Negotiating Well with Kathryn Valentine EP 353

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Hi, I'm Laura Vanderkam.

I'm a mother of 5, an author, journalist, and speaker.

And I'm Sarah Hart Unger, a mother of 3, practicing physician, writer, and course creator. We are 2 working parents who love our careers and our families.

Welcome to Best of Both Worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun. From figuring out childcare to mapping out long-term career goals, we want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to Best of Both Worlds. This is Laura. This episode is airing in early May of 2024. I am going to be interviewing Kathryn Valentine, who is a negotiation expert. So she has lots of great ideas on how women in particular can negotiate the various things in life. And you may be wondering, why is there gendered advice for how people negotiate? And it turns out that there's some research that when women use these sort of exact same techniques that men do, They may sometimes be judged in a way that they don't wish to be. So Kathryn has studied how women in particular can ask for things in a way that preserves relationships, but most importantly, helps you get what you want. So we're very excited about this conversation. But in the meantime, Sarah, have you negotiated anything lately or anything unusual in your life?

Well, I'm just so validated already by your introduction here, and I'm so I'm so excited to listen to this interview when it comes out because I hate negotiating. And I think I subconsciously understood that, that generally when I try to negotiate, it feels bad. I feel like I look bad. It doesn't come off well. I'm not good at it. And so my typical behavior is to honestly avoid it. I don't love to do it. I will say I did have one recent negotiation that I did that was very data-driven. I am getting X, this is what is really happening, I should get Y, here are the numbers, and I was able to do it. So when it's something very clear and obvious and it can just be a calm conversation of more like explaining, I don't mind it so much. But things like buying a car or sort of asking for something that's not on the menu at a given venue, oh my gosh, I really like— I can't stand it. And it actually can be a little bit of a sticking point between Josh and me where he'll be like, why don't you just ask? You'll never know if you don't ask. And I'm like, I don't want to ask. And so for example, this is like such a small thing, but we were both unable to run the Jacksonville Marathon last December because I had that unfortunate incident with my car and then Josh got injured last minute. And on the website it said something like no deferrals, but he's like, I'm just going to email them anyway and show them a picture of your injury and just honestly explain what happened and ask if they could make an exception and let us run the race next year. And I'm like, I would never do that. I'm not doing that. He's like, well, I'm just going to do it. And they emailed back and were like, here you go. Here's a code. You can use this next year. Thanks for letting us know. So I mean, I guess he was right. It would have been interesting to send that same email with my name. Like, maybe we wouldn't have gotten it.

I don't know.

If Sarah Hart Unger sent the email. I don't know. Probably we still would have gotten it. But I didn't want to ask. And—

If they gave it that readily, like they didn't ask for a physician report or anything like that, then I think they probably would have to you as well.

But— You're probably right. It's a small race. And I think they were just like, that's fine. So I'm very, very, very excited for this guest. Are you a good negotiator, or were you before you had this interview?

I don't know if I am or not. I mean, in my life, I wind up negotiating a lot of things just through the nature of running your own business. On the professional front, I do have people who negotiate certain things for me. Like, I've always had a literary agent. I've had a speaking agent. You know, those people actually have always been women. And I think women are well known for negotiating on behalf of other people. And we've always used like female real estate agents, we've, you know, anything like that. And I think that that's a perfectly good choice. Like no one should think like women are bad at negotiating, so I shouldn't use professional negotiators who are female, cuz there's actually some evidence that when women are negotiating for other people, they negotiate very, very well, which is something to think about. You know, if you are negotiating, think of yourself as negotiating for your team, negotiating for your family. And expanding the pool, that it's not just I want something, but this is benefiting all these other people, can sometimes be a lot more motivational. I was thinking back to a negotiation— this was so long ago now, but it came to mind when we were doing the notes for this— was buying my car in 2011. It was a straightforward sort of negotiating kind of thing. I got bids from 3 different dealers around the kind of Philadelphia, New Jersey, Delaware area. And then I took that number to the dealer who's 10 minutes from us, and I said, can you match it? And they weren't really thrilled about it. The word used was aggressive. But as long as I chose a car from the lot, it was OK. So I did, and it's been a perfectly fine car. And they've made it up. I've gone there for service for 13 years now, so I'm pretty sure that I'm a loyal customer. Whatever they lost on the initial sale, they have made it up in terms of oil changes and the like.

