Negotiating at Work E-Book

Deborah M. Kolb

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 506

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Understand the context of negotiations to achieve better results

Negotiation has always been at the heart of solving problems at work. Yet today, when people in organizations are asked to do more with less, be responsive 24/7, and manage in rapidly changing environments, negotiation is more essential than ever. What has been missed in much of the literature of the past 30 years is that negotiations in organizations always take place within a context—of organizational culture, of prior negotiations, of power relationships—that dictates which issues are negotiable and by whom. When we negotiate for new opportunities or increased flexibility, we never do it in a vacuum. We challenge the status quo and we build out the path for others to negotiate those issues after us. In this way, negotiating for ourselves at work can create small wins that can grow into something bigger, for ourselves and our organizations. Seen in this way, negotiation becomes a tool for addressing ineffective practices and outdated assumptions, and for creating change.

Negotiating at Work offers practical advice for managing your own workplace negotiations: how to get opportunities, promotions, flexibility, buy-in, support, and credit for your work. It does so within the context of organizational dynamics, recognizing that to negotiate with someone who has more power adds a level of complexity. The is true when we negotiate with our superiors, and also true for individuals currently under represented in senior leadership roles, whose managers may not recognize certain issues as barriers or obstacles. 

 Negotiating at Work is rooted in real-life cases of professionals from a wide range of industries and organizations, both national and international.

• Strategies to get the other person to the table and engage in creative problem solving, even when they are reluctant to do so
• Tips on how to recognize opportunities to negotiate, bolster your confidence prior to the negotiation, turn 'asks' into a negotiation, and advance negotiations that get "stuck"
• A rich examination of research on negotiation, conflict management, and gender

By using these strategies, you can negotiate successfully for your job and your career; in a larger field, you can also alter organizational practices and policies that impact others.

Leseprobe

More Praise for Negotiating at Work

“Talent is the bedrock of every successful organization. As the workplace shifts from corporate ladder to corporate lattice principles, companies need to create environments where top talent can thrive. This book shows what individuals and organizations alike can do to make this happen now.”

—Cathy Benko, vice chairman and managing principal, Deloitte LLP

“Negotiating at Work is for leaders and organizations looking to bridge the gap between wanting to improve the diversity of senior leadership and actually doing it. It is an invaluable guide to creating a culture that enables all of our most talented leaders to succeed. A very worthy read!”

—David A. Thomas, PhD, dean, William R. Berkley Professor, McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University; coauthor, Breaking Through: The Making of Minority Executives in Corporate America

“If it were only about having the ‘right’ experience, we wouldn't have the lack of women in senior leadership we do today. There are still barriers—seen and unseen—that block women from the top. Learning how to negotiate these is a must for women and the organizations that need them to succeed. This book shows you how. I highly recommend it!”

—Herminia Ibarra, the Cora Chaired Professor of Leadership and Learning, INSEAD

“The fact is that the world is not a level playing field—especially for women. Deborah Kolb's latest book will challenge the status quo: it argues that negotiation is a litmus test for advancement. That we all overlook daily opportunities to turn small wins into much bigger gains. And that those bigger gains are powerful game-changers for us as individuals, and for our organizations that desperately need to help pave the way for a more diversified pool of leaders. Adopt Kolb's new approach and practices, and you will help create a better world in which progressive, modern leadership approaches pervade.”

—John Gerzema, chairman, CEO, WPP Group's BAV Consulting; New York Times best-selling author, including The Athena Doctrine: How Women (and the Men Who Think Like Them) Will Rule the Future

“Big change starts small. When we learn how to advocate and negotiate for the things that help us succeed at work, it can have a profoundly positive effect on others, in all parts of our lives. Deborah Kolb's contribution of bringing this idea into clear, practical focus is awesome!”

—Stew Friedman, author, Leading the Life You Want and Total Leadership

“Tremendously resonant for women everywhere—across cultures, professions, or career stage. Deborah Kolb helps women see they can choose this and that instead of this or that in a way that brings meaningful change for them and those that follow.”

—Vicki Wilde, founder, former director, African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD)

“My daughter Allison is a VP of Intuit, and I've told her that Negotiating at Work is a must-read for every woman executive. Building on Kolb's earlier seminal work, this book provides practical advice for executives whose critical negotiations typically take place within organizations and in the context of ongoing relationships. By providing a conceptual framework for thinking about how negotiations play out in organizations, the book suggests how ‘small wins’ can be used to change an organization's culture and accumulate to big gains.”

—Robert H. Mnookin, Williston Professor of Law; director of the Harvard Negotiation Research Project; chair, Program on Negotiation, Harvard Law School

“There is nobody better placed than Deborah Kolb to write the book on negotiating positive change for women in the workplace. From decades of advising some of the country's most successful women, Dr. Kolb shares her knowledge on how to frame and negotiate issues that can impede a woman's career—steps that can have a profoundly positive effect on others and on the organization as a whole. Simply a must-read!”

—Robin Ely, Diane Doerge Wilson Professor of Business Administration, Senior Associate Dean for Culture and Community, Harvard Business School

“Are you trying to hammer out agreements on budgets, hiring lines, priority for your projects, or buy-in from senior management? Let Deborah Kolb's new book be your trustworthy guide to solving these and the host of other tricky negotiations every leader faces at the office. Research-based, easy-to-read, and actionable, Negotiating at Work will show you how to get great deals even as you enhance your organizational credibility.”

