unPACKed podcast: Sealing the Deal: Unwrapping the Art of Negotiation

Stephanie Neil:

Hi, I'm Stephanie Neil. I'm editor of CPG Next, and I am a member of the Packaging and Processing Women's Leadership Network. And as part of our ongoing Learning Circle series, today we're talking about negotiation. Negotiation is an important part of career development as we know, but it doesn't come naturally to a lot of people. So my question is it a skill that can be learned?

Angela Hall:

You can develop your negotiation skills. And what is important about that is that when you learn or try to develop these negotiation skills it's kind of focus on a few things, one of them is to focus on what are your own strengths? What do you bring to the negotiation?

If you're a person who does not do well with high conflict, then adapting a different type of negotiation style would go well. Another thing is to be able to, people who negotiate the best are people who do their research before they go into negotiation. There's something called the best alternative to negotiate agreement. That means that's what's your plan B if this negotiation does not work out. You need to know want to go, what you want to get for negotiation. You need to know the point which you will walk away, or the point which you say, "This is not going to work." You need to come in with your aspiration point. And your aspiration point is what you would dream about getting.

So you may say, "Well, it's easy to figure out or easier to figure out what I want," but you should also take the time when you go into negotiation to put yourself in the shoes of the other person and figure out what they may want, whether it may be conducting research on the internet, doing stakeholder interviews, whatever type of information you have because the more information that you have going into the negotiations, the better your negotiation will turn out.

Stephanie Neil:

So, Joyce, I would imagine you've had to negotiate a number of contracts. How did you learn? I mean, did you just learn on the job how to do it effectively?

Joyce Longfield:

I think it definitely was two things. I did have two male mentors and that was a significant help, especially because we were selling equipment, and so sales is kind of like a negotiation, and so having that aspect of it was a big piece. The other piece of it too is I was 33 when I started, and so old enough, mature enough to be more confident and comfortable in myself. I think in your 20s you're kind of still insecure and you're uncertain of your abilities. And part of doing your homework and doing your research is also even within yourself like where's your maturity level at and how are you going to present yourself?

When you hear some of the top negotiating experts, which I didn't know this back then, but looking at it now, they say a big win if you are negotiating with a terrorist or someone that's suicidal or something like that is the empathy side of it and reaching them on a human level. I think I was fortunate enough that because of the age I was at, I was at a place in my life where I felt confident enough in myself, but it wasn't ego. So I can be friendly, but firm. Which I think definitely is a lot bigger challenge for women is balancing out that without getting labeled something else. So you want to be delightful and enjoyable to work with. You want them to want you more for just your skills. They actually want to be able to work with you. You're humans, but how do you also maintain your boundaries?

I think a big part of, as I got older, what truly helped is using a lot of our own life experiences. I'm fortunate enough, I have two children and you're kind of on a regular basis negotiating with your kids on a daily basis. And how do you do that? You're negotiating with your partner, how do you do that? And for myself, I'm just a conflict resolution person, and so I'm always looking for how do we talk to one another to resolve conflict because we both want to come out happy. Nobody wants to walk away and give someone the silent treatment or send your kid to your room just as because you're the older person and you can dominate the conversation.

So that would be one thing that I would maybe encourage women is to reflect how did they resolve conflict in their households? Do they just shut down? Do they walk away? Do they try and kind of bully the conversation and control it? Because that's not going to work for you in a negotiating setting. So use your own self in your home life to practice your skill set.

Stephanie Neil:

Yeah. And Angela, you had named a couple of things that you should understand and know your strengths, maybe have a plan B, but does it really come down to what Joyce was saying? How do we negotiate at home? We can't do that in the business setting sometimes because it's not going to be the same kind of environment. I mean, is there other ways to learn to move your strengths into the business environment without it becoming too emotional? Because as women, we don't want to be too emotional in the work setting. Is there any other advice there?

Angela Hall:

I think that's a good question. I agree with Joyce that what we learn from our personal lives, whether it's let's say you're single and you don't have children, just any type of negotiations that you do, anytime you interact with people, there's some type of negotiation type of process. If there's any more than the very transactional, very short type of relationship, I think that something that's important is to know what we would consider to be negotiation techniques that are successful in the workplace. And these are some things that also can be successful at home, like framing. How do you frame something? If you want to negotiate with your boss about giving you a different type of assignment, you should frame it and how it would benefit that person or will benefit the organization in the long run.