I'm dying to know if Michael wielding the same offer would have also come off as, quote, aggressive.

Maybe.

He sometimes is aggressive, but you know. We deal with that. Well, so anyway, we're delighted to talk with Kathryn Valentine about negotiation, and we hope that you will come away from this episode with a few tips that you can use for negotiations in your life. Well, Sarah and I are delighted to welcome Kathryn Valentine to the program. So Kathryn, can you introduce yourself to our listeners?

Sure.

So my name is Kathryn Valentine. I use research to help companies advance women. And I have 2 little ones as well. I have a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old. And so I feel like when I listen to your episodes, I just love how much we talk about both of these things. Whereas with— I feel like so much of the other world, we talk about one or the other. And so I'm excited to have this conversation.

Absolutely. And so the reason we have you on is that you are a negotiation expert. So maybe you can tell us, how does one become a negotiation expert, or in your case, how you particularly became a negotiation expert?

I think you make all the mistakes in the book first, and then you decide that you need to really figure this out. So, for me in particular, I was doing my MBA internship, which is like a 3-month job interview. And a few weeks in, I had finished the assignment they'd given us for the summer, and I decided that I was going to— I wanted to negotiate. to be placed on another team so that I could learn more. And I spent all weekend preparing for that negotiation. I, like, got the books from Barnes Noble, and I highlighted them, and I underlined them, and I wrote a script. I tend to over-prepare for things. And so, on Monday morning, I went in, our meeting was at 10:00 AM, and I asked to be assigned to another team. And by 10:06, it was clear that I had offended the coordinator in some way. I did not intend to do that. And by 10:10, I was being told I wasn't a culture fit. And therefore, there wouldn't be a future for me at that company. And so, in less time than like it took to get a latte that morning, I completely derailed my career. But I had a year of business school left. So, I went back and I studied what was at that point in time emerging research on how to negotiate specifically as a woman. And what I learned from that year of research is that, one, negotiation's gendered, which makes sense when you say it, but we don't often talk about it as if it is. We just give advice, like the advice is right for everyone. Two, to that point, most of the advice you would get if you Googled, like, how do I negotiate, is actually incorrect for women. But it doesn't come with that disclaimer. And then the third part, which is my favorite part, is that there is a research-proven solution. to how to negotiate more successfully as a woman. It was pioneered out of Harvard and Carnegie Mellon and then verified by Georgetown and a bunch of other colleges. And so, that is what I get to do now is bring that solution to women who can use it to negotiate whatever it is they want. I think particular to your audience, that would help you achieve the best of both worlds.

Yeah.

So, there's a phrase that you don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate. It sounds like when you're talking about negotiation here, particularly what happened to you, there are some pretty big pitfalls here. So maybe you can give a little commercial for negotiation in general, because I think a lot of people do have feelings that it sounds like a terrible thing that risks many bad things, as you mentioned.

Well, to your point, we are at a higher risk of backlash in gender-noncongruent negotiations. So what that means is when men are negotiating flexibility, they're actually at a higher risk of backlash than women are. But women are at a significantly higher risk of backlash when they're negotiating all the traditional things— promotions, resources, pay, all of that. The commercial, though— that's not the commercial.

No, no, that was not the commercial. That doesn't make me want to do it. Let's try the commercial now.

The commercial, though, is that there are significant benefits to negotiating. I think the one that we're most familiar with usually is the financial benefit, right? So $1 million over your career, or if you want to think about it differently, you can work for 8 less years, 8 fewer years if you choose to negotiate. The other one though that I think has really ignited the research community recently is early evidence that moms who choose to negotiate workload That can be a predictor of whether or not they remain in paid employment. And that is one of those things where it just starts to open the door for all the things that we can negotiate. Because if you think about it, if the workplace was not built for us, and so there isn't necessarily a well-beaten path we can go down, we probably are going to need to make a number of individual negotiations as the workplace is changing. So when you think about what group of people could benefit the most from negotiation skills, it really is working moms.

Yeah.

Now, I want to make a quick caveat here, though, because it's not that women can't ask for money, and that one also shouldn't shy away from people who negotiate professionally who happen to be women. I wouldn't want people hearing this to be like, well, I shouldn't hire a female real estate agent. I shouldn't hire a female talent agent. I shouldn't hire, you know, that there are— you are not at a disadvantage necessarily in the market because your real estate agent is a woman.

