Before the Raise. The Moment Compensation Leverage Is Won or Lost | Kathryn Valentine

Job security? Let's get real. That expired years ago. And if you haven't been in a search for a while, you will, by choice or when choice runs out. Most executives I talk to stay way too long. They see the signs and then they rationalize them away. But the real trap isn't the job or the transition. It's this faulty belief that what comes next Has to be worse. So screw that. I built this show for you and for other executives who want more but aren't sure how to get there. Let's start with this. You already know that the old rules don't work. The resume, just a piece of paper, and the recycled advice, more noise. This is career blast and a half for executives over 40 who want smarter moves, faster wins, and zero wasted motion. I'm Lauren Greif, and I've Spent my career helping leaders like you land where they belong, on purpose, with power, more earnings, and without apology. So let's go. All right. Welcome back to another episode of Career Blast and a Half. And today we are diving into this whole idea of when compensation leverage is won and when is it lost. Most senior leaders don't get underpaid because they lack talent. They get underpaid because they negotiate after their leverage has already peaked. And today's guest has built her entire career around helping People like you, ambitious professionals, senior in their trajectory, close that gap. So Kathryn Valentine is somebody that I met. I consider her a friend, but she is also a ninja in this area, and that is not to be spoken lightly. She's the CEO of Worthmore Strategies, and she's a former McKinsey consultant and the mind behind The Relational Ask. Her TED Talk, which I got to see live, on negotiation became the number one trending talk on TED.com. And her work is featured in Harvard Business Review and all the big names, Wall Street Journal, Fortune. She works with leaders inside firms like JPMorgan, Bain, and KPMG to negotiate collaboratively and equally important, strategically. So compensation actually reflects value. Whew! Oh, I am thrilled. So let's get to the heart of this here because I want you to debunk this idea that many senior leaders assume that their compensation reflects their performance. So where does that assumption Quietly break itself down?

So, 2 things. Um, one, just to give credit where credit is due, the relational ask was actually created by Hannah Riley Bowles and Linda Babcock, um, one at Carnegie Mellon, one at Harvard. The way that I see my role is that I try to integrate with researchers as much as possible so that I can bring what they've learned into sort of the practical world of professional services. And so when we think about like, how do you use this as a banker, a CPG executive, a lawyer, a financier, any of those things, that's the gap that I try to serve. And the answer to your question of how does that work is it's reverse. It is 180 degrees opposite what we think, which is that research by Pinkley and Northcraft show that instead of looking at your impact and therefore deducing what you should be earning, people that you work for, including those that you report into, Look at what you're earning and use that to deduce how much impact you're delivering. And so, think of it as a commodity, right? You walk into a CVS, you see 3 different cough medicines, you're gonna assume the most expensive one is the best. You might not choose to buy it, but that's an assumption you're gonna make. Those same assumptions are made in the workplace. And so, the study goes on to conclude, accepting less implies that you are delivering less. Not the other way around. Oh, I know, right? Mind-blowing.

So, so like the subtext of that is always ask for more.

It is because that is how you convey that your work is worth that.

So if we look at the trajectory, at what point Is that leverage the highest? And what point do they realize, oh no, I've waited too long?

So this is a really interesting question because I think of it more as inflection points along the way than a particular point in the trajectory. And so the question is always like, when do I have the most negotiation leverage? A lot of people, and I do negotiation coaching, a lot of people come to me before they get the offer and in the interview process, they're trying to say, well, but I need this. Well, but I need that. Don't do that. Don't do that because that's not when you have leverage. You have the highest leverage once you've gotten the offer because that's when everybody has sort of held hands and said, this is our person. And now to get— now for you to not say yes is for them to have a little bit of egg on their face and no one likes that. And so that's one inflection point is once you get the offer, you have a lot of negotiation leverage. The other time inside of a company is once you've highlighted how great you are at your job. So when you've had a huge win, that's a great time to start negotiating. And, you know, maybe, hey, the budgets are due in September, so blah, blah, blah, blah. Sure. But like, we are now on the waitlist for the next time money is free. It's coming this way.

Okay. And so this is the perfect time. For you to walk us through the relational ask, because this is, this blew my mind. And I will make sure that your TEDx is also included in, in the show notes because every, every person, including every woman, should watch that TEDx. So tell us how this relational ask, this collaborative negotiation materially changes compensation. At the senior levels.

