A Handy Guide on Negotiating: Reflections of a Professional

As part of the preparation for the Leadership course I participated in at Cambridge Judge Business School earlier this year, one task was to solicit feedback from a number of my colleagues via a survey. The output was an anonymised 'Best Self Report'

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I read through the pages with a bashful sense of ‘wait! what? me?!’ mixed with a very healthy dose of ‘well yes, of course, me!’, until a comment stopped me in my tracks.

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The feedback process was anonymous but I knew immediately who had written this comment because they had referred to information only a few were privy to:

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Their comment (which I have since gotten their permission to use) read:

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‘Maybe a strange one, but it sticks in my mind how Moyo approached her salary negotiation when dot dot dot and dot dot dot didn’t really know how to deal with the discussions. Moyo has really strong values, and this shone through in the discussions, determined not to allow herself to be undervalued vs her peers, which is especially important for our female leaders. It was great to witness, and also challenged the thinking of a more “traditional” leader.’

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The story of how I got to a place where a senior leader at work describes my negotiation as ‘great to witness’ has been at least three years in the making. In order for you to understand how I got here, I have to tell you the story of what ‘radicalised’ me.

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At the start of my career, I got to know two people with similar backgrounds who were in the same job seeking context. Around the same time, they both got offers to work in the same company at the same level.

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One was an ethnic minority woman who felt grateful for what she was offered. It was a good pay. In fact, it was excellent pay if you considered the fact that in her home country, she could not dream of getting anything close to what she was now being offered. The other was a white European male, who was intent of getting what he saw as befitting his value. He was not going to accept the first offer if it was less than his target amount.

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I remained quite close to both of these people in the years that followed and this gave me a chance to see how their emotions developed around this topic. Over time, one would grow to have a sense of achievement that they were valued properly and that they could do something about it if they did not feel so.

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The other upon realising she was less paid than her peers and would likely continue to be, unless she left the company, grew to feel something I can only describe as akin to sadness and resentment. ?

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These two people, inadvertently become for me subjects of a longitudinal study. A statistically insignificant sample size, yes but their approach, experiences and outcomes were significant enough for me to decide that as I navigated in my career, I did not want to be like the grateful ethnic minority woman. For me, it was not necessarily a decision to be like the white European male in approach, but it was a decision about what not to be.

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This had to be a conscious choice, because there were more ways in which I was more like the woman than the man.

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I will pause here to say that I think gratitude is incredibly important. A prevailing sense of gratitude for my lot contributes significantly to my sense of wellbeing and happiness. Yet, I have had to learn how to contextualise. I have had to learn to hold on very tightly to gratitude in one hand and equally as tightly in the other the knowledge that ‘less than’ is not okay because of where I am from.

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Truly feeling comfortable with the conclusion that accepting less ‘does not follow’ from gratitude took time and perhaps I am not the only one to operate that way especially when it comes to material resources. My theory is that this comes from knowing lack and being entrenched for a significant period of time, in an environment of lack.

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‘I know what it is to be without, so I am grateful to have, even if it is comparatively less than.’

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Less than peers. Less than market rate. And so on.

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My hypothesis is that this gratitude can transform over time into something negative, because it is for a lack of a better word ‘misplaced’. I mean this in the sense that the actions it breeds and resulting outcome are often incongruent with recent and current reality.

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For my ethnic minority female friend, her reality at the time was that she was at minimum (emphasis) on a par with my white male friend.? They had both gone to top universities in Europe, gotten good grades and had relevant professional experience. It was also not a ‘personality’ issue. ?

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The thankfulness that one feels when they see how far they have come from to where they are is important and very valid. It gives life a certain richness. However, my argument is that it is irrelevant in the operating context of ‘fair’ treatment in the workplace.

