How to Negotiate as a Woman with Kathryn Valentine

Jamie Lee  
Welcome to negotiate your career growth. I'm Jamie Lee and I teach you how to blend the best of negotiation strategies with feminist coaching. So you get promoted and better paid without burning bridges or burning out in the process. Let's get started. 

I'm so excited to have Kathryn Valentine on the podcast today, Kathryn is a gem. Kathryn is also the CEO of Worthmore strategies where she helps companies advance and retain female talent. Katherine, we need more of you.

Kathryn Valentine  
I'm so excited to have this conversation, Jamie, there's so many good things happening.

Jamie Lee  
Yes. Kathryn is a top rated speaker. Her clients include multinational organizations such as JP Morgan KPMG, TIAA, and her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and Forbes. And Kathryn currently lives in Atlanta with her husband and their two sons, who give her plenty of negotiation practice each and every day. I want to hear about that, too. But I was just telling Kathryn, I think we're just going to be kind of like crushing on each other, this interview because Kathryn works with the companies to help them advance and retain female talent. And obviously, I work with female talent. And so we're sort of like approaching the same problem from different ends of the spectrum. And I feel like we need more of Kathryn and there needs to be more women at every, you know, every decision, every room where decisions are made.

Kathryn Valentine  
Yeah, agreed. And I'm so excited to talk with you. Because we meet people every day who want additional coaching support. And until I met you, I was never entirely sure where to send people. So this is fantastic.

Jamie Lee  
Amazing. So let's get to the big question. Why is it important for women to learn to negotiate for themselves? Why do you think that's so important, Kathryn?

Kathryn Valentine  
So I think that you can look at it from two different sides, right, from the point of view of the woman, there are still, you know, not only financial but resource wise things that aren't happening for us, right. So there was this research that came out a couple of years ago, it was done by Lee and Cray that showed that women were being given team sizes that were 25% to 40%, smaller than men, which means that inherently we're just set up to have fewer resources to do the same thing. On the financial side, I mean, obviously, you know, the gender wage gap we can talk about, and also Linda Babcock's work that if you choose not to negotiate, you're giving away a million dollars, or Margaret Neil's take on that work, which I particularly like, which is that if you choose not to negotiate, you're putting yourself in a position to have to work eight more years to retire with the same wealth. And because women tend to live longer. That wealth that we retire with is incredibly important. Yeah.

Jamie Lee  
And actually, now that we're having this conversation, I want to kind of go back and is it okay, I asked you I want to know about your journey, how you got started doing this work, what led you from, you know, the work you have been doing before, worth more strategies, and the decision that led you to be like, Okay, let's work with the companies themselves. which tell us more about that, your journey.

