The LinkedIn podcast network is sponsored by Oracle AI may be the most important new computer technology ever.
Do more and spend less like some of the world's most successful companies.
Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com slash LinkedIn podcast network.
Hello, my fellow negotiators.
How would you like to get the same expert insights and key takeaways in just a fraction of the time?
If you answered, I would love that.
Then sign up for negotiate anything premium today.
Negotiate anything premium is designed for listeners just like you.
People who are looking to level up their careers and relationships while juggling all the pressures of everyday work and life in general.
So what are you waiting for?
Negotiate anything premium offers, add free listening because every second counts.
Enjoy uninterrupted episodes to maximize your learning.
Episodes summaries. Get the most important insights from every episode quickly and efficiently.
You will also get many episodes and highlight reels.
You will be able to dive into your favorite topics and tackle your most challenging scenarios with concise, impactful content.
And then lastly, our question and answer forums.
This is where you can ask me anything and get my advice on how to negotiate and navigate the most difficult conversations in your life and business.
Don't miss out on the career of your dreams just because you're short on time.
Negotiate anything premium is your key to building confidence, unlocking your potential and earning more of the life that you deserve.
It's everything that you love about the negotiate anything podcast but in half the time.
The best part? You can get started with your seven day free trial today.
So there's really no risk.
Take it from me. As a lawyer, entrepreneur, father and husband, I know that every minute counts.
Are you ready to negotiate more of the best things in life?
Join our premium community today.
And so I'm going to start off with one of our most hard hitting episodes.
And I want to say it was episode 30 where we talked about negotiating offers in negotiating offers of employment.
Now believe you and I talked about this last year on our last episode, but I'm really keen to get your insight.
So when we talk about negotiating for an offer of employment, a person has been going through the interview process for a while.
They may have a severe financial situation going on where getting this job is just extremely important.
And then that HR person calls and they say, hey Kwame, we'd love you to join our company.
And here's the offer. Here's a salary.
Here's a vacation. A lot of people tell me that they are hesitant to negotiate.
They have this fear. In your opinion, and I love, I can't wait.
I'm so excited to get your perspective.
Being on, you know, coming from outside of HR, why do you think people are so hesitant to negotiate when it comes to things like a new offer?
I think a lot of times, especially when somebody is unfamiliar with the process of negotiation in a business context, there's a lot of fear around this because there's a fear of loss.
I'm afraid that they're going to pull this offer.
I need this job. I want this job.
And I don't want to create any potential barrier to getting the job.
But the problem is that it is based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of the negotiation process.
Because yeah, if you go and you have you treat the person disrespectfully, then they're going to say, yeah, I don't like this person.
They're not going to say, I don't like that this person negotiated.
They're going to say, I don't like you.
Right. And really the way I think about it is that negotiation is an opportunity for you to showcase new business skills because at some capacity, you're going to be happy.
Once you join the company, you're going to have to have difficult conversations with your colleagues.
You might be representing the company outside of the the company walls as well.
And so if you can comport yourself in a respectful way and advocate for what you want to need, it often is a good signal for the company because it shows that you're more likely to be able to advocate for the company for what's best for its interest as well.
So we have to change that premise where we're saying, okay, I am afraid to negotiate because I believe that if I negotiate, I might get the offer pulled most of the time that doesn't happen.
Now, let me tell you a story though, because I was coaching somebody and I was telling them, I was like, hey, I've coach people in salary negotiations for a while.
That was a different time when I was doing that, that type of coaching, but they were saying, I'm afraid if I negotiate, they might pull the offer.
And I was like, that has literally never happened in my experience coaching people.
And it's very rare that I've ever happened.
So go ahead and negotiate.
And so what happened? She goes, she negotiates and then they pull the offer.
No, are you serious? I was terrified.
I was like, oh my gosh, I ruined it.
I ruined it. So now fast forward six months down the line or getting coffee, she's filling me and she's like, hey, Kwame, you remember that Java applied for?