—G. Richard Shell, author, Bargaining for Advantage; director, Wharton School's Executive Negotiation Workshop

“This is a must-read for all women negotiating at work—and for those who are supporting their careers. It goes beyond the common perceptions and the academic research to advocate, but provides proven and highly practical negotiating strategies and tactics. Debbie Kolb has made another essential and insightful contribution to winning in the workplace—for yourself and your organization.”

—Sheila Penrose, chairman, JLL; cochairman, Corporate Leadership Center

“Debbie Kolb has the unique ability to integrate respected research and personal stories of accomplished executives into lessons we can all benefit from as we negotiate for career success. Negotiating at Work captures her years of experience working with executives generally, and women in particular, to provide examples that anyone can adapt to change the game within their organization. The big lesson is that by negotiating on our own behalf, we can improve the odds of success for others and for the organization as a whole. Negotiating at Work is a compelling read because each of us can put its practical advice to work, at work and at home, as soon as we put the book down.”

—Cheryl A. Francis, cochairman, Corporate Leadership Center

“Negotiating at Work provides vital new insights that strengthen our understanding of negotiation as a tool for individual gain, while expanding its potential for organizational change. Deborah Kolb and Jessica Porter reveal how negotiations occur in organizational contexts, which in turn shape what is legitimate to negotiate and how negotiations are received. By focusing on negotiations around everyday issues in the workplace, such as work schedules and resources to do one's job, the authors broaden our conception of what can be negotiated and how individual negotiations can both lead to small wins for the individual and change organizational practices for the betterment of others. This framework illuminates how challenging the status quo can create opportunities to examine assumptions, norms, and practices that may be holding individuals and organizations back.”

—Shelley J. Correll, professor of sociology, the Barbara D. Finberg Director of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Stanford University

“Deborah Kolb, one of the foremost experts in women and leadership, has created an extraordinary guide. It presents the best research, compelling and instructive case studies, and the most practical solutions you will find anywhere to help women—and men—negotiate small wins that create big gains for themselves and their organizations. A not-to-be-missed book!”

—Ellen Galinsky, president, Families and Work Institute

“This deeply researched and case study–driven book does an exceptional job of laying out the subtle, yet very real, challenges women face in the workplace that can derail careers and offers the precise strategies and tools needed to negotiate them well. This book will drive immediate change for women and the organizations that need them.”

—Linda Babcock, James M. Walton Professor of Economics, Carnegie Mellon University; coauthor, Women Don't Ask

“Every man and woman concerned with increasing the success of his or her career and organization should read this book. Kolb and Porter frame negotiation in three startling new ways: as a means for awakening us all to the assumptions, biases, and arrangements that constrain our opportunities and effectiveness at work; as a technique for members of marginalized groups to change the conversation and thrive at work; and as a potential tipping-point event leading to the kinds of reforms and re-visioning of our places of work that can make us proud and prosperous. Read it.”

—Peter Coleman, professor, psychology and education; director, International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, Columbia University

“I love this book. It is filled with ideas about how women can negotiate for changes that benefit themselves, but which can also help the company as a whole. These ideas will help women at all levels of an organization, but the insights also apply more broadly. I wish I had read it years ago.”

—Dr. Paul D. McKinnon, Harvard Business School; former head of HR, Dell and Citigroup

“Negotiating at Work will walk you through what does and what does not work in day-to-day negotiations at organizations, covering a wide range of topics such as how to deal with resistance, identify problems, recognize negotiating opportunities, offer creative solutions, build bridges with your negotiation partners, and claim your value. If you want to successfully negotiate for yourself and your organization, this is a must-read book, full of practical research-based ideas, insightful for the just emerging to the most senior professionals.”

—Boris Groysberg, professor, Harvard Business School; author, Chasing Stars: The Myth of Talent and the Portability of Performance

“The unnerving reality is that most organizations still struggle to ensure that the best minds get to the top. Women, especially, must take full advantage of every available skill, tool, and opportunity to advance. Deborah Kolb makes a fresh argument in her latest and best book yet, Negotiating at Work, as she shows how we all can better capitalize on every day's ‘small wins’ for greater gains—for ourselves, for the women around and behind us, and for our organizations. I recommend this book wholeheartedly because in these times, when women win, we all win. Buy a copy for yourself—and send one to someone you mentor—today.”

—Mary Davis Holt, partner, Flynn Heath Holt; New York Times best-selling author, Break Your Own Rules

“I recommend Negotiating at Work to everyone who believes in their greater potential. Regardless of your level, you'll gain strategies and skills that have the power to reshape assignments, advancement, and even lives for the benefit of you, those around you, and those who follow you. This book is also for those in positions to eliminate institutional biases that get in the way of many talented leaders.”

—Farah Pandith, key architect, Women in Public Service Project; consultant, author, and speaker

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Cover Image: © iStock.com / Sergey Nivens

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kolb, Deborah M.

    Negotiating at work : turn small wins into big gains / Deborah M. Kolb, with Jessica L. Porter.—First edition.

        pages cm

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    ISBN 978-1-118-35241-0 (hardback)

  1.  Negotiation in business.    2.  Negotiation.    I.  Porter, Jessica L., 1969–    II.  Title.

    HD58.6.K664 2015

    658.4'052–dc23

                                                                                                          2014032141

Preface

You might say that this book came about as a result of a negotiation. Several years ago a group of editors informed me that my book Everyday Negotiation would go out of print unless I revised it. I remember thinking this seemed not so much like a reality but like a bluff—a standard ploy in negotiation. But it got me thinking about what I wanted to write now, ten years later, in a book on negotiation and gender. When Judith Williams and I wrote The Shadow Negotiation in 2000 and then revised it for Everyday Negotiation in 2003, we were responding to dominant themes in the popular and scholarly fields about the negotiation process and how women fare in it.

