She Negotiates blog!

She Negotiates Co-Founder Authors Third Course at Lynda.com

Lisa Gates — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:50:46 +0000

As graduates ready to enter the workforce in June many will be negotiating their salaries for the very first time and seeking ways to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. With national student loan debt nearing $1 trillion and roughly 5.4% of borrowers struggling with repayment, learning to negotiate can make the difference between thriving and barely surviving.

She Negotiates is a training and consulting firm whose mission is to help women end the income and leadership gaps. Co-founder Lisa Gates says she wanted to “create foundational courses at lynda.com for women and men that set them up with the core skills for success and leadership.

Learning Trifecta for Grads and Careerists

Lynda.com is a learning platform offering courses in business, software and design skills headquartered in Carpinteria, CA. Gates says that in this “24/7, always on world, online learning is not just a nice idea, it’s essential for staying current.” She adds that her courses are “the trifecta for grads and careerists.”

The first course, “Negotiation Fundamentals,” covers the skills and strategies for negotiating everything from salaries to special projects to relationships. According to research cited in “Women Don’t Ask,” the groundbreaking primer on women and negotiation, women and men stand to lose up to $1 million over the course of their careers by failing to negotiate their first salary.

“What happens next in the workplace,” says Gates, “is discovering that human beings often have competing interests and new hires are often at a loss for navigating that complexity.” Her second course, “Conflict Resolution Fundamentals,” provides the foundation for understanding the social psychology of conflict and gives sturdy ways to improve communication and move from conflict back to cooperation.

As a certified coach with training in mediation, Gates wanted to give careerists pointing toward leadership the same skills she uses every day in her practice with executives and entrepreneurs, so she went to work on creating her third course, “Coaching and Developing Employees.”

“Coaching in the workplace has gained fairly wide acceptance and adoption across the corporate landscape as a tool for supporting both high potential and low performing employees,” Gates says. “But emerging managers and leaders can also learn coaching skills as a tool for creating a culture that thrives on developing employees, and fostering engagement and retention.”

Gates also uses her Lynda.com courses with her corporate training clients who often have limited time to devote to professional development.

“With these online courses, our clients can now do some advance learning,” says Gates. “We then dovetail that into our live trainings to drill down into the specific issues and scenarios they need to roleplay and practice. It also means we can deliver a program in a half-day setting rather than a full day making it more time and cost effective.”

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Speaker, trainer, and communication consultant Lisa Gates leads individuals and small to medium businesses through the process of finding better ways to communicate through negotiating, resolving conflict, having difficult conversations, and applying coaching techniques to advance leadership skills. As co-founder of She Negotiates and certified coach, Lisa helps high-potential women improve their leadership, communication, and career opportunities while maximizing their passion.

A sampling of organizations that have benefited from Lisa's facilitated trainings include Deloitte Consulting, lynda.com, the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, Miami University, among others.

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Asking Challenge: Get 10 NOs

Lisa Gates — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:29:07 +0000

Remember this: your opportunity to negotiate occurs when you hear the word NO. When you get to impasse. Up until that point it's just an ask. If you hear the word YES, well, there's nothing to negotiate really.

So your challenge this week is to get 10 Nos. Why? To get over the fear of rejection, and that pinch in your gut that makes you want to walk away...when you feel like saying, "oh nevermind."

You see, you aren't responsible for how people respond or react. They are. Being told NO is not an indictment of your character. What you do with the word NO is a character builder.

some possible asks

• Ask the gas station owner if you can pay 25 cents less per gallon.

• Ask to bring your dog to work.

• Ask your landlord to lower your rent.

• Ask for the matinee price for an evening movie.

• Ask for an extra week of paid vacation time.

• Ask to sit in an empty first class seat on your next flight.

You will likely be asked why you want what you want. Any credible (or incredible) reason is better than none, so be ready to answer.

Happy NO getting!

Smart Women Take the Lead

Admin — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:32:12 +0000

Join Victoria Pynchon, Lisa Gates and Katie Donovan, along with co-host Jana Hlistova and Gloria Feldt for Take The Lead's monthly Smart Women Take The Lead webcast. Register here now. The live webcast will be Tuesday May 14th at 2pm EDT. You can send questions via twitter using the hashtag #swttl – we’d love to hear from you! And if you miss the live program, you can always click the same link and see it on YouTube.