I was like, yeah, she's like, I am so glad that this did not work out because they have had like three people in that same position.
And so if somebody responds really poorly to you advocating for your own needs and respectful manner, that's often a sign of problematic dysfunction within that organization.
And if you're going to be penalized for respectful advocacy for yourself, then that's not an organization you ultimately want to work for.
Right? So we have to recognize that negotiation isn't just about deal making.
Like I always say, it's about deal discovery.
That's what the art of negotiation is about.
And so as I'm trying to negotiate the best deal possible, I'm also negotiating for information to learn more about the company culture through this process of negotiation.
Because I might learn something about the company that might make me realize that I don't want to this deal.
It's still not the right deal for me.
So I think really what we have to do is we have to address the mindset that might be at play and the self-limiting beliefs that are holding us back.
Absolutely. And you know, I swear to God, it sounds like you listened to my podcast because you said like three or four things that I said, I've been in HR for 21 years.
And I have never heard of a company pulling back an offer just because someone dared to negotiate better compensation.
And your and your colleague is absolutely right.
It does sound like they dodged the bullet because that is a window into the soul of the culture of that company.
If you're not even an employee yet and they're already penalizing you for having independent thought.
And if that's how they are, you know, it's the dating phase, right?
When you're negotiating, when you're having that dance, we're in the dating phase.
It doesn't get any, it's not going to get any more positive than that.
And so once you've come in and employee, you're no longer a candidate, you're now staffed.
And so unfortunately, there's a bit of a difference in dynamic.
But absolutely, I agree with everything you said that candidates should never ever be afraid to negotiate.
And the other thing I'll throw in, I'd love to get your perspective as well.
The other side of this is there's a business side of this.
By the time they call you and they say, Kwame, we want you to have, we want you to come join the company, here's to hear the terms of the offer.
By the time they get to that stage, they've spent a lot of resources to get to that point.
And for them to pull the offer means that they're going to, they're saying we're going to restart the process.
And so I try to say that in terms of addressing the fear.
And so my second question, Kwame, is addressing the fear part, whether we're talking about offers or anything else, there's that inner critic, there's that, that says, well, how dare you negotiate?
How dare you want to do more?
What makes you worthy to be a high-powered person to negotiate?
And so what do you tell individuals who just, who are battling that inner critic that may be telling them that they're not worthy to negotiate?
Well, the first negotiation we have to have with ourselves, which is sounds trite, because people say that all the time, but let's actually talk about it, because I think if we just ignore that voice and like push it down, it doesn't go away.
We actually have to do it.
So we're okay, voice. Tell me about, tell me about this.
You think I shouldn't negotiate.
Let's go deeper. Well, why?
We have to figure out why we have that belief.
And that's, it's going to be different for different people, because one of the things that I see a lot, and I see this a lot of times with women and people of color, there's a bit of survivorship bias where they say to themselves, or survivorship guilt, let me say, survivorship guilt.
So it's like, I have this opportunity.
I know the statistics for people like me, people like me don't get opportunities like this.
And then who am I to get this great opportunity and then ask for more when so many other people who are like me don't get this opportunity.
So am I being greedy and isn't it almost disrespectful for the other people who are not in this position for me to then ask for more?
And so I think there's a lot of that, especially for people who are, you might be a first generation college student, for example, is like, okay, I'm the first person to even go to college.
This offer right now, this offer that I have is three times more than both of my parents combined.
And I'm supposed to negotiate more.
That's ridiculous, right?
And so we all have to figure out what is leading to the performance gap.
What mindsets are leading to the performance gaps.
Whenever I kind of use that as a potential point of for explanation for them for my coach, the people that I'm coaching, and I say, hey, is this something that you're going through?
And they say, yes, I say, all right, cool.
So here's the way I want you to think about it.
You have like an avatar for somebody else who should be doing better and you feel bad about that, right?
Well, cool. Well, how about this?
I'm going to negotiate more.
And then you donate as much as you want.
Absolutely. Right. That's it.