Another type of framing technique is contrast. You can say, "Well, we can do this and if we want to do a good job and we want to be successful, and this is what I suggest that we do, as opposed to when we did that and it ended very badly." That's also another technique called legitimizing. I'm at Michigan State and we're in the Big 10, and what we like to do is say, "Oh, we should do that at Michigan State because of course the University of Michigan and Ohio State do that. And those are big great universities and they have a lot of things that we admire. Or Harvard does that, or MIT." That's called legitimizing.

So the way you can use these psychological techniques called influence tactics go a long way at work, and frankly in any other aspect of life where you're going to do any negotiation.

Stephanie Neil:

Those are great points. And Joyce, you had said that earlier in your career you had male mentors, and I'm just wondering, should we be men and women, I would assume, I mean just from my own observations, maybe negotiate differently, work differently, communicate differently? Should we be emulating the way they do it or should we be true to ourselves and how we want to communicate with people?

Joyce Longfield:

Yeah, I definitely think that's a fine balance and it's all a part of doing your homework, reading the room, kind of just feeling the energy of the room. But some big things just echoing what Angela was saying, that with being in a room with males and seeing how they interact, they get nervous around emotions. And obviously, women have been labeled as being emotional, being dramatic, being hysterical, this kind of thing and stuff. And so I think one of the skills that I learned is to control my emotions so that even if I could feel myself getting upset about something or overwhelmed, I don't want that being presented to the room because I don't want anybody to start judging me or shut down or anything like that.

Because for me, I'm looking at it like, "This is part of the job, this is part of what I do and stuff." And I don't want to have excuses just because something might be triggering me. As we all know, triggers are for our responsibility to work out. It's not that you can't prevent the triggers in the world from happening to you, so that's your responsibility to do on your own time. So in that moment, if you feel yourself being triggered by something, how are you going to control it so that. All of a sudden you don't get angry and you don't get heated and you don't start firing back and that kind of thing. So it's not always easy, but I think having a focus of, "I want this to turn out positively, I want to work this out."

And so if you feel them getting their back up about something and they're starting to get intense, what are you going to do to deescalate this situation? How are we going to bring it back to ground level and stuff? So I do think emotional control is a really important ability to practice on yourself.

Stephanie Neil:

Yeah. And we have talked a lot about emotional intelligence, that's a topic for another webinar because we can go through a lot of things with that. But how do you learn to read the room?

Angela Hall:

Well, there's a long line of research on emotional intelligence. And unlike personality, personality is pretty fixed. We used to think that personality was pretty fixed by 13 or early teens. Now we know it's probably pretty fixed by the time we get into preschool, meaning that you can examine a five-year-old or four-year-old and kind of determine how they're going to be as an adult unless something weird happens, like they have a trauma or an illness or something like that.

Joyce Longfield:

Sure.

Angela Hall:

And so the thing about emotional intelligence is that some of the ways that you can enhance that and be able to read the room is to model the behaviors of people who are already emotionally intelligent. Another thing is to have stakeholder interviews, meaning that, for example, prior to meeting, if you can talk to people, try to listen to what they're trying to tell you, reading people's body language and getting feedback from people whom you respect about how emotionally intelligent that they think you are.

You could also even get some books on emotional intelligence. Goldman has written a lot on that topic and there are a lot of books that help you develop your emotional intelligence and something that's very related, political skill. A book that I like to recommend to people is actually written by my advisor. It's called Political Skill at Work. It's by Jerry Ferris and colleagues. You can get it used on Amazon very easily and it talks about how to read the room, how to develop coalitions and allies in the workplace and how to do that because we know that the number one predictor of workplace success is emotional intelligence, and especially for people who are in leadership and management positions.

And circling back to something that you said, Joyce, I'm very happy that you talked about having a male mentor. I think that something that my advisor, who was at the time considered wanting to be the top people in the management management scholars, he talked about something called political skill deficiency. And political skill deficiency means that oftentimes women and people of color and other represented groups go to people who are like them demographically for mentoring, but you should go to whoever you can get the best mentoring from regardless of that person's demographic background, and you should mirror their successes and learn from their mistakes.

