Be a Great Negotiator with Kathryn Valentine

This episode starts with host Shelby Nicholl reading a text from a friend who reminded her that negotiation is a key skill for women in the workplace...and one that is often looked at with anxiety.  Yet, as guest Kathryn Valentine proves, we women are amazing negotiators!  Here's the text message that sets this episode into motion: 

"Before I had Elin, a friend said to me, your entire life will be a negotiation from here on out. Think about what we do when we negotiate w a toddler or god forbid a teenager - women are uniquely positioned to actually be rockstars at negotiation if they just lean into what they do ALL the time, with our realizing it. The same fundamentals apply - figure out what is important to the other party (whether it be a lollipop or a funded project) and trade for it, body language (the mom glare anyone??) and the silence is legit one of the most impactful ways to gain leverage to just name a few. Rock your work life like you run the hell out of a household and you'll be fine." 

During the ep, Kathryn Valentine, CEO of Worth More Strategies, shares her wealth of experience, including personal anecdotes and the academic research findings that reveal how traditional negotiation advice fails women.

We delve into the dynamics of gender in negotiation, spotlighting how women can excel, especially when advocating for others. Discover how to use a holistic negotiation strategy to enhance impact and alleviate burnout. Kathryn also offers a reframe of stress and non-promotable tasks that will change your perspective on why you SHOULD ask for resources at work. 

Resources mentioned in the episode:
To access Kathryn’s courses and the “75 Things to Negotiate” visit her website at: https://worthmorestrategies.com/

Claudia Goldin’s book Career and Family is incredible!  A bit of a history lesson but full of great info we should all know.

Linda Babcock, Brena Peyser, Lise Veterlund and Laurie Weingart’s collective book “The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women’s Dead End Work”

To connect with Shelby Nicholl, reach out to her via LinkedIn or at info@murielnetwork.com. 


About this podcast: 
If you're a woman in wealth management (or any male-dominated industry), this podcast is for you. 
Muriel Siebert (first woman member of the NYSE ) said, "When a door is hard to open and nothing else works, sometimes you just have to rear back and kick it open.”  After decades of sluggish progress, it’s time for us to kick the door open on women’s success.

Recorded and produced by Muriel Network.
Graphic Design by John Gallagher.
Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/ra/let-good-times-roll License code: EV5ON7Y3CSESDSEU

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

If right now, when you Googled how do I negotiate, you actually got advice for how to negotiate as a woman, I think women would love negotiation because we're really good at it. It's just that we've been handed the wrong tools and they backfire on us, which makes us not want to do it. Once you have the right tools, this is fun. It's great.

Speaker 2: 0:32

Hi, I'm Shelby Nickel. Have you ever had a great conversation with a colleague or a girlfriend and you leave with an energy, boost of inspiration, ready to fight another day? Me too, and that feeling was the inspiration for this podcast. I'm a 25-year corporate veteran who climbed the corporate ladder to reach top levels at two broker-dealers, and often I found myself being the only woman in the room. I saw women advisors and corporate leaders burned out, overlooked and generally wanting to have more impact. And it's not just about us who work within the wealth management industry. It's about the untapped potential of women as investors within the wealth management industry. It's about the untapped potential of women as investors.

Speaker 2: 1:07

In this podcast, we tell the stories of women who are winning clients, leading organizations, doing things differently and bringing new energy to their work. There's a quote that inspires me by Muriel Siebert, the first woman member of the NYSE. She said when a door is hard to open and nothing else works, sometimes we just have to rear back and kick it open. Welcome to the Muriel Network Kick it Open podcast. Our goal with Muriel Network is to close the gaps on women in senior leadership and the gender-based wealth gap, and so our guest today, catherine Valentine, is an expert in negotiating, and negotiating well is critical, of course, to landing the role or winning the client, creating your balance in life and certainly, earning more money.

Speaker 2: 2:01

Catherine is the CEO of Worth More Strategies, where she helps organizations advance female talent. A top-rated speaker, her clients include companies like JPMorgan, kpmg and Bain, and her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal and Fast Company. She started her career at McKinsey Company, where she became one of their youngest industry advisors. She lives in Atlanta with her husband and two sons. Those two sons put her leadership skills to the test every single day. Welcome, catherine.

Speaker 1: 2:39

Shelby, thank you so much for the opportunity to be here. I'm excited to have this conversation with you.

Speaker 2: 2:43

Great. Well, before we get started, I just wanted to start off with this text that, when I announced I was doing Muriel Network and to a group of my girlfriends who were all senior vice presidents at one of the firms that I was at, one of them sent to me talking about content and she said it was all about negotiation and how important negotiation was. And her text read you know, before I had my daughter, a friend had said to her so to my friend that your entire life will be a negotiation from here on out. Think about what we do when we negotiate with a toddler or God forbid, a teenager.

Speaker 2: 3:19

Women are uniquely positioned to actually be rock stars at negotiation if they just lean into what they do all the time without realizing it. The same fundamentals apply figuring out what's important to the other party, trading for it, body language I mean, we all have a mom glare and the silence is legit one of the most impactful ways to gain leverage, just to name a few Rock your work life like you, run the hell out of a household and you'll be fine. That was my friend's text, because we were all talking about what are the key elements of work life that can be hard for women and negotiation always comes up. What did you think about that text? I know you read it and you just heard me read it here.