That's it. If you think somebody else needs some money, you want to help other people find.
Then I trust you to make that decision a little bit more than the big company with the pockets, right?
And so when they change their mindset, they say, oh, I didn't think of it that way.
Because if you are struggling because you're thinking about other people who are less fortunate or decent managers in some kind of way, you do them.
You're doing them a disservice by not putting yourself in a position of power and wealth.
Because if you have a position of power and wealth, you're in a position where you could be a better advocate and help other people, right?
But instead, if instead, I say, man, if I negotiate for a hundred came, you know, that's kind of disrespectful.
Okay. Well, now that now nobody has it.
Not none of us have it. You're just helping somebody else.
You know, so I think it's when you start to actually engage with that voice, then you can see the flaws more clearly.
And you can figure out what new beliefs you need to put in place in order to lead to better performance.
You read my second book when I talk about helpful fictions, right?
These are beliefs that may or may not be true, but I choose to believe it because it is helpful in this situation because it elevates my performance.
Cool. I don't feel like I deserve this.
Well, I'm going to then turn this into a negotiation where I'm advocating for somebody else who I do feel like deserves it.
Hey, listeners, I have a quick question.
How long does it take you to get through an episode of negotiating anything?
If you're like me, it could be a day or two simply because life and other work responsibilities get in the way.
If you can relate, not to worry, I have the perfect solution.
Join, negotiate anything premium to level up your negotiation skills in half the time.
With ad-free listening, episode summaries, and many episodes that are exclusive to premium, you can get your favorite expert insights in 10 minutes or less.
Not only will this save you time, but it makes preparing for your difficult conversations just that much easier.
Just download a quick mini episode or a key takeaway guide and you're on your way to negotiating more of the best things in life.
Here's what you get when you join premium.
First, ad-free listening.
No more interruptions, just pure focused learning.
Episode summaries and quick worksheets.
Quickly absorb the key insights and expert strategies with ease.
Many episodes and highlight reels get concise, powerful content on your favorite topics, which are perfect for those on the go moments.
Question and answer forums where you can ask me anything and get my expert advice on any of the difficult conversations you're having, whether it's at work or at home, and you'll get all of this for less than $10 per month.
So what are you waiting for?
Take my word for it as a CEO, father, husband, entrepreneur, and more.
This is the best way to get your professional development journey in less time.
Start your risk-free seven day trial today.
Okay. The LinkedIn podcast network is sponsored by Oracle AI, maybe the most important new computer technology ever, but AI needs a lot of processing speed and that gets expensive fast.
Upgrade to the next generation of the cloud.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI.
OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs.
Do more and spend less. Take a free test drive of OCI at Oracle.com slash LinkedIn podcast network.
From LinkedIn News, I'm Jesse Hempel, host of the Hello Monday podcast.
In my 20s, I knew what career success looked like.
In midlife, it's not that simple.
Work is changing, we're changing, and there's no guidebook for how to make sense of it.
So come figure it out with me on the Hello Monday podcast.
I've been a journalist for two decades, writing cover stories for business week, fortune, and wired, and now, every Monday.
I bring you conversations with people who are thinking deeply about work and where it fits into our lives, like Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella on growth mindsets.
The learn it all does better than the know it all.
Or NYU professor Scott Galloway on choosing a career.
I think the worst advice you can give a kid is follow your passion.
Or MacArthur Genius winner Angela Duckworth on talent versus grit.
Your long term effort and your long term commitment are surprisingly important.
Each episode delivers pragmatic advice for right now.
Listen to Hello Monday with me, Jesse Hempel on the LinkedIn podcast network or wherever you get your podcasts.
See you later. This is great.
Yeah, so and tell me if I'm on the right track here, Scott, because what I'm seeing is that you as a coach and that your team, as you're working with clients, you're going to have to have difficult conversations with your clients to figure out what it is that they want.
But your clients also, they have to have difficult conversations with themselves.
So they have to go through and go through a bit of an introspective process to figure out what it is that they really want and peel back and figure out why they want those things, those type of things.