Stephanie Neil:

So emotional intelligence is really important. Is that the same as having emotions?

Angela Hall:

So what we know about the research that's been done on women in the workplace, especially women leaders, is that the leadership styles that women adapt have often been attributed to being the ones that are the most successful. And part of that, a big part of that, and Joyce touched on four, is the notion of having empathy. When people believe that you care, when people believe that you're listening to them, even if you don't agree what they're saying, the fact that you're being respectful, you're considering their feelings, you're explaining things to them, we call that procedural justice.

If you're engaging in those types of behaviors, people are more likely to accept negative feedback. They're more likely to embrace the types of changes that you want, and they're more likely to be engaged with their work.

Joyce Longfield:

Yeah. And I think there's a lot of great leadership books out there that touch on all of those pieces. And it is true that when you show people that you care about them and that you will stand up for them and that your goal is to educate them on how to do their job so that they could potentially be better than you, we always say that about our children. "I want to give you everything and I want to teach you everything, so you go out into the world and you do better than me." And if you're a leader within your organization, you kind of look at it the same way. And so I think negotiation is the same thing.

I heard this Buddhist monk say, and I will butcher his name if I try and say it so I'm not going to, but his phrase was that you should be able to separate out someone's opinion from the human. And so that really for me was an interesting concept because really, we like so many people because of their morals and values and what they represent, but you don't always have to agree with what they have to say. And so you have to be able to separate out that they're still a human and you can still love them even if you don't like their opinion on something. So negotiation's kind of the same way.

If they say something that you don't like, are you all of a sudden going to get your back up about it and then get defensive? That's not going to help with the negotiation. I mean, unless it was offensive. But if you're talking about money and all of a sudden they say like, "Well, no, we can't give you that raise and we're not going to pay you that much and stuff." If automatically you feel like, "I've lost and it's over," and you feel deflated and you get defensive, what tools are you left with then to continue on the conversation?

Whereas if you look at it like, "Okay, well, if I can't get that that I want, is there other things that I want instead?" But it kind of does come down to your composure because maybe you didn't walk away agreeing on a dollar figure that day, but maybe another day you will. And so I think that the emotional intelligence, the ability to how you present yourself, and again, I do use a lot of examples from how I am in the household, being patient with my children. It's kind of the same thing, being patient in those negotiating settings and stuff and don't seem like you're trying to rush it, don't seem like you're trying to dominate the conversation.

They always say it's kind of like an 80/20 rule. You have two eyes, two ears, one mouth, so you should be listening and seeing more than you should be speaking kind of thing. And so I try and remember that. I want to show them I'm interested in what they have to say, offer, and so forth. And then at the same time, I also do have the criteria that I want to come with it. And so using language like, "I hear you and I completely understand, so how can we get to a place that we're both happy?" Just talk in a way of more synergistic development of this negotiation than just I want, they want, that kind of black and white back and forth.

Stephanie Neil:

You mentioned money and I want to talk about it because the gender pay gap still exists as research shows. Angela shared some research with us yesterday and in 2022, women typically earned $0.82 for every dollar earned by men. So obviously, this is an area that is important and obviously we're not going to change the world here, but based on your experiences and your teachings, Angela, are there tips that you can recommend to someone trying to negotiate a higher salary in different stages of their career, maybe when they're interviewing versus when they're hired, versus when they've been on the job for a while, versus when they get a promotion or a title change? Are there certain things, go-tos that you can lean on in these situations to try to get higher pay?

Angela Hall:

Absolutely. And that 82% figure, $0.82 on every dollar figure, it's the result of multiple factors. Part of it could be gender discrimination, part of it could be the fact that women oftentimes leave the workplace or take lower paid roles because they are the primary caregivers of their children. Others could be that they don't negotiate that higher starting salary and then their subsequent raises are based on that. And so it's important that, to the extent that you can get the highest salary going in, under most circumstances, and let me explain that, sometimes it's not always money, it's other things. It's flexibility, it's career advancement.

