Finding Confidence in Conflict - Highlight reel

Hello my fellow negotiators.

Did you know I once had a.

Listener share that after listening to our podcast, she was able to negotiate a $53,000 raise. And you know what I told her? Where is my commission? Just kidding. But the real story is this was after years of being too afraid to negotiate. But after listening to a couple of episodes on Salary Negotiation, she felt equipped with with the confidence and tools to ask for the payment she deserved. And that, my friends, is the power of negotiation. And through a subscription to our new membership community Negotiate Anything Premium, we're taking that power to the next level. With customized playlists based on our most popular topics, you'll be able to find the episodes you're looking for much faster and much easier. A tool that comes in handy as you're getting ready to prepare for an important negotiation. Even I find myself asking which episode should I listen to before heading into a high stakes negotiation? And you might be saying, but Kwame, you're the ones having the conversations. But I forget. So I listen to the episodes multiple times. Okay, now here's the thing about Negotiate Anything Premium. It'll allow you to dive deeper into the specific situations you're facing, whether it's a salary negotiation, an important business meeting, or an emotional conversation with a loved one. Bonus for you. In addition to ad free and extended episodes, Premium members will have exclusive access to solo episodes and insights from yours truly. And as you know, it will be very dry and very boring. Because I have no sense of humor and this is something that you all have been asking for. I'll also be offering personalized answers to some of your most burning questions through our Ask Me Anything feature. If you've been enjoying our traditional feedback, imagine the value a premium subscription can offer. I've felt the benefit of negotiation firsthand and it is life changing. Many of you don't know this, but my journey has taken me from people pleaser to a confident negotiator. Because I was able to do two simple things through negotiation. I was able to first change my mindset and then I was able to improve my skill set. And that is what will happen for you when you join Premium. I've already seen the impact of these skills and the power of this model not only in my own life, but also in the lives and careers of our clients all around the world. My family, my friends, and our team here at A&I, and I am confident that it can do the same for you. Now, are you ready to negotiate more of the best things in life? Check the link in the show notes to learn more. I'm excited to continue the conversation. I'll catch you later.

Confident salary negotiation.

And so before we get into the.

How to's of this, Kyle, I kind of want you to set the stage here and tell us why it's so important for us to have these difficult conversations around compensation.

So on the surface, salary negotiation seems like it's just a numbers game. How can I get the most salary out of this organization that just offered me a job or will hopefully be offering me a job job and let me try and figure out that numbers game. However, underneath the surface, there's so many factors that impact how we show up to that conversation. And when I talk to job seekers, the number one factor that comes up probably 95, 98% of the time is confidence or lack of confidence. People say, oh, I don't have the confidence, Kyle, to ask for 40,000 more dollars than what they already offered me. Oh my gosh, this is meta or Amazon or some hypergrowth startup. I'm scared to go ask for more money. And confidence keeps coming up. So today, hopefully we can talk about a few ways people can boost their confidence as they go into these salary negotiation conversations.

I love that.

This is great.

And before we get into that again, I want to explore a little bit behind some of the perspectives that might hold people back. When you think about the mindsets that hold people back and make it tough for them to negotiate effectively and advocate for themselves, what are some of the patterns that you're seeing?

People, when they go into salary negotiation, they have these ideas around money. And when it comes to money, they're like, oh, I don't think I'm worth this amount of money. They say, I've always made X dollars and now this is 50% or 100% more than I've made before. And people feel like, oh, that's already good enough. I shouldn't negotiate more. And there's these negative feelings or perceptions people have around money. It can be difficult to move past that. And people connect money to their worth. I'm worth X amount of dollars, but not Y amount of dol. The stickiness that comes in. And we, when I come in, I try and say, let's disconnect that and not say, here's what you're worth. The money's not your worth. It's simply an exchange of energy. You're showing up and delivering a certain amount of energy to the organization. What energy can they provide back in regard to money? And that can be helpful for some people. To disconnect from, oh, this is my worth. No, it's not. It's just an energy transition between you and that organization.

That's so cool.

That's really interesting because it's. It almost depersonalizes the heavy conversation, right?