No, actually, women have better negotiated outcomes when negotiating on behalf of others than men do. So, you are at an advantage if your real estate agent is a woman or if your agent in any way is a woman. Backlash actually happens for women when we're negotiating on behalf of ourselves. And that's one of the things that, you know, is kind of the problem with if you were to Google, how do I negotiate for myself? And that's also where, you know, kind of the solution comes in.

Well, let's talk about it a little bit then, because you said that there is a solution. So maybe we can, we can get in on what are some of the negotiation techniques that maybe are more fruitful for women to pursue?

So we're in a spot right now where for so many years, women weren't negotiating as frequently as men are. New research actually out of UCLA shows that women now are negotiating as often, if not more often, than men in the workplace for themselves. But our results are about half as good. And what that shows is that we no longer have an asking gap. We now have a skills gap. And the skills gap is really just education. It's not that we're inherently not good negotiators. We're actually inherently very good negotiators. So, the research-based solution has 3 parts. The first part is to think holistically. The second part is to ask relationally. And the third part is to discuss collaboratively. Laura, tell me, do you want me to go into each of those? Would that be helpful?

Sure. Well, why don't we start with the first one and then we'll see how we're going?

Great point. So, with think holistically, when we talk to our audiences, 82% of people when you say negotiation, automatically assume base pay. And that is absolutely something that we can, and in many cases will want to negotiate. But at this point in time, if we can open up the aperture, there's so many other things that we can negotiate, right? Your performance pay, your signing bonus, a retention bonus. Then if we're going to want to go outside of money, we can think about your location, your work hours, how many resources you're given to do this, if you get credit for this. All of those things are negotiable. In fact, we have a list of 75 things that you can negotiate. And so, when you think about negotiating, A, maybe it's pay, but B, maybe it's more resources so that you can get the full impact that you're capable of done, but without being absolutely exhausted. Or maybe it's you're going to work these days, but not this day, because this day is when you're going to stack all of your kids' doctor's appointments, right? Those are the things that were not sort of historically common negotiations until the past 30, 40-ish years. They're absolutely things that we can think about when we want to negotiate for not only success, but well-being.

Awesome. Well, we're going to take a quick ad break, and then we'll be back to learn about the other 2 things that we need to negotiate for.

Quick one before you jump back in. You're listening for ways to help teams move faster, make sharper decisions, and turn scattered context into work they can use. ChatGPT for Business can help. ChatGPT for Business gives teams a shared workspace with admin controls, permissions, and access to work and codex in ChatGPT. This means your business can move from question to answer and code to rollout quicker. Join over 10 million business and enterprise users worldwide already using ChatGPT for Work. Download the ChatGPT desktop app or contact sales to learn more.

Today's episode is brought to you with support from Quince. We're heading into back-to-school season, and of course, for me, that means I'm thinking about the status of my wardrobe basics. You know, those everyday pieces you can always count on. Quince is the perfect place to look if you find your next season's wardrobe needs a refresh. Quince specializes in effortless, high-quality essentials, Like ultra-soft organic cotton and premium cashmere sweaters. They feel luxurious and transition seamlessly from morning meetings to dinner. And everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. I'm still wearing my organic cotton micro-rib cutaway tanks on repeat, but I'm also eyeing the gorgeous Mongolian cashmere shrunken cable tee, which looks like the perfect fall transitional piece. Upgrade your everyday. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com/best. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's quince.com/best.

When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for 9 months. I survived, and I've spent my life Exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.

I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, "Shut up!

Don't say anything." Every week, I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable.

I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

I started feeling that. There was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Well, we are back, and we are talking with Kathryn Valentine about how to negotiate, and particularly how one might negotiate as a woman, that there are certain techniques that might be more fruitful in negotiation from that perspective. So we talked about thinking holistically, and Kathryn has her list of 75 different things one can negotiate, not just pay. So then the second part was to think relationally, right, or ask relationally. Maybe you can talk a little bit about what that means.

