Comments on: Try this: Don’t ask for what you want when you negotiate

By: Fairness at the top « Penguin unearthed

Fairness at the top « Penguin unearthed — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 02:47:36 +0000

[…] In my experience of managing remuneration reviews over the last five years or so, women are more likely to be at the meek end of the spectrum. Since remuneration is usually reviewed compared with what […]

By: Joan

Joan — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 19:21:27 +0000

Well, this is certainly a wake up call. I’ve never been one to stand up and demand xyz and I’ve been told that is the reason I’m not farther ahead in my career, etc. Gee, I didn’t know that I needed to ask for something completely different than what I was wanting.

By: Priyanka

Priyanka — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 23:40:57 +0000

Penelope,
I love your writing, especially the fact that you challenge the notions we carry about work and our lives. One thing I must disagree with you on is about whether women ask for raises in the workplace. Based only on my personal experience, I find that women DON’T ask for raises. Many of my female friends are often afraid to ask for raises or initiate a salary negotiation because they are afraid to argue with authority. In fact, when I asked for a raise at work and didn’t get it, my mother (who in all other aspects of her life is very strong willed and outspoken) was worried I would be fired for asking!
However, I think your point about asking for things other than money is a great one. Suze Orman actually recommends this in her books. I think its important to rememeber how much other things like free time and control of your work matter as well.

By: MJTeegarden

MJTeegarden — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 16:53:58 +0000

I am a male and read your blog with no defensiveness at all, until reading how men often ask you for lunch when they really want sex. Of course we men want sex; this is how we are built, designed, made, or evolved (take your pick, please). Men have high levels of testosterone, which makes them (and women too, when they have higher levels) want sex very much. However, society has taught us fairly well that we are not allowed to simply approach women and ask for sex. We must approach the issue from the side, and we must prepare the woman we desire with certain socially-acceptable communications. Lunch dating is one of these. Men learn as teenagers how to negotiate for sex, which is something they (1) really want and (2) cannot easily obtain. If you have any better ideas as to how men can fulfil these needs, please publish - you will become quite rich, I predict, quite famous, and also quite reviled (conservative society does not want sex to be more easily obtained). You are correct, I believe, in the rest of your blog - men learn early to negotiate for what they really want (and after their teenage years, they learn to apply those skills for other things, such as business purposes). And men also expect women to negotiate less; we are somewhat surprised when women turn out to be equal or better than us in negotiations. We respond defensively with dismissively negative attitudes, such as “she is a bitch,” but this does not really help us negotiate with the next strong woman we meet.

By: Vincent

Vincent — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 08:20:39 +0000

I laughed when I read the section about salary negotiations. I laughed because I just went through this with my boss (a woman) who asked me what I thought was fair when I tried to keep from giving her a number. I must say after a brief exchange over salary but neither of us giving a number, she broke down and gave a number. She had a meeting to rush off to. :-)

By: Alamgir Kahn

Alamgir Kahn — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 02:10:04 +0000

I think you might be completely off on the whole not stating what you want when negotiating a salary bit. In negotiation, (atleast) three principles you need to be aware of are your BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement), Reservation Point/Price, and the concept of anchoring.

My throwing out what you want for your salary before someone else does, you establish an anchor point that research shows DOES have an effect on where the other party places their counter-offer.

You’d be well suited to consult Prof. Leigh Thompson at the Kellogg School of Management (http://www.leighthompson.com/). Not is she only a negotiation specialist, but she’s written a great book AND she’s a woman, so she can offer an informped POV.

By: Denis

Denis — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 11:38:09 +0000

“And, sweetie, if you think AskMen.com is actually written by men - and not women who want to get the better end of the deal - then you have a lot more coming to ya!”

I don’t read AskMen but I followed the link and this specific advice that Penelope cited is given not by a woman but by a real life pick-up artist David DeAngelo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_DeAngelo

By: Willy

Willy — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 17:13:26 +0000

I have mixed feelings about this post. Having studied Negotiation Theory pretty heavily in college, and having put it to work in both simulations and real life situations, I’m not sure that this advice is exactly good.

I think the reason for this phenomenon may be that people inherently want to make other people happy. If your constraints don’t allow you to accept someone’s request, you may find another way to please them. If you can’t give them the job, you (and they) won’t feel so bad if you take them out on a date; however, if they don’t know what you really want, they can’t give it to you.

I think better advice might ask for what you want, but don’t make it completely clear how badly you want it. Also, ask for a few things, so that they have options to give you. If someone has uncertainty whether a certain issue is a deal breaker or not, it will make him negotiate against himself. If you are dead set about something, it’s a lot easier to reject outright without even offering alternative options.

Also, I think women are much less likely to say what they want than men are. So that kind of turns this theory on its head, doesn’t it? Men get what they want because they ask for it, right?

By: L. Bates

L. Bates — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 13:49:42 +0000

This article has some great points - sad but true. Women are just not as skilled in the art of, well, deception, for lack of a better term.

The best negotiation advice I ever got was the simplest. Never use “okay” as a replacement for “um” or some other thought-pausing word. For example, your manager/the hiring manager says, “we’re prepared to offer you $75,000 a year.” As you consider this number, don’t say, “Okay…..” and pause. “Okay” implies acceptance, and it makes it very difficult to go back and negotiate.

If you must make a thought-pausing noise, try “hmmm…” last time I used that one, I got $15K a year more than their “final” offer!
* * * * * * * *
Great advice. Thanks Lorraine. I never realized that people say okay when they mean umm. But it makes total sense. Thanks for pointing this out.

–Penelope

By: Simonne

Simonne — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 06:43:15 +0000

And I thought I was the only one who cannot negotiate! I remember when I had a job interview, my future boss made me a salary offer which I accepted instantly. When I got the first paycheck, I noticed he gave me more. I asked him why, and he told me that he was expecting a little bit of negotiation from my side. So, he decided to give me what he intended from the very beginning, although I was happy with less.