Yeah.

Because it's not personal. This organization isn't hiring for you. They're hiring for a set of work. And what is the dollar value attached to that worth? That work? Not to your worth, but to that work. And what's the dollar amount that they've attributed to that amount of work? And that can be helpful. And there's a range that they've attributed to that work. And today what we're going to talk about is how much is work worth to an organization. What's the budget range for that? And not the budget range for you as a human, but the budget ra for that work. And that can be helpful to understand that as you go in and hopefully boost your confidence that you're not negotiating, how much am I worth? But how much is this energy or this effort worth to this organization?

I think one of the things that would be just an interesting place for us to start is talking about that operative word of fierce. Because you could have just said how to advocate for yourself or be a self advocate, but you put the word fierce in there. And I'm sure that was intentional. Can you tell us about that?

Yeah, sure.

I think for a lot of us, we would describe ourselves as fierce advocates for our clients, you know, for our internal stakeholders and customers, you know, for our VIPs, maybe even for those folks who we supervise and manage.

Right.

We want to be fierce advocates for those folks. And so often one of the messages I share with people is, you're already doing this. You know, you're already doing this. My question to you is, what if you took that same ferocious self advocacy, you know, that same art of negotiation you're bringing to delighting clients to those areas that benefit you, like your title, your performance rating, the juicy assignment that just came in and who's going to lead it, you know, your pay. Right. All these conversations. What if you, you know, brought that same great advocacy to those areas that benefit you? And what's exciting is when you, you start to think in a different way to bring that same fear self advocacy, you can do it even more often negotiation and even more strategically.

Right?

You can really do it more strategically and think through, how can I be empathic to the other person's situation right now? How can I think about what's top.

Of mind for them.

How can I make this a win for both of us?

That's great.

I was at a keynote the other day and a listener walked up to me and said, hey Kwame, my favorite part of the show, it's the ads. He was the only person who said that though. If you don't like ads, maybe you should consider joining Negotiate Anything Premium where you can access insights from your favorite negotiation experts with ad free listener and extended episodes bonus, you'll also get access to exclusive solo episodes and personalized advice from yours truly. If you've been looking for an easy and affordable way to level up your skills and negotiate more of the best things in life, join our premium community. Click the link in the show notes to learn more. And now enjoy this commercial. And so for that gentleman who told me he enjoys the commercial, this one's for you.

So why don't you start us off? Tell us about research.

Well, the research is very clear that women ask for things pretty reluctantly. We're socialized very heavily from the time we're quite young to wait to be praised, wait to be rewarded, wait to be invited to do things. And the ways in which we're socialized are fascinating actually. Start on the day a baby is born. One cool study showed that parents and nurses perceive little boy and little girl babies differently on the first day of their lives. They see little girl babies as more fragile, physically, not as strong, less coordinated, less alert and more needy, more in need of being cared for, picked up, comforted, etc. They see little boy babies as physically stronger, more alert, more coordinated, and more able to take care of themselves, less in need of comforting. And this socialization carries on throughout childhood. It's very profound and the impact is almost immediate. By the time kids are in first grade, they have learned this lesson pretty well. Boys will raise their hands in class asking for the teacher's attention even when they don't know the answer to a question. And girls will not raise their hands even when they do know the answers. They have already learned to wait, to be recognized for their brains and their hard work and their accomplishments. And we teach kids with the books we give them, the television shows and movies they watch, the behavior we model. We teach a lot with the chores that we give them. We typically give little girls chores that involve taking care of other people, taking care of younger siblings, taking care of the rest of the family, helping mom with household chores, chores that don't require a lot of initiative. They're not self starting so much. You're not going to leave A child alone with an infant or let a little girl stand at a stove and cook. So they don't require initiative and they are largely focused on the needs of other people. Boys more typically do chores, are asked to do chores outside the house. Go wash the car, go rake the leaves, go mow the lawn. So requires more independence, more initiative. Go get your tools, go do it. Stop when you think you've done a good job. And most significantly, boys are more commonly paid for their chores than girls are. So dad will say, I'll give you five bucks if you wash the car. Her mom will say, $10. You can get all those leaves right this weekend. So boys learn that they work for money. Well, girls learn that they work for love, which sadly doesn't pay very well.

