How to Ask Strategic Interview Questions (Complete Guide) - Session 8

Session seven, negotiation strategy. The most successful executives know that negotiation is a strategic game that starts long before the offer and continues well after you say yes.

In this session, we'll show you how.

To approach negotiation like a chess master with the Think Warwick Gains framework, a method for orchestrating career moves that position you for long term success. We'll also talk about how your emotional intelligence, your eq, can be your secret weapon to securing the best deal.

And I'm excited to get started with everybody. And this is not a topic you're going to learn in two hours. This is something that takes an entire career to concentrate on. But what I want to do is spend a little bit more time sharing stories of what can be done just to open your mind. And if at the end of today's conversation we get to a point where you're thinking, instead of how do I make the benchmark? Instead, if we're thinking, how can I break benchmarks? How can I get creative? How can I create the lifestyle that I'm looking for? If we can get to that mindset, then today's session will be a win. And I hope to accomplish that through a lot of the storytelling and then the, the fundamentals that we share here. So part one here I want to talk about negotiation fundamentals. Why the again, mindset, which comes up quite a bit, is very important. Your preparation and EQ is absolutely necessary. Want to go through some negotiation techniques, not every technique in the book, but some negotiation techniques that are most common and helpful ways that you can maximize leverage throughout the entire process and then long term considerations on how you can continue to negotiate throughout your career. So first I'd like to start with some of the fundamentals and I want to start with the areas where people make the biggest mistakes. If you correct these mistakes, then you'll make tens, if not hundreds of thousands more throughout your career. So the first big mistake that I see is that everyone undervalues their worth in some capacity. And I think you often hear from negotiation experts, you know, know your worth, know your worth, know your, know your number, fight for that number. And from a contrarian perspective, Chris Voss, who's a FBI hostage negotiation negotiator, you've probably heard from before, one of his favorite quotes is, never be so sure of your worth that you wouldn't accept more. And so we look at benchmarks and we have these great resources that say, you know, Beth should be making X amount or Chelsea should be making X amount. And my thought process on the benchmarks is that they are a mean they are an average. So do you negotiate for average if you're exceptional? It's. It's a weird thing. It's a weird concept. Like, I just want to be making the bar. Well, there are people out there that rise the bar. Why can't that person be you? And what's interesting, all of my clients think they're exceptional. And I have to agree and push into that and assume that they're exceptional as well and negotiate on their behalf. So because everyone thinks that, why not push the boundaries further? So we need to break down that those benchmarks are just a suggestion to get you a general ballpark. But there's no reason why you can't break them, double them, or create different types of options that are outside the status quo. If we're not thinking creatively, we'll never do that. Inadequate preparation. I think a lot of folks go into their interview and negotiation process thinking they know exactly how it's going to go. And that is, information is your currency, and you need to treat it as such. So as you're doing your interview preparation and as you're doing discoveries through the interview process and through the entire job process, all of that information is serving your negotiation at a later stage. We've all been building up to this point, and it's about having positions to take and having fallback positions. If they don't go well or if something is not received well in your counter, what do you fall back to? How do you navigate that conversation? How do you do it? With stoicism and poise. Speaking of which, the emotional entanglement is very difficult for lots. Many people say, hey, Jacob, why can't you negotiate on my behalf? Well, to be honest, it's very difficult to negotiate on your behalf. You have a lot of blind spots. There are a lot of emotional triggers. There are a lot of things drivers like, can I pay my mortgage? The school dues are coming, My spouse is upset that I've been out of work for X amount of time. Or they don't really care how I make the money or if I'm happy, but just that the end number is 20,000amonth or whatever it is. And there's a lot of emotional entanglement with why you are negotiating the way you are. And companies don't care about the emotional entanglement that's on you. And we have to separate the emotions from the negotiation. And someone like a third party like myself can do that. And it's very easy for me to do that because I don't have to live with the consequences of your decisions. Right? So this is an area where a lot of folks make mistakes, and we just need to do our best to separate that and where having sparring partners can be very helpful. Poor timing. Timing is this might be the number one thing that people make the most mistakes on, and. And