Category: Growth

Do you lean in to your negotiations? What does that mean to you?

In the wake of Sheryl Sandberg’s ground-breaking book, Lean In, many people misconstrued the message, believing Sandberg was advocating that women need to get tougher and bring their bad-ass self to the table to be taken seriously. I hope that’s not the message you took away. It’s been my mission these last many years to reframe how we look at power, success, and negotiation … in business and in life.

It’s precisely that ‘toughness carries the day’ mindset that I’m determined to flip. I encourage a new approach, where we choose collaboration over competition, seeking to truly understand and meet the needs of the other party to find best possible outcomes.

I invite you to lean in. But not from a place of challenge or exerting power over the other party. Instead, lean in to the messiness. Lean in to the human ugliness that may come up. Use it to find the path to unearth power with the other party. To do that we need to understand … the good, the bad and the ugly.

Most people lean back when negotiations get messy. When the other party acts out or gets angry, or hurt, or reactive, we step back. In trying to play safe, we build in what we believe to be safeguards to minimize risk to ourselves. Yet these strategies or approaches undermine our ability to get best outcomes. Far from keeping us safe, they act as saboteurs.

Many resources on negotiation suggest that emotion has no place in negotiations. This ignores a fundamental reality. Humans are emotional beings. For too long, we’ve ignored this fact in studying best practices for negotiation. Effective negotiations are based, in part, on relationship. High EQ is a critical skill for relationship-building and hence, for effective bargaining.

Yet when emotions rear up in negotiations, we usually back away, finding them messy and uncomfortable to deal with. As a result, many deals go sideways and fail when a resolution was possible if we’d just dig in to understand where the emotion is coming from and what block(s) may be standing in the way of your perfect deal.

What if, instead of backing away, you leaned in? If you got curious? If you committed to uncover the unmet needs that caused the eruption you faced? What if you resolved to diagnose the problem with fascination, compassion, and openness? If you want to figure out what the problem is so you can resolve it, you need to lean in to examine it more carefully. It’s not the time to retreat or turtle.

Think of an I.T. expert. When a computer acts up, spewing out info it shouldn’t, or freezing up, or shutting down, the expert doesn’t run away, but instead leans in, using that messy, annoying, confounding stuff as valuable information to make a diagnosis. I invite you to try the same in your negotiations.

When those pesky emotions show up, don’t back away, but lean in to the perceived problem to collect the necessary intel to identify and fix the problem. Those high emotions often signal the heart of the real fears or needs of the other party. Knowing that allows you to come up with better outcomes and get better buy-in.

Deal with these messy issues quickly where possible. Like a red wine spill on a white carpet, if you leave it too long the stain will be permanent, whereas if you act fast and blot followed by a quick application of dish detergent and vinegar you can clean up the mess and carry on with the party.

We’re taught to hold our cards close to our chest. We worry that if we’re vulnerable, we’ll be seen as weak, and others will take advantage of us. In my experience the opposite is true.

That approach creates a wall between the parties – a gap or space that’s tough to bridge. It doesn’t lead to the transparency and trust necessary for creative solutions.

Be willing to be vulnerable and to explore vulnerability of the other party. While outbursts may not seem like vulnerability in the moment, they can be gorgeous opportunities to see behind the Wizard’s curtain. I invite you to seize those opportunities. You may just find a heart, a brain, or unexpected courage to close the deal in unanticipated and gratifying ways.

All of life is a negotiation. I say this often. I typically quip that the art of negotiation is about getting what you want ‘from the boardroom to the bedroom’. In fact, my newly released book has that as its tagline … Art of Feminine Negotiation: How to Get What You Want from the Boardroom to the Bedroom. And that’s true. Negotiation can enhance your personal and professional outcomes. But recently, I’ve expanded my appreciation of the breadth of this skill to recognize its inherent value on the global scene. It just may hold the key to world peace.

This point was really driven home when I was asked to keynote a Peace Pulse event for Ollin Women’s International recently. In preparing for the event, the more I read about Ollin, the more I recognized how connected our work was. They are dedicated to fostering world peace. Their peace pledge is to make peace a part of our everyday life. In exploring their member’s personal definitions of peace, it warmed my heart to see references to letting go of ego, and acknowledgements that peace can be big and small, and that before we can bring peace on the outside we need to start on the inside.

This deeply resonated with me as I’ve been on a mission to redefine and reframe conflict, success, power, and negotiation. Many of my clients ask, “Why do you call what you do negotiation training or programs? Doesn’t that push away a lot of people?  What you do is so much more than that.”

I choose to focus on negotiation (notwithstanding the pushback) because I seek to raise awareness that life is a negotiation, from the micro to the macro level. Mastering this skill may be the single most important learning of your life.