That is fascinating. Just fascinating.

Yeah.

So let's start off with you kind of talking about the course, setting that foundation, and then giving examples about how you were able to use the skills from the course in real life scenarios.

Yeah. So I would say that right off the hop, that course taught me one awesome thing that you think would be obvious that's not. Which was be prepared. And you think, okay, of course I'm going to be prepared. But being prepared means a lot of different things for a lot of different people. And what I learned was the first thing you have to do to be prepared is think about yourself and think about where you're at, what you want, and what it is you want to accomplish. Think about where you're willing to concede, what you're not willing to concede on, and, you know, write all of those notes out. So take some time to focus on yourself. And so that was the first thing that I applied because there was a couple of areas in my life that I really needed this program to help me with. And which it really did, and that was the first thing that I put myself through, is I went, okay, what is it that you want? And you think that would be really simple. And it's not, because oftentimes we're chasing a feeling. And sometimes you come right down to the core grassroots of what's the feeling that I'm trying to get out of this, and then what's the end result? Then I learned that I needed to sort of put my feet into the other person's shoes, put myself into the other person's shoes, and say, what is it that they want? What is it that they need? And what is it that they're trying to get out? What do I think that they're willing to concede? On and what they're not willing to concede on. On and take a look at. Do they want to be valued? Do they want to be appreciated? Do they want to be respected? Are they coming from ego? Where are they coming from? And once you've gathered that information, that in itself will change. It'll up your game by 50%. So, you know, for people that like me, who really didn't take anything in negotiating whatsoever, and, you know, probably I grew up as a pathological people pleaser, trying to make everybody else happy. And you, you don't think about what you want and what you need. You're just trying to make everyone else happy. Well, it's impossible to make somebody else happy. And once you come to terms with that, you can start thinking about yourself. And so where I was able to apply these skills, and there's a lot of other skills in the program that I learned, but just based on that, I was able to use it in both a really interesting medical appointment and in a job position that I wanted. And with the doctor's appointment is I had to go see an oncologist. I'm a breast cancer survivor, and I was on this medication, Tamoxifen, so I'm sure lots of women take it, have no problems with it, but I hated it. It was death to me, and I did not want to be on it. And the previous doctors were. They scared the crap out of me, to be honest. Well, you can't not take it. You're not protected. You know, your cancer's going to come back and you're going to die. And I'm like, oh, my God, I'm going to die. And. And then I just said, well, I don't have a quality of life right now, so I need to figure this out. And so I kind of sat down and had to assess what do I want out of life and what do I need? And when I walk into that doctor's appointment, I know that doctor is going to say, you know, I have to give you this medication. So how do I do this? And do I actually want to come off the medication? Well, I think I do, but the reality is I just want to love life. I just want fun. I want to feel like a human being again. So then I took a look at the doctor's perspective, and from the doctor's perspective, he needs to make sure he's doing his job the best he can. He needs to make sure that he can sleep at night with the advice he's giving me. He needs to make sure that I'm well educated on the situation, and I took all of that together and kind of wrote it all out. Went to my appointment and had a great conversation with him, and he went over all of my options. We had a really great discussion. In the end, we both decided, yes, you can come off this medication, and this is what I want you to do. We came up with a plan. We worked as a team. And I know that that probably doesn't happen to that doctor very often. He probably comes home frustrated most nights just shaking his head. And he would have had an intelligent conversation with the patient. You came up with a great plan. If you have any questions, you call me whenever you want. And that was a win win for both of us. And I still. I've called him up a couple of times since a couple of questions, and he's there to answer them. And I didn't just walk into his office and say, I want to come off this medication. I hate it. You don't know what you're doing. I came in and said, okay, this is how I'm feeling. This is where I want to go. I need to know what my options are. And we opened up that discussion, and it was a great discussion. So I was really happy with that. I was happy how it turned out. And to be honest, I was quite surprised because I. I knew I wanted to come off the medication, but I walked out of that office actually feeling empowered because I had a plan. So I'm not scared. I'm not scared that I came off of it. I do have options. I know what I need to do, and I made my choice as to what I wanted to do.