I, I really appreciate the shout out to the TEDx. Um, I can't tell you how much that has changed my life. I've been doing this research since 2014, so 12 years, and it has been one-to-one, one-to-one, one-to-one. And all of a sudden I did this little talk at this TEDx that it's their first time. And, you know, shout out to Kara because she's really good at what she does. And shout out to Anna for help helping this happen. But it has, I mean, in the past 4 weeks, 400,000 people have watched that talk. Exactly. And it's like, I, I like, you just, I feel like I was pushing this boulder up a hill every day. And it's like, I get these notes and one person at a time, one person at a time, one person at a time. And all of a sudden, thank you, TEDx curators, whoever you are back behind the magical box. But like, all of a sudden I can really scale that, that research and that helps. So. To walk you through what a relational ask is, the foundation that we're working with here is that, uh, people are penalized for gender non-congruent negotiations. So what that means is that when women ask for things, typically within the workplace, like compensation, resources, stock, all of that stuff, we are at a significantly higher rate of backlash. It also means, by the way, for any non-women who are listening, when those who don't identify as women ask for things that are traditionally feminine, like flexible schedules, Or time off because their kids are sick or backup childcare, you are also at a higher risk of being punished, of backlash, of your, um, you know, advancement slowing because that's a gender non-congruent negotiation. Very important in both directions to acknowledge, although simply because of the amount of negotiation that is happening, most of this tends to hit women. Um, there's just more women asking for, I don't know, raises than there are men asking for backup childcare right now, right? So the way that the relational ask works is that if you use it, it virtually eliminates that risk of backlash alongside significantly increasing your chances of success. So there are 4 parts to this. Part 1 is your past performance. Part 2 is the future win that you and the other person agree, like, yes, that's a win. Usually it's kind of why the job exists. Part 3 is you make your ask. And then part 4 is you stop talking and you start a collaborative discussion. Um, for the first 5 years I coached people on this, we didn't have part 4. And then we found out that women were, you know, cared so much about how other people felt that we would start negotiating against ourselves. So now we add in a part 4. Um, is it helpful to you if I run through an example? Would that be—

Oh, you just read my mind.

Oh, okay, great. So for example, let's take the job offer scenario, cuz that's one that we get a lot. So let's say that you just received an offer as, um, the CIO of a, I don't know, donut factory. Okay. So as the CEO of a donut factory, what it would, the way you would lay this out is, as you know, in my past roles, I have, you know, helped prepare a company for sale or blah, blah, blah. Like, what are the 2 or 3 things that they want? Why are they hiring you? As you know, in my past experience, I have X. Together, I believe we can, why? And I don't know if the donut factory is hiring you because they need to increase profits, or if they're hiring you because they're preparing for sale, or if they're hiring you because they want to expand, whatever it is, but that's what you, that's the reason why they're spending the money on you. That's your future. In order to do this, I wanted to talk to you about adding 5 more people to the team. I wanted to talk to you about, uh, compensation in line with X, because that's what I see in the market. And I wanted to talk to you about, you know, allowing me to use the first 2 weeks to visit factories, because I think that's really important in understanding what all these dollars that are coming through are doing. In, and then you would go to the collaborative ask, what do you think? And now we get to have a discussion back and forth. Um, in my experience, you want to ask for more than one thing simply because it helps you tell that story of, you know, why we're asked, like, we want to be as good at our jobs as possible. And then the other flag I always have to throw is that we know that men are getting 80% more stock options than women are. That's Wall Street Journal. We know that men are being given team sizes that are 25 to 40% larger than women are. That's Lara Cray out of UCLA. And we know that men are getting 30% more 401 benefits and performance bonuses than women are. That's Robert Walters. It's a recruiting firm. And so if you are negotiating, I just want you to think like, hey, could any of these things be something I wanna throw in there? Because we know that's an area that without intervening, uh, we tend to be, uh, less gender neutral, um, than we would want. I feel like I just talked forever. Ugh. What do you think?

Well, first of all, it's not even what I think. It's, it's what is, what the data is showing. And I would love for you to just celebrate some of your wins here and talk about not just the pillars and the steps, but why this is so different and why especially women need to be able to learn this differently from the way that we have all, for the most part, been taught to deal with negotiations because There's a downside and then there's the upside. So walk us through that.