that is that they don't realize that they're negotiating when they are. So I have. I've had a really hard time. I'm sure everyone here knows that I obsess over word choices quite a bit. Like, if you've looked at my profile, it changes, like, almost every day as I try to figure out who the hell I am. I'm hesitant to call myself a negotiation coach because the psychology and perception of negotiation is that once I have an offer, I will negotiate. And everybody thinks, okay, now that I have an offer, Jacob, come help me make this better. Right? And the reality is, if you wait that long to think you're negotiating, you have significantly less play, you have less leverage. You have. Like, so much has gone into getting to that point that I may be able to increase your deal 10 to 20% on average. But if we started much sooner, I could have doubled it, right? Or we could have put plans together to create unique opportunities that we never even thought possible after it's too late. So poor timing is very difficult. This often comes up with severance as well. Like, severance is an awkward topic to talk about when you're starting a job. Like, hey, let's talk about the terms of our divorce before we're married. Right? That is a difficult one to bring up. And I'll talk a little bit about severance timing little bit later, another mistake. Position based. Like, my stuff's in the way here. Position based negotiating versus partnership based negotiating. If there's one kind of visceral mindset tweak that I can get you in when you're negotiating with someone, it's that it's not you versus them. So if I'm negotiating with Chelsea right now and she's on the other side of a zoom, or we're in a conference room and we're looking across each other from the table, physically, it's an adversarial position to be in. Like, it's me versus you. We have this point, we have this challenge in the middle that we solve, right? I'm. I'm advocating for my position. You're advocating for your position. That is a losing endeavor when it comes to negotiation. What I'd like people to think about when they're about to negotiate is if I were physically in the room with Chelsea, I would want to be on the same side of the table with her, if appropriate. I'd want my arm around her like we're buddies. We're going to work on this problem together, and we're going to solve our mutual interests together. This is not the same as win win negotiating. This is just having empathy and compassion for the other person and trying to understand everyone's point of view and where they can and cannot move. This is also where we start to strategically reveal more information later on in the negotiation process. But if there's one little sticky note you take, just picture being on the same side of the table. We are a team. It's why we also earlier in the process said, pretend you already have the job and you're a consultant. You're part of the team. We're doing this together. We're solving this together. It just so happens that we can both win and gain from this as well. Negotiating alone. I think a lot of executives are isolated. They're afraid to talk compensation with other folks. Sometimes it's for fear that, you know, Karen makes more than Liana, and that's frustrating, or, you know, I'm afraid to share that I've negotiated poorly in the past, or it's just in society not. And also in many other cultures not okay to talk about money in that context. And I think I'd say one of the reasons I've gotten good at what I do is that one of the first questions out of my mouth when I talk to people is, how much money do you want? And I'm not using it against them because I'm their advocate right now. When you share it with a company, they're using it against you. When you share it with me, I'm here to help you. And then when somebody says, I want 250,000, I ask, why? How are you so sure that that's what you want? What if someone gave you 300, what if someone gave you 400? Those types of things. So I can break that down. So having sparring partners with this is important. Some people will call this your personal board of advisories, right? Your advisory folks. So they're your mentors. There could be some colleagues of yours. There could be some folks in other industries, similar to how we build out that networking chain that we talked about in the second session, we have these different groups of folks that can provide information for us. And when we go into a negotiation situation, we advise with our board of advisors. We Ask them questions like, hey, if you were in my shoes, what would you do here? Knowing what you know about me, what do you think I should advocate for? Having this support system can be really critical in helping you develop the confidence that's required to push back and ask for more. It doesn't always have to be an expensive coach. It could be your friend group that is just rallying together to support one another. Another major mistake, revealing your position too early, which is essentially the same as saying, this is how much money I want, right? Or you show your urgency too early. This can be with some of the language you use where you come across, I'm going to use the word desperate for sake of conversation and impact, but showing a little bit more urgency to accept the role. Like, you're eager. We don't want you to come across eager. We want you to come across enthusiastic. There's a difference