards for this.

O’Melveny & Myers LLP has been named to The American Lawyer’s 2010 A-List, which recognizes the nation’s most elite law firms for stellar performance in the areas of revenue generation, pro bono commitment, associate satisfaction, and diversity representation.  This is the Firm’s third consecutive year on the list of 20 firms judged best at balancing the practice of law with their obligations to the profession.

I don't mean to pick on O'Melveny.  It's representative of the whole.  Any AmLaw100 law firm that would like to crow about its great track record in retaining and promoting women and minorities, please do drop by with your results and suggestions to your peers for improvements in these figures that the smartest guys in the room don't seem capable of figuring out.  

Today, Forbes Corporate Social Responsibility Blog is commencing a series on how one company's serious commitment to diversity has resulted in improved bottom line performance.  I commend that series to the attention of the real powers that be inside AmLaw 100 law firms and they cannot be found in the Diversity Programs, of that I can assure you.  Here's the intro to the McDonald's diversity program series:

How does a company that serves 56 million customers a day across 118 countries become a leader in diversity hiring and retention? According to the inclusion and diversity team at McDonald’s, it takes a combination of knowing how to leverage a multicultural customer base, a C-suite-led commitment to talent management, and academic-style learning labs.

And if you're a woman, like me, we have our own garden to tend.  We leave the Fortune 50 and the AmLaw100 out of discouragement.  But part of that discouragement is born of our own diminished expectations and failures to build serious rain-making activities into our daily practices along with our failures to demand assignments to the types of cases where partners are made.

If your law firm or corporation does not have a serious diversity program, click your ruby slippers three times, say "there's no place like the board room," take the She Negotiates signature course, and kick a little butt. 

Remember, as Gloria Steinem said, "the truth shall set you free, but first, it will piss you off."

prison of peace

This is how powerful negotiation for women can be.  Can we afford not to know how to use the tools of peace making?

Once you have the power, you need the tools.  And you need the tools to get the power. 

If it's a Women's World, Where's My Raise?

I'm late to the 'end of men' party.  No one in my twitter, facebook, linkedin or blog networks alerted me to the July/August Atlantic cover article announcing the news with a question mark:

What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women?

I knew the recession (mancession) had hit the "overwhelmingly male" fields of construction, manufacturing and high finance far worse than any others.  But I was more than a little surprised to read that:

"...while female CEO's may be rare in America's largest companies . . . last year they outearned their male counterparts by 43 percent, on average, and received bigger raises."

Forty-three percent? Judy Martin, in town to give She Negotiates the media message make-over it so badly needs, gasps I don't believe it as we sit at our laptops to my guy's vast Labor Day irritation (he went to the gym; we'll put him to work at the Bar-b-Q soon). /1

Work Life Nation? 

You betcha!

If you're eager to reverse the wage gap and realize that the floor you're standing on used to be a ceiling made of glass, now's the time to take the negotiation class tailored for the new titanesses of industry.

That's you girlfriend! 

September 13 couldn't be coming soon enough.

Our virtual online coached negotiation class is filling up fast.  Don't be left out of the revolution.

_______________

1/  It's an "outlier" statistic - comparing the salaries of the women CEO's (all 16 of them) at the helm of the S&P 500 to their 484 male counterparts. 

Still.

negotiating the ordinary business of life

When I was practicing law (that's a quarter of a century, folks) I never read the business page of the newspaper. 

I didn't want to work on Sunday morning.

Here's how I read the Sunday New York Times.

• the magazine
• the "Style" section (Carrie Bradshaw called it the Women's Sports page, particularly with reference to the wedding announcements)
• the Front Page
• the Sunday Book Review (I was a Lit major after all)
• Arts & Leisure
• Travel

Business went straight to the trash.

What was I thinking?

I was thinking like an employee, that's how was I thinking.  What I was thinking was paycheck, 401K, time off, Christmas bonus, profit sharing.

Now I read the business page first.  For three reasons. 

• Because Whitney Johnson handed me a business koan several weeks ago that I keep applying to my personal life ~ if markets are efficient, I should succeed best at what I do best.  (not a direct quote)
• because the Sunday Money column quoted the "great economist Alfred Marshall" as saying economics is the "study of mankind in the ordinary business of life."
• because knowing what's happening in business has become the business of my life at She Negotiates.