Kathryn Valentine  
So my background is mostly in management consulting, I worked at McKinsey for a long time. And then I did growth strategy for apparel companies. And then I went to get my MBA. And as you probably know, the whole reason to get your MBA is because you think you're going to get a better job coming up, right and better paying job. Exactly. And so you're in the internship is really like a three month job interview. So I got placed with a company that I was really excited about, there's a fortune 20 company. I finished my summer intern like the summer project in four weeks, they've given us tend to do it. And I decided that if I wanted to position myself with the highest likelihood of getting that coveted offer at the end of the summer, that what I needed to do was to negotiate to be placed on another team. So that too, there would be twice as many people who could vouch for me and I figured that that would put me in a good position to get this the job offer that I wanted at the end of summer. So I spent all weekend this was a you know, this was back when Barnes and Nobles were like on every corner. So I spent all weekend at Barnes and Noble. I bought, you know, four or five different negotiation books. I highlighted everything I underlined everything. I scripted out exactly what I was going to say in this conversation. I practiced it endlessly. And then Monday morning I went in my meeting was at 10 o'clock. By 1006 I had managed to offend the interim coordinator. And by 1010 I was being told that I wasn't a culture fit, which as you can imagine, exactly is sort of like the phrase of death like you're done here. Once it became clear that I was no longer going to get a job off For the internship didn't make sense. And so we agreed to part ways at which point I was escorted out of the building by security. So I had gone from, in many ways a top candidate, like I finished my project and half the time to no job offer to no internship in less time, in less time than it takes to get a latte, right. And so the question became what the hell happened in that room. And so I went, I was really lucky, I had a year left in school. So I went back and I met with a negotiations professor who later became one of my mentors. And I said, Hey, I followed all the rules, what just happened. And she pointed me towards what at that point in time was emerging research on gender negotiations being done out of Carnegie Mellon, and out of Harvard a lot, a lot of Hannah Riley Bowles stuff, and Linda Babcock to and said, You should go look at this. And it was just starting to come out, like within the past year. And so I spent the next year studying how to negotiate specifically as a woman, which is where I learned that the way we have to negotiate is different. And you know, maybe that shouldn't be true, but it currently is true. And also, I learned that the advice that's commonly given for negotiations is wrong for women, it will actually it is more likely to result in backlash for us. And Jamie, I know that I'm preaching to the choir on this one, right. And so I spent the next I don't know, seven ish years ago, I was working full time, but then coaching folks on the side. And then when the pandemic hits, I found myself in a room with a bunch of HR folks. And they were talking about how they wish that women would just come ask for something and sort of quit because they were hemorrhaging women, and they couldn't figure out how to keep them. And so I wrote this article called Ask Before you go, it went viral. And at that point, in time, a couple of banks reached out and said, Hey, we are losing more women than we ever want to. We're trying everything, why don't you come train women on how to negotiate and let's just see what happens. And what happened is that we currently have the most popular training that has been done at JPMorgan every year for the past three years. We have we did a corporate partnership, where we showed that the women gave, the women showed a 100% decrease in their intention to leave. So that saved the company, tons of money, because these women who would have walked out the door weren't anymore. And the reason why they worked is because we gave them the tools to ask for what they needed to be successful without having to risk what we typically have to risk in those conversations. You know, that's my story.

Jamie Lee  
I mean, and I love this is such a great story. I love that. It starts with an epic fail, epic fail. And then you turn it around to something that just help other women like resounding success. So and I love that because so many women are afraid to take that one step to even initiating a conversation, because that risk of rejection risk of like, what if they say no? What? And you got escorted out of the building? 

Kathryn Valentine  
Yes, it was an epic fail. And the thing is when we, when we talk about women being nervous to take that I mean, they're nervous for a very real reason, like backlash is real. And I think knowing the relational ask and knowing the work of Hannah Riley Bowles and Linda Babcock, like that really changes the game, because now we're in a position where we can ask without being at disproportionate risk of backlash, right? All of a sudden, the cost of that ask goes essentially to zero, which means in a position to have those conversations so much more often.

Jamie Lee  
Yeah. And there might be some folks who listen to this. They're like Hannah who?

Kathryn Valentine  
Oh, yeah. 

Jamie Lee  
Right. So I know Linda Babcock from the book, "women don't ask" and also "Ask for It" the sequel, right? reading that book, women don't ask totally changed my life, because they, they walk you through the reasons why the gender socialization that we've been exposed to from a very, very young age, that disposes us to like not wanting to ask, or fearing to ask, or not even assuming that it's okay to ask. Right? And maybe you can tell us, I want to I totally want to hear more about the tools and I'd love for you to define relational ask. But before you do that, maybe you can tell us a little bit about Hannah Riley Bowles is well.

