Female Negotiation

Why is negotiation different for women? Are there really differences between how men and women negotiate? These were the questions Professor Cristina Bombelli explored during her recent talk to PWA Milan.

Cristina Bombelli, professor at SDA Bocconi and Bicocca University and founder of the Laboratorio Armonia research centre, has devoted her career to researching diversity management issues. As the first female professor of the executive Masters courses offered by the prestigious SDA Bocconi School of Management ( Milan , Italy ), she was struck by the fact that, not only was she the sole woman on the faculty, but also that there were no women in her class. Here was a representative sample of Italy ‘s executive-level professionals, and they were all male.

This experience sparked Cristina’s interest in the glass ceiling and diversity within organisations, though she recounts that when she first proposed this as a field of research, the reaction was dismissive: “Study the women’s issue? Naaah.” Since then, Ms Bombelli notes, there has been a significant shift in mood and today, when you mention diversity and gender management, “they no longer laugh”.

h4. Women don’t ask

The most significant factor that puts women at a disadvantage when negotiating, particularly with respect to men, is that women don’t ask. Given the choice, women would rather not negotiate at all. To give just one example, according to the authors of the book “Women Don’t Ask – Negotiation and the Gender Divide” (Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever), by not negotiating a first salary, an individual stands to lose more than $500,000 by age 60—and men are more than four times as likely as women to negotiate the important first salary.

The inability to ask can be traced back to certain internal obstacles and mental attitudes:

• Seeing themselves through other people’s eyes: Women’s natural empathy means they are good at seeing the other person’s point of view. This makes them particularly susceptible to how they perceive themselves to be judged and, at the extreme, results in losing sight of their own agenda. Women should not, as Ms Bombelli cautions, put themselves so much into the other person’s shoes that they forget to occupy their own!
• Preventive negotiation: A related risk is that of preventive negotiation, in which the woman mentally anticipates the other person’s objections and scales back her demands accordingly. This typically occurs before she even starts to make her case.
• Low self-esteem: Women can shy away from negotiation because they do not feel sufficiently worthy or entitled to ask for something, whether it be a pay rise, a promotion, or even the time and attention of a superior.
• Doing things for love, not money: As society’s traditional caretakers and child-rearers, women have long been used to doing valuable work for no financial reward. By putting a premium on human relationships over money, women are liable to sacrifice their immediate self-interest in favour of gaining approval or “being liked”. Finally, their sense of empathy can often prompt women to make allowances in the workplace to “help out someone in need”, or out of an unwillingness to “add to somebody’s problems”, relegating their own interests to second place.

• The Cinderella fantasy of being “discovered”: Women tend to be uncomfortable with the game of workplace politics and self-promotion. In a culture that values modesty, not pushiness, in women, they are conditioned to believe that if they quietly labour away, their qualities will eventually be noticed and rewarded. Unfortunately, organisations are not pure meritocracies (sometimes they are not meritocracies at all!) and the appreciative Prince Charming is unlikely to appear.

Becoming a better negotiator

Given that there are deep-seated differences between how men and women negotiate, what can women do to become better negotiators? Some key points are:

• Objectivity: The woman should enter into the negotiation with a concrete awareness of the strengths of her position. Benchmarks and objective elements of comparison (say, the average price in the area when negotiating an apartment rental) are fundamental for effectively countering objections and avoiding the trap of self-doubt.
• Preparation: Women should come prepared with a clear idea of what her goals are in the negotiation – what is the optimal outcome and what is the best alternative? Objective elements of comparison will help back her position.

• Remove the person from the problem: A woman may back off from a conflict for fear of losing the relationship or incurring personal dislike.
*Separate your fears from the other person’s intentions: In other words, women should avoid preventive negotiation, and not make ungrounded assumptions about how the other person will react.
• Positions are different to interests: Negotiating positions are of course never arbitrary: they reflect some underlying interest. By delving into the reasons behind the negotiating stance, it is sometimes possible to transform a win-lose game into a win-win situation.

At the end of her talk, Ms Bombelli’s take-home message was that women need to start by observing, in both their personal and professional lives, the extent to which they actually ask for what we want or need. This illuminating exercise marks the first step to we can all take to challenge, and change, our traditional negotiation behaviours for the better.

Anna Nardella
Member of PWA Milan