If We Do the Math Girls, We'll Close the Wage Gap all by Our Little Selves

You negotiate your own value every day in some form--anything from the projects you say yes to, to a sit down with your boss about a raise, to who will do the dishes.

But are you valuing yourself enough? No.

Take a look at this study, conducted by Major, McFarlin and Gagnon, as reported in Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide.

• Both men and women were asked to count dots on cardboard squares for $4.
• They were asked to keep working until they felt they had earned their $4.
• They found that women worked 22% longer and counted 32% more dots than their male counterparts before they believed they were entitled to the $4.
• Both women and men felt equally satisfied with their pay and performance.

Consider this: the wage gap between men and women is stuck at 77 cents on the dollar. This study demonstrates that if we simply valued our time and the fruits of our labor more highly and negotiated fair compensation for it, we would close the wage gap without needing to seek outside help, or convincing others that the disparity is (partially) based on gender bias, or trading power for sympathy.

Listen girls, nobody’s going to give it to us, we’re going to take it. It’s our responsibility. We don’t need help in the form of new legislation that often makes for divisiveness. We can shore up the difference by ourselves. 

As a community of women, we need to LEARN how to ask for what we want.

Here's one solution: Take the virtual month-long negotiation training course SHE NEGOTIATES! Starts September 13. (Go here to register.) 

 



training that leaves a silver bullet behind

I was thirty days from my first major in-house corporate training when I decided to call a friend who manages an in-house health care team.  "What's the best in-house training you've ever had?" I asked.   

She said, we get great trainers who have terrific insight and we pay them extraordinarily high fees.  But they don't come prepared to talk about the problems facing health care.  They generally just give examples from their prior work that usually doesn't have anything to do with the challenges we're facing.  So they're great to listen to, but I can never go back to work and apply what they've said to my team.

Over at the Harvard Business Review, Ronald N. Ashkenas tells in-house managers how to solve this problem for their employees in his great short article, How to Translate Training into Results.

Many companies create leadership programs that are filled with good content and delivered with great skill, but without any kind of measurable business impact, they eventually die on the vine.

Luckily the "fix" for these kinds of programs is really quite simple: Require that participants come to the program with a specific business challenge (either individually or as a team); build time into the program to create a plan for addressing that challenge based on the content that is presented; and then insist that managers execute against these plans after the program. Firms such as GE, Honeywell, Siemens, and many others have used this approach for years with great success — and have documented many millions of dollars of benefits. In essence they have transformed their leadership development activities from a "cost center" to a "profit center" — which makes them much more difficult to dismiss when budgets get tight.

In response to my friend's complaint, I called the managers of each group attending the training and asked them this question:  if I were the Lone Ranger who could ride in on my horse and leave a silver bullet behind to improve your team's performance, what would it be?

This inquiry provoked a series of thoughtful responses from each management team.  I shouldn't have been surprised but I was curious when most managers identified the same problem as the biggest in-house challenge ~ one that concerned intra-company negotiations, a problem I re-focused my negotiation training to address. 

This is the same kind of results-oriented, problem specific, focus we have in our of our courses at She Negotiates University.  Please bring your specific challenges to the first session of our next coached and journaled month-long negotiation course.  We promise you'll make up the cost of the course before it's over or your money back!!  That's how confident we are of our product.  Let us help you be similarly confident of yours.

Join us on September 13 to find and deploy your own silver bullet solutions to your 21st Century business problems. 

Heigh ho Silver!

 Register for our next course...starting September 13. Get $75 off if you register by tomorrow!



Are You Awake Enough to Be on the Female Leadership Pipeline?

We keep ranting about the dearth of women in leadership (thank you MamaBee and Young Women Misbehavin' and MomsRising and Sloan Work and Family Institute) and we need to. We can lobby to shift workplace policies and culture like Deloitte did. We need to work from that vantage, but it's all a BandAid fix, all smoke and mirrors unless we wake up and acknowledge that our self leadership is the starting point.

For the kinds of sustainable change we're after, we're going to need to work systemically—inside ourselves, and inside our workplaces. Starting with ourselves first, we need to:

• Discover or rediscover our self worth;
• Know what we want and what we value;
• Ask for it and get it.