in that language. Similar to, we don't want you to be aggressive, we want you to be assertive and confident. Confidence is not the same as arrogance. Right. So these word choices matter. And we don't want to reveal your position too early with that. And we'll talk through some of the ways that we do that. And then another killer, and this is particularly a killer for women and minority women I've seen more frequently, and that's the fear of asking or just assuming you're not going to get it. And I want to share a story about this that happened recently with a client I've been working with for over a year. And she has never advocated for herself. She's doing fairly well for herself, but been in a company for about 10 years and makes significantly less than she could be. And she never knew how to ask for more, just period. I think some of this is from fear of an offer being rescinded, right? Like, oh, you asked for too much, so we're going to take it away. For what it's worth, I've never seen an offer be rescinded from one of my clients, even when pushing aggressively. So in this instance, she'd never had the confidence to ask for more. We are in a counter situation where she received a competing offer from another company, which her boss is actually pulling her over to. So we built that secession plan and built that relationship so that we can have this optionality. And the offer came in low and she was disappointed. She's like, wow, this is like 40% less than what I'm making. 40%'s a big number. It feels insurmountable. And so it's not what you say, it's how you say it. So when we came back, it was really only a 2, 3 minute conversation with the talent manager in this case. And we said, look, this isn't going to move the needle for me. And this is when we revealed how much we were roughly making before. So I stand to make about 50% more than this. We're in the seven figure range and that's before being considered for a promotion. So conservatively I'm going to make significantly more than this. And this is difficult for me to like basically to, to digest. And the response immediately was, well, here's what we can do like right away. So we just, they kind of threw a number out, here's what we can do on the back end. And before that conversation was over, we had come up $440,000 on that call, which sounds absolutely ridiculous, right? It came up in equity, it came up 30,000 in base and it came up, I want to say 250,000 in sign on bonus in that call. And we didn't respond positively or negatively, just thanks, I want to see it in writing. And the response back was, I haven't really earned her trust yet. So the response back was, I'm not sure if this is enough yet. Let me circle back to the leadership team and see if I can get you more. And she was so taken aback that not only did the offer increase significantly on the phone with what they were basically allotted to go for, the talent manager expressed that it probably still wasn't going to be enough given the new anchor that we set. And he went back to go work on her behalf. And so we're actually, that deal was signed yesterday and it was the largest sign on bonus that we had seen all year. It was 800,000 in cash sign on bonus on this. And this was a Fortune 500 company for what it's worth, but it was not an executive role, it was a mid level role, which is interesting. So just overcoming the fear of asking, just knowing it's not what you say, it's how you say it. Thinking about, if you're just afraid of asking, find a different way to say it. Now I want to start with the pillars of negotiation here, which does apply to this even at your current company. So the three things that you always need to keep in mind is information, timing and power. Those are really kind of where you're at when it comes to delivering where your leverage is. Information is your currency. You're gathering intel strategically while controlling what you share. And this is what we approached in the closer process in the interview. This is why we ask so many strategic questions. We're trying to get as much insight as possible without revealing the, I'd say the most egregious urgency on our part or fear or anything that kind of damages our position of strength. That's what we want to hold back until a later point. So we don't always want to share. Like, you're my favorite company ever. I can't wait to work here. I'm so excited. Like, you can't be overly eager, right? You kind of have to play it cool in the meantime. But when you get closer to the end stage, they know they want you. Then we can start to reveal more of that information and more of that excitement to get them excited about going to work for us and make a bigger offer for us. So that's where the information that you've controlled starts to get leaked out at the right time. And that's what creates power and leverage. So we're playing everything builds up into this. And this is a, this is a pretty meaty topic to cover. If you want to dive more into this, I would recommend reading you Can Negotiate Anything by Herb Cohen. It's definitely old school, like old white dude in the 80s. So be mindful of that language that's in there. But the concepts on information, timing and power are timeless and it helps you think about and simplify negotiation in terms that are more grokable. For example, he'll talk about negotiating a dishwasher sale at Sears. Significantly easier to