Speaker 1: 4:04

I think that text is spot on, and what we know from research is that once we remove some of the roadblocks which we'll talk about in a second and how to remove those but women are better negotiators than men in almost every context. We're absolutely better when we're negotiating on behalf of others, because that actually leverages societal concepts of gender instead of having them work against us. Where it gets a little bit tricky is in gender non-congruent negotiations, specifically those that happen in the workplace. So if you think about when men negotiate for flexibility, they're at a higher risk of backlash than women are, and when women have traditional career negotiations promotion resources pay. Those are the places that get a little bit trickier for us. The good news is, as your friend, pay. Those are the places that get a little bit trickier for us. The good news is, as your friend pointed out, we are fundamentally excellent negotiators. The sort of roadblock we have is one that is created by society, and it's one that we can get around pretty easily once you know what the tricks are.

Speaker 2: 5:02

Oh my gosh. So how did you become a negotiation expert?

Speaker 1: 5:07

Oh, so many good stories come from massive failures, right? So I was getting my MBA and I was negotiating with the. So I was getting my MBA, I was having my MBA internship, which is essentially a three-month job interview, and I finished my three-month project in four weeks, which was faster than they ever had anyone do. I was, like you know, I'd been trained by McKinsey. I was very clearly on strong footing, and so I decided what I wanted to do was to negotiate to be placed on another team halfway through the summer so that I could get to know more people and sort of understand the organization better. And so I did what any, I think, well-intentioned person would do in that situation, which is, I decided that over the weekend I was going to get trained up on negotiation and then I was going to have this conversation on Monday morning.

Speaker 1: 5:58

So I went to the Barnes and Nobles, which were like on every corner. I bought the books, I underlined them, I highlighted them, I Googled how do I negotiate? I put all the information together, synthesized it, I wrote out a script. You know, one would argue I've never under prepared for anything. We'll put it that way. And so I went into the meeting on Monday morning we had started at 10 am and I asked to be placed onto another team. By 10.06, it was clear that I had somehow offended this person. I had not intended to and I had no idea how I had, but I had. And by 10.10, I was being told that I was no longer a culture fit and therefore would not be getting a job at the end of the summer. So I went from top of the pile to bottom of the pile in less time than it takes to get a latte.

Speaker 1: 6:47

At the end of that then you know, if I wasn't going to get the job, then the internship didn't make sense. I needed to go find a job and so, as a result of that, I was then escorted out of the building by security because that was their protocol. I mean huge Fortune 10 company. Their protocol is if you're no longer employed, you're going to sort it out. But it was one of those things where it's like, oh gosh, 20 minutes ago I was one of their top candidates and now I am sitting in my car with a box of stuff trying to figure out what the heck just happened to me.

Speaker 2: 7:20

Wow, I mean, I can't even imagine that must have felt like such whiplash. It feels like such an overreaction to your ask as well.

Speaker 1: 7:33

Wow, yeah. So at that point in time I was in a fortunate position because I had a year of business school left and I went to Northwestern, where you know there's a number of very famous negotiation professors there, including some that are on retainer. You know Google for all of their M&A like big, big players. One of my professors did a two billion dollar acquisition when when I was working with her Right, and so I went to her and I said do you have any idea what happened to me? And she said no, but there's a bunch of new research being pumped out right now between Harvard and Carnegie Mellon on the impact of gender negotiations. Which, shelby, they didn't look at that until like 12 years ago, that's crazy too.

Speaker 2: 8:13

I mean, we have been in the workforce for a long time and nobody thought we should like look at these things.

Speaker 1: 8:18

Right, and so I just dove into the research and I did that for a full year and what I figured out by the end of the year is one negotiation is gendered, which is kind of obvious once you say it out loud. But to anyone that Googles, how do I negotiate? You're denying that gender's in that, because no one is giving advice that's gendered. Right now, we're all assuming that what works for white men works for everybody. The second thing I learned is that most of the advice out there is for white men.

Speaker 1: 8:48

We don't say it's for white men but it is.

Speaker 1: 8:50

So, even like? The Wall Street Journal ran an article last year that said the advice given by the expert was go in and say, and I quote I deserve to be promoted. Oh, we can't say that. No, we can't say that solution that has been proven by the top universities in the world. People in the academic world know about this. They've known about this for years, but it hadn't been translated to the professional world, which is how I derailed my career because I didn't know about it, and so my job now is just to bring the insights to women who can use it tomorrow to negotiate more pay, more resources, that promotion, whatever it may be the work life scenario that you need to be able to be successful.

Speaker 2: 9:49

Oh, I love it.

Speaker 2: 9:49

It's so reminiscent of what I see all the time in the financial advising wealth management community and specifically, I hear it a lot from women advisors, and women advisors are often called into their, whomever their leader is, if they have you know kind of a boss, or it might be somebody in their, in their home office, and or they go to attend a class and they're going to be trained on you know how to do, how to grow their business and they'll be brought in and the usually white man will say do these things, say this stuff.

Speaker 2: 10:22

And if you say these things, that's going to close the deal and the woman I'm talking with will you know, take the note, because she's still polite, take the note, look at it and go. There's no way I can say that. It's like so much of the advice we get is built for that white man, of course. And we're working in financial services in an industry like many that was created by men for the male advisor, for a male client, and now you've got this feminization of wealth and, oh gosh, the whole world is shifting. Like what does this look like?