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I am reminded of the Nigerian saying, ‘don’t let your background keep your back on the ground’

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Some may wonder why this is so important, especially if my friend got a’ good’ salary anyway. The truth is for some people, it will not matter if they are underpaid for various reasons e.g. they are in a place in life where they are comfortable and have no real need for more for them and their family to live a good quality of life. This is a fantastic place to be in! This is not the reality for everybody.

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For my friend, being at the start of her career, I got to see the real-time impact of the realisation she was ‘undervalued’ in comparison to her peers. Today’s workplace is structured in such a way that pay is an (imperfect) measure of value. It is not the value of a person and it can never be but it does say something ?about how the value of a person’s work and contribution is measured.

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For full transparency, it matters because I do not believe a woman should earn less than a man for creating comparable value for a company (e.g. doing the same job). Good pay or not. Whether or not they are able to advocate for themselves or not.

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Perhaps I am an idealist in thinking a person’s willingness, ability and confidence to negotiate their pay should not be a determining factor in how much they get paid in compared to their peers. Yet, I am very much of a realist to know it is a factor, to varying degrees across companies and teams.

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I started preparing for my first ever salary negotiation sometime in 2020. Negotiating was not something I felt very comfortable with, but? I knew I had to learn and so as always I bought a book. I also started to read articles on the topic (HBR is a treasure trove) and attended a few online seminars.

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A number of things stood out to me.

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One: Repeated studies show that the social cost of negotiating for higher pay has been found to be greater for women than it is for men (Why Women Don’t Negotiate Their Job Offer, HBR 2014). Simply put, people and yes including decision makers on pay, are more likely to view women who ask for a higher salary negatively than men.

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Two: Black women experience a substantially wider pay gap than other women?due to the compounded effect of racism and sexism

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And lastly (not all doom and gloom): Women tend to negotiate better when they do so on behalf of others.

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The last point was a massive gamechanger for me. Here, I could lean into where I had come from. I did not have to think too hard or too long to identify the ‘others’ I could 'bring with me' to the negotiating table.

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The second became fuel for my determination. I loathe unfair treatment based on race and gender.

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The first was insight into how to navigate negotiations. That women face this social cost should is a thing to be addressed, and this is where the DEI agenda (when done well) has a role to play. In parallel to change (at whatever pace) happening, I also needed to learn to leverage my strengths/traits to reduce the social cost of me, a black woman, advocating for higher pay. Perhaps one could say I'm lucky because one of traits I have used to mitigate against the social cost is likability.

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As I have become more comfortable with negotiations, my stumbling blocks have changed.

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More recently, it has been along the lines of:

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Am I being greedy?

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Collins Dictionary defines ‘Greed is?the desire to have more of something than is necessary or fair.’

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The question of necessity was one I was quickly able to put to bed. Incidentally, here again, I tap into my background. The amount spent on getting this ‘girl child’ a higher education runs into the six figures (in either GBP or EUR, your choice) and till today, this does not fail to astound me. I reflect on the fact that not only was my getting an education ridiculously expensive, it cost at least twice as much for me than for most of my classmates by virtue of me being African. I think about what it took for my ‘village’ to fund this endeavor, coming from a country where earning potential is lower and social security comprises one's network of family and friends and depend on circularity to thrive. Against that backdrop, not being undervalued and not being underpaid is for me both a matter of necessity and survival.

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Caveat - I think our personal stories, backgrounds and experiences are mostly only valid in the context of our own motivation and drive. In my own opinion, they are not objective criteria (e.g. experience, training and other such metrics) that one should use when advocating for higher pay.

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As a side note, one of the good things about living in a country like Denmark is seeing how the institutions have been set up to ensure its citizens (and EU citizens, if we are being pedantic) have a robust safety net. Half a decade since I first set foot on this soil, the fact that there exists an ‘unemployment insurance’ that pays up to 90% of the salary you earned before you became unemployed still boggles my mind (in the most positive way)

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Back to the topic at hand. As I thought through the fairness element of greed, I came to the realisation that so far, I have not sought to negotiate my way out of my pay bracket. I negotiate within it, supported by facts. If we work with the assumption that a pay bracket is a fair indication of what a person can earn in a given position in a company, then it is not unfair or even greedy to consider ‘what they can earn’ what they can actually earn.