understand than a highly complex technical deal in the multi seven figures. With Facebook, breaking it down to its basic principles is important and we'll talk about how these three pieces come together. Now I want to refer back to the mindset that we had in the interview process and add one last component that's necessary once we get to a stronger or let's say the conversation actually starts to become more meaningful for you. Right? Interview processes are nice. We're exploring, we're, we're throwing softballs at each other. We start to scale up the pressure as we get closer to making a decision. We want to know where the dirty laundry is. We want to start asking the due diligence questions, the hard hitting questions. We want to ask for 100,000 more dollars. Right. Whatever that is. As things get more difficult, we need our mindset to get closer to that of gratitude. And so we are still confident, we are still curious, we are still enthusiastic, but we have to express, express gratitude. 1 so people recognize that the Work that they're doing on your behalf is reciprocated and it feels good to take care of you. And the second part of this is for you, because when you're grateful for your opportunities, you have less anxiety. The gratitude and anxiety take the same space in your brain. So if you feel really anxious, like, oh, God, what if they say no? Like, what if I. Like, I'm going to ruin my reputation. What if I push too hard? You're feeling all that anxiety instead, shift it to, I'm grateful for the opportunity to have this conversation. I'm grateful for the chance. Right. Like, you have an option and a lot of people don't have options. There's a reason to be grateful right there. And so your gratitude can serve to alleviate that anxiety, build your confidence, help you express things with more curiosity, and keep your enthusiasm high in the most high stakes situations. Oftentimes when I'm in and this week has been a little health for me, I have four clients in late stage negotiations, all of which are complicated, and all of them need support immediately. And if I can just get them in that headspace of gratitude and confidence, they perform significantly better. And it's a volley back and forth. But this is the core mindset that you need. All right. I also want to talk about the power of preparation in a little bit more depth here. So this is why we treat our interview like a discovery process and that you're a consultant. We're doing our homework. We're researching the company, the industry trends, but we're also leaning into your experience about the market in general, your business knowledge, your business acumen. We're reinforcing your value when we share stories and when we ask smart questions. When we have that information, we're better able to anticipate challenges. And then we're also able to set our goals and change our goals based off of what we're learning. Like if we learn that a company's about to do an acquisition and scoop up a bunch of roles and they need somebody to manage that, and you volunteer and put your hand out there. If you haven't anchored yourself with a low salary, you might now absorb some new responsibility, push your career forward and make more money. But you wouldn't know that if you weren't adequately prepared in asking the smart questions. So this is where things are radically different than when you used to find jobs in the middle of your career. When you're a middle manager, or maybe even a senior middle manager kind of working your way up, it's highly tactical and you're told what to do. Someone else tells you where the challenges are and says, go fix them. Someone else gives you the goals. This is the mindset where you set them for yourself. And that's a key difference. That's what helps you break through that ceiling there. And so I'll tell you, I alluded to this earlier as we talked about planting seeds, but I mentioned that we had several deals that were starting at a $600,000 range that were up leveled to seven figure ranges. So I have a client who had been a VP for a long time, larger companies, and was being interviewed for a senior director role. And they liked the company. They liked the, they knew some of the executives had some internal champions. The company wasn't expecting to get somebody with that level of executive presence and experience. And they had budgeted for a senior director. Now, there's a couple of things that we can do here. You could walk away and say, they're not going to pay me enough, I'm gone. Right? Or you can explore it. Now, you run the risk of wasting your time, but you get the benefit of practicing your pitch, being persuasive, trying to understand the company's needs. So we followed suit with let's pretend you have the job and you're a consultant consulting them on who they should hire. Right. And so we approached the interview more from that consultative approach, saying, okay, so here's what I bring to the table. Great, it sounds like you're looking for this. Have you thought about X or Y or Z? What in. We were able to continue the conversation because if we had determined that there was no alignment, my client was going to make an introduction for someone who was better aligned and continue to help them solve the problem, which is the focus. Right. But through that process, they fell in love with her. They fell in love with her as the client. And at this point they're