Yeah. So, ask relationally is coming— this is research done by Hannah Riley Bowles and a few others, which shows that when women negotiate, if they demonstrate that what they're asking for is both legitimate and beneficial, then you have significantly higher outcomes and you virtually eliminate the risk of backlash. That sounds really great, but also sounds a little bit complicated. And so, what we've done is sort of boiled it down into a formula. And the formula is your past performance plus the future vision, and then your ask, and then stop talking, we added recently, because in an attempt to make the negotiation partner feel comfortable, women would start negotiating against themselves. So, what that looks like, let's say you're negotiating for, you know, we worked with one woman who was negotiating for fertility benefits. So, let's say you're doing that. What that would look like is, as you know, I've been able to accomplish X, Y, and Z. In her case, it was a new job offer she was negotiating. I would love to be able to come here and apply all of those skills to you. I think that we can reach X growth target within the first 12 months. In order to do that though, I need to make sure that I'm not leaving important benefits on the table. Specifically, my former company was offering fertility benefits, and that's really important to me. And so I wanted to talk about whether or not we could make that a possibility here. To which they immediately agreed because they wanted her and the growth they were going to achieve through her so much. So that's what that would look like. Do you want to talk about the third step?

Well, can we back up here and say, why is that relationally? What defines that as a relational ask as opposed to just an ask based on evidence? And here we go, what is the relational part there?

So I actually think it is just an ask based on evidence as opposed to the— there was one Wall Street Journal article where the expert, quote unquote, recommended that you go in and you say, I deserve to Be paid more. That's a really hard thing to recommend that women do because we know that women are at a high risk of backlash when they say something like that. However, if you can lead into, here's what I've accomplished, here's what we can do, and here's what I would need, that's a much easier ask, A, so much more likely to be successful. But B, also worst-case scenario on that one is you get a no. It's not that all of a sudden you're sidetracked. Or like me, you're told that you would have no future at that company. So the relational part is really just thinking about how to set yourself up for success, not just go in and make the ask. Now, I will say this is best practice negotiation for all genders. It just has the added benefit for women being able to eliminate that risk that unfortunately we carry.

And then what was the third one again?

The third one is to discuss collaboratively. And so, this goes back to sort of like getting to yes and a win-win mindset on negotiations. The difference here is instead of thinking it's you versus me, it's us versus the problem. And the problem is anything that keeps you from delivering the full impact you're capable of at the lowest stress level. That's a problem for you. That's a problem for your employer. And so, framing it up that way, now we can trade what more might work. And so, I worked with one woman who wanted to be offline after 6:00 PM because that's when all the family things happened. And her negotiation was, hey, I've been able to deliver X, we're on track for Y. I want to talk to you about being able to work the hours in which I'm most impactful. So, I'd like to talk about being offline after 6:00 PM every night. Do you think that would work? And what she learned back from her manager was, well, actually, the big report that we do is due on Friday morning. The whole company reads it. We always work on that late. So what if you're offline at 6 PM the other days, but not on Thursday? Because that's when it really matters. And like, that's a huge win for both parties. Without that collaborative discussion, she probably would just have gotten a flat out no. And she wouldn't have gained Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and frankly, Friday back.

Yeah. Now, this is interesting, though, because I mean, a lot of these examples that you're giving are women asking for more traditional women things, though, right? Like the flexibility and all that. We probably have a lot of listeners like, listen, I would like to be paid more. You know, let's do it. And I wonder if it's— I mean, men may be more sort of socialized to ask for that, because I think a lot of men are judged fairly or unfairly, well, unfairly, really, on how much they make. And it's just as unfair as judging women on their looks or something like that, but it is traditionally seen as this status marker. And so I think a lot of young men in particular grow up thinking, well, I need to negotiate for my whole family. Whatever my family's going to want, that could be on me. And so that creates this pressure to get it. And I think a lot of women have not grown up with that, but maybe they've come to see that I would like to be responsible for my family's financial health as well, or it is just me. You know, that happens as well too. So let's talk about getting more money. How do we do that in a way that doesn't risk backlash?

