What Happens When You Don’t Ask
HOW YOU LOSE OUT IF YOU DON’T ASK
I spoke to a lovely lady today who had been laid off due to Covid. She was positive about her chances to find another good position. In fact, she had been made an offer last week and was keen to take that up. Pay wasn’t bad, so she wasn’t going to negotiate the role or any of the set-up; afraid the opportunity would be taken off the table if she spoke up too much.
If you recognise that thinking, let me please give you a bit of a wake-up call here, much like I did with her.
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 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 NEGOTIATION. With your customers, with your co-workers, with your manager. And 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 pick up the message 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. In other words: 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 LESS OF OUR WORK, regardless of its quality.If this sounds super simplistic: this is how 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’d miss out of if you just accept what’s offered to you without further discussion: CAREER OPPORTUNITIES. If you don’t engage in these crucial conversations at work promotions and stretch projects and all that good stuff. Which in turn means you’re 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!
Please, darling bunny – negotiate for the things that are important to you. Not doing so is much more detrimental than you might think!
If you want my help turning you into a kick-ass negotiator, book a call with my team to see if you’re a fit. 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!