Kathryn Valentine  
So Hannah Riley Bowles is the co-dean of the women's program at Harvard's Kennedy School. She does things that are much more broad than gender, though gender is one of her specialties. And what she did with Linda Babcock and there's a you know, there's a consortium of probably six or seven researchers who were very into this but what she did with Linda Babcock, um, It's sort of uncovered the relational ask. And the relational ask is this idea that, as women, when we ask for things in a way that shows that it's both legitimate and beneficial, we can virtually eliminate the risk of backlash. That term virtually eliminate is from a study that was done by Amanathullah and a few others. Think about 2018, I'd have to look up the exact date of that. And so all of a sudden, we're given this incredible tool. What I found in my coaching work is that the women that we work with are so busy, that having to figure out how to display having having to prepare for this conversation, but then also having to figure out how to have it in a way that shows that what you're asking for is both legitimate and beneficial, is really hard. It's almost like a level too nebulous. And so we pushed it down and introduced, we call it the worthmore relational ask equation, which is past performance, plus future vision plus the ask, and then stop talking. Stop talking, because we found that in an attempt to make your negotiating partner feel comfortable, women would start negotiating against themselves. And so that's the one of the formulas that we teach with our corporate partners. I personally have loved the corporate work even more than I thought that I would, because in the one on one coaching, you get to have that relationship that's so special, in the corporate work, you get the chance to have that relationship across many women, like we're teaching a lot of women, but also you get the chance to actually change culture, when you have 1500 women going through this program, and then 300 of their managers, all of a sudden, how you are talking about it is different from both sides of the table. Whereas with coaching, I felt like I was a little bit limited, because I could never talk to the manager about how to do this better.

Jamie Lee  
This is like a dream come true for so many women, they're like we want this. How do we get this? How do we get my manager to attend this?

Kathryn Valentine  
And that's a point of view that boggles my mind, Jamie, is from a manager's point of view, negotiating with your employers is one of the single most fibrous conversations you will ever have. And no one coaches managers on how to do this. No, there's not a single manager training out there that talks them about how to have this conversation. And so that's kind of the the newest thing that we're starting to go into.

Jamie Lee  
This is really fascinating. So would you mind telling me more about it? Like, you coach managers on how to have a negotiation conversation with their direct reports? In other words, how to respond, how to think about it, you know, how to... what to do after that? Yeah, tell me more? 

Kathryn Valentine  
Well, the other thing we do is we educate them on the gender dynamics, right. So one thing that I've found, and I don't have stats behind this yet, but a lot of managers tend to assume. So for example, we did this training, oh, I don't know, 18 months ago. And one of the managers who came up to me afterwards said, I always just assumed that whoever on my team came to me to ask for the opportunity was the most interested in the opportunity.

Jamie Lee  
Oh, you got to say that out loud, slowly, one more time. Could you repeat it? 

Kathryn Valentine  
And he came up to me afterwards. And he said, I always assumed that the teammate who came to me to ask for the opportunity was the one who was most interested in the opportunity.

Jamie Lee  
I just wanna echo you. That whoever asks for the opportunity is the one who seems to be most interested. Okay? Please continue.

Kathryn Valentine  
And that has a lot of gendered bias in it, right. And so what a number of managers don't recognize male and female, I mean, all genders, right? What a number managers don't recognize is that the cost to asking for that is higher for women, which means that any rational actor who's doing a cost benefit analysis will come to you fewer times. Once managers are aware of the gender dynamics behind that they understand what backlash is, they recognize that even if they're not perpetrating it that is perpetrated at a very high rate. And therefore women have an extra calculation they have to do, then they become aware of the fact that it's not a level playing field in the way that they thought it was. And so what we do is we train women in the corporation on gender specific negotiation strategies. And then we're starting to train managers on how to have these conversations. And the first part of that training is just an awareness of the fact that it is not the same for Jamie to come to you as it is for Bob to come to you. Those are different. Those are different things. There's a higher hurdle to hit, they're both informationally and from a risk perspective. And those trainings have been we've only been doing them we've been doing them less time than anything else. It's our newest product, but they've been really eye opening.

Jamie Lee  
I love that. And I'm curious, because some of my clients who are maybe like, senior managers, or directors, and they go negotiate with the VPs. And then the VP say, Well, yeah, that's nice. But you know what? The real decision maker is the CFO or the CEO, and you just could be better off if you have a direct conversation with them. Or, you know, my hands are kind of tied. Right? So that is a scenario that happens often, when people do with women do what you call relational ask, I like to describe it as self advocacy is an act of service, because you're showing them the benefit, like when you get that promotion, when you get that opportunity, it helps, you know, not just you, but the team and the company benefit, right? And so, would you mind like telling me your thoughts about that? Like, what do you think about when women negotiate with who they assume to be the decision maker or their direct manager, and often they do that from a place of like, I want to show respect for somebody who, who I report to, and then they get sort of what they call the runaround, right? It's like, No, you got to talk to the CEO or the CFO, my hands are tied. What do you think about that?