The dominant discourse at the time was that women negotiate differently from men, and that compared to men, they come out deficient. In our interviews for those books, we set out to dig deeper and find out more about women's actual experiences when they negotiate. In so doing, we identified two nested challenges that women (and men) face: to be effective advocates for themselves at the same time that they try to establish collaboration and connection with other parties. By exploring these challenges—we called them the hidden agendas of bargaining—as well as how successful women (and then men) dealt with them, we identified what we called the shadow negotiation. The idea was that in our efforts to tell people how to get to yes and make good deals, we had not paid enough atten­tion to the hidden challenges parties face to get themselves into a good position to negotiate and establish a good working relationship with the other person. Although The Shadow Negotiation began with a study of women, it was clear that what we described had implications for everybody who negotiates. Indeed, when the book was named by the Harvard Business Review as one of the ten best books of 2000, its general application to all negotiators was identified as one of its major strengths. We think this is true for Negotiating at Work as well.

Despite the initial overture from the editors, I knew I wasn't interested in revising Everyday Negotiation, for a number of reasons. The most obvious one is that Everyday Negotiation was already a revision; going back to it was like going back a decade in my own thinking and revising the book at its margins. I had no energy for that. What I wanted was to integrate the work I'd been doing on gender, leadership, and change into a practical book on negotiation for all leaders, but especially women. Trouble was, I didn't know how to do it.

Over the past fifteen years while I was the Deloitte Ellen Gabriel Professor for Women and Leadership at Simmons College School of Management and after retirement, I've been involved in both leading and participating in Women's Leadership Development Programs (WLPs). In them, I always teach a negotiation module that asks participants to focus on issues they want to negotiate at work. This is a departure from the negotiations we considered in Everyday Negotiation, where we covered a wide spectrum of bargaining situations. Those included the many places in which people negotiate: buying cars, dealing with office space, rallying community boards, convincing loan officers to lend, engaging faculty colleagues, seeking refunds on travel, and other such topics.

What distinguished the negotiation topics in the WLPs were that the women were negotiating for themselves—as principals, not as agents. At first, I used the frameworks from the Shadow Negotiation in these programs, programs that I ran in corporations and in nongovernmental organizations in the United States and abroad. Over time, as I listened to the stories of these participants, I began to see new facets of negotiation that I hadn't noticed before. I started to appreciate nuances in how these women (and some men) handled tricky situations in their organizations. Over time, I began to capture their stories. These stories became the data for this book.

Several examples are especially salient for understanding the trajectory of this book and how it differs from the previous ones. Leading Women Executives, a Chicago-based program for senior-level women from different companies who attend a multisession program, has been an important site of learning for me. As academic advisor as well as an instructor, I develop a strong working relationship with the participants. That relationship gives us multiple occasions to discuss their negotiation experiences. At the conclusion of one of the programs, a graduate saying good-bye to me whispered in my ear that I had changed her life. Wow, I thought. What is that story? It is a fascinating one—and it appears in this book. That led me to become more deliberate about capturing the stories about how these women and others used the negotiation module to get something they previously thought was not achievable.

The second incident occurred in another program where we taped women negotiating their own everyday negotiation, and we did the role play twice. The first time was after the negotiation module; the second time was after colleagues Robin Ely and Carole Levy did a session on leading with purpose. Two insights came from that experience: first, that one has to create occasions to negotiate at work—they are not always obvious—and, second, that focusing on the link between what is good for you and for your organization seems to work better at engaging the other party. We discovered this in the videos of the role play, as well as in the results the women reported. This experience led me to consider the various ways that people situate their negotiations in the context of ongoing relationships. It also helped me see that those who can connect their interests to their organizations are empowered to advocate more forcefully for what they want.

A third experience comes from a story that a very senior leader told in one of the programs. She wanted to negotiate a complicated office arrangement with her CEO. They had a good working relationship, but she expected this to be a difficult negotiation. In her story, she described how she let him know of her accomplishments to remind him of her value. But she also let him know of the other choices she had—in a way that was appreciative and nonconfrontational. Although we'd written about making one's value visible in Everyday Negotiation, this story made me look deeper into the ways that experienced executives do so. Where we had talked about raising the costs of the status quo in the earlier book, I was never confident about how one could do that and not raise the other party's ire. I had dropped it from my teaching. But from this story, I could see how a seasoned executive could do this smoothly, and that led me to collect other stories that led to developing the ideas about an “iron fist in a velvet glove.”

A fourth experience led me to consider the limits of some of the strategies in the earlier books. This was particularly true in the context of “moves and turns.” The idea behind “moves” is that other negotiators can say things that can make you feel defensive. “Turns” are actions that enable you to respond. Moves and turns is something that people associate with the earlier books. I've written more about them, and the papers and chapter have been reproduced in a number of publications. (We consider moves and turns in chapter 6 in this book.) However, in my experiences, especially in Africa and Asia but also Europe, I came to see the limits of some of the turns one might recommend. I remember vividly being called out by a dean at a university in East Africa who said to me, “I could never use that turn.” So in this book, we are both more detailed in describing moves and turns and more circumspect in what we recommend.