This may seem obvious...

But having just co-facilitated She Negotiates with my biz partner Victoria Pynchon, I can tell you we women have trouble with the basics:

• We chronically undervalue ourselves and give our services away for a song.
• We play the long-suffering victim and complain how "nobody in this household ever pitches in with chores."
• We gossip at the water cooler about how Jane got a promotion and malign her boldness, while we would never think to ask for one ourselves.
• We work harder than anyone else to be indispensable, hoping someone will notice and give us a raise or promotion.
• We table our dreams and goals as frivolous in favor of helping everyone else achieve theirs.
• We see our livelihoods as cute little hobbies only worthy as long as our partner has a paycheck.
• We don't ask for help with car pooling or babysitting.
• We have Knee-Jerk Yes Syndrome, and then blame the world for our lack of balance.

Granted, it's a global problem.

Worldwide, women and women's work are not valued. But we women have to wake up first. We have to wake up and see how and where we ingest the vagaries of oppression as normal and resign ourselves to "that's just the way it is."

In Babcock and Laschever's book, Women Don't Ask, they describe a phenomenon that is at the heart of our self worth. Girl children are given girl chores like dishes and laundry and vacuuming and expected to do them. Boy children are given boy chores like raking and lawn mowing and snow shoveling and offered money or allowance for their efforts. When women enter the workforce, we already have a deeply ingrained sense that the work we do is worth less.

Let's stop making it worthless, and wake up. Get conscious. And leverage that kind of self-leadership with our workplace leadership.

 Register for our next course...starting September 13. Get $75 off if you register by tomorrow!

three is the magic number

. . . and the Supreme Court has it.  Check out The Female Factor over at Slate (excerpt below):

Social scientists contend that the difference is more than just cosmetic. They cite a 2006 study by the Wellesley Centers for Women that found three to be the magic number when it came to the impact of having women on corporate boards: After the third woman is seated, boards reach a tipping point at which the group as a whole begins to function differently. According to Sumru Erkut, one of the authors of that study, the small group as a whole becomes more collaborative and more open to different perspectives. In no small part, she writes, that's because once a critical mass of three women is achieved on a board, it's more likely that all of the women will be heard. In other words, it's not that females bring any kind of unitary women's perspective to the board—there's precious little evidence that women think fundamentally differently from men about business or law—but that if you seat enough women, the question of whether women deserve the seat finally goes away. And women claim they are finally able to speak openly when they don't feel their own voice is meant to be the voice of all women.

Here at She Negotiates, we use the power of women to support, encourage, cheer and brainstorm in every class we offer, with the greatest power coming to and from our post-graduate Negotiation Master Classes which are limited to only four women.  For additional information about how you can use woman-power to improve your bottom line, contact either Lisa or Vickie using our contact form or at our direct numbers.

This isn't about gender-war, this is about human peace and prosperity!

Thanks to Bruce Moyer, the Federal Bar Association's Government Relations Counsel for the head's up on this one.

Want to Transform Your Relationship with Asking? Getting Results? Market Value? Self Worth?

Make the most stunning choice you can for your career and life. Register. Early bird discounts end this Friday.

She Negotiates!

Game Changing 4-Week Virtual Course: Sept. 13—Oct. 12

with Victoria Pynchon, Esq. and Lisa Gates, cpcc

This transformational negotiation course examines the way you value yourself, your services, your salary, your bonuses and your products. Through our interactive learning environment and weekly practicum calls, we give you the tools necessary to research and recalibrate your market value, and navigate the cultural and emotional stops along the way. You will learn the basics of both distributive and interest-based negotiation strategies, and explore the primary tactics used to negotiate the best deals for yourselves, your clients and your family.

Our Guarantee:

With concrete, actionable tools you can put to use immediately, you will capture far more than the cost of your investment in the first negotiation you conduct after the course is finished.

How it Works:

This is not an eCourse!