And then once they get that solid understanding of what they want and why, now it's all about going out and getting it.
And that involves difficult conversations too.
Yeah. And I mean, let's let's take negotiation for just a second here as a topic.
Because I know that that's something you're very passionate about.
That's something that is strangely one of my hobbies.
I think you and I have talked about that before.
Both you and I are, it feels like some of the few people on earth that really love negotiation as a whole.
It is some people golf. I don't know a couple of people negotiate whatever, whatever floats your boat.
And I'll say that for negotiation as a whole, it is critical that you understand what it is that you want to accomplish.
Does that affair assessment, if you go into a negotiation and you really don't understand what it is that you're trying to achieve, what you're trying to get to, what type of outcome you're trying to serve?
It's going to be really difficult, even if you're an amazing negotiator, to be able to have a wonderful result on the other end.
So that's that's a truth, that simple truth.
And I'll tell you one more way that we often talk about it with our with our clients and and many other people live my life by the fact that one, if you ask for what you want, you're a lot more likely to be able to get what you want.
But that means you have to then know what it is that you want.
One does not work without the other.
So if we're going with that really simple set of logic, that means any of those difficult conversations that we mentioned earlier, whether it is, you know, having a conversation with your future boss for a job offer that you're trying to negotiate.
And you know, whether that is based on the salary or you're literally trying to, this is something we've done with many people before, where you're literally trying to ask them to change the role and what the opportunity looks like in itself.
You first have to understand what it is you want.
Or if you are, you know, already in an opportunity and you're working, you have a working relationship with someone and you're trying to change what that relationship looks like for whatever reason.
You still have to understand what it is that you want to push towards the outcome that you're trying to achieve.
One, again, does not work with the other.
And we can go and delve into how that might happen through job offer negotiation or any of those other scenarios or situations, how those, how those difficult conversations might look and how it might be different than what most people think should happen there.
Yeah. Well, before we get into the tactics of like the specific conversations, I want to spend a little bit more time going into the introspection portion because I think a lot of people will say, okay, yep, I get it.
I need to know what I want and I need to know why I want it.
But the fact that people, like the majority of people listening would say, yeah, got it.
Yeah, I'll do that. But then again, we don't do that.
All right, even though there is, there's the recognition that it's something that should be done, we, we recognize that we don't do it frequently enough.
And what ends up happening is you might negotiate effectively and get exactly what it is you're asking for.
And then in the end, be incredibly disappointed with your newfounding situation.
So can we go a little bit deeper into what makes it so hard for people to ask themselves those tough questions and get the right answer?
Absolutely. One of the things that we talk about extensively in the book is five obstacles that stop people from getting to what they want, that stop people from getting to what we call meaningful and fulfilling work.
And one of those particular obstacles is what we call the restaurant with no menus.
Okay, so here's what I mean by that.
The imagine for a second that you walk into a restaurant, you know, maybe maybe Kwame, it's you and Whitney, you walk into a restaurant, you sit down at state night and it's a brand new restaurant.
You've never been there before.
You're feeling adventurous.
So you go in, you sit down and matriot D shows up and says, hey, you know what, your waiter will be with you here in a moment.
But just know that we can make you anything that you want.
Anything, absolutely anything that you want.
Okay, so here's, here's the thing.
First of all, that might sound a little bit scary or a little bit intimidating, but you're feeling adventurous Kwame.
So you go ahead and roll along with it.
One of the things that we think about here is restaurants would never ever do that.
They would never ever do that.
Instead, they have a menu, they have a reader board, they have all of these different ways to communicate what it is that they offer.
And the reason that they would never ever do that is it would kill sales drastically.
And even though they can make you anything that you might possibly be able to ask for, there's still some serious limitations there.
Number one, is that is overwhelming.
If they can do anything, oh my goodness, like that is talking, talk about, you know, like when you go to the cheesecake factory or someplace like that that has this massive menu is like a book that, you know, might damage something if you drop it on the table too hard.