Speaker 1: 11:01

And I get so excited about what you're describing because I feel like I'm one of the spokes on that wheel, which is that, to your point, most business skills were created for white men and we talk about them as if we are all white men. But we now have really robust research and we have a number of research partnerships where we can talk about training folks on how to negotiate as a woman, how to network as a woman. I mean to your previous podcast. It's different, right. How do you do time management as a woman? Any time management book you pick up that's written for a man is going to ignore 54% of the things that we do on a weekly basis. Any system that was built for someone that does that much less work than I do is not going to work for me. And so there's all these little threads of places where we're being trained, we're being given the wrong tools you know, and so I think part of this podcast is let me give you some more tools.

Speaker 1: 11:59

You don't have to use them, but at least in your arsenal you now have something that was built for women and you can pick and choose what feels right to you in any specific case.

Speaker 2: 12:13

Okay, so let's get into it. How, what does the research say that we should be doing?

Speaker 1: 12:19

Okay.

Speaker 2: 12:19

I love this part.

Speaker 1: 12:21

Me too. So at this point in time, I've reviewed about 13,000 pages of academic research and it comes out very clearly on. There are three things that we should do. One is think holistically. Two is ask relationally. And three is discuss collaboratively. Do you want me to dive in each of those? Yeah, let's dive in. Yeah, okay, let me give you a little bit of a foundation and then I'll dive in.

Speaker 1: 12:46

So where backlash comes from for women is backlash comes from societal concept of gender, that we need to be others focused. Add that into a scenario where people come into a negotiation believing that it's you versus me. Those two things will never inherently go hand in hand. Right, those are always going to clash, which is why, when women negotiate for others, you know if you're doing a deal, negotiation or something like that we're extremely good at that because we don't trigger anything. It's when you're negotiating on behalf of yourself that you tend to trigger these societal concepts of gender which lead to backlash. So that's kind of the foundation of what we're dealing with here. So then step number one think holistically is and I feel like you handed it at the top of the episode but 82% of people that we talk to when we say negotiations, think about base pay, and that is absolutely something that you can negotiate. But I would encourage you to think even bigger than that, right? So we have a list of 75 things you can negotiate.

Speaker 1: 13:48

The work of Claudia Golden, who just won the Nobel Prize, shows that if you do want to maximize for your financial future, you will actually negotiate career progression before negotiating base pay. Right, it's the difference between, like, a 2% bump and a 20% bump. But the other thing that we find in our research that I think might be particularly helpful to wealth advisors from my understanding of wealth advisors, so please step in is that women are given fewer stock options, but also fewer resources to do the same job. So women, for example, are given team sizes that are 25 to 40% smaller than their male colleagues. Women are given stock options that are 80% less than their male colleagues, right? So if we're talking about the wealth gap, it's so much broader than just base pay.

Speaker 1: 14:38

So things I would think about when you're thinking about what you want to negotiate is one what would help me be more successful in this role? Two, what would reduce my stress? Three, what would bring me joy? Right, so I've worked with people that have negotiated certain locations, certain team sizes, what they will do for job responsibilities, what they won't do anymore and who it's going to go to Fertility benefits hours is a big one. Also calendars. Like I have worked with people that have negotiated that they do not work the month of December because they believe that that's when the bulk of their children's memories are being made and also, frankly, in certain industries there's not as much work happening. Then, from your point of view, what kind of things do you think financial advisors can negotiate outside of just base pay that would be helpful to their career well-being?

Speaker 2: 15:32

Well, I think there's a couple of things. One is that our community is both people in home offices so think corporate leaders, who you are very well accustomed to, just like all corporate leaders and then financial advisors. Financial advisors, specifically, could be negotiating absolutely their hours and their time off and definitely the activities that they're doing. So, for example, some of the most productive advisors and teams even if you use traditional metrics of AUM or client served, et cetera they have distributed the work across some other people. They might have a paraplanner who's doing the 80% of the financial planning work and then they're just coming in on the top of that and doing the really critical elements for them. They don't have to enter all the data themselves, et cetera. So I think there's some things that financial advisors there can negotiate. I loved your conversation about the 75 things because it really spoke to me. You know I read Indra Nooyi's book and.

Speaker 2: 16:37

I remember this stood out to me so much as I read her book it's probably the number one thing I talk about, I mean, out of her enormous book, her enormous career. But one of the things that stood out was how she didn't ask for the corporate jet. All of her peers were using it, and it wasn't until finally her calendar between her family and work got so terrible that then she felt forced to ask for it. And then she was given it. It was just never offered to her and she didn't want to step out and ask for it. And then she was given it. It was just never offered to her and she didn't want to step out and ask for it.

Speaker 1: 17:07

Well and think about all those years where she was taking 50% more time to get to everyone. Like what impact was she not delivering because of that? Like the company lost out on that one too.

Speaker 2: 17:19

That's right, yeah, and I think she lost out. She was such a worker, she just put in tons of hours. But to your point? A worker, she just put in tons of hours. But to your point, she could have been putting in tons of hours on something else, not on the travel activity.

Speaker 1: 17:33

So, so to your point. I do think when you're thinking holistically on negotiations, you know what can, what can I ask for that would allow me to deliver more impact? Deliver more impact? And part of that is looking at where I'm spending my time. What can I reallocate somewhere else that will free up enough time that I can do more of the high impact work that I'm? Maybe I wasn't doing when I was 22 and started, but I'm capable of doing now better for you, better for the company.