• The course takes place at She Negotiates University, a virtual interactive learning community, and all course work and materials will be delivered there.
• Homework assignments are completed in an online journaling format.
• You'll navigate the real negotiation challenges you bring to the table—whether it’s something like a career move or pricing your services, or solving a noise problem in your apartment complex.
• You'll learn how to influence your bargaining partner with aggressive opening offers.
• You'll practice the techniques of anchoring and framing.
• You'll be coached by attorney-mediator and negotiation trainer Victoria Pynchon and life-balance specialist Lisa Gates.
• You'll receive comments and coaching on your homework and journal entries to help you perfect the negotiation techniques taught during the course.
• Your coaches will host one live practicum teleconference per week to role play, answer questions and model the most efficient negotiation and persuasion techniques now being used by the best business schools in the country.

About Victoria Pynchon:

After a lifetime’s use of the legal weapons of mass destruction (litigation and trial) Victoria Pynchon finally stumbled upon the better way—consensual, negotiated, interest-based dispute resolution. Now, instead of bombing her adversaries back into the stone age, she helps the attorneys with and against whom she once fought, find mutually agreeable ways of resolving disputes that have languished for years (and sometimes decades) in California’s state and federal courts. Read Victoria's complete profilehere.

About Lisa Gates:

Lisa Gates is a consultant and certified co-active coach, and Lead Trainer at Balance University. In her spirited work with women executives and entrepreneurs, she rigorously guides women to show up powerfully and take a stand for themselves. She is devoted to helping women close the wage and income gap and design purposeful livelihoods so they may create a legacy of leadership and lasting change for themselves, their families and communities, and the world. Find out more here. 

FOLLOW THIS LINK TO REGISTER!

negotiating from a position of weakness

As I've said many times before, everyone feels as if they're negotiating from a position of weakness ~ even the Big Dogs.  Why?  Because everyone wants what they want and few people or institutions think they have the power to make other people do what they want, no matter how much money or power they possess.  People are like that.  They don't like to be told what to do and don't much cotton to being paid off to do something they don't want to do.  Stubborn.  Proud.

So what do the negotiation gurus have to say about getting your own way when you feel you're weak.  Quite a lot it turns out.

A couple of years ago over at the Settle It Now Negotiation Blog, I commented on a post by Penelope Trunk of the Brazen Careerist -- How to Negotiate When You Have Nothing to Leverage.  

Penelope suggested the weakest strategy available -- exchanging power for sympathy.  "If one person has a great BATNA," Penelope wrote, "and the other has a terrible one, it’s not really negotiations; it’s trying to get a little something extra. It’s asking for a favor. If you approach negotiations from this perspective then you are much more likely to get a little bit of what you want."

Two of the savviest negotiators around Deepak Malhotra and Max Bazerman in their tremendously practical book Negotiation Genius have devoted an entire chapter to Penelope's problem called Negotiating from a Position of Weakness.  They don't suggest throwing yourself on the mercy of your negotiation partner as Penelope does (well, not as their only recommendation).  Rather, they suggest a host of strategies weak bargainers can use to act strong, look strong and be strong.  i

• Don't Reveal that You Are Weak

[H]aving a weak BATNA is not terribly problematic if the other side does not know that your BATNA is weak. If you have a weak BATNA, don't advertise it! 

• Overcome Your Weakness by Leveraging Their Weakness

[W]hen both parties have a weak BATNA, it means that the [Zone of Potential Agreement] is large.  In other words, a lot of value is created when the two sides reach an agreement.  Who claims more of this value? . . . [T]he one who fares better is the one who makes the other side's weakness more salient throughout the negotiation. 

• Identify and Leverage Your Distinct Value Proposition

[V]ery often, you do bring something to the table that distinguishes you from your competitors.  This is your distinct value proposition (DVP), and it need not be a lower price.  You may have a better product,, a higher-quality service, a good reputation, a strong brand, or a host of other assets that your [bargaining partner] values and that you can provide more effectively or cheaply than your competitors.  

• If Your Position is Very Weak, Consider Relinquishing What Little Power You Do Have (This was Penelope's strategy in the Yahoo negotiation subject of her post). 

[I]f you can't out muscle the other side in a negotiation, you may want to stop flexing our muscles and, instead, simply ask them to help you.  When negotiators try to leverage their power, others reciprocate.  This pattern can be disastrous when you are the weaker party.  But when you make it clear that you have no intention of fighting or negotiating aggressively, others also may soften their stance.

