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Welcome to Risky Conversations. I'm Jamie Lee and I'm an executive coach for smart women who don't like office politics. And I help them get promoted, get better paid without throwing anyone under the bus. And why risky conversations? Because everything that's worthwhile is on the other side of a risky conversation. Like negotiation. And we do know that negotiation can feel particularly risky for women because there is the well-researched and observed phenomenon of gender pushback. And we also do know that increasingly women are negotiating, but we're also hearing no more often. And so we have to wonder what is the problem? And here's the thing: the problem is not that women cannot negotiate. Women do negotiate. We are great negotiators. But the problem is that when it comes to negotiating for a pay and promotion in the workplace, we're taught, we're conditioned to negotiate in the wrong way, or by playing by roles that were never meant for us. We're taught to negotiate in ways that are ineffective for women professionals. So what's the more effective way? This episode is going to dive right into the three core negotiation skills. Three core negotiation skills that are immediately actionable. And you'll find out that by implementing these three core skills, you not only improve your negotiation outcomes, you improve your relationships in the workplace and beyond. And also in this episode, I'm going to showcase a quick case study of my client Sarah Neal, who actually did a podcast interview in Risky Conversations. And she is a wonderful example of how by implementing these core skills, you can not only improve and pivot in your career, you can get better paid. She went from being an unhappy professor to pivoting and making 7% more. And then she pivoted again and she's making 50% more in her income. To be transparent, this episode is an excerpt from a training that I did earlier in 2026. And you are invited to come to Jamileecoach.com to join my newsletter list so that you can stay in the loop for more exciting and new trainings that I will be doing this year. So stick around. Here's a quote from another negotiation trainer. His name is Chester Karis. He says, You don't get what you deserve. You don't get what you deserve. You get what you ask for. We deserve the world. We deserve, you know, we think we deserve what we want. But if you don't ask, you don't get. So what are we not asking? Are we not asking for the compensation, whether that's salary, bonuses, market adjustments, severance pay if you're leaving? Are we not asking for the title that we want? Are we not asking for the scope of responsibility? Are we not asking for full time? And if you're exiting, exiting, are you not asking for fractional work contracts? Hint, hint, are you not talking about the promotion timeline or trying to engage in open, curious dialogue, pacing and leading to co-create a promotion timeline? This is the work that I help my clients do who are executives and managers. You know, at this level, it's not a syllabus how you get promoted. It's not written out step by step. No. In fact, most of most of people's jobs, it's not like that. It's it's like, how do we co-create? How do we show up as an invested stakeholder in the conversation, not to somebody who's receiving the step by step, but look, let me sit with the boss or the stakeholder or the skip level boss and propose some ideas on how that promotion timeline can look, right? Additionally, stock options, grants, vesting schedule, conditions for accelerated vesting. Maybe you're you're thinking about an exit negotiation because your company is going to have an exit, right? Whether it gets sold or does an IPO. And executives do this. Executives start their job offer negotiation thinking about the end, especially if you're going into a tech startup that or some sort of uh company that is designed for an exit event. We want to make sure that we have thought through and negotiated the specific conditions for when your stock options or grants, stock grants, vest, they become yours, right? As soon as the company is sold or it goes IPO. Yeah. Work-life balance, flexibility, hybrid. If you can work hybrid or remotely, that gives you more time to yourself to work on with a side hustle or additional fractional work, right? And you can also negotiate health insurance coverage if you're negotiating an active exit, because health insurance is expensive, yeah. And every single day that you're covered is it matters, yeah. And additionally, if you're thinking about actively exiting the workplace, think about negotiating a consulting retainer. Somebody I know did this. They were very, very unhappy in a role. And they said, if I could just do a little bit of consulting for this company and not have to report to this particular person ever again, I would be so happy. And I said, You know, you can ask for that. And they're like, I can? Yeah. And you can even tell them how much rate you want to charge, and you can negotiate that. They're like, Oh, they were so much happier. So you could leave and you could still have a source of income. And additionally, there's hardware references, referrals, and NDA, non-compete, non-solicitation. I did a podcast interview with another negotiation person expert, and she was talking to me about how tech employees who are getting laid off, they don't have to sign the NDA. They don't have to sign that agreement the company demands you sign as you are, you know, being laid off. You don't have to sign it right away. And that gives you leverage, that gives you time to ask if you can get a higher severance pay, if you can keep some of the hardware, if they can make some exceptions, if they be willing to work. You know, you can ask for things because you have leverage. And there's so much more that is negotiable. But but, you know, there was a time in my life when I didn't know any of this. I didn't know any of this. So let me tell you about that time in my life. Yeah. So so if we go back in time to maybe like 12, 14, 15 years ago, I was very, very unhappy in my before state. I would spend nearly all of my free time constantly replaying