Not Negotiating Your Career – No Biggie?!

So often, I speak to women who will earnestly tell me that they have been very lucky in their careers because they have never had to negotiate a raise, but instead had been given raises before they had to ask.

For those women, and for the ones reading that and thinking “Lucky duckies! I wish I had just been presented with raises like that!”, let me give you a bit of a wake-up call here.

When you are not negotiating in the workplace for all that you need, want and deserve, you’re not just missing out on hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars or euros over the course of your career (see my other pieces on that one, ha!).

Nope.

You’re missing out on so much more.

Let me start with one: RESPECT.

From your boss. You see, to get anything done anywhere, you need to get people behind you. So EVERY JOB INVOLVES SOME FORM OF NEGOTIATION. With your customers, with your co-workers, with your manager.

I am sure you’re good at that: many women are excellent negotiators when they do so on behalf of others, and only crumble when it comes to asking for themselves. But if you don’t do that when you’re negotiating the terms of your role, or if you never ask for a raise, your boss most likely will assume that you are not very good at it. And so they might not think you’re very good at your job.

What is more: from the research on this, we know that PEOPLE EQUATE VALUE WITH PRICE. When something is expensive, they will value it more than if it were a cheap item, in short. The same happens with our salaries. Our boss knows how much we earn. If that is less than our co-workers (because we didn’t negotiate, and they did), our boss will THINK OUR WORK IS WORTH LESS, regardless of its quality.

If this sounds super simplistic, it is because it is 😊 Our brains are wired: life is complicated, our brains take shortcuts. And so if you earn less than your peers, it doesn’t matter that we do better quality work – WE LOSE OUT ON RESPECT.

So please stop kidding yourself and think that you’re *just* missing out on (lots of) money when you don’t negotiate. Losing out on respect might be a bigger issue, career-wise.

And this connected to something else: you’re losing out on CAREER OPPORTUNITIES. If you don’t engage in these crucial conversations at work, you will miss out on promotions and stretch projects and all that good stuff. The squeaky wheel gets the grease: you must speak up when you want something.

And losing out on these career opportunities means in turn you are missing out on more money.

And perhaps more importantly: this is probably not the vision you had for your career-path, leading to FRUSTRATION AND RESENTMENT… You wouldn’t believe the number of women I speak to are considering quitting their roles because they don’t feel recognised for their hard work and results!

So, in short, my friends: do me a favour and reconsider the idea that not negotiating your worth is no big deal. It’s a big deal. BIG deal. You have to negotiate pro-actively if you want to look back at your career and life in a couple of decades from now, and know you have made the most of both.

If you need help in having these conversations, get in touch to see if I can help. You can book a free call with my team to see what hurdles you’re encountering and what the best ways around those hurdles are. Here’s the link: https://womeninnegotiation.org/apply

Book a call with my team for a free coaching session and let’s see what we can do for you!