Noa Sheer

Once you have an alternative, you are very powerful in that negotiation.

And once you understand the cost to the other party, you are very powerful in that negotiation.

Second, using the rights approach, we must benchmark and understand what people in other industries, companies, countries even are making for the same work that we are doing or that we want to be doing.

And so now we're not just hyping ourselves up.

We're actually giving valid reasons for why we deserve a certain amount.

And we need to be very confident in that, especially, especially women, because we make the mistake of already conceding before we go to the conversation.

Specifically as a woman, one mistake that we make, according to some really interesting research, is that we go in representing just ourselves.

Why is that a problem?

Because women are evidently, from all of this crazy research, we're just happy to take a concession.

If it's just for us, we can deal with less.

We'll be okay.

We put ourselves last.

And if we even superficially persuaded ourselves that we're not negotiating for ourselves, we're negotiating for somebody else, we're negotiating for our children, we're negotiating for my family, for my

parents who are going to need help in old age.

We're negotiating for unborn children.

We're negotiating for the next generation of women in this firm to set a precedent.

Whatever it is, we empower ourselves in that way.

So the first mistake is to think that you're just negotiating for yourself.

The second mistake is to think that this is about not wanting to look greedy.

Try to avoid looking like a pushover, is what I say.