Negotiating at Work is informed in another way from my teaching with executives. Over the past decade, and even before that, I've been involved in two different types of projects that touch on gender and change. The first was a series of research and intervention projects that focused on understanding the ways in which an organization's policies and practices that appeared gender neutral could have unintended but differential impacts on different groups of men and women. We later came to call these types of policies and practices second-generation gender bias. With funding from the Ford Foundation and under the banner of the Center for Gender in Organizations at Simmons College School of Management, I worked with a group of colleagues, including Lotte Bailyn, Robin Ely, Joyce Fletcher, Deborah Merrill-Sands, Debra Meyerson, and Rhona Rapoport, to uncover these types of practices within organizations. Then in collaboration with organizations, among them the Body Shop, and several international nongovernmental organizations, we tried to identify some small wins. We thought of these as experiments, pilot projects: many of them had to do with expectations about time at work, as well as how unexamined role requirements contributed to gender inequities in these organizations.

The second project is tied more directly to my teaching. I have incorporated this perspective—identifying workplace policies and practices that may have unintended consequences for women leaders—into many of the WLPs that I lead. We call the session strategizing leadership dilemmas. In it, cohorts from the same organization, a company or a division, spend a session identifying these second-generation biases, develop some practical ideas about potential small wins, and then craft strategies to make the small wins a reality. In truth, some succeed more than others. But what I have found in hearing the stories is that when cohorts have been successful in getting small wins started, many started with an individual negotiating some change in her own working conditions or status. These negotiation experiences led her to take more leadership in spreading the word about her situation or directly initiating other changes. We report some of these small wins throughout the book and suggest in chapter 8 ways that they may have broader impact.

Negotiating at Work has been a few years in the writing but many more years in the evolution of its ideas. Some I have already mentioned, such as my colleagues on the Ford Foundation–funded research projects where together we learned about ways to think and talk about gender in organizational contexts. Kathleen McGinn and I brought that perspective to negotiations first at a conference at the Kennedy School of Government in 2008 and then in a paper in 2009. When I turned to writing chapter 6 in this book, I was happy to rediscover that Kathleen and I had developed a coding sheet for moves and turns that proved very helpful to the writing. But it was really in the context of the WLPs that the ideas for this book came together.

Cheryl Francis, Sheila Penrose, and Diane Sakach of the Corporate Leadership Center in Chicago run an amazing program for women leaders, Leading Women Executives, that I have been associated with since 2009. Collaborating with them has given me an incomparable platform to develop the ideas set out in this book. Their commitment to advancing women leaders sets a culture for learning and experimentation that one finds only rarely in a leadership program. It was Debra Meyerson, my good colleague, who initially brought me into that program, and I am always grateful to her for what we've learned together over the years. I've been able to involve great colleagues in this program as well—Debra Noumair, Robin Ely, Stacy Blake-Beard, Sue Ashford, and Melissa Thomas-Hunt—and together we've learned about creating WLPs that make a difference in women's lives and especially in the organizations in which they work.

When the leaders at Leading Women Executives wanted to increase their leverage with organizations, their first step was to survey the literature on gender and leadership and turn this study into a usable model for organizations. That is when Jessica Porter joined the project. She had already been working with us on other WLPs, but now she would become our team's expert on gender and leadership. It became clear to me that her knowledge and expertise would enhance this book considerably. We agreed that as junior author, she would take responsibility for bringing her knowledge about gender and negotiation (and later more generally negotiation) into creating extensive notes that would make the book a valued resource to people who want to use the book in classrooms and for research. I have also worked with Herminia Ibarra, Carole Levy, Amy Anuk, Vera Vitels, and Kristin Normandin in other WLPs, and each has contributed to the ways I teach and do this work. Debra Noumair at Columbia Teachers College has been my partner in crime in developing our version of WLPs. She also brought me into her Executive Masters Program in Change Leadership, where I've tested these ideas with both men and women. Lotte Bailyn has been my mentor for more years than I choose to remember, and it is at our breakfasts that I get feedback on my ideas. So too in my regular meals with Jean Bartunek, Robin Ely, Joyce Fletcher, Kathy Kram, Hannah Bowles, Kathleen McGinn, and Karen Golden-Biddle. I leave each of these sessions nourished and ready to go back to work with a way out of the puzzles I present to them. Linda Putnam has been a wonderful partner and coauthor in developing many of the ideas about interdependence that now figure so prominently in this book. It was Carol Frohlinger in our teaching collaboration who came up with the idea of n-negotiation as differentiated from formal deal making, which is the way we describe negotiating at work. Mike Wheeler, Larry Susskind, Robert Mnookin, Jim Sebenius, and Bill Ury of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School have always cheered my work, even though it is quite different from theirs.

Kathe Sweeney, formerly of Jossey-Bass, has been an editor and friend over the course of three books. For this one, she had to endure my continual excuses for missed deadlines. Rob Brandt then stepped aboard and has kept a steady hand on the helm, even when the seas sometimes get a bit rough. Christine Moore amazed us with her insightful editing of the book.

How can I express enough gratitude to Tim Murphy, our stalwart editor of this book? First, he had to figure out how to work with a person, me, who was clearly not writing the book, and then had to ramp up when things speeded up. His way with words—well, you can see.