So I feel like we continue, uh, really in the past 20 years or so to keep uncovering places where it's like, well, this doesn't make sense. 90% of breast, you know, breast cancer research was done on men. Well, this doesn't make sense. Um, those are kind of the things that we're up against. And this is one of the ones where you pull back the curtain and you're like, well, that doesn't make sense. So a lot of the way, if you were to, you know, Google or ChatGPT, how do I negotiate, what you're gonna be fed up is a lot of tools that has historically been created for men by men. And there's nothing wrong with that. Married to a man, love men. It's just that this wasn't built for me. I always picture, I live down the street in the same state as Augusta, the golf course, and I always picture what would happen if somebody went to the Augusta Nationals and handed every single one of those men a golf club that was made for a 5'4 woman. Can you imagine the uproar that would ensue? But we do that to women every day, particularly in negotiation, where we continue to handle women tools that were not built for us and then make us feel bad when they don't work, which is bullshit. And so here, what this is, is 10 years of research done by some of the best researchers, Hannah Riley Bowles, Laura Cray, Linda Babcock, a ton of other really incredible people. That shows, hey, you know what? Not only are we doing this wrong, but we have a solution here. And so that's kind of what, you know, the message I'm trying to share. Like, hey, don't go to ChatGPT and ask how to do this. It's gonna give you the wrong answer. Look at the research. Like, here's the tools. Let's, let's use these instead. Not only are you gonna get better outcomes, but the women who use it report feeling more authentic doing it. And so they're more likely to negotiate, which is something that we want.

I am blowing the lid off of our best-kept secret, our 30-Day Blast program. Yeah, you heard it, 30 days. We have seen so much success for this program that past clients have landed in that 30 days and increased their compensation 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, over 100%. Now, not everybody lands and earns that much in 30 days, But my point is, it prepares you. And in 30 days, if you're not out of there with a changed mindset and changed clear and simple ways to be able to navigate the market this year, then we'll gladly refund your misery and you can go back to applying now. Check out the link below for the next 30-Day Blast, and we would love to have you there because we live for your success. And that's what's really important. I want you to go a little deeper on better outcomes.

Yeah.

Because that's really, that's the payoff, right? You're gonna, you're gonna learn something different. It may be uncomfortable at first. Okay. No problem. Like, think about this. Like, what is, what is the this?

Well, and what I'm going to argue is once you learn it, it actually won't be uncomfortable all of a sudden. I mean, what I hear is people being like, oh, oh, and you're like, yeah, this is, this is no big deal. Right? We're all on the same side of the table here. We both, you and your employer both want you to be really good at that role. Okay, we're aligned there. In terms of the outcomes, when I do negotiation coaching with people, on average, we have a 26% increase in compensation. I did have a 62% recently, which was awesome. Not normal, not average, but fantastic. And so, you have those measurable things. I would also argue you have a decent number of unmeasurable things that help a lot with the mental load. And so, I've worked with executives who have negotiated a dedicated conference room because they were spending too much of their time figuring out where their team was going to meet. They have negotiated things like a ton of relocations, but also things like who's traveling with the CEO, what people are you getting to meet, and what rooms are you in? The other thing that we see in terms of outcomes is there's the quantitative, there's the qualitative, and then there's the leadership capabilities. So people who negotiate this way are ranked by their negotiation partner, the person they negotiated with, as higher in leadership capabilities than if they didn't negotiate at all. So I did one negotiation at a bank where she came back to me and she was like, I got— she got a 40% increase, she had 3 people added to her team, and she was like, and now I'm on the leadership committee. And I said, wait, come again? She was a VP. A leadership committee was not something we were negotiating for. And she said that the company realized they were growing so quickly that their high performers used to just sort of inherently be taken care of, and now they needed to really be thoughtful about it, and they wanted her voice in the room as they started to add structure around how they retain high performers. And it's the first time the company had ever needed to do that. And so, that's kind of the thing that we see when we talk about people seeing you more as a leader after you negotiate in this way than if you didn't negotiate at all.

Excellent. This is really exciting. I also really want to plug into the ebook that you have and the pieces around, you know, you've identified 76 things, 76, that's no small number that professionals can negotiate beyond salary. And you touched on some of them. That may have come up organically or maybe in the negotiation. But what I would love to have you filter for is which of the 3 most directly aligned to long-term power and influence?

Ooh, okay. I love this one. And I really, by the way, I really appreciate that you're asking questions differently from how I've ever been asked them. It makes it a lot of fun. Do you, you mean power and influence, not financial wellbeing?

Earning power and influence, like the long-term, the, the ones that really, like if I, if I decided, you know what, I'm gonna put the other 73 aside, like I should just focus in on these. What would those be?