the unhappy, frustrating exchanges I had with bosses that I didn't respect and I didn't like. And I would just felt so resentful. I was anxious. I was timid to speak up in meetings. People would be like, Jamie, speak up, speak from your diaphragm. And it's funny, now I'm laughing because I'm a public speaker. I give workshops like this. Yeah. I would anticipate rejection and pushback. I was stuck in this compare and despair loop, you know, comparing myself to other people. Never initiate conversations about my career aspirations because I didn't know any of the things that I just shared with you. I would find out. When was this? This was 2010. So this was 16 years ago. I found out a year into a hedge fund job that was making 50% of the going market average as a junior analyst. I read a report. I read an industry report that said hedge fund analysts typically make $100,000. I'm like, why am I making $50? And then I quickly spiraled into the blame shame game, blaming myself, shaming myself, and hoping, hoping somebody else will notice that I'm a really good person. I work hard. I'm really smart. I went to Smith College. I had Ace. I was on the honor list. Somebody will notice I'm good and make things happen for me and then feel disappointed because, of course, hoping is not a strategy. So fast forward in time, I learned the things that I just shared with you about the true core skills of negotiation, all the things that are negotiable that people don't tell you about. You know, they don't teach this in college. Yeah. Once I learned that, and then once I learned the mind-shifting tools, I started imagining and creating a future where my gifts bring joy and abundance to others. I started taking calculated risks to make reasonable, persistent as for what I want. I left bad fit jobs. I negotiated my safe landings via fractional work, partnerships, and offers. And I did uncomfortable things on purpose because I realized I'm responsible for my results, not other people. I'm going to tell you a little bit more about that shift. It's a very, very important distinction. And I remember that I'm in control of my career, not people I would never invite to Sunday brunch like the bosses that I didn't like. And I came to this realization because one day I was ruminating, I was feeling frustrated. And my life partner, he turned to me and he says, he gave me this coaching. He said, Do you know you're in control of your career? I said, Yeah. And that was the moment I realized I've been passing the remote to my career, the remote control to my career, to my boss, to my colleagues, to other people, to the economy, to the company. And then wondering why I felt so terrible. So let's just pause and ask who has the remote to your career? Yeah. And this is a really important question because when I started learning negotiation and started leading workshops for professional women, there was this one key concept that changed everything. There was the question, do you know you're you're in control of your career? And then this key concept solidified it, anchored it in for me. And this is the concept called locus of control. It's just academic verbiage for who's in control. And where is that local, the the focal point, the control dashboard, the control, the remote control of where is it placed? Is it outside of you? So you end up blaming external forces for your own circumstances and you feel out of balance and you feel like swept away. Yeah, and you're like, ah, like this person on the left. Or do you believe that the locus of control, you have the remote? It's in you. You are in control, and therefore you take responsibility for your own actions. And please do not consider this like I'm not trying to this, you know, pass this along as if like trying to shame people. There's a really good reason so many of us start, including me, with an external locus of control. Especially if you're a woman, especially if you're socialized in this patriarchal world, we are almost conditioned, we're taught to believe that placing the locus of control outside of us is the right thing to do. Right? Like, take, for example, this seemingly innocent statement don't make Tommy feel bad. Be nice to Nancy, right? It's like as if some other people outside of you can control your emotions. And starts with something so subtle like that, and all the messaging, yeah. It's like and how people commonly think about what affects their sense of well-being. It's well, it's this, it's the headlines, it's right. So please, please be mindful that if you notice that you had placed the locus of control outside of you, it's not a reason to blame yourself. It's just an opportunity to think more objectively about what had led to that, and to acknowledge the invisible context in which women, especially women of color, minorities, uh, people who are marginalized, yeah, we're almost conditioned to see ourselves in this way, in the before rather than the after. And to put this in the context of negotiation, there is this really cool concept called tiara syndrome. And the tiara syndrome is something that happens when you expect other people to reward you for being good and doing good work. So you're waiting, you're expecting it to happen. I just spoke with a friend and she was so upset that you know somebody she's dating temporarily didn't respond and say, Oh, I'm so sorry you had a rough week. But I'm like, but you didn't tell them that you wanted that person to say that, right? So she was waiting and hoping that the other person would just say the right things, right? How often are we waiting and hoping, right? Waiting to be recognized. And the reason why I put these really cute sunglasses on the before person is because you're blinded. You cannot see your own potential, you cannot see your own power when you're in this tiara syndrome, the tiara that never arrives. And that's why the tiara is on the sovereign mindset, the after way, your it's internal locus of control. It's your tiara, you put it on your own head, yeah, you cultivate self-trust to do new things, you create evidence in your mind first before it's in the real world. You embrace uncomfortable on purpose. And I read that in research