like, man, it's like going to test drive the nicest car on the lot and going, well, I can't go back to the other one. Right. And then you have a negotiation that happens. So through that process, we address that. And he said, I certainly didn't mean to come in here and disrespect your hiring process. This is likely more horsepower than you were looking for. Is there a way we can make this work? It's very vague language. Is there a way we can make this work? And they said, yeah, we absolutely want you. Let's find a way. And one of those ways was to break the comp ban by going instead of a senior director. We've gotten approval for it to be a vp. We actually probably could have pushed for C Suite in this instance, but my client was very concerned about being the tall poppy and getting fired. I'm sure many of you have felt that pain before, right? So kind of wanted to fly under the radar there. And for what it's worth, this is a $200 million company, so this isn't a big Fortune 500. This is relatively small, tighter, team, less process to have to really muck through. Still about six people coming up with the decision making process. But as we focused on the value that they would provide in the role and the impact, we actually focused on how the company would have this big win if they were able to attract top talent like this and create a story about it and how it bring different folks. I can't name the function that they're in, but it would bring different folks into that function and show that they were more innovative. And it actually turned into a PR play and a win in a big move in innovation for the company. And that ultimately helped rescope the role and nearly double the compensation from that $600,000 range. So lots of nuances. I want to be out of the box, right? I want people to feel so confident that they're differentiated because your job is to help them find the right solution. Now, ideally, you are the right solution, right? And you can communicate that. You could say, look, I hope I'm the right fit for you. And ideally we'll find alignment and I anticipate that we will. But should we not? I know these conversations will be fruitful because I'll be able to point you in the right direction on who you should hire best as I start to understand your needs better. Putting the sales hat on again. And I'll also use car sales as an analogy. If you see a, let's say, midlife crisis, father with three kids and his wife coming onto the lot and she wants him to buy a minivan and you show them a two door, right? And you try to talk about like the two door is the right solution, the two doors for you kind of thing, and he buys it and you win him over. There's no alignment there. He's going to fight with his wife, right? They're going to have problems later down the line and the salesperson's to blame, right? So if you, you have the ability and you have the capacity, especially the folks in this room, you have the capacity to be deceitful. You have the capacity to force yourself into Alignment and say, I am the best fit regardless. But is that the best decision for everyone? If it creates something down the line, we will talk about like long term reputation and those things. If you rush into being the right fit because you need the job. And again, I understand, like, if you're in a position where you need to make the money, you might need to soften this language a little bit and just take a job. But I want you to recognize why you don't have leverage to be your true self and why you don't have leverage to fight back and say, I'm not the right fit for this. And we work to build that leverage later. There's a rubber band effect here psychologically and it's certainly not easy to do right, especially when you really want something. So I'm not asking you fake it, it's just that you become very differentiated. So I actually, like you say, I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this. Most people do. Now, we promise to be differentiated. We need to be different, to be attractive, to be contrarian, to be provocative. People like that, people are attracted to that. And that's ultimately how you can win some of these jobs. If it makes you feel uncomfortable, you know you need to run towards it. And negotiation is very uncomfortable. But you have to ask yourself, why is it uncomfortable? Is it uncomfortable because I don't know how to ask for what I want, or is it uncomfortable because I don't believe I'm worth that? That's going to open up a slew of other questions, right? Is it comfortable because I'm not confident saying I'm not the right fit? Why is it because I'm not confident in who I am as an executive? Maybe I need to solve that. So it starts a tree of questions that no, if it's uncomfortable, how can I make it comfortable? How do I make that? It's an indication that there's something to learn and something to run towards. And it's likely something you're going to fail at multiple times. And if you have a growth mindset with it, you'll be failing forward. And unfortunately, you just have to deal with some of those pains and black eyes along the way. All right, now I want to share the strategic information management flow here and why it's important and kind of how it builds momentum through the process. So we start by asking these smart questions. We're deferring away the questions about money, the questions that kind of reveal our position, and we