I love this question. So I was raised by a single mom. And as you were hinting at, like, our entire financial well-being was on her shoulders. And what we found, frankly, when she retired is that she was pretty dramatically underpaid. And that money over the course of 30 years could have made a really big difference. And so, this is one that when I originally did the research was very much top of mind for me. And so, let's say that you want to ask for more money. What I would recommend doing is, again, that past performance. As you know, last year I was able to increase sales by 5%. I'm just trying to use a common example here. Looking forward, based on X, Y, and Z, I think that we can increase it by Y% this quarter, Y% this year. In order to do that, I want to talk to you about making sure that I'm paid at the market rate. And frankly, given that I'm a top performer, a little bit higher than that. I think that number is around X. What do you think? Now, giving a number is a little bit tricky. What we know from that is that you want to anchor people and give the number first if you understand the bargaining zone. So, if you know about what is a fair range, you want to give the number first because you want them to be anchored high. If you don't actually know what a fair range is despite having tried, then you don't want to give the number first. So, that's kind of, that's always a point of debate. Do I say the number? Do I not say the number? Depends on how much information you have. And then I would go into, what do you think about that? Now, when you're doing a pay negotiation, a lot of times the most common no we get is like, well, unfortunately budgets are locked this year, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. In that case, what I would recommend doing is saying, I appreciate that information. Can you tell me what I would need to demonstrate so that when we have this conversation again in 6 months, this is an easy yes for you? And what we're trying to do is eliminate bias by making those checkmarks really clear. So, when you leave the meeting, you'll write the note, thank you so much for your time. Here's what I heard from you. And every time you check one of those boxes, you'll send another note. So, we have a paper trail, right? However, the other way to respond to, well, we can't right now because budgets are locked, is to access one of the other pots of money. I understand that budgets are locked on base pay right now. What about performance pay? What about a retention bonus? What about a training bonus? What about a relocation bonus, a signing bonus? Like, there's 100 different pots of money out there. Base pay tends to be the most regulated. Like, there actually are certain times that you can do it. The other buckets tend to come more from like a slush fund type situation. And so, they're easier for managers to access if you need to close some gaps.

Yeah. No, it's interesting. There's always something that's, or, you know, ask for all those other things, I guess, the vacation, extra weeks of vacation, even if a budget is locked, they can let you take more time off. For instance, that might be something to ask for as well.

And what I want to pull in here is, so Claudia Goldin won the Nobel Prize recently for her work on women. And what she was able to pull from the data, which I think is so fascinating, is that if you want to maximize your financial gain over the course of your career, you would actually negotiate for promotion, not a base pay raise, right? Because if you get a base pay raise, you know, the average is 3%. But if you can get a promotion, we're talking about 10%, 20%, 30% pay bumps, and then it puts you in a new range. And so, what I always think is interesting is you can come straight at pay if you want to. That's perfectly fine. And I think we've talked about how to do that. But the research would actually say that if you wanted to maximize finances, you would go straight at promotion, which is, I've been able to do X, think I can do Y, wanted to talk to you about being promoted by the end of the year. Can you tell me what I would need to demonstrate for that to be an easy yes for you? The other thing that we know is that because men tend to be promoted based on potential, but women on performance, that the right time to have that conversation is now. It's in your midpoint review, and lay out, like, the breadcrumbs that you would need to do so that your annual review is pre-decided, basically.

I love these phrases that you're using, like, what do you think about that? Right? That's a good one. Because it's not just yes or no. It's like, what do you think? So that's a— have a conversation about it. What would I need to do to make this an easy yes? That's another phrase I think people can learn from that one. So those are a lot of good ones to keep in mind. And then being quiet. You mentioned earlier the idea of just being quiet for a while. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that.

Women tend to negotiate against themselves. And this really came into focus for me when we were working on a negotiation a couple of years ago. And the woman wanted to work remotely. And when we talked, she wanted to work remotely 4 days a week. That was her goal. And then, when I talked to her after the conversation, she said, I'd like to work 4 days a week. You know what? I bet I could do it in 3. But if 2 is all that works for you, I'll do 2. And I said, well, what was your manager saying in between those? And she said, oh, nothing. I just kept talking. And so, that's what we want to sort of guard against. The other point that you made about the questions is we've set those up, we're calling them conversational volleys, but we set them up so that if you can make it at the end of the relational ask, it becomes very clear that it's the other person's turn to talk, not yours. So it makes the silence just a little bit easier to sit into.

Excellent.

We're going to take one more quick ad break, and then we'll be back with more on negotiating with Kathryn Valentine.