Speaker 2: 17:59

Yeah, absolutely, and I love how you just phrase that as how can I give up some things so that I can do more for the company? Right? I talk with a lot of women, especially the higher ranking, say SVPs, evps. Everybody is feeling burnout, we all feel this achievement and hustle culture norm, and so I feel like you can avoid some of that if you can ask for some of this help.

Speaker 1: 18:27

Well, and if you want, you know if I can nerd out with you here first. Yeah, I don't know if you've read the no Club yet. This is Linda Babcock Wine Gartner. There's two other authors on it. But basically what they looked at is non-promotable tasks, and women are asked to do 200 hours of non-promotable tasks every year. That is a full month of work. It is very much contributing to burnout, is contributing to limited talent from a company perspective, and so to your point. One of the big solutions on that is figure out what non-promotable tasks are on your plate and negotiate them off.

Speaker 1: 19:03

And we'll talk about how to do that, but, like you, it's going to free up your time and well-being and it's also going to allow you to be more valuable to the company.

Speaker 2: 19:11

Super interesting to think about non-promotable tasks, because sometimes those are the things that we also enjoy at the same time. But to your point, we only have so much time. We have to negotiate it.

Speaker 1: 19:23

Well, and I think, if there are ones that you enjoy, you know, keep some of those Joy in your life is important and you know, from a corporate platform you can do many things that you can't do as an individual. So, yes, but also, are there some on there that A are totally draining you? I bet there are, and two, you know, maybe you focus that joy on a couple of them and not on 16 different committees. So anyway, number one think holistically. Do you want me to move to number two? Yeah, let's do so. Number two is ask relationally. This is research done by Hannah Raleigh Bowles out of Harvard and Linda Babcock out of Carnegie Mellon. It shows that when women ask in a way that demonstrates both that their ask is legitimate and beneficial, they are not only more successful in their negotiations but they virtually eliminate the risk of backlash. Virtually eliminate is from one of the research studies done at Georgetown on this. So what I found?

Speaker 1: 20:18

and I don't do individual coaching anymore. But what I found when I did individual coaching is women are so busy and our brains are so full that when you tell somebody that they need to demonstrate that it's both legitimate and beneficial, like eyes glaze over. It's just a level two nebulous for us to be able to put in. So what we ended up doing over the course of about five years is creating a formula. It's our trademark formula. You can use it in almost any work, negotiation, and the formula is past performance plus future vision, plus your ask, and then stop talking. We added that one in in year three because, in an attempt to make the negotiation partner feel comfortable, women would start negotiating against themselves. So now, at the end, what we do is we put in conversational volleys that show that it's like clearly the other person's turn to talk. So would it be helpful if I give you an example?

Speaker 1: 21:11

Yes let's do so. What is something that one of your audience members would want to negotiate?

Speaker 2: 21:17

Okay, I think the perfect example is additional team member support.

Speaker 1: 21:24

Great and what are for your audience? What is like? The key metric Is it? I heard you say AUM earlier.

Speaker 2: 21:33

Yeah, I would say maybe client served. Okay could either be advisors if we're in the home office and we're serving advisors, or it could be if you're an actual financial planner or financial advisor. It could be the end client, the investor that you're serving.

Speaker 1: 21:51

Great. I'm going to give you an example here To the audience members. If I use these terms inaccurately for your industry, just breeze over it. I'm sure you can fix it. Also, understand that, like I, you know. So what someone would say in that context is, as you know, I was able to serve 10% more clients than we needed last year, or then. My goal was I was able to see my goal by 10%. I actually think that this year I could exceed it by 15%, which is something everyone wants, right? This is the future vision that we're all behind.

Speaker 1: 22:26

In order to accomplish that, I wanted to talk to you about getting additional team members so that I can delegate the lower value task and really focus on that high impact work, which is what you hired me to do and what's going to get us results. What do you think about that? And so now let's have a conversation. Actually, there's a team member over here that has half capacity because I was going to move this over here, so let's talk about that. You know, I don't know where this would go. Oh, what about a freelance budget? Oh, I guess we could get a freelancer to do that data entry for you, especially because we don't have a budget for, like, another full-time hire, but freelance budgets come from a totally different bucket. Like now we're going to have a conversation about how to collaboratively solve this problem.

Speaker 2: 23:06

Right. I love also that you could probably stretch that over time, like it could be well, let's free up that half a person today and assign that, and then we can add the other person later on in the year, et cetera, et cetera. I also love how you broke that into tasks to make that more reasonable and doable. Interesting, and that last question how might we make that happen? I can't remember your exact phrasing, but it was. You really visually turned the conversation to the other person.

Speaker 1: 23:39

Well, so you want to walk out and, by the way, the average negotiation is 28 days, so this typically isn't going to be one conversation but what you want to walk out with is that plan that we have co-created and that we both feel good about. And then, obviously, you're going to send an email afterwards with what the plan is. So now we have a paper trail, but any time that you hit a roadblock like, oh, we can't do that, now we're going to figure out why. So, oh, that's interesting, can you tell me why? Well, because budgets are locked for six more months. Okay, what do I need to do in the next six months to demonstrate that? That's you know, to be ready when that happens? Oh well, you would need to do X, y and Z. Okay, that sounds good. Now you go do X, y and Z, so when budgets are unlocked in six months, there's not a conversation anymore. This is a predetermined thing. Like, you are getting the resources that you need.

Speaker 2: 24:24

And you've already proven your success Again. You just keep that achievement up, which is part of your formula Love that.

Speaker 1: 24:36

So then, do you want to do step number three? Let's do three Yep.