I look to my children, Sam and Elizabeth, and their spouses, Karin and Greg, to learn how the younger generation deals with workplace negotiations. They should not be surprised to recognize some of their stories, well disguised, in this book. Their children, Jacob, Alexandra, Isaac, and Eli, are my diversions. My husband, Jonathan, is the patient listener and sounding board. Our dinner conversations are peppered with negotiation stories, where we continually find connections between my stories and what he hears in his work, a broader reality test for the ideas. He has been as always a great support even though nonfiction is not his favorite genre.

Finally, two notes about pronouns in the text. Because this is a book about—among other things—hidden gender bias, we've struggled with that famous flaw in the English language: what to do with the generic third-person singular. For obvious reasons, we can't simply accept the masculine “he” or “him.” To use “they” or “their” as a singular justifiably erodes credibility with some readers. Such tricks as “he/she” or “s/he” come off as cheap gimmicks, and repetition of “he or she” and “him and her” is plain clunky. So our solution is to keep the singular pronoun and alternate between the genders—and may no man or woman feel excluded in the bargain. In sections about teaching or seminars, you'll sometimes see the first-person singular. That's me, Deborah Kolb. Plural first-person pronouns refer to me and Jessica Porter, and sometimes my other teaching colleagues.

Deborah M. Kolb

November 2014

A number of people influenced and supported me while writing this book. I thank all of the women I've met at Women's Leadership Development Programs who have shared their stories and experiences, as well as the friends and acquaintances who discussed their own negotiations with me. I'm grateful to Debra Noumair, Kathleen McGinn, and of course Deborah Kolb for helping me push my thinking and expand my areas of expertise. My friend Bob tirelessly brainstormed book title ideas, as did my patient spouse and true partner, Matthew. My teenage children, Emma and Jackson, have provided me with the ongoing opportunity to practice negotiating with worthy counterparts. My parents, Tom and Judy, raised me in a dual-career family where work was a common topic of conversation. It was a great foundation for understanding the importance of negotiating for oneself at work, particularly for women.

Jessica L. Porter

November 2014

Introduction: Negotiating in the Shadow of Organizations

In the executive leadership programs that I teach, frequently to women leaders, I ask participants to come prepared to negotiate about something that matters to them. In addition to negotiations occurring in communities and families, I am particularly interested in those that take place in organizations. People often want to negotiate for more responsibility or a change in title, the goal of more than 60 percent of participants in one recent program. Yet the negotiations can vary widely. Some had a change agenda they wanted to pursue. Some were looking for financing for a new venture, others just more resources for an ongoing project. Others wanted more exposure for their work. Some wanted to achieve better integration between their work and personal lives; they were seeking a decreased workload or more assistance to make that possible. Some wanted to take on expanded roles in community or business associations.

These negotiation issues, and the contexts in which they occur, differ from programs that focus more on structured nego­tiations where parties typically act as agents for their respective organizations. Yet usually when we think of negotiation, it is those more formal situations that come to mind: mergers, legal settlements, salary, partnerships, purchasing agreements, and structured deals. Merriam-Webster even defines negotiation this way: as “a formal discussion between people who are trying to reach an agreement.”1

A great deal of study and expertise has been devoted to these formal negotiations—the kinds that take place between countries over borders or between companies over mergers and acquisi­tions, over sales and purchasing agreements, and between buyers and sellers generally. Best practices have been catalogued by many well-known scholars and practitioners in the field for these kinds of negotiations.2

Hundreds of studies, conducted primarily in research laboratories, have contributed to the public's understanding of what it takes to realize joint gains in a negotiation: the ability to make deals that create value for all parties, as well as the barriers to making this happen.3 This work has been invaluable, helping negotiators in many settings manage the bargaining process so they can design deals that create value for the parties involved.4

Why This Book? And Why Now?

For all the value this work has brought to formal negotiations, it still misses some of the crucial dynamics that occur when people negotiate for themselves in organizations over issues that matter to them.

In order to work with those dynamics, we begin by identifying two distinct kinds of negotiation. In chapter 1, we fully distinguish N-negotiations, formal bargaining over contacts and agreements, from n-negotiations, which are unstructured and more personal. The lowercase variety is trickier: it's the kind in which you find yourself advocating for something you want in an organization. Think, for a minute, about what Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, and Hillary Clinton experienced when they negotiated with foreign governments. Despite any setbacks they had, they negotiated as representatives of the United States with all of the authority and formality that connotes. Now think about Lilly Ledbetter, who successfully sued Goodyear Tire and Rubber for pay discrimination after she retired. During her career at Goodyear, we can imagine the kinds of n-negotiations Ledbetter engaged in—attempting to get her contributions recognized, to get promoted, and to be compensated equitably for her work. As Lilly Ledbetter found, in n-negotiations setbacks are more consequential for our careers and well-being.

This book focuses primarily on those n-negotiations we all have at work. Along the way, we aim to:

Demonstrate that n-negotiations have some features that draw on more classic N-negotiations. Yet they also present fundamentally different kinds of challenges. In n-negotiations, these are

our

issues, and it is up to us to raise the subjects of the negotiation and the process by which we will conduct it. No preexisting structures for negotiation—formal diplomatic meetings—exist. We create the structure and process as we initiate the dialogue.

Reveal some of the ways in which organizations are anything but a level playing field on which to negotiate. You can bet that, like Lilly Ledbetter, you'll meet resistance when introducing certain topics and issues. We discuss tactics for meeting that resistance.