We negotiate every day in a myriad of ways. Our first and most important negotiation is with ourselves … negotiating our own mindset. From there, we negotiate our relationships (with our kids, intimate partner, co-workers, service providers, or multi-million-dollar transactions). We also negotiate on the global scene (whether peace in the middle east or conflicts such as the current Russia/Ukraine debacle). The principles are the same. When you uncover how to negotiate on the micro level for your personal impact, you are equipping yourself to negotiate with much broader potential impact.

Most of my clients come to me for the professional development i.e. how to up-level their ability to get more professionally. And we do that … in spades. But the thing that most surprises them is the profound impact our work has on their personal relationships and life. And the thing I find most interesting is the extent to which many of them go on to negotiate even bigger stakes with profound ripple effects for the world (sometimes without them even realizing it).

My reframes focus on leaning in to the feminine. After much research and work on this mission, I came to believe that the solution to much of the world’s ills starts with that simple shift.

In 2020 I did a TEDx talk: Rise of the Feminine Voice as the Key to Our Future. The idea was that the world is out of balance because we’ve lost touch with our feminine. This was not a new concept but interestingly, it was still being treated as novel.

That’s surprising given that the Dalai Lama has been talking about this for at least a decade and a half. Every year, in multiple talks since at least 2007, the Dalai Lama has said:

To promote greater compassion, we must pay special attention to the role of women. … the time has come for women to take more active roles in all domains of human society, in an age in which education and the capacities of the mind, not physical strength, define leadership. This could help create a more equitable and compassionate society.

It only took a decade and a half and a global pandemic for the message to be received. COVID appears to have opened the world to a new way of thinking and new way of being. I started talking about the importance of the rise of the feminine voice many years ago. I believe the time is now.

There’s a new appreciation for the value of feminine energy … in business, in politics, and beyond. I’ve been asked to speak about the Art of Feminine Negotiation™ at business schools, law symposiums, corporate events, trade union conferences, and a few weeks ago in Greece on feminine wisdom. People are suggesting that countries with female leaders fared better during COVID. This may or may not be true, but the discussion is important because at very least, the value of feminine stock went up. Feminine traits are being recognized as key leadership skills for the first time in a long time.

To clarify a possible sticking point, when I speak of feminine, I’m not talking about gender. There’s no one way to be a woman, a man, or any of the spaces in between. We all have masculine and feminine energy. The problem is that for too long we’ve been under-valuing our ‘feminine’.

This is key as the world had shifted out of balance as both men and women eschewed their ‘feminine’ in favour of a competitive, masculine model of success. Hopefully now, we’ll see both men and women lean in to their feminine, bringing empathy to the table, seeking to build stronger relationships, not coming from a place of competition, not looking just to meet our needs, but also to understand and meet the needs of others, valuing and respecting our differences and stepping into the best of our humanity.

Imagine a world where we all negotiate life from that place of powerful feminine persuasion. Studies confirm that people who show up and invoke these so-called feminine skills in negotiating their lives get better outcomes, more creative solutions, better buy-in, less conflict, longer lasting agreements, better relationships, and more positive impact – both personally and professionally. Imagine the power of those results on the global scene.

Most people, at some point, have a craving for unhealthy food. With their internal conscience, they try to dissuade themselves from choosing the ‘wrong’ option. But as they appeal to self-interests, they end up with unhealthy outcomes. This habit is called self-negotiation, which is a sabotaging tactic that keeps us resisting change, even when we want to improve ourselves.

People who self-negotiate often use their own internal arguments as an excuse not to work towards a goal, rather than as a reason for it. It’s unsurprising why fitness and health are one of the most put-off goals that people set because of self-negotiation, which is especially evident in gym attendance dropping off over the course of a year.

In one study, the percentage of new members who attend fitness organizations dipped to 50% in the sixth month and 22% by month 12. Rather than allowing yourselves to sabotage your own efforts, it’s essential that you learn how to negotiate better with yourself. Through these tips below, you can improve your self-negotiation tactics and use them not as excuses but instead as motivators to work toward your desired health targets.

Reframing your diet mindset

When it comes to dieting, people may have a tendency to negotiate with themselves and think they can eat more today because they exercised or will exercise the next day, but then don’t. These seem to be the cause of failure, however, negotiations based on calories aren’t effective either. As some of the best weight loss programs have come to learn, calories don’t tell the whole story when it comes to nutrition.

You also need to consider protein, fiber, sugars, and fats in your diet for a healthier pattern of eating. Rather than making excuses and limiting yourself, you can reframe your choices to more positive outcomes. For example, instead of thinking, “If I eat that cookie, I’ll get fat.” — it’s better to reframe it as “This food looks good, but I also enjoy feeling good when I feed my body healthy food like this apple.” By changing your mindset, you can better convince yourself to make the healthier choice.