Quick one before you jump back in. You're listening for ways to help teams move faster, make sharper decisions, and turn scattered context into work they can use. ChatGPT for Business can help. ChatGPT for Business gives teams a shared workspace with admin controls, permissions, and access to work and codex in ChatGPT. This means your business can move from question to answer and code to rollout quicker. Join over 10 million business and enterprise users worldwide already using ChatGPT for work. Download the ChatGPT desktop app or contact sales to learn more.

Today's episode is brought to you with support from Quince. We're heading into back-to-school season, and of course, for me, that means I'm thinking about the status of my wardrobe basics. You know, those everyday pieces you can always count on. Quince is the perfect place to look if you find your next season's wardrobe needs a refresh. Quince specializes in effortless, high-quality essentials like ultra-soft organic cotton and premium cashmere sweaters. They feel luxurious and transition seamlessly from morning meetings to dinner. And everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. I'm still wearing my organic cotton micro rib cutaway tanks on repeat. But I'm also eyeing the gorgeous Mongolian Cashmere Shrunken Cable Tee, which looks like the perfect fall transitional piece. Upgrade your everyday. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com/best. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com/best.

When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for 9 months. I survived. And I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything.

Every week, I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable.

I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, so I am back with Kathryn Valentine talking all things negotiation. You mentioned that you were overprepared, perhaps, with the Barnes Noble book highlighting of your own negotiation. But obviously, we want to go in with— particularly if you are going to be listing past successes, You need to have a good list of this. So maybe you can talk about sort of proactively what people should be doing to set themselves up for good negotiations in the future.

So I think the idea of having a win list or a win file is always a good one. The other thing that I recommend is sending an end-of-week email every week to your manager of like, here's what we said I was going to work on this week, here's what I was able to accomplish, here's what I'll work on next week. Number one, that ensures that you're using your time efficiently. But number two, that means that you're basically highlighting your wins every single week. And so, when that person goes to fill out your review or anything like that, they just search your name end of week and it's all right there. The other thing, if you need to brainstorm what they might be sort of retroactively, is to look at your job description because that tells you exactly what's important to the company and you can lay out You said that I needed to build a new onboarding program. Not only did I build it, but we're onboarding people 30% faster than we were before. I think those are the kind of things that you can lay out there.

And you want to use numbers. I think that there's something to be said for turning just about anything into a number if it possibly can. And yet, I think a lot of people don't really think about that.

Agreed. And I think it doesn't have to be perfect. Sometimes there are estimations. You're going to triangulate what that number is. But as long as you can reasonably defend it, yes.

All right, so we're going to come up with a win list. The win list is going to have numbers on it. You mentioned that you were practicing with people before. Should you practice your negotiation?

I'm so glad that you brought that up. That is the number one most underutilized way to change what your outcome is going to be, is practicing it with somebody else. Now, no one likes to do this because it's a little uncomfortable. But it is the thing that we know will make a big difference. The other one is, and I love this sort of psychological trick, but you are more likely to have good outcomes when you go in and you're primed with happiness. And so what we've seen people do is plan a reward immediately after the conversation, not because of the outcome of the conversation, but simply for being brave enough to have it. And knowing that that reward is coming will actually make you more successful in the conversation.

I would imagine that also not putting too much stake on any one negotiation in your life might be helpful too. I know that many people have had some of the best negotiations of their life when they were totally willing to walk away from whatever it was because the stakes just don't feel so fraught.

Well, and Laura, I love having this conversation with you because you're so knowledgeable about the topic. So, the average negotiation takes 28 days. And I think a lot of times we build it up in our mind as like this one conversation and in an hour I'll have an answer. And that's actually not the way it usually goes. And that's to our benefit because as the conversation's evolving and you get new information, it gives you time to think about it. So, wow, we've done a lot today. Here's what we talked about. Here are the things we're still thinking about. Why don't we come back together in a few days and Finish it up. That's all perfectly fine.

Sounds good. Sounds like some ways we can all come out ahead. So, Kathryn, you mentioned you have this list of 75 things you can negotiate other than your salary. Maybe you can tell our listeners a little bit about where they can find that and where they can learn more about you.

Sure.