Provide practical tools for your own n-negotiations no matter what your gender, ethnicity, or place in the hierarchy might be. These tools help you prepare and position yourself to get the n-negotiations off the ground and give you practical advice for how to keep a difficult negotiation on track.

Convince you that the n-negotiations you successfully bring to the table can improve not just your own life at work, but also the life of your whole organization.

Let's start with a brief summary of what distinguishes these everyday n-negotiations and then connect them to the broader issue of gender and negotiation.

The Negotiated Order

In his 1978 book, Negotiations, Anselm Strauss criticized the negotiation field for its tendency to treat all negotiations as the same and so minimize the ways they're shaped by the organizational situations in which they occur and the problems they address.5 As our students report, negotiations at work occur around a range of everyday activities. In addition to the usual topics of compensation and employment, we constantly negotiate about what kind of work we do, what jobs we have, what resources we need, our goals and objectives, our work schedules, the work itself, and our roles, resources, and goals.

Organizations Shape Negotiable Topics.  

If these are the subjects of negotiation, it's also important to recognize that these issues are negotiated in organizational contexts that shape which issues are con­sidered legitimate topics for negotiation and how they're treated. Strauss calls this the negotiated order—which suggests that an organization's structure, policies, and practices are the results of previous negotiations. Negotiations describe the activities involved in de­signing jobs, doing work, avoiding work, achieving status, and establishing boundaries of authority and responsibility, among a host of other potential issues. When we teach negotiation workshops, the issues people want to negotiate reflect their desire to negotiate about some aspect of the negotiated order in their organization.

Who Is a Negotiator?  

A second feature of negotiated orders is what it means to be a party in a negotiation. Traditional negotiating contexts conjure up images of buyers and sellers. But in n-negotiations, the parties are employees (bosses, peers, subordinates) who work in corporations, government, nonprofit and profit-making institutions, and universities. What matters to them, the options they develop, and the choices they make are influenced by their status and roles, as well as by their individual dispositions and interests. Certain people or groups may—because of their position, gender, or other attributes—have power in a negotiation to define what is negotiable.6 To negotiate with a senior leader when one is considerably junior is not something people undertake lightly, especially when one is raising an issue that a more senior person might not recognize as one worthy of negotiation.

Problems and Opportunities: Many Potential Negotiations Aren't Obvious.  

Third, because potentially negotiable issues are part of organizational routines, they are not as readily obvious or identifiable as having potential for negotiation, the way something like a contract or a formal dispute might be. They are created out of people's everyday experiences of potential disagreement and discontent.7 These issues, basically the need to negotiate a problem, can result from disadvantage or perceived lack of fairness. Let's say that in your organization, leaders are expected to spend time in an overseas assignment in order to progress to senior ranks. Yet you are not asked to do so because it is assumed that your family situation means you're not available for such an assignment. This is a problem, and it's up to you to find the right occasion to negotiate about it.

Negotiations can also come about because somebody wants to change something—that is, negotiate an opportunity. The range of problems professional women negotiated about, according to a recent study, included a lack of recognition, being passed over for promotion, and organizational politics. The range of opportunities included leadership roles, promotions, mobilizing resources, and advancing new ideas.8

Each Negotiation Adds to the Negotiated Order.  

The fourth feature of a negotiated order is that organizational structure, practices, and policies are products of previous negotiations. Negotiating history provides the ongoing context within which a particular negotiation takes place. And a person's experience and reputation will also influence a current negotiation. This means that individuals have the potential to change the negotiated order—what becomes negotiable can change, and the very practices that are the subject of negotiations are potentially altered as well.

We Continually Shape the Negotiated Order.  

This feature is especially important when we consider how gender intersects with negotiated orders and the implications for different groups to negotiate issues that are important to them. Over time, efforts toward change may be successful, and others can feel empowered to raise issues that were not previously part of an organization's policies and practices. One way to understand the emergence of flexible work and family policies, for example, is as the result of individuals who first negotiated individual arrangements. These requests (negotiations) accumulate until leaders take the initiative to institutionalize flexible work policies and programs. Negotiating a leave or flexible schedule is different if you are the first ever to do so, since you're challenging a negotiated order; it's easier when others have already done so. And it's still more different if there is an organizational policy in place. When the executives in our seminars step up to negotiate about some aspect of their work, they are altering the negotiated order in small ways. These informal negotiations in organizations are n-negotiations and thus different from the N-negotiations that people typically think of.

Gender and the Negotiated Order

To consider n-negotiations gives us a different way to understand gender in negotiation. The topic of gender in organizations has been the subject of considerable research over the past forty years. In 1977, Rosabeth Moss Kanter performed the first major examination of women's roles in organizations, bringing attention to many of the phenomena we still see today: tokenism, for example, and leaders hiring in their own image.9 In the years since, researchers from every discipline—economics, sociology, psychology, organization behavior, law, political science, education—have explored the impact of gender on individuals and at a collective level in institutions and organizations. More recently, dialogue about gender and leadership has become a more frequent topic in the mainstream, sparked in part by public conversations around books such as Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In, which offers advice for women to embrace professional achievement and take on larger leadership roles.10

