The Woman as Negotiator
Last week, I spoke to 500 women at the annual Society of Women Engineers (SWE) conference in Nashville, which drew over 8000 attendees. The topic? Effective Negotiation.
These 500 women, working in or studying various STEM fields — in such diverse workplaces as the military, astronomical observatories, academic institutions, biotech firms and defense contracting companies — are incredibly bright, dedicated, and ambitious. They are contributing to and leading some of the most important and innovative work happening in our world today.
There was no question in my mind that each of them had already spent years negotiating their way toward their goals and to their current positions. In contrast to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s much-criticized comments last year that women shouldn’t ask for raises and instead rely on good karma to get ahead, I knew that these women had not simply sat back and waited for the karma gods to bless them.
And yet, when I asked that room full of women to raise their hands if they are a negotiator, only about 60% of them did.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t surprised. This reaction tracks the research on women and negotiation that indicates that women self-report negotiating their salary four times less often than men. Indeed, a lot of women don’t associate themselves with the word negotiator at all, and perhaps for good reason: in the public imagination, “negotiation” conjures up formal board rooms, CEO’s, diplomatic summits, hostage negotiations, salespeople — formal deal making activities that are historically undertaken, with swagger, by competitive, hard-charging men.
But here’s the reality: the act of negotiation is, quite simply, any interaction intended to influence decision making. I don’t need to negotiate with anyone to write this article, but if I want a colleague to review it, we have to negotiate when and how she will provide feedback. I don’t need to negotiate whether I rake the leaves in the backyard, but if I want to use condo association funds to pay for lawn service, I have to negotiate with my neighbors. Even obtaining my son’s preschool Parent & Family Handbook requires negotiation if his teachers keep forgetting to give us a copy.
Negotiation is both that simple and that prevalent in our lives. In fact, most of the interactions we have with people throughout our waking hours are one form of negotiation or another. In short: every woman is negotiating, every day, with all kinds of people and about all kinds of topics.
I told the group of 500 SWE women that one of my aims in the session was to repeat the question at the end: Raise your hand if you’re a negotiator, and have every last one of them raise their hand. That was more than a rhetorical device on my part. The single most powerful tool a woman has to improve her negotiation effectiveness at work and at home resides between her ears. Namely, the set of assumptions and beliefs that comprise a woman’s mindset — about what negotiation is, about her needs, about when she is engaged in a negotiation, about what’s possible within that negotiation, and about her role in the negotiation process — is where most of our self-limiting behaviors originate.
Don’t mistake that statement, however, as me saying that a woman’s negotiation success (or lack thereof) depends entirely on her mindset. I believe it’s the best starting point we have, because we have far more control over our own thoughts, assumptions, and beliefs than we do over anybody else’s. But it is also true that women do, at times, experience unique obstacles to negotiation success — obstacles that do not plague men in the same ways or to the same extent.
Over the last forty years there have been two significant waves of research on gender and negotiation. In the first wave, gender was researched as a personality variable that might predict performance and results. Rooted in stereotypes of men as “analytically minded competitors” and women as “relationship-oriented cooperators,” the experiments conducted at that time were essentially inconclusive. The research questions were too global and too generalized to say anything meaningful about how gender affects negotiation; the research petered off.
Renewed interest in the topic fifteen years ago led to the second wave of research, which is ongoing. This time, researchers have been focusing their work around more narrow questions: under what conditions are gender stereotypes activated in negotiation, and how do those stereotypes affect performance and outcomes?
The results? It’s complicated. But some identifiable differences between the genders have started to emerge.
A couple of caveats about this second wave of research: like a lot of social science research, most of the experiments have been done in university settings. Which means that the subjects in the experiments are largely young and white. It’s an open question whether the results of these experiments describe the experiences of older women, women of color, or women with other status-linked social identities. On that point, there’s been some speculation that the findings thus far may not be related to gender at all, but instead to social status — more research is needed.
With those caveats in mind, this second wave of research has started to tease out the effect on negotiators when gender stereotypes are explicitly activated (it tends to produce counter-stereotype behavior or ‘reactance’), when they are implicitly activated (participants tend to fulfill the stereotypes), and whether, how, and when participants attempt to ‘police’ others’ behavior relative to the stereotype.