Kathryn Valentine  
 So a couple of things. One, the average, and this was always helpful for remote for me to remember, the average negotiation is 25 days. That's Hannah Riley Bowle's work again, right? And so if we create this expectation, our minds, the successful conversation is going in doing a good job at what we've prepared, and then getting a yes, immediately. That's kind of a false hope. Right? I mean, maybe it happens. And that's incredible. But for the vast majority of these conversations, they're important enough that they deserve a little bit more time and a little bit more thought. And part of that is to your point, some of these have decisions that are made by committee, right? So I do a lot of work with consulting firms and accounting firms where promotion to partner is a decision that's made by a committee, there's not one person who will make that right. And so in those situations, I think that conversation then becomes discovery. Oh, that's really interesting. How was that decision made? Who all is involved? Have those people? Who are the ones that lead the discussion? Or who are the ones that you would recommend I go talk to next. And so then your job becomes identifying who the key stakeholders are, and speaking to them and giving them the sound bites, they need to be a good advocate for you in the room where it happens.

Jamie Lee  
I'm vigorously shaking my head yes, because this is exactly what we do inside the one on one coaching. And this is precisely why I coach women through actually months, right? Like to set yourself up for success to change the mindset around negotiating, advocating for yourself. And then exactly through all the questions that you just, you know, offered here who who makes the decision? How is the decision made? Who's in the committee? Right? What do they need to hear? workshopping that preparing that? And then like, problem solving that as you go, this is so good. Okay. So,

Kathryn Valentine  
Jamie, I have to ask you, because you've had so many, you know, so many ins at it. So many reps. What else? Is there anything else in there that you would say we should build on or other things that we should tell your audience that when you find yourself in this situation, consider the following?

Jamie Lee  
That's a really good question. Don't be afraid to go directly to the decision maker. Yeah. And in fact, I've had a couple of clients who got promoted doing exactly that. They realize, okay, I'm working, I report to the manager, but the manager is sort of hands off, the manager isn't directly involved in the project that I'm leading, the manager doesn't have as much stake on the vision that's going to be most compelling to the actual decision maker, like I had a client who's working in global marketing. And the her direct manager worked in more like market research as opposed to marketing. So we talked about, okay, who's going to be impacted by this global marketing project? The sales and marketing people, right? So now you really want to talk to the VP of sales who's going to have a bigger stake in the work that you do. So my client created this strategy, we co-created the strategy where she initiated one on one conversations where she got buy in on that vision directly with the decision maker who has the most most stake in what she's doing. And then by the time she went to her direct manager, it was like, he was like, Yeah, of course, you got it.

Kathryn Valentine  
I love that so much. And it's always so fun to me how much negotiation is tied in with networking, right, both in terms of access to information, everything else and I'd be curious for your take on this. But one of the things that always stood out to me about negotiating compensation specifically, is that I can I we can teach you how to do negotiate in terms of the skill, but the thing that I have can't knock down for you is the information asymmetry. Right? Like there are I mean, we have a list The Ultimate Guide to benchmarking, we have 100 Different sources you can go to to benchmark, but none of them are complete. I mean, if you found a way around that,

Jamie Lee  
I'm just going to be totally honest, my only way around it is to empower the client to really trust her own intuition as to what makes the most sense for her. And also to think beyond just the dollar value. Like I just talked to somebody yesterday, she's like, I'm up for a promotion, you know, but what I really, really want is to create an exit strategy, because I want to become a consulting CFO, as opposed to the VP of Finance here, like she really wants to create her path toward entrepreneurship at the end of the day. So I'm like, Okay, then let's think about what's most important, which is your time and your mental bandwidth to be able to do that.