So, for any listeners that are interested in learning more, the list of 75 things you can negotiate, which has taken us at this point in time about 11 years to make, you can access on our website, which is worthmorestrategies.com. W-O-R-T-H-M-O-R-E and strategies.com. Secondly, if you're part of a women's organization, please consider recommending me as a speaker to help us get these resources to more women.

Yeah.

And I mean, there's some fascinating ones in there, like asking— I think you put in notes to me, somebody asked for December off. I mean, just as an ask, because I mean, that's when you're not getting much done anyway. And that is when a lot of stuff is happening. So it might be something you could, you could ask for.

Well, and Laura, as I was writing that email to you, I realized that there are so many things that you have probably seen working moms negotiate, right? So from my end, some of the ones I've seen are location, fertility benefits, sabbaticals, flexible hours, health, more resources, out exactly when the work happens. But even listening to what you and Sarah have done, like, there's so many other creative ways to do this. Are there any that you've seen in the past that have really stood out to you?

Hmm, well, I'm always, you know, I enjoy watching what Sarah has negotiated over the years as she has, I mean, completely crafted her career to look like what she wants it to do. I mean, that she obviously loves practicing medicine, but she has so many other things she wants to do in her life. And she's figured out a way to arrange her schedule to have both be possible. So I think that's really cool that she did that. But yeah, I mean, I think we've seen some cool ones. An episode I keep hoping to do at some point— we had to hold it for a couple of reasons— but about living somewhere else for a while, a family going and living somewhere else for a bit because both partners negotiated to be able to work remotely for a bit. So that's a really cool one. People have taken extended leaves. Sometimes it's not so awesome why they did. I mean, it's that there's a burnout factor going on. But when you've got that, and you're like, look, I could walk out the door tomorrow, or you could give me a 2-month leave, people get their heads around it. And that is heartening to see.

The woman that I spoke to who had negotiated December off— and she started Negotiating this like 20 years ago because her kids are in college now. Her whole insight was, when I take a step back, the majority of my children's memories and my memories with my children were happening in this one month. And also, I was getting nothing done at work, to your point. And so, I do think that there is— not everything's possible, but in terms of what is possible, the ability to be creative. with it is something that I think is a little bit underutilized because we're all going so fast down this one way of doing things.

Absolutely. Well, Kathryn, you know, we always end with a love of the week. I can go first, just because— to give you time to think about it, although I think you probably already know what yours is. So this episode, unless something happens, is airing shortly before Mother's Day. And one of our listeners at some point shared this strategy with us, which is in its own way a little negotiation. But on Mother's Day, there's often a certain way that your family wants to spend their time, which may or may not be how you wish to spend your time, right? Either it's that you are going to do something with the kids, or you may even need to be part of extended family gatherings that are celebrating the various, you know, matriarchs in your family. And that's awesome, right? But it again, May not be the restful celebration of yourself that you were going for. So she started doing what she called Mother's Day observed, right? Observed in the parentheses. Like the post office, if a major holiday falls on a Sunday, they then get the Monday off afterwards because it's whatever, observed. And so— That's what she did. She'd take Mother's Day observed some day either before or after the Sunday that is Mother's Day. She would take a day off work, do whatever she wanted to at that time, and celebrate Mother's Day in the way that she wished to do. So my love of the week, Mother's Day observed.

I love this so much because on Tuesday I was walking with a couple of my mom friends and they were all talking about how they were planning their mother-in-law's Mother's Day. Oh my goodness, she wants to do brunch here and she wants to do it with all of these people and she wants my children to wear matching things so that we can take a picture and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so this is just brilliant.

Well, there you go. Maybe more people can put this into practice this year. So what's your love of the week?

So mine is in December, I read your book Tranquility by Tuesday. This is my ideal schedule that I'm showing a lot of people now.

Just holding it up.

Yes. Awesome.

And in December, because you talk about the course that you're in, in December I was like, on Wednesdays I would love to go to dance class. And we are now almost in May and I went to dance class for the first time last week.

Yay.

And it was so much fun.

Oh, good.

Yeah. I hope that it fits in my ideal week more often.

I think it should.

But that was just—

I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't read the book.

Oh.

It was really, really awesome.

Well, that's wonderful. Well, I'm glad you did. And I'm even more glad that you made it to dance class and hope that becomes a Wednesday night staple for your night off.

Yeah, only took me 4 months.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, Kathryn, thank you so much for joining us. Real quick, could you say your website again so people have that?