Speaker 1: 24:39

Step number three is to discuss collaboratively, which we sort of showcased earlier. But when you do your conversational volley, what do you think about that? What concerns would you have? How could you see that working? However, you want to end your relational ask. When you do that, you're now going to engage in collaborative problem solving.

Speaker 1: 24:57

So what the issue we come up against is even people who have been trained in integrative negotiations, which is like we're going to build the pie and then split it. Even people that have been trained that way, when they picture a self-negotiation, they picture a winner-take-all one person's a winner, one person's a loser situation. We really need to fight against that. The mindset when you walk in that room should be us versus the problem, and the problem is anything that prevents you from delivering your highest impact at your lowest stress level. Problem for you, problem for them, right, and so when you go in with that very collaborative mindset, now we can start to build it together. Oh, okay, I understand that you said that that's not possible. Do you have any other solutions? Ok, well, that one might work, because here's this other information I have that you don't have yet. Right, and now we're building the solution together. We also know the Ikea effect People are much more likely to say yes and value things that they've built.

Speaker 2: 25:55

Interesting. This is game changing. It's really just blowing my mind this idea of that the end of the day, the best thing for the company is for me to do the highest impact work at the lowest stress level. That makes my problem their problem. That is a reframe that I have never heard.

Speaker 1: 26:15

Well, it's the best thing for the company. It's also the best thing for your clients, right? It is not good for your clients if you are exhausted because you're doing I don't know, data entry or whatever it may be. Right, it's best for your clients if you have extra energy there so that when something unexpected happens, they can call you and you're ready, like you have the energy to dive in and figure out how to help them navigate that.

Speaker 2: 26:36

Because I think, as women we're often we often feel like it's only our responsibility. I need to just buckle down, do all the things, do all the work, never ask for help, et cetera, and getting out of it. You just made my feelings of overwhelm part of my company's problem?

Speaker 1: 26:53

Yes, because it is. I mean, one of the things that's happening right now is so. Mckinsey just did this study showing that if women, if we had true gender equity in the workplace, it would add $28 trillion to the global GDP, and every company wants a little slice of that, but they cannot access a slice of that if they can't advance and retain female talent. If females continue to leave at higher rates or stay at the bottom of those companies, then they can't get any of that growth that they want. So this is very much a, you know, sort of a global problem that companies have to learn how to solve, and the way that you solve it is you allow women to access conversations that help them deliver more at a lower stress level, which are negotiations that we have largely been locked out of.

Speaker 2: 27:40

Absolutely. I also think a lot of so much of the mindshare that goes to all of the sort of just being a woman in the workplace, stuff, right, the double bindish, the fact that we have to learn how to negotiate a little bit differently. That being said, once we know this formula, we can just do it and I get. That's the power.

Speaker 1: 28:05

I didn't love the idea that I, as a woman, needed to learn how to do something different right, it was just another burden and it kind of ticked me off.

Speaker 1: 28:13

But once I got into it I realized that one once you teach women to do this, they report feeling more authentic in their negotiations, which means that they're much more likely to negotiate Right. So we see, you know, women not only negotiating more successfully, but not dreading these conversations the way that they were when they had to suit up in armor. That wasn't built for us. Right now, it's just we're going to make everything better for everyone. Why wouldn't we have that conversation? We're going to make everything better for everyone. Why wouldn't we have that conversation? The other thing is a lot of these tools are actually best practice negotiation tools. Like you know, discussing collaboratively is best practice for all genders.

Speaker 2: 28:54

It just happens to have an additional bonus for women Interesting. So discussing collaboratively is always better for both genders. So, in other words, whenever we're negotiating as people, when we're on the other side of the negotiation table, we're not negotiating for ourselves. We're hearing a team member negotiate, even if it's male or female. We're going to be more open to that negotiation if it is addressed in a collaborative way.

Speaker 1: 29:15

Yeah, I don't want to say always, just from a research perspective. That's the thing that we get touchy about, but overall that is what you would expect. So Harvard's program on negotiation teaches this tactic to all genders in almost all scenarios, because we know from research that when we use this approach, overall we do better. Now, there might be a couple one-offs that somebody can come up with where this one's not going to work as well, but overall, yes, you would expect all genders to have better outcomes when they do this.

Speaker 2: 29:51

When people go into negotiation, how do you suggest they prepare for that experience? Let's talk about it as I'm negotiating either for a team member or even just pay financial compensation. Should I have sort of, should I go over what I really want and pad the request so that I can come down? What does that look like?

Speaker 1: 30:12

So what you're asking about right now is anchoring. Are you familiar? Yeah, so for anyone that's not familiar, an anchoring bias is the first number that you hear, tends to be what you keep in your mind and everything else is compared to that. So, yes, we do want to ask for more than we absolutely need, because that number is going to get pulled down between, oh, budgets or oh, timing or oh, we approved you for this, but then we shut down all hiring across the company, whatever it is. So you always want to overshoot a little bit so that when you land in a place that everyone's comfortable, it's still a place that you can do what you said you would deliver. If you only ask for the very baseline of what you would need, then when it gets negotiated down, you now have a high target but not enough resources.

Speaker 2: 30:56

It's interesting. I was always negotiating resources every year for large product teams or large investments, and how are we going to build this new thing? When I was in my corporate career and absolutely you kept some padding in there. You knew it was going to come down, of course, but you also wanted that top number, that initial number, to feel somewhat reasonable, right, sometimes people would throw out a number and say I need 100 people and people would look at that and go well, that's just crazy.