Despite forty years of research to understand gender bias in organizations, women continue to be underrepresented at the highest ranks. Though women constitute nearly 50 percent of the labor force and graduate from college in greater numbers than men, they are still not anywhere near parity in the senior positions of corporations, professional services partnerships, governments, and large-scale international organizations.11 Among S&P 100 companies, women make up only 19 percent of board of director positions, and the representation is even more disconcerting at the senior executive level: only 8 percent of the highest-paid S&P 100 executives are women.12 Less than 10 percent of heads of state and heads of government worldwide are women.13 At the current rate of change, it's unlikely that women will reach parity in any of these spheres soon.14

In Lean In, Sandberg presents the chicken-and-egg dilemma of gender inequality: Do women need to first address inequality on an individual level, overcoming their internal barriers (the chicken) to demand more responsibility and leadership roles? Or do we—as individuals and in organizations—need to address the external barriers (the egg) to women's parity by addressing the systemic and organizational issues that make it harder for women to move up?15 Sandberg focuses on the chicken in her book, with tips for addressing those internal barriers, including those at home, which keep women from putting themselves forward.

We too believe that negotiation is a critical skill for women who want to “lean in.” The ability and confidence to ask for opportunities—resources, new projects, buy-in, and promotion—is critical for any person who wants to be successful. This is even more important for people who don't look like our typical leaders: women and minorities. These groups are less likely to be asked, so they need to do the asking themselves.

When individuals negotiate within the context of the negotiated order, they address more than just their own circumstances. In fact, negotiating allows us to have an impact on the order and address systemic issues as well, much like Sandberg's egg. The example of flexible work applies here, since this is usually a case when policies are established after individuals negotiate agreements for themselves. Another example is that of performance metrics: by negotiating for clear criteria for promotion, we not only help ourselves in our own career, we also encourage objective standards for performance that will be important to everyone in the organization, particularly those who are more likely to be judged subjectively. It is this potential for individual small wins to lead to bigger gains that makes negotiation such a powerful tool for both women and men in organizations, a theme we revisit throughout this book.

Gender Issues in Negotiation

The major approaches to understanding how gender plays out in negotiation extend beyond individual behavior. Gender is embedded in organizational policies and practices, largely due to the fact that organizations, many of which at least begin as male-dominant institutions, build formal structure and informal norms around gendered notions of work and behavior. These create a gendered negotiated order that forms the context for the strategies and tactics outlined in the book.

There has been an explosion of research on the topic of gender within the field of negotiation.16 Much of this work has been motivated by concerns about the gender gap in wages and achievement—the glass-ceiling effect—that causes women in organizations to plateau before they reach top leadership positions.17 Furthermore, women are estimated to earn up to 40 percent less than men over the course of their careers.18 This compensation gap has been growing recently, particularly among women of color.19 While there are many societal and organizational explanations for these phenomena,20 women can take actions to remedy these situations. One of them is to negotiate more proactively and effectively for wages and opportunity. It is in this spirit that much of this more recent work has been undertaken.

Are Women Deficient Negotiators?  

Studies that examine individual differences between male and female negotiators often highlight women's general deficiencies as negotiators. Women are less likely than men to ask,21 to initiate negotiations,22 to be positively disposed toward negotiation;23 they are less confident;24 and they are more likely to set lower goals.25 When it comes to compensation, the focus of most of the research, women expect to receive less in compensation than men expect,26 feel less entitlement to higher salaries than men do,27 or place less value on pay than on other aspects of their jobs.28 These feelings translate into behavior that affects outcomes. Women demand and accept less in salary negotiations than men do,29 are less confident and less satisfied with their negotiation performances,30 and feel lower self-efficacy about their bargaining abilities.31

A Laboratory Is Not the Real World

This line of research consistently compares women negatively to men, who typically approach a negotiation on the offensive: seeing themselves entitled to and therefore not hesitant to request a higher salary. Thus, when men outperform women in salary negotiations, the reasons for these differences are often attributed to “problems” that women have.32

More recently, scholars have identified problematic aspects of this line of research.33 Much of the research was conducted in laboratory situations, in which distributive negotiations, especially over pay, were the topics. Yet distributive negotiations, sometimes called win-lose negotiations, offer no opportunity for creative options. Furthermore, those artificial conditions often reproduce assumptions around gender and so fail to recognize the importance of context in real-life negotiations.34 Each of us has multiple social identities (gender, race, education, and so on) making a focus on individual gender differences a problem because it ignores the interplay of different aspects of identity—our race, our age, our profession—as they play out in different situations.35

Negotiating for Yourself: The Backlash.  

More recently, the interest in comparing what men and women negotiators do has given way to considering what happens when women actually negotiate. And the fact is that women can face a backlash when they negotiate for themselves. This “social cost of asking” suggests that gender-linked stereotypes make it harmful for a woman to advocate freely for herself.36 Women who act assertively in compensation negotiations are less likely to be hired and deemed good colleagues.37 They are also less likely to be trusted and appointed to important roles and can pay a price in terms of how well they are liked and admired by colleagues.38 Women often are expected to demonstrate a high degree of concern for others and may suffer when they do not do so. In addition, these expectations may be greater for women of color.39 Indeed, women may risk censure and backlash when they fail to act asser­tively enough on behalf of others, as agents, and advocate for their team.40

Second-Generation Gender Bias.  