Women in the age of of AnneMarieSlaughterSherylSandbergMarissaMayer are drowning in a sea of unsolicited advice. In recent days, it’s been suggested to me (the generic woman) that I find a way to strengthen my voice (Executive Presence); jettison my womanly emotions in the workplace (don’t cry!); eliminate question marks and exclamation points from my email communications (??!!???); act more like a guy; act less like a guy (in the same article); get the best seat at the conference table; improve my handshake; ask for more money but to do so with a smile on my face andthe pretense that it’s for someone other than myself; pay more attention to my family than to social networking; devote more time to online social networking; learn to golf; seek sponsors; seek mentors; brag about my accomplishments, but modestly; conform my behavior to feminine stereotypes while covertly using man-rules; and, for heaven’s sake never, ever to curse in public.

Over at Princeton, it’s even been suggested that young women do what their grandmothers did –find a man who is likely to be a “good provider” while the getting is good (before graduation).

My generic woman’s head is about to explode. The solution? Start by understanding there's nothing wrong with you over at the Take the Lead blog here.

When Women Answer the Call to Leadership

Admin — Thu, 09 May 2013 21:11:31 +0000

For those of us laboring in the "women in leadership" fields, it's very heartening to read the Op-Ed page of the New York Times this morning. Maureen Dowd tells us the jig is up on military rape, assault and harassment because the "women of Congress are on the case."

Click to read more...

Are Men Bad Negotiators?

Admin — Thu, 09 May 2013 20:31:38 +0000

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

Click to read more...

She Negotiates Training Options at Lynda.com

Lisa Gates — Fri, 03 May 2013 15:59:24 +0000

It's no secret we train women to negotiate and we're pretty darned successful doing so. In addition to our consulting and coaching, we train inside organizations, we hold public workshops, and we offer a unique "build it and we will come" option to any group.

What you might not know is we now have three online video tutorials running at lynda.com -- the premiere online learning site for business, software and creative skills. Here's what we offer:

Negotiation Fundamentals

Demonstrates the skills empowered communicators use to achieve mutual benefit results at the negotiation table. The course delivers repeatable strategies for negotiating common issues such as asking for a raise, setting fees, promoting teamwork, and bringing out the best in those you manage.

Conflict Resolution Fundamentals

Discover how to improve your relationships with your coworkers, clients, reports, and supervisors and find your way through conflict back to cooperation.

Coaching and Developing Employees

Learn the benefits of developing your team and helping employees build their skills in ways that transform and empower them to do more productive and engaging work. Then discover how to build your own leadership and coaching skills and equip yourself with tools that encourage insight and growth.

Monthly memberships start at $25/month and you can access not only our courses, but nearly 2,000 others, and you can watch them at your own time anywhere you are.

Here's a link to get you started with your 7-day free trial.

The Asking Challenge

Lisa Gates — Fri, 03 May 2013 15:45:34 +0000

For six weeks, we'll challenge you to negotiate the little things...all the way on up to the VERY BIG THINGS...with a series of challenges. All along the way, we want you to report back. Tell us your story in taking on the challenges. Why? We'll respond! You'll learn something new. No, we are not giving away prizes, except those that come from engaging and changing your experience of yourself.

Making Counter Offers and Concessions in Salary Negotiations

Lisa Gates — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:00:33 +0000

Negotiation conversations are made up of offers, counteroffers and concessions. Simplifying wildly, you need to know two things--your target (what you really want) and your reservation point (your walkaway or resentment number).

Walk a Mile in My Heels on Equal Pay Day

Lisa Gates — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 14:35:17 +0000

Start by picturing a male law graduate looking for his first job. Let’s call him John. Most of John’s law professors were women, but he realizes he’s seeing an increase in non-tenured clinical posts being filled by men. 50% of his classmates were women and he never gave much thought to gender discrimination. It looks as if all gender barriers are down. The long and acrimonious war of the sexes has been won and both men and women has emerged the winner.

What to Do on Equal Pay Day 2013

Lisa Gates — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:41:53 +0000

Today is Equal Pay Day. That doesn't mean we're all going to walk into our workplaces and magically get a raise. This is the day on which we women finally catch up to what the guys have been making since Janauary 1.

This is the day you take the wage gap personally.

This is the day you decide to negotiate your true market value.

This is the day you recognize that when you go into your salary negotiation and anchor (put a number on the table) and you close your wage gap, you a doing a service not only for yourself, but for every woman.

This is the day you realize that the personal is political, and that asking for what you deserve makes you a foot soldier in the Women's Movement.

This is the day you really get that when you close your personal wage gap, you will never again judge a woman who raises her hand, speaks up, asks for what she wants--and gets it.

Your homework is to resolve to do something about your economic reality and our collective cultural reality. Learn to negotiate.