Speaker 1: 31:38

Like, how do you even know it's 100? Right, it's too round, doesn't have any thought into it. The other thing that I wanted to mention only because you said earlier you know what if you're negotiating pay, one of the questions I get a lot is if I'm negotiating pay, should I give the number first? Should I not give the number first? Who gives the number first? And the answer on that is if you understand the bargaining zone. So if you understand what the market bears, what the range is for, whatever it is you do, then you give the number first, go high, but give the number first. If you don't understand the bargaining zone, therefore, you carry the risk that you're going to give a number that's outside of it to your point. The 100 people, right, that's outside of the bargaining zone. In that scenario, you actually don't want to give the number first. You want the other people to give the number first, because if you go outside of the bargaining zone, it really takes away a lot of your credibility.

Speaker 2: 32:27

So how do you know? What is your advice for helping people figure out if they are being paid a market wage? How do they know that zone?

Speaker 1: 32:37

It's a great question. So if someone were to say, what do you think is the number one structural thing that's holding women back right now as far as pay goes, it would be information asymmetry, because if you look at also how networks are built right, we tend to network with other women not exclusively, but majority, which means that we're all talking to each other. So if our numbers are off, they're all off collectively, right? Here's what I would recommend. One do your online research. It's not. Don't stop there, please, dear God, don't stop there. But like, spend an hour or two just to get a sense of where we're going. And I have it's helpful. On my website you can access a list called the Ultimate Guide to Benchmarking that has like 50 or 60 different sources you can go to, depending on what your industry is and what your level is and all that. The other thing I would say is talk to peers, and if that is sketchy where you are, then talk to former peers. Former peers are my favorite. They don't have the dog in the spine, they don't care.

Speaker 1: 33:41

But they can tell you what they made last year or what they made three years ago. Ditto with mentors. Sometimes, if you're at the same company, they will tell you, which is great. Sometimes you need to talk to mentors that are outside your company and they're happy to access their networks to tell you what they're hearing. Recruiters are very good resources if you have or know or can build a relationship with a recruiter and then, depending on where you went to school, career services can be very fantastic. There's certain places like Harvard and Wharton that have very robust alumni salary databases and then also associations. So if you are a member of and I don't know what it is in your world, but women in wealth management, a member of and I don't know what it is in your world, but women in wealth management a lot of times those can be excellent places to find you know what those numbers really are.

Speaker 2: 34:34

Oh, I love that. One of the things I've always wondered is if the alumni networks were strong enough, right, and how you sort of know that with those career databases. How do you judge some of those sources? A little bit of practice, first of all.

Speaker 1: 34:43

it's a question of whether or not they have them. A lot of places just don't have them. So if they don't have them, that's not going to be yours. The second one is I think of this as a triangulation like that can't be your only input, but if you have, maybe one former peer told you something and then you heard something from you know the online research says it's this, and then you know the online research says it's this, and then you know what the alumni career service says is in that world, great.

Speaker 1: 35:06

If one of those numbers is really far outside of the other ones, I would just ditch it. Right? We're trying to find things so that together we can piece it. The other thing I would say is to the point we made earlier. When you're talking to folks, don't just ask about pay, ask about their overall compensation, and then I would say is there anything else you've negotiated for that has been really helpful to you, right? This is how people find out that, actually, like, their company has paid for all of their peers cars and no one right? Like these are the things that aren't written into the offer but are casually happening and formally happening that we want to know about. The other thing I would say is we have a whole online course that will guide you through the eight-step process to negotiate. If that's helpful to you, you can find it on our website.

Speaker 2: 35:51

Oh, that's great. You just hit on something which is related to all of the non-base pay elements, and earlier in the conversation you mentioned stock options and that women tend to have significantly.

Speaker 1: 36:04

I think you said 80% less or so 80% less than our male counterparts.

Speaker 2: 36:11

How do we find that out? What do we do? When we do find it out and we need to create a change, how do we handle that?

Speaker 1: 36:24

so how you find it out is we can't just rely on online sources for our benchmarking. Like you have to create that network of peers and I heard you talk about this, um in your previous networking uh podcast where, for women, why we don't just want, like, a vast network, we also want an inner circle of other women. Um, that's a great place to start. And then you want to make sure that you talk to some men. Please, like, have some, whether it's advisors or sponsors or mentors or whoever it may be. Like we form our peers. Again, I think are an excellent place there. But we want to. Benchmarking isn't an analytical online thing. It is a network relationship thing thing. It is a network relationship thing.

Speaker 2: 37:11

How do we handle a negotiation where we are, where we need to make a change right? We took too low of an offer. Essentially, now we have found out that everybody around us is getting more stock options than we are and we need to fix it. Is getting more stock options than we are and we need to fix it.

Speaker 1: 37:28

So what pops into my mind is negotiation. I helped a woman with who was at Uber, gosh, I don't know eight years ago or something like that. She was in a similar situation and what she did is she used the relational ask formula. So she went in and she said as you know, my market is up X percent to last year. I think that we can get it up Y percent to next year. What that would justify is, you know, this market rate. However, I believe so much in this organization and in the growth that we're going to achieve that I want more skin in the game. So I want to talk to you about a compensation package that looks like this, and I want to weight a lot of it towards equity, because I believe in what we're doing. And they ended up giving her something like two to three times more equity than they gave the average person in her role, which, as you can imagine, was worth a lot when she cashed out last year.