Kathryn Valentine  
So on that note, we created this resource, it's a list of 75 things we've seen women negotiate, because to your point, it's not just compensation. I think that's blowing my mind, though, is the stats coming out recently about how it's not just compensation by any means, but about the gender gap in non base salary compensation, like bonuses, and 401k matches, and all of that stuff that continues to it does feel like with salary transparency laws, I wonder if what's going to happen is sort of like we squeezed the balloon on one end, and the air just moves to the other place? Have you seen any of that?

Jamie Lee  
Um, that's a really good question. And I think that's a valid concern. And I, myself haven't really seen it directly. But yeah, I could see that happening, for sure. And I think the only way to work around it is, again, networking, having those conversations with people of all genders, not just, you know, just not just your female coworkers, but male, non binary folks who have experience in your field at your job, you know, somebody who used to work at your company and left, it could be really good source of information, somebody who has some visibility or exposure to HR or finance, because I used to work in HR and finance and you would have to look at the salary of everyone, right? And so people who, it's legal, it's not illegal for you to have conversations like that, you could just ask them, Hey, I'm thinking about this. Do you think that's reasonable? What are your thoughts on that? So that you have a thought about it?

Kathryn Valentine  
Well, it just it strikes me as to the other, you know, the other big resources coaches like you, right, because I only see my little narrow piece of this, whereas you have seen this happen hundreds of times, and can help guide me as to where all of these places are, but I can totally agree with you, especially on the point of don't just ask women, right, if we just asked women, because the gender wage gap is about, you know, what, 83 cents now to the dollar, we're gonna get an answer that's 20% lower than the truth. And so it is really important, I think, to ask non women as well.

Jamie Lee  
Yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm really glad you brought up 70 things employees can negotiate besides salary. And we also talked about some of the non salary negotiations, but maybe you can share with us if you have any other tips for women who are considering negotiating, especially since you have more insight from like, the business from the employer perspective.

Kathryn Valentine  
Any my number one tip, and I don't know that it. It doesn't necessarily lean on that employer perspective part. But mine is always to plan a reward. Right? We know that we are statistically more likely to do well, if we have something that we're looking forward to afterwards, not just as, like a reward for having a great conversation, but a reward for having the bravery to have the conversation. And it can be something big, it can be something small, it can be a hike, it can be out a bubble bath, it can be a bottle of wine you've been looking at, but you haven't quite, you know, purchased yet. But knowing that there's something after it happening, I think just changes how you go into the conversation.

Jamie Lee  
I love that. So in other words, reward yourself for just having taken the action.

Kathryn Valentine  
Yeah, because it's like anything else, right? Negotiation is a muscle and the more times we use it, the easier it gets. But those first handful of times, they're rough, right? I mean, having been escorted out by security guard was not my favorite experience. And so I think part of it is also being kind to ourselves in the process.

Jamie Lee  
100% and I love what you're saying and sometimes I do this inside the coaching container where I help my clients really envision and visualize how satisfying how gratifying it would be for them to reward themselves to be on the other side of it. And then they can sort of copy and paste that feeling on to the expectation or the anticipation of the the actual negotiation. 

Kathryn Valentine  
Jamie, that's so great. 

Jamie Lee  
Thank you. Yeah. And I want to just highlight once again, it's taking those steps like initiating those conversations. That's even if you fail if you get escorted out of the building, right, that leads to more growth. And I've seen that because I have coached clients who felt like the first sign of pushback they get, they're like, oh, it means I failed. It means I shouldn't have it means I shouldn't I shouldn't do that. Right. And we know that Wayne Gretzky said, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. But I also like to remind my clients that he never actually made 100% of the shots he did take. So does that make him a failure? I guess Yes. I guess that makes me a failure [laughter].

Kathryn Valentine  
That's a fun way of looking at that. Okay. So can I build on that for a second? 

Jamie Lee  
Yes, please. 