they found that people who intentionally cultivate an internalized locus of control negotiate more and therefore get more. Because if you don't ask, you don't get so with this in mind, what does it take to negotiate like a sovereign? What are the three steps? And what does a sovereign have? Sovereign has the right rule, the sovereign has uh right to their own agency. The sovereign has votes. Yeah, they have the votes, they can vote. So, what are the votes? The sovereign has the vote to vote for themselves, vote with their tribe, and vote with your feet. So let me tell you about each of these three steps. The first step, vote for yourself. Here are the three key disciplines assessing your value from an objective perspective. Remember, we're taking off the glasses. That's why unbiased yourself is the sunglasses, right? But first, let's let's think about everything you have done in the past. Let's take stock of your contributions, your strengths, your values so that you can decouple your worth, your professional value from the opinions of others that is unreliable, subjective, and fickle, especially if you work for bosses who are like, you know, this this time, this quarter, I think you need improvement, although you met all of your metrics. And I don't really have a good reason for that. It's just, that's just how I feel. This is something that a client told me has literally happened to her. And we also want to unbias ourselves and recognize that gender, race, and minority bias in a broken world is not a sign that we're not enough. The reason why I say this is because when we work in toxic workplaces that you know that that perpetuates perpetuates the why can't I speak English all of a sudden? You know what I mean. Inequities, right? We have a tendency innocently to think that means there's something wrong with us. So, how do we unbias ourselves? Take off the sunglasses so we're not lost, we're not blinded to our own potential. And then from there, making decisions from the person that you're becoming, not the person that you had been. Who are you becoming? And from that place, making decisions and from that place articulating what you've done, where you are, and where you'd like to go. Those are the three key disciplines. And here's how my client Sarah Neal, she and I just did a podcast interview. So if you go to podcast.jameleecoach.com, you can listen to the interview I did with Sarah Neal. And basically, this was her before. Before coaching, she checked all the boxes. She's a PhD, art history professor, highly competitive field, but felt unfulfilled, overworked, underpaid. And she was experiencing that Stockholm syndrome where you're blinded because she felt afraid and nervous to leave the confines of a toxic workplace due to some cost fallacy. I've invested years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to get this degree and be a professor. But now I want to out. Is it okay? Is that gonna be all right? And she felt unsure how to have career conversations or communicate effectively to showcase her future potential in a new industry. And she had big financial goals. She she she wanted things for her life, yeah, but she just felt unsure and she was lacking confidence on achieving them. So here's the after by walking through this framework, and I'm showcasing the vote for yourself. So we decoupled her self-worth from the toxic workplace to own her transferable skills. And in doing so, we we grounded her in that confidence and then we pasted that confidence into job offer negotiations. In doing so, she's first secured 7% pay increase increase in the first job, and then second time, she got a 50% pay increase. And both times she pivoted into brand new different fields. And we leveraged neuroplasticity, yeah, to override that Stockholm syndrome. And she was able to show up through these interviews and negotiations, feeling more like herself, feeling calm and poised. And she talked about where she wants to go. And she did that pacing and leading beautifully. And she thought about, you know, who are the people in the room, right? She she led with her empathy and she navigated the uncertainty. Yeah. And she ended up securing a six-figure role. And on top of that, she's she launched her own sovereign income-generating online course. And if you want to check it out, it's really cool. It's called Small Conversations, Big Impact. And she teaches people how to do informational interviews because that's how she was able to pivot into all these different industries. I'm like, how did you do that? You have to teach it. And so she is. And so now she's benefiting more people while making more money. That is the power of voting for yourself. So, in summary, the three core negotiation skills, number one, network sovereignty, number two, pacing and leading, and number three, navigating uncertainty. When you implement these three core skills, they will not only improve your career outcomes, income potential, and relationships, they will improve your reputation. And we also heard Sarah Neal's case study. When you vote for yourself, you will decouple your professional value from a toxic workplace so that you can confidently step into your true potential and improve your outcomes. And that's what Sarah Neal did. But you know, voting for yourself is just step number one in this framework. In the subsequent episode next week, you're going to see what happens when you engage your tribe strategically. And when you know it's time to quote unquote vote with your feet, when the workplace is just no longer a fit and you still want to grow, it's about voting with your feet. Because Sarah Neal's not the only one with this incredible story, and neither are you. So if you're ready to go deeper, if you'd like to dive deeper on this framework and you're ready to get supported, and you like to have this framework customized for your unique situation, you're invited to book a free hour-long consultation with me. The link to book the consultation is in the show notes. And in this free hour, we're going to co design a custom roadmap for you to activate your negotiation muscle and improve tangible career outcomes. And until then, I'll talk to you soon.