Well, the challenge there is, there's just so many things.
It's difficult to nail it down.
But what if we took from cheesecake menu size to infinite size, it's nearly impossible to be able to limit it down.
Now, here's the other side of that, the other side, if you walk into the restaurant and they don't have any menus whatsoever, you can only order off what you know exists.
What that means is if you don't know that they can make a nine layer dip and you've never had a nine layer dip before that has, you know, all the all the onions and salsa and whatever else is on a nine layer dip.
I don't even know what's on a nine layer dip.
But if you've never had that before, then it's going to be impossible for you to order it.
And that is one of the biggest challenges is it relates to different types of clarity or understanding what you want.
Because if you haven't seen it, if you haven't had exposure to that before, it's impossible to order even if it's going to be great for you.
And we find that the same thing is true for your career, the same thing is true for your career or anything else that you might want in your life.
If you haven't had exposure to that before, it's going to be impossible for you to have it on your menu, which means that it's not just a problem of defining and choosing what it is that you want.
It's also a problem of exposing yourself to what is going to be possible for you.
So that in itself is a little bit of a catch 22, as you might imagine, right?
So if you run a restaurant, first of all, get some menus.
And second of all, we can talk about how to work through that.
Yeah, I love that metaphor because you run right into the paradox of choice.
If you have too many options, then you're just not going to make a selection.
And you're going to feel bad about it in the process.
Yeah, just too old. So many emotions.
Yeah. So let's say people are in that position because it's, you know, and this is one of those things.
If you're in that privileged position where you live in a country where you have so many options, it's a blessing and a curse.
What can you do? Anything.
Well, that's a lot. Right?
So when you run into that, how do you help people work through that?
Yeah. And you make a great point to hear.
There are portions of the world where people don't have those types of options.
But in more and more of the world with every day that passes, more options become available.
So what do you do when you are in that very privileged situation?
Well, I'll share one thing first.
Part of the reason that we created the Happen Your Career Podcast, the way that we did, we chose very early on to be able to, we don't talk, we actually don't talk about this on the on the show frequently at all.
But in how we tell the stories, part of what we're doing is trying to provide exposure to how everyday people in many different ways achieve nearly impossible.
What most people would consider to be impossible, types of career changes on their way to meaningful work.
And the reason that we do that is that exact, that exact problem that we just discussed, the restaurant with no menus.
If you don't have exposure to it, you're not going to be able to do something about it.
So the reason I am sharing that though is because it points out that part of what you're going to need to do is expose yourself to people and stories and even potentially professions and industries that you suspect you might want.
But don't fully know what is out there.
Now, here's here's something that is a misconception is it relates to careers.
Many people get frustrated with their career in one way or another and they want to throw in the towel.
They want to completely change.
We get we've had thousands and thousands of conversations at this point where people are like, yeah, I have been a director of marketing and I need to no longer be in marketing and they're ready to throw out the baby with the bath water in so many different ways.
And we might work with them and I'll share one story really quick here.
We worked with Eric actually who came to us in that exact situation where she was a director in marketing and had a pretty bad experience in her last organization.
So she's like, I need to get away from this.
I need to completely move on.
I don't know what it's going to be.
I have no idea where we're going to go with this, but I know it needs to be drastically different than what it is.
So she's ready to entirely change.
And in Eric's case, one of the things that we have realized is that she just didn't have exposure to how marketing might look differently to be able to serve her strengths.
So instead of saying, okay, all right, we're now going to shift you into HR because that's the obvious solution somehow.
We are then, no, we're not going to shift her to HR at all.
This wasn't our first idea.
So what we did was we took Eric and he said, okay, let's first establish what you know already that you want your career to look like.
What are the parts and pieces that you must have in your career?
And by the way, we use a tool that we call the ideal career profile.
And it's actually very simple.
And the reason we use it is because when you think about meaningful work and you think about if you want more meaningful work that also compensates you very well.
And that's the outcome that you want.
Then the challenge is not just exposure.