Speaker 2: 38:20

My goodness, what a success story and how brave of her also to one position it that way. Do so and have the guts to say, yeah, this is gonna work out for me. I mean, that is bravery and dedication and knowledge, right? Such great confidence too in there.

Speaker 1: 38:41

Isn't that one of the? And again, this is your area, not mine, but isn't that one of the women in investing things that we take on a little bit less risk in overtime? Yeah, she didn't fit that typical mold. She was very comfortable with calculated risk.

Speaker 2: 38:54

Yeah, well, and actually what the data would say on investors and risk is that we are risk aware. We are better investors than men. So if you have, for example, a financial advisor who's picking your stocks and your securities, you really want that person to be a woman. They are a better investor than men, and the ideal is actually a two or so person investment team or more investment team, but a blended gender investment team does the best.

Speaker 1: 39:23

I love that.

Speaker 2: 39:24

Isn't that cool.

Speaker 1: 39:25

Yeah, that is really cool. Yeah, it's also.

Speaker 2: 39:32

I think the situation I would prefer to work in Right right, most of us want to work with people who understand us, know who we are, know where we come from, work with other people like us and then, when it comes to the actual choosing of the investments, that blended team, blended gender team, is really ideal. I love that. That blended team, blended gender team, is really ideal. I love that. Can you address if and how women should change their approach based on who's on the other side of the table? And I think this is one of the common questions you get Is there a difference that we should take when we're negotiating with a man versus a woman?

Speaker 1: 40:04

So I love this question because, when I was doing the research, the end product of my research was I made like a quick three-page guide for any women that went to my business school who needed to negotiate, like here's what you need to know, and I expected to have to make two guides here's what you need to know when you're negotiating with a woman. Here's what you need to know when you're negotiating with a man. Now, obviously, we know that gender is not binary, but the research looks at it that way, so that's how I'm, that's the lens I was taking to it. I was delighted to find that, actually, the experience is based on who we are, not who the person is. The downshot of that means that we're just as likely to receive backlash from other women as we are other men, because the backlash is how society sees us, not how like not who we're negotiating with. The upshot, though, is that we only need one strategy, and that's the kind of the three-pronged thing we just talked about.

Speaker 2: 40:59

So really, what we're talking about through all of this is that women are facing the double bind. It's that we are being held against a gender stereotype, and when we action outside of that gender stereotype is really when we are creating issues or having more kind of pushback.

Speaker 1: 41:19

Yes, and I don't know if we've updated how we think about the double bind. Perhaps we have, but when I first came across the double bind, I was, you know, young and in the workforce and trying to figure out what was happening to me, and I just found it so freaking, depressing.

Speaker 2: 41:35

Like oh shit, I can't win.

Speaker 1: 41:38

The way in which I don't feel like this is the double bind is you can win. You are better Once we strip this away. You are a better negotiator than your male counterpart and actually you know, let's just give you the tool that allows you to strip this away in every conversation. Here it is Think holistically, ask relationally, discuss collaboratively.

Speaker 1: 41:57

Oh, that actually feels even better. To you, great Added bonus. So I think the thing that kind of blows me away about negotiation is if the thing that kind of blows me away about negotiation is if the world maybe it's media, maybe it's experts, I don't know but if the world had done, if, right now, when you Googled how do I negotiate, you actually got advice for how to negotiate as a woman, I think women would love negotiation because we're really good at it. It's just that we've been handed the wrong tools and they backfire on us, which makes us not want to do it. Once you have the right tools, this is fun. It's great.

Speaker 2: 42:42

It's so interesting. You know, earlier we talked about those advisors and getting the bad information right. And what I hear from advisors all the time is, when they've been trained by, generally, men and they're still hitting their head against the wall trying to do it the way that the man advisor is telling them to, they are burned out, they're just it's awful, right, it feels awful, it feels yucky, it's not working well for them. And when they finally get so fed up that they turn the other way and say I'm just going to do it my way, I am going to lean into who I am and do it my way, suddenly their success just skyrockets because they have figured out how to do it inside of this feminine energy side of themselves.

Speaker 1: 43:30

Yes, and sometimes I mean, I live down the road from Augusta and one of the things I think about is like what pardon my language here but like what hellfire would be unleashed if, for the Masters, every year, we gave every single golfer a club that was made for the average five foot four woman. Like who's going to play their best game? No one. And also how pissed are they going to be Extremely, but like we do this to women every day, I mean, it's even the temperature of the buildings, my goodness.

Speaker 2: 44:02

It's the health care that has never been built for us, right? And yet we are 50, 51% of the population. It's crazy.

Speaker 1: 44:10

Breast cancer studied in men until the 90s.

Speaker 2: 44:13

Okay, what? Who thought this made sense? Oh, we don't study different drugs on women, even though we know that women have different hormones.

Speaker 1: 44:23

Yeah, why would we? That doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 2: 44:25

Basic, so basic. Yeah, these are the things that we talk about in my circles of girlfriends all the time. We're just it's mind blowing how much of the world has been created this way.

Speaker 1: 44:38

And I think, when you combine awareness with hope, that's when, to your point of like the people who decide just to do it their way and all of a sudden they break through, like when you can combine those two things together, that's where the magic really happens.

Speaker 2: 44:52

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1: 44:53

I love that because of the positivity that that is bringing Well if we just had awareness, who would get up in the morning, Like you know.

Speaker 2: 45:00

Yes, I think Gloria Steinem said you know, the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.