And so the technique that we call negotiation literature is called log rolling. And log rolling is when you trade a low priority item for a high priority item. An example I can give is this, I am a night person and my daughter is a teenager now, so I really don't have to, if I could sleep in a little bit later, I am happy to do that. Most faculty do not like teaching at night and they're like, "Oh, I would do anything not to teach at night." I would say, "Hey, I'll teach at night. I'm the hero because I can teach night courses." And it looks like I'm giving up something really major, but I'm actually getting something that I want.

And it could be like that when you are negotiating, you need to think about something called expanding the pie as opposed to the fixed pie. You need to have creative solutions and I'm going to give you an example of, there's another book I really like. It's called The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator, and it's by Leigh Thompson who's at Northwestern University, and she gives the anecdote of two sisters and a lemon. And the two sisters are arguing for the lemon and the mom said, "You just work it out between yourselves." And they couldn't, so the mom brings a knife, she doesn't stab them, no violence is involved. She cuts the lemon in half, gives one half to one sister, gives one half to the other sister, they walk away satisfied.

But what's happened is one wanted the lemon to make lemonade, one wa nted lemon for the rind. So if they had just talked about each other's preferences, they could have gotten 100% of what they wanted as opposed to 50% what they wanted. So strategically revealing information, a lot of times when we negotiate, we feel that if we release or reveal information, we're going to be at disadvantage, but oftentimes it's to our benefit.

Joyce Longfield:

That's a great analogy. The art of conversation is so important. And when you were talking about money, I think money is something that a lot of women struggle with and feel really uncomfortable. And then especially if you have to walk into a room and have that conversation with a male, it oftentimes also makes women feel really uncomfortable. And so in order to make the conversation go well and more fluid and comfortable and natural for both of you, going back to the prep work, I'm a big believer that the story you tell yourself is the story that you live. And so if you are walking into that room saying like, "I'm so nervous, I don't know if he's going to give me what I want and stuff," and you're so wrapped up and consumed in like, "Are you going to get this raise?" Kind of thing, as opposed to maybe beforehand writing out a list of what this raise means.

And I don't necessarily mean the list to be just like, "Why do you deserve it?" But again, what will they get out of it that will make them happy and want to pay you more? And so kind of build up your confidence before you go in there like, "I'm going in there and I'm going to tell them all about the wonderful things I'm going to be able to do and that this raise will, it'll motivate me or will," because for whatever the reason that you want this money. I mean, maybe if you just feel like you're being underpaid and you want to be treated more equally, whatever that is, I still think you need to go into it thinking like, "I got to show them that there's a reason behind giving me this pay increase" if it's not just the fact that you're not meeting the daily requirements that you should have.

Stephanie Neil:

Well, I think that's important. And I mean, I like that we have to look at the big picture, "What's important to you? What are your non-negotiables?" Whatever that might be. But let's be real, we have to pay our bills. And if we did come in at a lower salary, how do you ask for more money in your existing role if you aren't getting a promotion or a title change? Maybe you did come in at that lower level and now you're fighting, you're fighting to get more paid because you've got to pay your bills. It sometimes it comes down to simple survival, so I don't know. I mean, it's great to think about the big picture and have that communication, but is there a solution to this or does that mean you have to maybe look for another job?

Joyce Longfield:

Well, maybe part of the homework though is also just doing your background to look at what other companies are paying for your role and really assess, "Am I being underpaid? And if I am being underpaid, to what percentage am I being underpaid?" And then that just might help you feel more confident going in there. Not necessarily that you need to point it out, because really you don't want them to fire back and say, "Well, then go work for one of those companies." Again, you don't want to get into this argument or debate situation. You just want it to be a continuous discussion because always the goal is both of you want to come out happy, you want to come out together and you don't want to come out like, "Who won?" That's not what this is about.

Angela Hall:

We're talking about negotiation. Unless it's like a one-time thing, like you're negotiating buying a car, you want to make sure that you, in the workplace, you preserve the relationship. That should be first and foremost. Coming into a role, if you come into a role and you're not being paid what you would like to be paid coming in, you can ask for something called a rapid review, which is usually an off cycle performance evaluation. And then you say, "Well, okay, you can only bring me in X amount, but may I have a rapid review after three months or six months? And based on that, maybe I can get a bump in pay." And a lot of organizations are amenable to doing the rapid review.