Two of the findings that I find most fascinating are the following:
1. Ambiguity dampens women’s willingness to initiate a negotiation. In situations where it’s unclear whether it’s okay to negotiate, women are less likely to do so. One experiment had female subjects interview for a job where one version of the written job description said nothing about negotiating salary, but another one included the statement, “Salary is negotiable.” Women were 45% more likely to negotiate the salary in the second scenario versus the first one.
Ambiguity comes in other forms, too. For example, when a woman’s role relative to others in the negotiation is unclear, women tend to negotiate less frequently. Years ago, I worked on US-Iran relations for a non-profit organization. I had one direct report, a man who was one year older than I was, and who already held his master’s degree. I had beaten him out for the Program Director position, so for better or worse, I was deliberate about minimizing our status differences: I always referred to him as a “colleague” and almost never pulled rank on him. Those outside of our organization might have been forgiven for mistaking us as peers, since I didn’t insist that we wear name tags reading BOSS and I REPORT TO HER.
I vividly remember attending a meeting with Tim at the Iranian Interests Section of the Embassy of Pakistan. We regularly interacted with the personnel there to obtain Iranian visas, and that day we met to discuss a variety of upcoming citizen exchanges we were planning. We were ushered into a back room with lavish Persian rugs, comfortable sofas, and as much Iranian tea and pastries as we wanted. Our hosts (all men) were exceedingly gracious. And, they spent the entire meeting talking to and making eye contact with Tim, not me. It was really obvious.
I spent that meeting nervously pulling at the headscarf I had to wear, seething with frustration, and waging an internal battle over whether and how I should assert my role and authority in the room. (“We’re on their turf and I should respect their cultural norms. And anyway, does it really matter how they see me? I’m getting the information we need. Then again, what the hell, Tim! Why aren’t you directing them over to me? Are you confused about who’s in charge? Dammit, what do I do? What could I even say that wouldn’t make me look bad? Crap!!”) In the end, I said nothing. And in saying nothing, my experience reflected exactly those research findings: it was unclear to our hosts that I was in charge and it was unclear to me how to signal in a culturally appropriately way that I was in fact in charge — so I opted out. Interestingly, it also mirrors another research finding, which is that when gender stereotypes are implicitly or subtly introduced, women tend to fulfill the gender stereotype. There I sat, the good girl quietly deferring to the men in the room as they talked about my program. Ugh.
But the good news is this: as situational ambiguity decreases, gender effects also diminish. If I could do that meeting over, I would have done two things differently: in our email pre-communications I would have used explicit language to indicate Tim’s and my respective roles (adding my title to the bottom of the emails, for example), and I would have discussed with Tim in advance that I expected him to volley the conversation back over to me.
2. The “likeability-competence conundrum” or what is termed the double bind. For men, there is a positive correlation between their perceived competence at a task and their likeability. For women, there is a negative correlation between the two.
Two experiments illustrate the double bind well. In the first, Harvard Business School wrote up a case study of a successful Silicon Valley executive, who in the real world was a woman named Heidi Roisen. The study was also written up in a second version, with a single word change — from Heidi to Howard. Students ranked Heidi’s and Howard’s competence similarly, but they rated Howard as more likeable than Heidi. (See Sheryl Sandberg’s description of the case study at 7:45–8:45 in her Ted Talk.)
In the second experiment, subjects were asked to take on the role of a commercial bank manager, hiring a college student for a summer internship. Subjects read transcripts of a man or a woman interviewing for the position. In one transcript, the man does not attempt to negotiate the salary. In another, he does. In a third transcript, the woman does not attempt to negotiate the salary. In a fourth transcript, she does. Subjects were then asked whether they or others would be likely to hire the candidate. Notably, both men and women were rated as less “hireable” if they negotiated the salary, but the woman’s “hireability” penalty was more than twice as large as the man’s. A modified version of the experiment found that women were penalized 5.5 times more than men for negotiating salary.
The bottom line? Women are socially punished for engaging in assertive behavior in ways that men aren’t. Sometimes that punishment is explicit, such as when pejorative terms like ‘bossy’ and ‘bitch’ attach to a woman, but other times the punishment occurs through more subtle signals.
But hold on. Before we get all up in arms shouting, “I knew it! Men suck!” it is worth noting that in the experiment described above, women also punished the woman for negotiating the salary. So it’s not quite as simple as saying “We women are victims of the male patriarchy!” We do it to each other, too. (See, e.g., the Mommy Wars and this NSFW Amy Schumer sketch.)