Okay. Here are the 3 of them. One is high-profile assignments. Um, anything that is gonna allow you to report into the executive team. I would like for you to consider asking for. Um, when I was working in apparel, I was 26. I had no freaking business asking for this, but I asked to figure out where the next retail locations were going to be, and I would do the analysis on it because I was the resident nerd. Um, and they were like, yeah, that sounds good. We'd love for you to do the analysis. And by doing that, I was allowed to travel with the CEO and the COO. I was allowed to be in rooms that otherwise I never would have had access to. So one, high-profile assignments. 2, resources. One, resources because I want you to be able to level up. So if having 4 more people on your team is what allows you to deliver the biggest impact, yes. I also worked with somebody in inventory management once who negotiated for a new inventory system. And when we were talking about it, I was like, oh, okay, that's interesting. Tell me more. And she was like, well, the system costs $2 million. But it enabled her team to do the same amount of work in 40% less time, which meant, one, she didn't have the burnout issue and just, you know, the team before couldn't keep people, uh, before she inherited it. Once they implemented the system, all of a sudden they could keep people. But two, it meant that that team could level up and think strategically for the first time. And if you think about the impact inventory management has on the cash of a company, like that is a huge leverage point. And so her career totally took off because she thought about how to resource herself to deliver impact. Yeah, that was a big one.

That's really interesting.

So one, high-profile assignments, 2, resources, and 3, meetings. What meetings could you ask for access to? Because it allows you to see where the ball's going. And so I worked with one woman in the past who asked for access to the department sort of head meeting in a different department. So it wasn't her department, but that department, the way that work flowed in her industry is it went from their department to her department. And by being in the leadership team meeting of their department, she could see what was coming down and it allowed her to prepare her team to be even more effective. It also is great for, just great for her network. And so those are probably the 3 things I would think about if you want to level up your power.

All right. They should, they're, we're highlighting them here, but don't, don't skip out on the other 73. Okay.

Oh yeah. 76things.com if you want the whole resource.

Excellent. So we'll include that in the show notes too. For a senior leader who suspects that they're being underpaid right now, should they do in the next 90 days to change that trajectory?

Okay. So I get this one a lot. Um, and a lot of the reason why people come to me on this is because their company asked them to hire somebody into their team. And when they looked at the job description, the person on their team was going to get paid more than they were. And that's, that's what drives, I think, a lot of the times I get this question. And so, if you suspect you're being undercompensated and you want to allocate 90 days to kind of figuring that out, here are the things that I would do. One, benchmark your compensation. Now, a lot of times people will go to Glassdoor or salary.com or whatever. Not terrible. I'm not sure it's entirely worth your time though, especially at the senior executive level. A lot of times companies won't accept that data because it's self-reported, and so they just immediately throw it out. Instead, what I'd prefer you allocate your time towards is accessing your network to get those numbers. And so, you know, if you went to business school, reach out to them. If you went to law school, reach out to them. A lot of times those alumni centers are helpful. I also want you to talk to people who used to be at your company but aren't anymore. They're very happy to chat with you and they have, you know, they don't have a dog in that fight. So ride on. And then the other thing I would think about is who else do you know who might be able to backchannel you this in? into this. So when I work with folks in the medical field, a lot of times, like, the pharmaceutical reps have a, have a good idea of this because they have a huge network of other specialists that they can ask, right? So who else knows a lot of people like you that you can talk to? So that's the first thing is one, actually benchmark it. I realize it takes some elbow grease. You should probably need to allocate 4 hours to it, but that's going to give you what you need instead of us just imagining what it is. So one, two, I would then, you know, I mean, you know, the negotiation thing, you're only as strong as your alternative. And so one of my, one of my favorite clients once told me, I never have to get ready for the job interview because I'm always ready for the job interview. And I love that she's just taking the calls. And I know that it's another thing on your plate, and I do hate that, but it is one of those moves that we know dramatically impacts what your compensation will be over the long term. So, 1, 2. And then the third thing is brush up on your negotiation skills. Um, if you are a woman, we have a course, uh, at worthmorestrategies.com that you can take. It's 45 minutes. It's literally built for people that don't have time. Or, you know, read some blog posts, watch the TEDx, but allocate 30 to 60 minutes to getting gender-specific negotiation training, because that's going to matter.

It's all—

how did I do? Did I hit all 3?

You crushed it. No surprise. So thank you listeners for coming today. We are exactly, well, actually we're a little bit early, but that's okay. We are really wanting to say not just pay attention to this episode, but leverage and decision-making is is really the lexicon that you should be thinking about, whether it's negotiation, whether it's your next career move, because at this level, that is where your strengths are most evaluated. What decisions are you making? What are they costing if you're not in the room? And also more Specifically what's about to break so that you can foresee how you are the solution to that. Because something broke last night. So really start identifying that. That's not ambiguity. You already know what those things are, and that's where leverage either lives or dies. So thank you so, so much, Kathryn, for being here. And for any of you who Listen to this episode, please write an Apple Podcast review, and we'll say goodbye for now. And thank you so much.

This was awesome. Thank you so much for the conversation.

My pleasure.

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