Speaker 1: 45:07

Seems right.

Speaker 2: 45:09

It does. I think being mad was part of what drove me for Muriel Network and it's really kind of turned. I've tried to turn some of that sort of PTSD in some ways from being in a corporate career for so long into this wonderfulness of teaching others. Going back a little bit to the double bind, one of the techniques that I talk a lot about is the framing technique, and it's really part of your negotiations, really your second step, which is framing what I'm saying in a way that it becomes a bigger issue. It's a matter of values, it's a matter of ethics, it's a matter of whatever fairness to all employees. That we do ABC right. Even that's a negotiation. But that's that second step of your negotiation conversation.

Speaker 1: 45:58

Yeah, and I think you know, sometimes I talk to people who, when they say negotiation, they're thinking of like that big conversation at the end of the year or something like that and much to the way you just used it. We negotiate every day, all the time. Who's going to get credit for that idea in the meeting? What resources do you have? When's the deadline, what you know, all of those things right. And if you think about kind of the cumulative effect of the micro negotiations that you do every day across the many years of your career, that's a real thing at the end. And so understanding, you know, building that negotiation muscle so that it doesn't weigh as heavily on you every time it happens, but you get the credit you deserve and the resources that you need to deliver the impact you're capable of. That's some real magic.

Speaker 2: 46:45

That is some real magic. Love it. One of the things we were talking about before we kind of came on was around the financial advisor marketplace and how you're starting to get calls for doing events for financial advisors who are inviting clients to these events. Tell us a little bit about this, so.

Speaker 1: 47:05

Shelby. My business was built on helping companies advance and retain female talent. So you know, for example, I work with JP Morgan. We do a workshop, multiple workshops, every year to give women women-specific tools, and that's what I knew, that's what I was building.

Speaker 1: 47:22

And then all of a sudden, I don't know, maybe six months ago, maybe 12 months ago, I started to get calls from folks in the financial service industry which I am only starting to know more, like you know a ton about, I'm learning all the pieces and they would say, hey, can you come in? And I'm like, sure, how many employees do you have? And they're like, oh, actually it's because we're trying to attract female clients, and it took me a minute to understand why. But then, to your point, once I started to learn about the feminization of wealth, it was oh, they need to attract women with money and, by the way, it also appears that they need more female advisors from the outside. That's what I'm right. But when you want to attract female clients, my content is really good for that Right, let's what I'm right. But when you want to attract female clients, my content is really good for that Right.

Speaker 1: 48:12

Let's talk about negotiating as a woman. Let's talk about networking as a woman. Let's talk about time management as a woman. Those are sessions that potential clients wanted to come to, which helps the firms. But it wasn't really until you and I were chatting earlier that I was like, oh, this is the value they're getting for that.

Speaker 2: 48:25

That's right, because they're trying to attract high income corporate executive women as their clients. I mean it's a brilliant strategy. I love it.

Speaker 1: 48:37

Also. Those rooms are really fun to be in.

Speaker 2: 48:40

I bet. I bet with those leaders. It's been incredible as I've learned and met with so many advisors in the last six months. The other thing I'm seeing from advisors really successful female advisors is niching down. So, for example, I know of one female advisor and I've met her just a couple of times, but she is out of Nashville and she specializes in specialty physicians. Primarily it's female surgeons Like that is her client base.

Speaker 2: 49:14

Isn't that so cool? That's so cool. So this niche down is really creating these new pockets of people that they can really attract and then, yeah, your content would be amazing for her clientele. So many of them are really wanting to work with women. The women advisors love to work with women. Women clients love to work with women advisors. There's too few of them. I love this idea of bringing in the content that could be created there. It's been really fun, I bet, I bet. Well, we are definitely like right here at the end of time and out of time, any other kind of last thoughts that you'd like to share with our audience?

Speaker 1: 49:53

You know what, shelby, I just really appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation with you. It's always like I know the research and the content, but the specifics of any one industry, you know that's not my expertise. You know that's not my expertise, and so it's always fun to get a mind who knows the specifics so well and just to like collaborate and nerd out a little bit on it. I think for any listeners who are interested in learning more, I created this list of 75 things you can negotiate. It's taken us almost a decade to put together. You can download that for free by going to our website at. You can download that for free by going to our website at worthmorestrategiescom. So W-O-R-T-H-M-O-R-E strategiescom. Secondly, to Shelby's point if you're part of a women's organization or part of an organization that is trying to attract more women, please consider recommending me as a speaker, just to help us get more resources to these women.

Speaker 2: 50:46

I would love that. I think that would be a great, a great win for everyone. And Catherine, by the way, I would nerd out with you anytime because, if you've listened to my other podcasts, I'm constantly bringing up data. I'm constantly a little data nerd about it. So we were in good company and this was just a delight. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 51:05

Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 51:14

Hey everyone Shelby here. I am so thrilled that we just had that conversation with Catherine Valentine and I am incredibly blown away by her approach and how authentic and amazing it feels for women. It is really everything that we are trying to do with Muriel Network. At Muriel Network, we are trying to create commonality amongst women in a very male-dominated industry. I'm bringing to you hopefully or at least I hope I'm bringing to you the stories that will inspire you, the stories that will teach you things and lift you up and help you do more every single day. If you're not yet a member of Muriel Network's community, please reach out. You can find us at Muriel Network M-U-R-I-E-L Network dot com. I hope to see you there inside the network soon.