Kathryn Valentine  
So the first thing that I always just to say to your audience is I failed, because I took advice that was meant for a man, and I act as if it would work for me. So for anyone out there who's thinking about it, like, talk to Jamie, look at our stuff like you can do this without having a backlash that I suffered, there is a way to do it without having the backlash that I suffered. The problem is, we just don't talk about it enough. And publications, continue to publish advice that is gender specific, that would work for males and act as if it's not gender specific. So please, like if you have a big negotiation coming up, it is worth getting some help here. So first thing, the second thing is when you say no, the other thing that I always remind myself is even the word no is a gendered word. Right? So we have been raised. There, these toy coding studies starting back in the 1970s, right, and they repeat them every five years since where researchers go into homes with children they look at with children being given to play with. And what they find is little boys are being given toys that teach agency, I build this up, I knock it down, I'm exerting my power on the world. Little girls are being given toys that teach reactivity, my little baby cries, I respond to it. My Nana's thirsty, I make her a drink in my kitchen, right? And children are so aware of gendered expectations that babies as young as 18 months old, so before they're even potty trained, respond with fear when an actor comes in and acts in a gender unexpected way. Right? So it's like hardwired into us. No, as part of that I respond to my brother responds to know as if it's a piece of information, because to him, that's all it is. To me, I've been conditioned that my value is and how I make others feel, and know is a direct hit to that identity. Right. And so even that word means that we have to start to divorce ourselves from basically messages that are sent to us every day, all day our entire lives. To understand that, that no just means, you know, not this thing at this time. It doesn't mean, you're not a good person. I don't like you. I don't want to work with you anymore, right? All of those things that at least in my mind, I interpret it to mean sometimes. 

Jamie Lee  
 Right. And just to add to that, no can mean, like you said, not now, or I don't really understand the value, or the beyond impact,  the benefit of your ask, in a way that makes sense for me to relate to the ultimate decision maker?

Kathryn Valentine  
Well, it's so interesting, because the way that you're phrasing that it really pulls out for me like negotiation, at the end of the day is a sales job.

Jamie Lee  
Mm hmm. Yeah. And actually, can I ask you a tough question? 

Kathryn Valentine  
Sure. Go for it. Why not? 

Jamie Lee  
Um, you know, we're both consultants. I'm a coach, and I work with women of all stripes, all backgrounds, and some of them identify as genderqueer. Or maybe some of them have been socialized as women, but they don't identify as women anymore. They see themselves as non binary. And so the, you know, the way you've described the Gender Research, and most of the research that I've read, they have like this footnote, this is we understand they're non binary folks. But for the purposes of this research, we just made it binary. And so how could gender queer folks or non binary folks benefit? How can... what can they take away from this research that have been presented in a binary way? What do you think about that?

Kathryn Valentine  
That's such a good question. So two thoughts. The first one is Is that my company really prides itself on being research backed, right? Like these conversations are too important to send you in with like my opinion, I'm only going to send you in with things that have been proven. There is not a not... And frankly, I can only think one study that just came out a few months ago, there is not enough research on negotiation, and non binary or frankly, even just negotiation and LB... LGBTQ plus, right, even negotiation, and women really only started eight years ago. If you think about it, maybe nine

Jamie Lee  
 when the research started

Kathryn Valentine  
 Yeah, when it really started building out, and to your point, Linda Babcock was on the front end of that, I think hers came out in 2002, it was pretty quiet for a while. And it wasn't until 2013 ish, that we start to see this explosion in research again. And that is around women. And before that we didn't have too much. Now, we still don't have very much not even close to enough on women of color on LGBTQ plus and on non binary. So from a research perspective, there's not much I can add there now to take off like my company hat and to put on my Kathryn hat. Anecdotally, what I have seen is and I've seen actually a lot of men use our strategies to anecdotally, what I have seen is that it just gives you another tool that you can decide whether or not it feels authentic to you. And if having conversations and collaborative ways where it's a win win, where you're solving a problem together, feels more comfortable to you, then you're more likely to negotiate. And we should definitely use that tool. If that doesn't feel I worked with one woman who was ex Navy, and she'd been in the Navy for like 15 years. And it just wasn't her style, like she had been brought up on command and control hierarchy. This is how this works. She did not she was much more comfortable with that approach. In which case, you know that this tool is there, use it if you want to, but by no means do you need to or have to if it doesn't feel more comfortable to you.