The challenge is that that's a complex problem.
And when you have a complex problem, that means that there's not one thing is the solution, which by the way is another thing that stops people from getting too much more meaningful work.
And that then means that we have to solve many, many small problems and make many, many small decisions.
So this tool, the ideal career profile, think about it as a checklist where you've gone through and made many micro decisions about your career.
Like, for example, who are the types of people I want to spend my time around?
Because by the way, if I know who those people are, I might be able to go find organizations that have more of those types of people because I'm spending a good chunk of my life working with potentially co-workers.
And then who, you know, what do I want to do for my financial goals?
Because my work as much as I might try to, I can't separate out work from the rest of my life.
They are mutually dependent.
And so if I can go through and decide and make these micro decisions on all of these different areas that impact both my work and the rest of my life, then I can put those together and create what we call an ideal career profile and think about that just as a checklist of what you must have and what creates your personal version of extraordinary.
Okay, so that's the approach that we use.
Now fast forward, let's come back to Erica's story.
One of the things that we realized as we did that was everything she was putting on there actually fit really nicely with marketing.
It's just she didn't have the flexibility or autonomy that she really wanted, which by the way leads us into some of those conversations that we were mentioning earlier.
Erica at the point in time where we got to meet her and we're working with her on what creates her personal version of extraordinary.
She was already going in, I don't know why she was doing this.
She was running around like, I don't know, like crazy, going to all these networking meetings and going to all these interviews and just doing everything just so she could feel like she was doing something.
But as we started to clarify where she wanted to go, she started realizing that even though I've done eight different interviews, there's really only two of these organizations and opportunities that even are a close fit.
So they weren't quite a total fit though and that's where some of the difficult conversations come in.
I'll tell you about one interview.
She was she's part of the way through the process and she started having these realizations that what I need is a lot more flexibility, a lot more autonomy.
I don't want to actually go in.
I want to work remotely and now that she was learning this, she had to have midway through after she had already shared, hey, like I'm willing to accept you know, A, B and C, she realized that she wasn't willing to accept A, B and C.
So here's what that conversation looked like for her.
She went into the very next interview.
This was a final stage interview and she shared that, Hey, I've realized as I've been on these eight other interviews that this organization and the people in this organization and this type of opportunity fits me very, very well.
I've also realized that what I told you earlier on about being willing to not work remotely, being willing to be willing to serve on this other team that is going to require my time at three days a week from, she had some times in the evenings that it was going to require and she didn't want to do that.
So she said to them that this is, you know, I'm sorry, but this is actually not going to be a fit for me.
Instead, here's what I'm looking for and she shared some examples of different types of autonomy and flexibility.
Okay, so that is a scary conversation to have and she also went on to say, you know, thank you so much.
I really, really appreciate that you have brought me this far into the process and if this changes what you are looking for and this isn't a fit, that's okay.
I felt like I needed to share that with you early on as soon as I realized so that if, if it's not a fit, then I'm being fair to you.
However, if it is, I would love to keep going because everything else lines up so, so well.
Okay, so that is kind of a scary conversation.
If you think about it, like you're most of the way into this, into this role, into this opportunity, you pretty much all but have it.
They've told you that you're in the final stages, you're the last candidate and you feel like you're ruining that is where you are emotionally.
However, what ended up happening is they said, you know what?
We agree. We think that this is a situation where we want you and she ended up getting an opportunity out of that where she was blatantly honest and even though she had to have a pretty scary emotional conversation with them, she got that opportunity and got it the exact way that she wanted to.
And crazy thing about it, it actually, she worked one day a work, one day a week less because she was only working four days a week and from an hourly basis ended up making more than what she was making at her previous director role.
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 about it, you should listen to it again.
I want you to know about and 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 negotiating anything premium, you'll get more bonus content you've been asking 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 negotiating anything premium, you'll have access to more high level custom design content and insights giving you the tools you need to negotiate higher salaries, better deals and better relationships in your 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 first hand 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.