focus the conversation on asking more questions. It's like playing Poker. And instead of revealing two of your cards, you're just asking them to show theirs so you know how to play the hand better. We're trying to get some more information, which is why we ask smart questions. And then we focus on listening more actively. We listen two times as much as we speak. Two ears, one mouth principle. We want to be understanding and getting folks like, we want people to be on a soapbox, just sharing what's going on with the company because that's giving us the information necessary to be able to navigate our pitch and our story and also navigate how we negotiate later to build momentum and ultimately look for opportunities that others don't see. Opportunities that could include combining roles or upload an agency, or there's lots of different things we might see if we listen and understand and ask the right questions. And then as we continue our process, we share more and more specifically or more strategically so that they start to get to know us in the right order. And I want to go back a little bit to timing here, because there is a time where you can start to become more and more personal, and it's later on, like, in the process, so you start to get a little more open. Kimono, like, you don't say, oh, yeah, I was totally hammered last night drinking with my friends. Until you've worked with somebody for like a month and a half and know that that's acceptable, right? So, like, there's a time and a place to share that, and maybe that builds camaraderie with you, maybe it doesn't. But that's just one extreme example of you don't start off the gate with that. But later on, as they get to know you and they start to trust you more, you can feel more like, hey, like the. The team I used to work for, like, I noticed something was wrong right away. Have you ever felt that way? Then you can start opening up with more risky conversations. The better. You know, folks, you have to understand the drivers of the person you're speaking with, specifically what information they can or can't have. And you want to understand your goals with that person you're speaking with, too. So the goal of the HR person is to win them over and have them be an advocate and just to pass you off to the ultimate decision maker. And so I like to approach those conversations with what are the types of candidates you get most excited about pushing forward and why and how do I make sure I become one of those people? And very assertive. Ask, maybe presumptuous, right? If you're worried about being presumptuous. You say, I don't want to be presumptuous, but it sounds like our conversation's going well. How do I make sure that you're confident moving me forward and sharing with, you know, with Karen, you know, what she cares about most or what you learned about me, or how do I make sure that you're excited about this? And so we know they don't have the power to understand the nuances of your particular role necessarily. Many and especially top recruiters are going to understand the nuances probably better than the people that are hiring you. Right. Those we want to be mindful of. That's a different person to consider as well. But with hr, it's. You might want to ask more questions about. And this is where having your preparation is important. With your experience with hr, what do they care most about? How do they get paid? How do they keep their job? What are their OKRs? Right. Do they get judged on DEI? Do they get judged on their team culture? Do they get judged on retention? Right. Think about what HR leaders care about most, and then we incorporate that. So I would assume, like, if I'm talking to HR for the first time, I'm going to assume that you'd really like to make sure I'm a good culture fit. Right. And that we stay retained. Like, that's something I've always focused on as a leader myself. What are some of the biggest pressing things that you're interested in? What makes you confident to move someone forward? And so that's a different ask than talking to the hiring manager and saying, what do you need the P and L to look like next year kind of thing. Everybody has different motivators and drivers, and that's where you need to think about that. And that's where that strategic preparation comes in as well. All right, now, I'll reinforce the timing portion here. Timing is very important. You're building momentum over multiple conversations. You're not selling on day one. And I think the biggest takeaway is this is probably a sticky note thing for everyone here. Haste equals risk. The faster you go, the more risk you take on. And this is a little counterintuitive because if you have sense of urgency and need to pay your bills, like, haste is not risk for the mortgage company. Like, it's every time the same day. Still coming, still coming, still coming. Right. And so it feels counterintuitive to drag the process out. But when we drag the process out, we do more due diligence. We understand demands more. We understand whether we are hopping into a position and it's not a good fit and we're going to get fired in three months. Right? Those are things that happen all the time. When you rush into a situation, you don't have time to look through all the dirty laundry and find out where all the skeletons are. You don't have time to ask the questions because you're so focused on just start paying me. And