Right. Well, I mean, it's. As long as you're feeling that fulfillment and you're moving in the right direction, that's. That's what really matters. And I know after getting to know you over the past couple months, I know that one of your special tools that you use is strategic rejection when it comes to advancing your business. And I thought that was really fascinating because I know that embracing rejection has a lot of benefits for people when it comes to their ability to negotiate and improving their negotiation skills. And so there were three main things that you wanted to talk about. Can you give us a quick overview?

Yeah, yeah, happy to. So what we're talking. We're going to talk about here is rejection therapy. And really what that is is desensitizing yourself to the fear of rejection. And it's just like any other form of desensitization. You're afraid of germs and every day you go touch some door handle that everyone else is touching. Over time, you're going to start to see, hey, I'm still alive. I'm not sick. Maybe germs aren't that bad. I recently had a buddy that was really afraid of spiders. And he was just traveling for a few months in South America, backpack hiking through jungles and stuff. And he's like, alex, I am around spiders that are the size of my face now. When I come back to Los Angeles, I could really care less about these little bugs and spiders that are here that used to terrify me. And rejection is no different from anything else. You can work on building the muscle that tells you to be afraid of people telling you no. And that's just natural. Every human being doesn't want to be told no. We're all afraid of that. It's evolutionary program into us that you get told no, or you, you make the wrong turns, you get eaten by a lion. So these are all natural things. But by systematically exposing yourself to rejection, you can, over time, and not a long amount of time, I'm talking about days or a week, you can remove the fear of it. And it's a pretty simple process of actively seeking out rejection. And we can go into how you can seek it out. But over time, you get some benefits. And really the benefits are confidence. As you're putting yourself out there in the world and you're asking for things and you're getting told no, obviously your confidence is just going to ramp right up. And so that's awesome. I mean, who doesn't want more confidence? The other thing that you get is a sense of humility because we're all so caught up in ourselves. And is today a good hair day or a bad hair day? For me, when was the last time you realized that someone else was having a bad hair day? Probably never. You're sitting in a meeting or class or something and you're thinking, should I ask this question? Are people going to think I'm dumb for asking this question? The reality is no one cares. No one cares. You ask the question, no one's going to remember. So as you're out there racking your brain of, is someone going to hate me for asking them for something? The answer is no. No one's even going to remember it. And in two seconds, they're going to totally forget. So you get the confidence, you get the humility. And then the last one is, as you're going through this and you're asking people for stuff, and you're going through life, it's amazing how many yeses you get. And so while the goal of the exercise is to get rejected, get a no, humans are awesome. And you start to see that people really want to go out of their way to help you. And so as you're going through this, you end up getting a lot of yeses. And I've got some incredible yes stories as I go through this. But yeah, those are the three things. Confidence, humility, and then you just see the world in a really positive light.

I love it.

Perfect.

So let's dig deeper.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Now, before you sign off, I have something to tell you that I've never told you before. Just kidding. I've told you before, but you should listen to it again. I want you to know about Negotiate Anything Premium. Imagine all of the things that you love about our traditional feed, plus so much more. I know you like our traditional feed because you're at the end of the episode. And with Negotiate Anything Premium, you'll get more bonus content you've been asking for for more of the expert insights that you can't get anywhere else, and more exclusive behind the scenes access into every conversation. Are you ready to get more of what you want out of your life, career and every conversation? With Negotiate Anything Premium, you'll have access to more high level, custom designed content and insights giving you the tools you need to negotiate higher salaries, better deals, and better relationships in your life, life and career. Once I had a listener share that Negotiate Anything helped her to negotiate a $53,000 raise. Could this be you? What would that mean for your life? I've seen firsthand the impact this model has had on my life and the lives of my corporate clients and I am confident that it can do the same for you. Are you ready to negotiate more of the best things in life? Click the link in the show notes to learn more. I'll catch you later.