Another thing, if you've been in an organization for an extended period of time, you need to point out to your boss how you bring value now and what you can do to bring value in the future and how you are supportive of the organization's strategic goals and mission. And if you can provide that information, oftentimes that can sway organizations because oftentimes we would rather keep someone rather than hiring because we all know hiring consumes a lot of time, effort, and it's costly.

Stephanie Neil:

And I love your point. You really need to preserve that relationship with your employer. You don't want to burn any bridges or make anybody upset. It's not going to help you in the long run. And of course, we negotiate for a lot of other things. It's not just money. It might be resources, it might be staff, it might be feedback from your boss.

Angela Hall:

Absolutely. And you need to know the point at which you will walk away, you need to know what you want. A lot of times people go in negotiations, they don't know what they want. Having that information makes you very powerful going into your negotiation.

Joyce Longfield:

And I think there's some classic rules that hold a lot of value. You see a lot of people say like, "Don't accept the first offer that's put on the table because it's most likely there's more behind it." But then knowing, let's say they did offer you exactly what you wanted and you thought, "Oh, that's great," but if it's a brand new company that you're going into for the first time, that first impression is important. And I would just, for myself, I've found that especially if that conversation is with a male for the first time, it's not necessarily to establish a dominance as much as I want them to see that I'm not afraid of having a conversation that could be difficult.

So even if they offer me the offer that I really want, I still might respond, and it doesn't have to be money, but it could be something to massage the deal, the contract a little bit, just so it's a little bit of engaging that you see I'm not the type of person to just take whatever you're going to offer me. So I don't want that to sound manipulative, but I do think that as a woman, it is kind of important, especially on those very first discussions, that they kind of don't get in their head like, "Oh, she's a pushover. We can get whatever we want from out of her" and that kind of thing.

People do judge you in that way and so I think it's just important to demonstrate you have the capabilities and the confidence within yourself to have those tough conversations if we had to. And so I definitely find that some of those rules that are out there are really good advice. And if you do want more money, what do they always tell you? Ask for more than what you want because then you want to have that wiggle room to come down. And also to Angela's point, it doesn't just have to be money. It could be other benefits and stuff, but ask for more than what they're offering and have that wiggle room to really get your goal that you want to have.

Stephanie Neil:

Well, this is a hot topic because there's a lot of questions coming in. So someone asked, "How do you justify the amount of money that you're asking for, for example, if I believe I'm underpaid by $10,000? Do I ask for that $10,000? And what if my company doesn't do annual reviews or believe in pay increases?" These are more corporate policies. You can't really fight against that, I guess, if you're being told, "Hey, this is just the way it is, so be happy." I mean, I guess is it just about doing your research, showing the value that you bring, making sure you understand who you're talking to, right? Who are you trying to negotiate with?

Because to Joyce's point early on, we're talking about human beings. We're not talking about all the time a big corporate policy. We're talking about negotiating with our boss or our manager. So is it knowing who and what makes them tick? Could that possibly help influence your argument?

Joyce Longfield:

So one thing I would just love to say is no one will advocate for you more than you. And so you have to be your advocate always, especially in your career setting. You're your number one advocate. And if you truly feel that you are being underpaid or you've just been in this role for so long and you haven't had a raise, and obviously the cost of living has come up and you do want that $10,000 raise, I would say yes, to ask for it. But I would ask for $15,000. Again, go a little bit more than what you want. And also though, have your reasons why. Your career over these years, you've done this, you've done that. And I wouldn't even always just include your accolades. I truly believe that there's so much value in failure if you can show what you learned from your failures.

So if within your organization, if there's an example like, "We tried this, this did not work. We problem-solved, we figured it out, and we went back and we did this, and this is how successful we came." If you can demonstrate to your company that yes, you've had these successes in accolades, but you've also learned so much and you can teach that learning to other people or do you add value to the company in a cultural way, that is so important in this day and age of the cultural setting of a company, because you have so many conflicting parties and opinions and what's real news and what's fake news and what's politically charged, and so forth. So the more you can help grow a culture to be healthy I think is such a value add. And I think more people are appreciating that value add, like what you contribute to the company environment, not just your work skill set too.