that risk, when compounded over time, creates mediocre careers. And so it's okay if you're feeling that urgency now, but the challenge is I want you to look deeply and say, why don't I have leverage? Did I spend too much money? Could I live with less? Should I have been searching more proactively earlier? Did I not anticipate the market fluctuations? Did I not see layoffs coming? Like, which part of it is my fault? Right? So that I can understand how to be more proactive and avoid it next time so I don't find myself in this under leveraged position. And I'll add this one point because this seems to resonate with folks. So how come, how come a company can spend four months to get to know you, send you through 15 rounds of interviews, ask you for deliverable after deliverable after reference check after background check? I had a client the other day had 15 background checks, like 15 different back channel conversations and one came back negative and it changed the deal. And so how come they can do all of this? Right? Then they extend an offer to you and they say you have 48 hours to accept. Tell me how that's fair. So there's information, I've talked about information, asymmetry. They have the power and you don't. My job is to give you the power back. Right? And so no, I need time to review this offer in writing. I'm going to look it over over the weekend. I'll get back to you on Tuesday. Right? We need to control time and give you the tricks to control time. And timing is what ultimately creates leverage, right? If we can go through the entire process, be differentiated enough so that you're the only answer for them. Like Rashmi, you're the only one I want to work with. Like, there are three others in the process. But you're the one I want to take to prom. You're the one for me, right? You want to work that process. And then as you drag it out, the likelihood that they fall out of the process is greater. Therefore you're eliminating their alternatives and becoming their only option, which increases your power. Now there is A way to do this strategically. And it's a pretty reasonable ask to say, I'm going to take a couple days to review this. We also want to plant positive intentions. Like, I look forward to working with you. Therefore, they think it's a done deal. Right. I look forward to working with you. They might even internally say, we're going to hire rash me. Right. And if they're verbalizing that you're already there, they're going to have to more or less yield to some of your, I'll say demands. We're not making demands, we're making requests. Right. They're more likely to yield to some of those things as the pressure on them gets higher to bring you in. It's one of the reasons I love negotiating around the holidays. Because you can say, oh, I'm out for Thanksgiving, it's a great time to discuss with your family. Right. Or I have PTO for a week. This is, I'll discuss it here. You can drag stuff out. And yet companies are urgent because they want someone in seat Q1. Like they're trying to hit their budget. They have a greater urgency than you do. And instead of hiding, you don't necessarily need to push back very assertively. If you don't have those skills developed yet, you can use the holidays as a placeholder to push back for you and get some more time and push things along. We want to do this respectfully and with a lot of compassion. I imagine there'll be some questions for that part too. This is a very strategic conversation, how you drip information and this is also how we build our power. So one of the key principles that I share every time is that a company needs to know that they can get you or they won't go to work for you. So they need to know that you're. That's where that enthusiasm comes in. Like they need to know that you're actually interested or they won't even bother. And so you might say something like, I've had a handful of interviews. Or you might say, I was, I was in an interview last week for a VP role or a C suite role. This is where you can plant that other people are validating you for high level positions. And you might also choose to share for a Fortune 500 company that's going to set the perception that you're about to make a lot of money. Right? And they're like, oh, I don't know if we can get this person. But then you add, and you get ahead of it and say something like, but if I'm honest. I make a better impact at a mid sized company like yours. And so I'll, I owe it to myself to entertain it. But ultimately I'm more excited about this conversation for these reasons and I look forward to working with you on that and I'll keep you posted on the process and I'll let you know how it's going. And that helps create control. It's like, look, I do have other suitors, but you're the one for me, right. And I don't want you to be deceitful here. It's very easy to tell everyone you're the one for them. Right. If people think back to dating in high school. Right. It kind of feels that way. And you're playing the field. It's. You want to find a reason to be enthusiastic about each company that's genuine. So you might say, you know, I'm torn on like, I know it's likely going to pay well and I know the title's good, but if I'm really honest, I'm more excited about working with a smaller team because I like to see things grow and I like to see my impact. And I'm afraid that won't happen at a company that size. Like, if you were in