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I think that when people hear that others negotiate their pay, some could be tempted to think that it means ‘negotiators’ are being paid more than they should be earning. I put it to you Reader, that this is a non-sequitur i.e. ‘it does not follow’. My bet is that on average, negotiating simply just gets you to the place where you are not paid less than. Especially if you are a woman. Especially if you are an ethnic minority woman. Navigating a system where there are still headwinds, conscious and ‘unconscious’. I am happy to be proved wrong.

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I am a massive advocate for individual action and alongside this, I believe that advocating for yourself does not negate the need for structural change. This is why I personally welcome the EU Pay Transparency Directive, due to be implemented in legislation in a few years’ time. Some of the things I applaud are the fact that:

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Applicants are entitled to information about the starting salary or the salary range based on objective gender-neutral criteria for the position in question.?In addition, companies will be prohibited from asking about the applicant's current salary or salary in previous employment.

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Workers will have the right to request and receive information on their individual pay level and the average pay levels, broken down by sex, for categories of workers performing the same work as them or work of equal value to theirs.

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Until this directive become law (and even afterwards), building negotiation skills will still remain necessary in many of our workplaces especially for women and ethnic minorities.

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Why?

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As much as we all consider ourselves objective and fair decision makers, in many of our workplaces, pay gaps still exist between men and women performing the same or similar work. Bias and subjective definitions of what is ‘fair’ pay for one person versus another will not disappear overnight but laws and policies like this are right steps towards building more equitable systems and workplaces.

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Now Reader, can I admit something to you and only you?

I love the fact that a leader I respect describes my negotiating as ‘great to witness’. Yet, it would be remiss of me not to add that I am still at the stage where negotiation feels like a necessary evil.

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I may be ‘good’ at it, but I really don't like the feeling of having to do so much work, and exert so much energy just to make sure I am not ‘undervalued versus my peers’.

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It should not be this way, I think.

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However, until it isn’t, negotiation is a skill I am committed to honing in various workplace contexts beyond pay. My mantra for uncomfortable things is that, 'The leader Future Moyo is requires Present Moyo to practice these things now'. This very often helps me not to let even myself (fears and doubts) get in my way.

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At Cambridge, I had the chance to reflect on my learnings on negotiation. If you asked me, I would say a great place to start is by just doing it - however imperfectly, however unsure and uncomfortable you feel. Practice coupled with information makes better. In the same vein, be self-aware. Know your own belief systems and potential stumbling blocks. It is important to know which of your truths are valid for influencing your actions, approach and the decision criteria for whatever context you are in. ?

I also gained a better understanding of my negotiation style and as a result, I could understand better why I had walked away from past negotiations with this and that outcome.

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I love the fact that my negotiating is supposedly ‘great to witness’ and I would like to think there are greater things to come. I want to get to a place where, not only can my skills can be described as exceptional, I actually enjoy negotiating. Apparently people like this exist!

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Until then I will keep on practicing as well as advocating for both individual and systemic action to redress both gender and racial pay gaps.

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As the saying goes, a closed mouth is a closed destiny.

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One category of the ‘Best Self Report’ included a section on things I model well for others around me.

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They were two comments that made me smile and unfortunately I truly do not know which of my colleagues wrote them. They read:

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Moyo has an infectious go-getter attitude. She dislikes the word “Impossible”

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Moyo models confidence in her abilities and skills very well. It inspires those around her to also tap into their own abilities and skills.

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On that note, I hope with this piece, I have duly infected you (if you are wary about negotiation) to tap into the resources intrinsic and extrinsically available to you on your own journey.

Reader, go forth and negotiate!

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