Sure.

It's worthmorestrategies, which is w-o-r-t-h-m-o-r-e-strategies.com.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.

Well, we are back. That was very informative. We all picked up a lot of good tips on how to ask for and get the things that we want in life for ourselves, our teams, our families. So great to talk with Kathryn about that. Today's question is also about negotiating, of maybe a different variety than people often think of negotiating, but certainly negotiating. So this listener writes in, how do you handle kid chores once your kids are older and busy with extracurriculars? She says, between my partner and I, we have 3 children, ages 16, 14, and almost 13. I want them to help with household chores occasionally, of course, but their after-school and weekend schedules vary, and I don't want to get frustrated waiting for the dishwasher to be unloaded. So Sarah, how are you guys dealing with negotiating to get kid chores done despite busy schedules?

Yeah, I think if a kid is physically not there to do something, I'm just not really going to worry about it or think about it. Now that might be my kids are a little bit younger, so it is possible that I just haven't gotten really used to necessarily relying on them for all that much, even though I do ask for their help in certain situations. I don't need it per se, but I do feel like if they're around and I ask for help, I expect them to say yes. And I have had a kid kind of claim the, oh, I have homework defense, but it's like, okay, that homework will be there in 8 minutes after you've finished unloading the dishwasher because we know that's how long it takes. So I'll call them out if they kind of claim an excuse that is clearly not actually urgent, but I'm not going to leave something undone and wait for a kid to get home if I want it to be done, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I mean, especially something like emptying the dishwasher, because when it doesn't get done at the time it's supposed to be done, then the whole kitchen schedule is off and people are loading the— they're just putting their dirty dishes in the sink or on the counter because there's nowhere to put them. And that's like the additional chaos that then ensues is not worth it. That said, I do think that— I mean, chores have been such a struggle for us lately in general. And some chunk of this is the sheer reality of having 5 kids and particularly having 4 who are old enough to do something. Because when I ask somebody to do something, some chunk of the time, the answer is not okay. It's, why didn't you ask this person? Or they haven't done anything over the last 3 days. Why didn't you ask them? Or I did it last time. This person hasn't done it in 2 weeks. Go ask them. And I'm. It may be true, it may not. I'm not keeping an exact tally. Like, if I'm sitting there in the kitchen and we've got a pile of dirty dishes, I might just ask whoever's there to help me. But we tried to get something more of a chore schedule. And again, it got complicated of people being gone at certain times. Like, if somebody's supposed to do the after-dinner dishes and they have a 7 o'clock thing and we finished eating at 6:45, they can't do it. But then somebody else is gonna be like, well, he didn't do it last night. And so why do I have to do it tonight? All this is to say, I haven't come up with a great solution, but it does matter. I mean, like, I was thinking about this the night before we recorded this. Michael wasn't around. He and the older boys usually take out the trash. And this is not just like, I don't want to take out the trash, which may be true, but it also really hurts my back to carry these cans down a long driveway. And the 2 boys were also gone. They were at a state technology competition on Wednesday night. And I'm like, oh my gosh, what am I even gonna do here with that? I mean, so Ruth pulled some of them down. I mean, she's big enough to do that with some of them. Alex pulled one down, although again, it was harder for him because it's pretty heavy. And then I pulled 2 of them down and it was not a pretty situation. So we're— I think we may have to come up with, like, if you can't do it on your night, you do it the night before and it just sits there. I think that's gonna have to be how we approach that one in the future.

Yeah, because that's a good example of a task that's not like super— like, it does— it's not like the dishes. It doesn't have to be done within a very narrow window. So like, you could just assign someone to own it, make it work. Yeah. Nope.

So we'll see. I, uh, I don't know. We'll have to— is this a question where we don't have a good answer? But I think if it is something like taking the trash out And a kid has basketball practice from 6:30 to 7:30, you might just wait for the trash to go out after practice. And they can still do it, even if it's not at the exact time that you would have wanted. Well, this has been Best of Both Worlds. We have been talking with Kathryn Valentine about negotiation. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.

Thanks for listening. You can find me, You can find Sarah at theshoebox.com or @the_shoebox on Instagram.

And you can find me, Laura, at lauravanderkam.com. This has been the Best of Both Worlds podcast. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.

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