my shoes, what would you do? Right. They'll probably say, well, you should entertain everything and keep your options open. But you're also psychologically planting the seed. Other people are interested in you. You're a scarce resource. It's not you're all in and you're the only one for them. Right. That helps to create like you're in demand. And so there's a lot of different ways to bring this up and there's a lot of different times to bring it up, especially if. And we have a slide on creating bidding wars, right. Especially in a situation where three or four companies are after you at the same time. The mastery of negotiation is controlling the stars to align. So all the offers fall within, let's say five to ten days of each other to maximize the information you get so that you can control time better, so that you have maximum power. And then we go back to those three principles there. So I want to talk a bit more about the psychology of persuasion through this too. And this is. I don't recommend many books. I did recommend one here earlier. Influenced by Robert Cialdini is the best book that you're going to read for your career and again, highly recommend that you go through the principles. Marketers here will immediately see the things they do on landing Pages and content and say, oh, that's what I'm doing. If they haven't read the book before, sales folks will see that as well. Product folks will see, oh, that's why we do this, that's why we do that. And see that it's baked into our lizard brains. And I just don't want you to lose sight of this. Like, we're building rapport, we're creating scarcity, we're using social proof. Like social proof in this instance could be like when we had said most people talk to me for these reasons or I was recently in an executive interview at Amazon or I was talking to like you're doing a little name dropping or brand name recognition there, that's building your social proof. If you're using the names of people inside the organization, hey, I just had a conversation with Brian and he said that you and I were going to have a great conversation and yada yada yada, you're using the proof of people within the organization that you're valuable. So these psychological principles all play to building kind of the greater concept here. And never underestimate the power of being likable and bringing light to difficult conversations. In a similar vein, another principle is the emotional intelligence piece. You have to be hyper self aware of how you are communicating constantly. You want to be aware of confidence and power, language versus desperation and neediness. You want to demonstrate empathy strategically. You want to side with folks, understand their point of view, probe at their questions. And to that question we got earlier about I'm hesitant on offering other people in the interview process. It sounds counterintuitive, right? If you're demonstrating empathy, you should understand that the hiring manager, they want you to be successful but they ultimately don't care who is the person that's successful. Right. In an open ended search. Right. I'm not going to get into nepotism or any of those other deals like insider trading kind of stuff. But they want you to be successful, but they honestly just need the problem to be solved. And if you're being the person that promises to solve the problem and support them, they're going to be more attracted to you. And they may say, I need to work with somebody that's this much of a straight shooter. Because honestly, truth in being a straight shooter and that confidence is lacking through all of corporate America. It is not. I mean, you know it when you see somebody that's genuine and it's rare and we all know that to be true in some capacity. Right? And so that demonstrating empathy is really important. Regulating your reactions. If somebody lowballs you, you don't get sad, right? You, you will take your stages of grief, but do that off of the phone, right? Don't do that publicly. Usually what happens is I get the text message. It's just what the f question mark explanation. Like, I can't believe this. Can you believe this? I don't. How did this happen? Right? And my job is to let people vent. Sometimes I'll get frustrated with them too. And I'll say, look like we knew where the alignment issues were here. Like this is this. This is that we're regulating. Sometimes we're explaining. But then we come up with a plan to come back and we stay calm under pressure because emotions erode your leverage, right? We talked about getting overly emotional and taking ego into it. That stuff starts to hinder your ability to think more objectively. Also, we should never forget to read the room context wise. It's also why I give the big warning, don't be Jacob Jr. Because there are situations where I wouldn't behave like this in public. There are situations where it's okay to be funny and there are situations where you need to be hyper serious and direct and you need to read the room and take cues and mirror. Be receptive to the changes that you see.

Session seven Workbook. Your assignment this week asks you to imagine you've been offered an executive role at one of your top companies. You'll practice using the GAINS framework to prepare your negotiation strategy so that you can secure the best possible offer. You'll also think through EQ strategies for dealing with tense negotiating scenarios.