First, then, a suggestion, from Gandhi: be the change you wish to see. If you wouldn’t flinch if a man said or did the same thing that a woman just did, then don’t penalize her for doing it. When people are whispering around the water cooler about how awful that New Hire sounds (“Did you hear how much money she asked for? What a greedy bitch!”), consider stepping up to defend her instead of joining the chorus of boos: “Hey, as far as I can tell, she did what any man would do. Let’s not criticize her for that — in fact, good for her!”
But, poor New Hire. Let’s say that she followed the classic job negotiation advice, which says to develop one’s Best Alternative To A Negotiated Agreement (BATNA), and use outside offers to improve the terms of the job you really want. So she did — and she did get some additional dollars from the hiring manager. But she also got caught in the double bind: her brand-new colleagues are, at best, wary. Worse than that, the human brain is wired such that, once a person develops a tentative conclusion about someone else, they (consciously or not) tend to collect evidence to prove their original conclusion. Which means that, if the water cooler talk isn’t challenged, New Hire’s colleagues will start cataloging subsequent behaviors that seem a little too assertive, too greedy, too bitchy (“Did you see how she argued with the Finance Manager in the staff meeting?”) — ignoring disconfirming behaviors. Months later, all that New Hire knows is that she seems to be the last to find out what’s going on at work, and she hasn’t made any good friends.
This likeability-competency conundrum is the very reason why the classic — and otherwise solid — negotiation advice isn’t always enough for women: “Assert your interests!” may well backfire if a woman does it the same way a man might. Happily, recent research is helping to identify approaches that can help women sidestep the social backlash. In particular, two “relational account” strategies seem to help:
- Frame your ask as something that is good for your counterparty, your team, or your organization. Offer a rationale beyond yourself for why it makes sense that you’re negotiating this particular thing. Why does this work? In part because it conforms to an existing stereotype of women as “mama bears” who negotiate on other peoples’ behalf — it doesn’t provoke negative reactions the same way a woman advocating on her own behalf can. Sheryl Sandberg famously negotiated her salary at Facebook by telling Mark Zuckerberg that it made sense for her to negotiate because negotiating would be a big part of her job — thus, it was in Facebook’s interest to see her skillfully negotiate her salary. I like this approach in part because it comports with the interest-based negotiation paradigm - and my twenty years of experience - which argues that people are basically self-centered, and thus more likely to agree to what you want if they are getting something good out of it too. A large portion of my professional practice involves helping clients craft such “Yesable Propositions.”
- Refer to a respected mentor. The idea here is to use a “mentor excuse” to frame your request: “My team leader recommended that I discuss this with you…” Women who used this framing in a 2008 experiment were considered more ‘relational’ (i.e. likeable) than those who did not. Notably, this approach also conforms to an existing stereotype of women as…well… hapless on their own but willing to follow somebody else’s advice or direction. I am not a big fan of this approach, as it is deeply disempowering. But it has been shown to be effective in the research, and, to my chagrin, a version of this approach has worked for me personally. To wit: I had some health problems a few years ago that required a series of surgeries. A few months ago, I was talking to my surgeon, Dr. A., about scheduling a particular follow-up procedure. The procedure in question was one of several surgical options that was covered by insurance. When I told him I wanted to do that specific procedure, I could tell from his body language that he wasn’t a fan of my choice; he looked like he might try to talk me out of it. However, when I mentioned, moments later, that the second surgeon who would be involved in the procedure supported my choice and said to discuss it with him, Dr. A visibly warmed to the idea and said, “Oh, he’s on board? OK — we’ll do it.”
It seems deeply unfair that women, at times, need to adjust their negotiation approach to overcome social hurdles that men don’t. I imagine that Fox News’s Megyn Kelly, who came under fire from Donald Trump in the first Republican primary debate, and Hillary Clinton, who just finished testifying in another Congressional hearing about Benghazi, have both had their private moments shaking their heads and muttering, “Surely it wouldn’t have gone this way if I were a man…”
For them, and for all of us, I wish we had a Negotiation Blacklight — so we could freeze frame a negotiation, shine the Blacklight on everybody involved, and see clearly whether gender stereotypes are in play. We get ourselves into trouble both by ignoring real gender effects (and not understanding how they are affecting our behaviors and outcomes), and by assuming that anytime things don’t go our way, gender effects are present (when they may not be). In both cases, we miscalibrate our negotiation strategy.