Jamie Lee  
I really appreciate you sharing that because in my one on one coaching containers, self empowerment is so important. And that starts with knowing that you get to make a decision that feels right and makes the most sense for you. Even if there's all this like plethora of research saying X, Y and Z at the end of the day, you get to decide. I think it's self sovereignty.

Kathryn Valentine  
And that I would have loved to have been one of your coaching clients. 100%. Yes. And what I'm doing here is I'm just introducing another tool in the toolkit.

Jamie Lee  
Yeah, that reminds me I have a client who's an expert in the medical field, and she read this Cornell University research about status leveling burden of high status women in the medical field. And I don't know if you're familiar with it, basically, 

Kathryn Valentine  
I have seen it. 

Jamie Lee  
Yes. And for my client, when she read the research she shared it with me, we read it. And it created some stress for her. Because it led to this thinking that she had to level her status in order to get along with the nursing stuff in order for her to get promoted in order for her to have a good enough reputation, right, to advance your career. So I'm like, okay, and let's just remember, some strategies are useful, and not all of them are. And also sometimes these research, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Sometimes they echo, like very personal opinions that are not necessarily objective, but that are not necessarily data. Yeah?

Kathryn Valentine  
There is one study that I read a couple of years ago that concluded that the experience is no different for women of color. That just can't possibly be true. There is just Yes, there is no way that that can be true. Right. And so I agree with you that like I don't, I wouldn't hinge too much on one study. A lot of what we do is I was actually just reviewing today our log of 220 studies in one area. So I always want things double, triple, quadruple, validated, which actually, frankly, presents even more of an issue for the groups that we were talking about earlier, because having having one study would be fantastic, right? We don't have much at all there. There's a there's a couple new ones and women of color that are pretty good, but even that it still treats all women of color as one group. Right. We're not the research community is

Kathryn Valentine  
there's definitely plenty of good work left to do. Yeah,

Jamie Lee  
yeah. It's not perfect. It's not it's not perfect, but, you know, with the with judiciousness All right, that sounds like deliciousness. When I'm sorry, say that again.

Kathryn Valentine  
 I said, and I'm so hungry.

Jamie Lee  
Okay. I think we're gonna wrap this up. So Katherine, can go have lunch, but um, I really appreciate you going to that. To that tough place and like, acknowledging at the end of the day as individuals, as, as people, as as human beings, we get to make a decision for ourselves, what is most useful. And by and large, what we're learning is that relational ask, in other words, framing, owning your past accomplishments and talking about your wins in a way that highlights what is the benefit? How does the other side... How does your employer how does your team win? Doing that helps women negotiate successfully in general, and there are always exceptions to be made. And that's okay. Did I miss anything? 

Kathryn Valentine  
No. And I really love the way that you put it out there as nothing is perfect, but at least we're building on it every day.

Jamie Lee  
That's right. That's right. And so I'm curious. What do you think this all means for men?

Kathryn Valentine  
So I have a couple of thoughts. For so one thing that I've seen happen over the past year is the percentage of the people coming to our talks that are men has skyrocketed. So when I very when I started doing this, I was virtually in 2020 Noman. 2021, handful, not many, I did a session yesterday that was 40%. Which is fascinating to me, right. So I think one thing is, knowing this enables you to be a better ally, a better colleague, a better manager, a better brother, a better son, right, a better father. And actually, it's amazing how many fathers we have come to this, right. But it allows you to be not only better at your job, but to better support the the women in your life. The second thing, though, and Jamie, I'd be curious on your take on this. But as we continue to move in a more and more collaborative direction, just in how we do business. My hypothesis is that the way that women the way that it behooves us to negotiate now, because we can lower the risk of backlash is actually going to become the way that everyone is going to want to negotiate soon, because as we go from more command and control to more collaborative workplaces, the old combative way of negotiating just really isn't gonna fly. So those are my two thoughts. One, it makes you a better ally, a better manager. Two, I think it can be a really good tool in your toolbox to

Jamie Lee  
I would have to agree and I would, I would love to see that happen. And that become more of the norm for everyone. And so some people are wondering, wait, what companies are paying to train their women and their men to negotiate and their managers to be ready for this? Like, why are companies doing this, Catherine?

