WOMEN AND NEGOTIATION

I make a living through negotiation and lawsuits.  One thing I find is that females have trouble dealing with some real workplace issues.  They mistakenly believe that every assignment given them must be performed. This is very common among women.  The result is that many women work themselves into severe stress trying to get things done.  This is a failure of negotiation.  Let’s find a way to fix it:

 

As an exercise on a very small scale, take a deliverable, something you owe someone on a deadline.  Pick one that is either to a lower level person who can't affect your career much, or to a friend.  Not something for a major client, etc.  Now on this deliverable, you do something deliberate.  You blow it off.  Neglect to do it.  You are aware of your intentional nonperformance but you don't say anything about it to anyone.  You drop the football.  Click a mental stopwatch from the deadline to the point that someone asks you for the thing.  Is it a day, a week, a month?  Startlingly, sometimes the follow-up to your nonperformance never comes.  This is an old Navy trick designed to test for priorities.  We were schooled on doing this.  If no one follows up on this thing, take it off your list.  "If it's important, someone will holler for it."  Now say the person does come calling.  Measure the confrontation volume.  Is it sweet?  "I really needed that, can you please fit it in?"  Or is it gunpowder?  "God-fucking-dammit, I needed that and you wobbled my client meeting!!!  I'm telling on you!"  (note, if you picked the experimental deliverable well, this won't happen)

 

Now, that may be enough of an exercise for now.  But later, if you feel brave, do it again.  Pick a different deliverable for a different manager or internal client.  Again, pick a low priority or something that won't get you killed.  Now, drop the ball again.  Don't do the thing at all.  Click the stopwatch and await the confrontation.  Let's say it comes in the form of an email reminder.  Now, for confrontations, here's the "gouge" (information so simple even a professor can understand it):  respond in kind.  If you are expedited by email, respond by email.  If the email is nice, respond nicely.  (Note, always good to maintain professional courtesy, up to the point that you decide to intentionally abandon professional courtesy, more on that later).  If the email is curt, respond curtly.  If the confrontation is a visit in your office and the person sits, you remain sitting.  If he doesn't sit, you stand up and face him.  Listen carefully to the confrontation to separate truth from fiction.  Divide the incoming data into 2 piles -- the real effect of your dropped ball, and the anxiety your being "unreliable" or "out of control" caused.  The first data pile is important -- is the effect of the fumble the same as your prediction, or did you miss something?  Use this information to increase your knowledge of the organization and how it works.  The second data pile is also important -- you need to calm fears. 

 

So now deal with calming of fears.  Reassure the person that the fumble was due to workload, and that you prioritized it below other stuff that did get done.  Be ready with a mental list of what you had as higher priorities.

 

One of two things happens.  Either you correctly prioritized or you didn't.  In the first case, where your other priorities were higher, the confronter (management, your boss or internal client) will nod and ask when you can get it done.  In the second case, of your working on a lower priority rather than the fumble, you'll be told that you prioritized incorrectly.  Ask how you would know.  This puts the ball in the manager's court.

 

Now, here's the thing.  If you never fumble the ball, you are communicating to your management that you don't have enough work to do.  At the point that you begin to drop the ball, management will then back off, because they are your partners -- they want the work done too!  But if you never fuck up an assignment, management thinks they are fucking up by not loading you up enough.

 

Keep doing this and getting experience at fumbling assignments.  What you will find out is this:

 

1.  The world is incredibly forgiving of fumbles.  It expects them.  Machinery is in place to deal with them, machinery you've never seen because you never fumble.

 

2.  The bigger the fumble, the more people cooperate with you to get it done.  Do this skillfully and you will be given an entire department to run to make sure you don't fumble again!  Which means corner office, more money, more prestige -- all from intentionally screwing up!

 

3.  The more you fumble, the more you learn about the politics of the organization.

 

I'm such an expert at fumbling that I am essentially doubling if not tripling my already ridiculous salary by doing this (story for another day).