• Strategize on the Basis of Your Entire Negotiation Portfolio

[A]udit the implicit assumptions you make when formulating your negotiation strategy.  You may perceive yourself as being "weak" if you only measure strength as the ability to push hard in any given negotiation without losing the deal.  But you may discover that you are actually quite "strong" once you begin to think about your ability to withstand losing some deals because you are maximizing the value of your entire negotiation portfolio.

• Increase Your Strength by Building Coalitions with Other Weak Parties

In the realm of international relations, a vivid example of the power of coalitions surfaced during the 2003 World Trade Organization negotiations in Cancun, Mexico.  Disgruntled by the continued lack of attention paid to the issues of concern to developing nations . . . twenty-one "weak" countries banded together to create the Group of 21.  This group is now in a much stronger position to negotiate for the interests of its members than any member nation would have been on its own.

• Leverage the Power of Your Extreme Weakness-They May Need You to Survive

[I]t is often useful to tell the negotiation "bully" that an overly strong show of force can be counterproductive:  "If you push me too hard, you'll destroy me -- and lose a value-creating partner."

• Understand -- and Attack -- the Source of Their Power

A number of Planned Parenthood clinics around the country have adopted a particularly creative strategy for fighting back [against protesters], usually referred to as the "Pledge-a-Picket" Program.  Here's how it works:  The clinic asks its supporters to pledge donations to the clinic on a per protester basis.  The more protesters that show up to picket the clinic, the more money the clinic raises in donations! . . . The Planned Parenthood of Central Texas in Waco has even posted a sign outside its clinic that read:  "Even Our Protesters Support Planned Parenthood."

Once the Planned Parenthood clinics understood that the source of their opponents' power was the ability to draw large numbers of protesters outside the clinic, they were able to think of a novel way of diminishing the benefits of doing so.

Malhotra and Bazerman conclude their chapter on Negotiating from a Position of Weakness by noting that

while being in a position of weakness is sometimes unavoidable, you will negotiate most effectively when you leverage the fundamentals -- systematic preparation and careful strategy formulation.

Go get 'em ladies!

Negotiating with the Novel in Your Drawer

You didn't mean to do it. It was a Sunday and you were rummaging through your cupboards and drawers looking for paper clips and you just accidentally opened that drawer. The drawer that emits heat waves of angst every time you even so much as brush past it. The Novel Drawer. You run your hand over the first page and gently lift it from it's resting place. You peel a few pages forward and read a the words with your head turned sideways. One line, a few paragraphs, entire pages...and soon you're sitting in the big overstuffed chair with your pencil, loving your creation.

That night, that same Sunday night the heat waves coming from the drawer slip past the blood-brain barrier and startle you awake. Your pencil lurches into your hand and you grab your journal and capture the message from the ether.

The alarm goes off at 5 a.m. and three lunches, two drop-offs and three meetings later, and all metaphor drained from your body, your other child, your other job lies abandoned, waiting to be adopted by a real writer. One who really cares.

I know this place. I know it like your blood sister. Like your blood, sister. And I know the only real thing missing is a decision. A negotiated resolution. You can answer the question, "what will it take to create the space to say yes to my other life?" You can ask yourself several more diagnostic questions (the lifeblood of negotiation), careful to notice that every rationalization is just that—a rationalization. Avoidance.

In the end, you carve out two blocks of 15 minutes and set a timer. You do this for several days until the timer annoys you. You re-set it for 30 more minutes. And soon, you've carved out half a Saturday and even a long weekend. 

Along the way you negotiate with nefarious harpies who remind you that you're just an accountant, or a lawyer, and not Virginia Woolf or Twyla Tharp or Mozart. You scold them for not cooperating (tit for tat) and tell them their breath is fowl or the like. 

Then once upon a time, just yesterday, you push "send." In other words, blood sister, your other child will not survive through wishful thinking. You must negotiate. You must negotiate your dreams before the years multiply like missing socks in the laundry you did instead.

how the "big boys" do it ~ create a market

Your services and products are not luxuries, not desires.  They are necessities.  That's how an entire generation of Americans (and eventually the rest of the world) was sold on Coca Cola. 

More coke ads here.