Kathryn Valentine  
Companies are doing this because they've actually done a really good job of recruiting incoming classes that are 50/50. But what's happening is if half of that class is more likely to leave than the other half, then when you think about your future leadership, you're having to pull from a pool, that's half the size of what it used to be. And so it's really to their benefit, both for their future growth. And I think morally, to figure out how to retain more women. And one of the ways they have done that is a lot of top down programming, right, longer maternity leave, shipped breast milk, whatever it may be, and those are applaudable, and part of the solution. But what we have missed up to this point is that no individual is the same, right? So what you and I need to be successful is not the same, I'm not going to guess that what you need now is different from what you needed five years ago, and will be different from what you need in five years. So we have to enable a bottoms up mechanism to match these women into what they need to be successful. And that is what negotiation is right negotiation allows you as an individual to identify what it is that you need. And then to have that conversation. At this point in time, we have value unrealized value laying all over our organizations, because those conversations haven't been able to happen freely for one gender. And our job is to alleviate that pain point so that women and managers are in a position to openly discuss what is necessary, even though it's different from what it historically has been.

Jamie Lee  
What I love about this is that you approach negotiation not as a transaction, not as a haggle not as a bargaining tool, but it's like it's more of a holistic conversation about what is it that I truly want. It helps you raise your awareness and helps you raise your awareness about the impact of your contributions so that you're really having a mutually beneficial conversation? Yeah, I love that. So Kevin, is there anything else that I missed that you would love, you know, for me to ask or

Kathryn Valentine  
the only thing I would mention is for any of your listeners who want to see that list, you can go to our website, which is worth more negotiations.com. And at the top, there's a yellow bar, if you click on that, and put in your email list or email address, it will send you our list of 75 things you can negotiate for. And I think it's always one of the things that when you whenever you have an opportunity to negotiate, it's helpful to just skim that list and it triggers new ideas, if nothing else, I love it. And it's all for free offering. Yes, actually, that's the our corporate work, subsidizes our direct work. So we don't actually sell anything to consumers right now. We just try to produce resources.

Jamie Lee  
We appreciate that. And if anyone who is listening to this, and they're like, oh, I want to get my, you know, CHR o or the head of HR talking with capital, where should they go? Danny, thank

Kathryn Valentine  
you so much for asking, you can go to that same website worth more strategies.com and you can go to the contact form and emails that way. At the same time, if you're also on the planning committee for a women's conference, or if your women's ERG brings in speakers we do a lot of training through keynotes. And so that's another good way to connect.

Jamie Lee  
Excellent. Well, this has been pure pleasure. I hope we can have another chat soon. And I'm gonna like you go have some lunch now. Jamie, this

Kathryn Valentine  
was great. Thank you so much for your time. This was really fun.

Jamie Lee  
What do people actually say when they negotiate for big pay raise? If this is you, I've got you. As an executive coach for smart women. I help my clients figure exactly this out. To help you help yourself. I've put together a completely free eBook How to ask for a big pay raise, which you can access right away from my website, Jamie Lee coach.com. That's spelled J a m i e L e e C o a c h dot com. In this free ebook, you're going to get to real client case studies showcasing how to secure a 44% pay increase in more 20 Easy to read pages that you can access directly on your mobile because you gotta prep on the go. And three simple questions for getting past in past with curiosity and creative brainstorming. So don't wait. Go grab your free ebook How to ask for a big pay raise on Jamie Lee coach.com and I will talk to you soon