A third way to consider challenges that women may face in negotiation is to consider the context, or negotiated order, within which negotiation takes place. Research on gender in organizations—in particular, work that seeks to explain women's persistent underrepresentation in leadership positions—has shifted away from a focus on actors' intentional, discriminatory efforts to exclude women to consideration of what we and others have called second-generation forms of gender bias.41 These are the powerful yet often invisible barriers to women's advancement that arise from cultural beliefs about gender, as well as workplace structures, practices, and patterns of interaction that inadvertently favor men.

Visible and Invisible Structures.  

Let's use architecture as a metaphor for organizational and workplace culture. The US Capitol Building, like most workplace, was built when there were few women working, particularly in leadership positions. Therefore, there was no reason in the early 1800s for architects to consider including space for women's washrooms off the Senate and House floors: women wouldn't even be granted the right to vote in the United States until 1920, never mind run for office. As the Capitol Building was expanded and renovated over time, the structure continued to represent the majority of its users: (white) men. By the early 1960s there were seventeen women in the House of Representatives, who all shared a single bathroom that was far from the House Chamber. It was not until 1962 that congresswomen were given the “Congressional Ladies Retiring Room,” which included a larger bathroom, though it was still some distance from the Chamber.42 In the early 1990s, Senators Barbara Mikulski and Nancy Kassebaum were forced to share with visiting tourists the women's restroom downstairs from the Senate Chamber.43

The processes, values, and norms of organizations—like the physical structure of the buildings that house them—continue to reflect their original bias long after women become represented in greater and greater numbers. It's not that architects or male congressional leaders actively plotted to make the Capitol difficult for women to navigate; the building simply reflected the needs and experience of the dominant group. Yet that structure made it more difficult for women to navigate and obstructed their ability to do their jobs. When women were represented in larger numbers, it still took time to change the building's structure.

Change Comes Slowly to Organizations as Well.  

Systems, culture, and practices reflect the organization's history and cater to the dominant group, making the organization more difficult for minority members to navigate. Even when the need for change becomes obvious, it's hard to achieve and often done piecemeal. In 2011, a four-stall women's bathroom was built near the House Chamber,44 and in 2013 the women's room near the Senate floor was expanded to accommodate a record-setting twenty female senators.45

Organizations Are Not Gender Neutral.  

Second-generation gender practices often appear neutral and natural on their face. But they can result in different experiences for, and treatment of, women and men, and they can vary for different groups of women. From this perspective, organizations are not gender neutral, and so their structures, practices, and policies are the negotiated order within which women and men negotiate. Understanding how second-generation issues are enacted in organizations helps us navigate organizations more effectively—and negotiate more successfully.

Second-Generation Gender Issues

These second-generation issues can take a variety of forms that can be the bases for negotiations. The issues raised here are not merely about bargaining for a certain job and the accompanying compensation: they concern a much tougher issue of redefining norms and expectations. These may be norms around what is seen as an appropriate “fit,” about expectations around people's family lives, around what skills are needed to succeed in a given job or at a given level in an organization, and around who is implicitly trusted versus who has to prove themselves.

Who Fits, and Who Doesn't

Jobs and opportunities can be gendered in the sense that certain people are seen to “fit” a job while others are not, and matters like race, class, and ethnicity can complicate these issues of fit. Leaders generally do not consciously dismiss women as a bad fit for some roles; rather, most of us—women as well as men—hold an unconscious association linking various roles to a certain gender. These implicit biases often lead us to connect men more often with leadership and career and women more often with family and caretaking.46

It's no wonder we make these implicit connections: those roles are reinforced everywhere we look. Men are far more likely to be quoted in the news media than women, and news bylines are more likely to be male.47 One study found that only 25 percent of guests on US Sunday television news shows were women.48 Women are also underrepresented and often stereotyped within the entertainment industry; of the top one hundred grossing films in 2011, only one-third of the characters depicted were women.49

The images we conjure of an investment banker, a prison guard, or a shop-floor supervisor tend to be men. In a complementary way, certain roles are seen as a more natural fit for women—staff roles like human resources and communication. Men are channeled into operational ones. In our executive programs, we frequently meet women who want to move to more operational roles, as these are the positions that carry more influence. Their challenge is to negotiate for opportunities when they are not automatically seen as the right fit.

Expectations Around Personal Life.  

The issue of combining work and personal life is ripe for negotiation. Our notions of the “ideal worker” have changed a great deal in the age of 24/7 connectivity. Economist and founding CEO of the Center for Talent Innovation Sylvia Ann Hewlett calls this “extreme work”: the belief that pro­fessional success requires heroic dedication, long hours, and global relocations.50 Yet this construct tends to be gendered and fits only certain workers in the populations. Extreme jobs are a difficult fit for people who carry significant responsibilities at home, which despite changing norms continue to fall disproportionately on women.51 We know that women do ask when these issues are on the table.52 Yet because women are often subject to a “motherhood penalty,” they must negotiate about pay and other work issues knowing they are likely to be penalized for asking.53 Negotiating about these issues helps men and women by changing the negotiated order and challenging assumptions of what constitutes an “ideal worker.”

Claiming Value for Invisible Work.  

The kinds of work that are valued may similarly favor men, making their bids for leadership seem more valid. Research suggests that even when women are rated as more skilled in leadership, it is visible, heroic work—more often the purview of men—that is recognized and rewarded. Organizations tend to overlook equally vital but behind-the-scenes work that's considered to be more characteristic of women, such as building a team or avoiding crises.54 We find this to be a common theme for women leaders in our programs. While they are held accountable for reaching specific milestones, they do not receive credit for the large amount of undefined work they do: building connections across