Of course, even better than a Blacklight would be a magic wand that could wipe out the damaging stereotypes that interfere with a woman’s ability to achieve her goals. Were such a thing possible, women would be left grappling with (merely) the same run-of-the-mill negotiation challenges that men face. Alas. Absent the magic wand, the statistics about women in the workplace remain pretty depressing — the wage gap persists and women’s vast under-representation in leadership roles continues to dog us. Even so, I am fundamentally optimistic about the workplace that my daughter will join in 20 years — for two reasons.
First, there is some terrific work being done on gender and negotiation: Hannah Riley Bowles, Laura Kray, Deborah Kolb, Linda Babcock, and Deborah Tannen are prominent academics in the research arena, and their efforts are helped in no small measure by the visibility that women like Sheryl Sandberg, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and most recently Jennifer Lawrence are bringing to the topic. Sandberg is doing interesting work bringing men into her Lean In initiative — a welcome bridging effort.
There is also very good advice available to “skill up” women at an individual level to be more effective in the negotiations that most directly affect their lives. I am proud of my hometown Boston, which this fall launched a 5-year initiative that aims to train half of Boston’s working women in salary negotiations.
Second, researcher Hannah Riley Bowles says, “Micro-level interactions contribute to larger social phenomena.” The reverse is also true: larger social phenomena contribute to micro-level interactions. And U.S. social norms are changing — in ways that are beneficial to women — before our very eyes.
In 1995, in the wake of Shannon Faulkner’s case against The Citadel, the military college of South Carolina voted to admit women and become coeducational for the first time in its history. In the years immediately following that decision, several colleagues and I worked with the Citadel’s upperclass cadets on integrating women into the institution — helping them develop skills to talk about coeducation issues, build relationships among male and female cadets, and identify and appropriately handle situations of sexual harassment. In the first couple of years of that work, there was a distinct group of male cadets who were unhappy about the integration of female cadets — they had joined a single sex institution and they resented the change. But a few years later, those cadets had graduated, and the new crop of upperclass male leaders we worked with showed little of that unhappiness. Why not? Arguably because they had entered an institution that they knew from the start was coed, and they were comfortable with that reality. The upshot? As structures change, people adapt.
What we saw at the Citadel is a singular data point, to be sure, but it does illustrate the speed at which meaningful attitudinal shifts can occur. When I was a kid, Michael Keaton’s 1983’s Mr. Mom film was considered great comedy — who could imagine a man competently raising children and keeping the home? As of 2012, however, nearly 2 million fathers reported staying at home, a near doubling since 1989. Heck, as kids neither my husband nor I imagined that we would play anything other than traditional gender roles in our future marriage. Yet our own attitudes have changed since childhood: today my husband is the primary caretaker of our two young children while I am the primary breadwinner.
The Millennial generation offers even more reason to be hopeful. More so than earlier generations, they are increasingly politically independent, religiously unaffiliated, and tend to hold liberal views on a range of political and social issues. As Millennials advance in their careers, company policies and practices will evolve to more closely reflect the values of their generation — to the benefit of women.
It helps, too, that companies are starting to realize that supporting girls and women is smart business. Target made waves recently for shifting to gender neutral toys in its aisles, and Mattel is receiving accolades for finally “getting it right” with this Barbie ad. Employers are also beginning to understand that it costs a lot of money to replace its women who drop out of the workforce to assume care taking responsibilities. In the last year alone, companies such as Goldman Sachs, Google, Facebook, Adobe, and Virgin have instituted more generous paid family leave policies — and only one of those companies’ CEO’s is a Millennial.
I am hopeful that such companies will also seize upon this gem among the research findings: mixed gender teams outperform single-gender teams. As it turns out, not only is it costly to replace women who leave the workforce, but the presence and participation of women drives better business results.
To state the obvious, there’s no Blacklight, no magic wand, no silver bullet that can instantaneously change the negotiation landscape for women, and progress can feel maddeningly slow. Still, I’m with Martin Luther King Jr. in believing that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” I predict that the next 25 years will bring positive social changes and positive corporate changes that will increasingly support women, and, in turn, improve women’s negotiated outcomes.
At the end of my SWE talk, I asked the women one more time: Raise your hand if you’re a negotiator. Every hand in the audience went up.
Stacy Heen Lennon advises, coaches, and trains women and men around the globe to be more effective negotiators. You can reach her at heen@alum.mit.edu.