Angela Hall:

I think Joyce hit some really good points. People treat us the way we teach them how to treat us. And if we go in being humble but confident, that works. Studies show that being what's considered to be overly aggressive backfires with women, we should go in very empathetic at first, but when you have to take the gloves off, you do. But showing your value, going in a logical type of way, and explaining the value that you bring. Another thing that Joyce talked about about offering salaries, suggesting what you want, you should always aim high and you should never state a range because what occurs is something, it's a cognitive bias in psychology that is called anchoring effects. If I say that I want $100,000 to $115,000, I'll probably nine times out of 10 get a $100,000.

So you can say $100,000 to $115,000 if you really want $90,000. But if you really are thinking that you're going to get something in that range, particularly the high end, the research suggests that you're just not going to get that.

Stephanie Neil:

And that is actually are the key. So you go in and you want to prove you're not a pushover, are there key statements you can say other than the salary range, like an aiming high, but are there other key statements that kind of anchor you and show that, "Listen, I'm humble, but I'm not aggressive, but I'm also not a pushover"? I mean, are there anything that you've used or yourself have said in the past that you think made a difference?

Joyce Longfield:

I think before you get to statements, think about your body language. Are you sitting up tall in the seat? How are you presenting yourself? What are you wearing? Is your hair clean? And eye contact. Are you looking them in the eye? Are you nervous and fidgety and that kind of thing? So you kind of have to assess your body language before you go into it. And if you know that you are a fidgety person or you get nervous and you look away, I think you'd need to take the time to practice outside of that setting. You do have to work on that because that is a really important skill, is how you present yourself. I think that that is a big piece even before the statement.

Angela Hall:

I totally agree with that. If people remember me from law school, I graduated law school 30 years ago this month, and people would know me in law school that anytime the professors used to call me, I used to burst out crying. And I used to be like that my first year of practicing law, I was so painfully shy. And I wasn't even the most aggressive lawyer until I started becoming a college faculty. And when as a college faculty member, I was in front of people all the time, I had to speak and I became habituated to it. And the more practice you get, the more habituated you are, the less anxiety-inducing these things are, the more confidence you have going in. And people respond to confidence and people's nervousness makes other people feel nervous. To the extent you can be confident, you will do yourself a great service when it comes to negotiation and your career overall.

Stephanie Neil:

Yeah. And I'm so glad that we had this conversation because I had a question about body language like, "What does that portray?" And the question came in saying, "I struggle with controlling the emotional element and how do I do that?" So I think you did give some good suggestions how you might control that and practicing is probably key.

Joyce Longfield:

I think. Like I said, I'm a big believer that the story that you tell yourself is the one that you live. And so ahead of time work on yourself, and obviously it doesn't happen overnight, but being able to tell yourself like, "I'm confident, I speak well, people like listening to me." Affirmations go a long way. And so if you're constantly putting yourself down and even believing in the story like, "I'm an emotional wreck." Well, then you're going to be an emotional wreck. So don't call yourself an emotional wreck and say things like, "I'm working on controlling my emotions."

A big thing for me that I kind of told myself that helped me make the switch was, this sounds silly, but I only get emotional about my children. I do not get emotional about my work. And maybe because I'm a scientist and it's a little bit easier for me to look at things like factual black and white and stuff. So if I mess something up, my brain is, "Okay, how are we going to fix it?" Not a puddle of tears. And so I think I've just kind of come to a decision that I only get emotional about my family.

Angela Hall:

There's the notion of paralanguage. Paralanguage means how you say something. And something that the research has shown is that a lot of times women make statements like questions, like they're asking for permission and they have what they call up speak at the end like, "I really think we should do this." Like we're asking for permission. The extent that we are confident in our statements and do not engage in the up speak is very, very important. And also to be allies to other women. When one woman says something in a meeting, he was like, "Yeah, that's great what you said." Or, "Just like Anne said, this is a really good point." And to do that for women and other people who are historically marginalized is a really good way to increase the equity and inclusion in the workplace.

Joyce Longfield:

I like that a lot.

Stephanie Neil:

Great points. Thank you both so much. What a great conversation. I know I learned a lot. I'm sure everybody else did too. And again, this was our Learning Circle on negotiation. And appreciate your time.

Angela Hall:

Thank you.

Joyce Longfield:

Thanks, ladies. Thanks for helping me be a part of this.

Angela Hall:

Take care