Track your habits and behaviors

When you set mental goals for yourself, it can be easy to change them at the last minute because they are too difficult to achieve. Desiring big outcomes is good but often, self-negotiation kicks in to persuade us to take the easier, but not necessarily healthy, choice. Instead, it’s more effective to physically note and work towards smaller targets.

As the saying goes, “What gets measured gets done.” You can start off by writing in a journal what you plan to achieve in health: your desired fitness level, the average amount of sleep per day, or your resistance to stress, to name a few. When you’re faced with a poor choice, you can go back to these goals and use them to redirect yourself back on the right track. This lets you think beyond your present thoughts and reminds you to stay accountable for your goals.

Reduce or make self-negotiation easier

Depending on your personality and willpower, self-negotiation can be a great way to convince yourself to do a task you wouldn’t otherwise commit to. However, there is always the possibility that you will lose these negotiations. Reducing the need to self-negotiate can discipline you and ensure you attain the results you want, especially your health goals. One of our tips for negotiating balance is to control your environment. You can start by eliminating physical unhealthy factors such as junk food and replace them with healthier alternatives like fruits and home gym equipment. Alternatively, you can also add more positive influences in life that inspire you to reach your health targets. Even if you haven’t built the habit of taking the healthier option yet, your environment can encourage you to achieve your best potential and reduce the need, or make it easier, to self-negotiate.

Can colour affect your negotiations?

What was the first thing that came to your mind when faced with this question? Was it wardrobe choices? Room colour? Colour of your skin? The colour you bring to the table when negotiating? There are layers to this conversation and it’s a subject worth examining. In unpacking the issue, we may be able to discover how to use colour as your secret sauce to better negotiation outcomes.

Not long ago we were bombarded with purported new ‘shocking evidence’ about how colour can impact negotiations. Everyone rushed to change their wardrobe to maximize their effectiveness as a negotiator. While there is some merit to this science, I believe there are broader social implications to colour and in this article, I’d like dig deeper on the concept. Let’s explore the impact of the colour of our skin and our ‘personal’ colour.

In an ideal world, the colour of our skin wouldn’t matter. But the sad reality is that it still does – in terms of process, relationship and substantive outcomes. Simply looking at the continuing pay differential for white vs black vs First Nations vs Latino women dispels any notion that colour is irrelevant today. We still have work to do on this front.

While it’s unfair, the reality is that women of colour often feel the need to be more conscious about how they show up, as they’re perceived and judged differently. When legitimately advocating for themselves, they’re often unjustly labelled ‘angry black women’ or some such unflattering moniker. These stereotypes continue across the colour spectrum and can adversely impact on negotiation outcomes.

Even negotiating for access can be more challenging for persons of colour (and women of colour in particular). Getting a seat at the table can be affected by your colour. And for people for whom English is not their first language, the barriers can be even higher. They’re often not even given the time or space to put their thoughts together to express their views. This is an unfortunate loss in the bargaining process as valuable perspectives are ignored and lesser outcomes achieved as a result.

In addition to consideration of what biases you may face, it’s also important to be aware of what biases you may bring to the table. We often go into negotiations making assumptions about the other party and in so doing we limit our effectiveness and ability to secure best outcomes. Likewise, we often make assumptions that the other person will discount us or not show up with partnership perspective. In bringing these biases, we miss opportunities as it narrows and compromises our perspective-taking ability.

Another element of colour that’s worth exploring is the individual ‘colour’ or personality you bring to negotiations. Do you feel comfortable to show up as your full authentic self? Or do you rein in certain qualities to meet expectations (real or perceived)?

Women are more likely to modify their behaviour to meet expected social norms. They fear (with good reason) being judged as ‘too emotional’ or ‘too demanding’. They may demure and soften their pitch and/or approach, ask for less, or play to egos in the room. At the other end of the spectrum, they may overcompensate, bringing masculine energy to the table that doesn’t reflect their authentic style, believing that’s the only way to be heard or succeed.

Many so-called experts advocate for women to modify their behaviour and employ ‘workarounds’ to avoid push-back based on societal expectations. I do not subscribe to this theory. I think it perpetuates the stereotypes and entrenches the problem. If we want meaningful change, we need to start talking about the elephant in the room and coax it out of the corner and into the light.

I believe we’re better served by showing up in our full authenticity and in so doing start to break down ill-informed barriers and expectations. We get what we tolerate in life. If we continue to tolerate discrimination, we will continue to attract it.

Instead, as per the first ‘W’ of my signature 5W model – ‘who’ – I invite you to consider, with intention, who you want to show up as in every negotiation. Choose the power of your authentic self, showing up in your full technicolor.