2
Recognizing Opportunities and Positioning to Negotiate
Several years ago at our regular Tuesday morning game, my tennis partner arrived close to tears. It was obvious that we had to spend some time talking about what was troubling her before we got on the court. As her colleague, I knew she was going through a challenging time. She'd recently put into motion a plan to adopt a child from South America. In fact, she had just received notification that all had been arranged for her to travel to Paraguay the following month to pick up an eighteen-month-old girl. Her maternity leave had already been set. Anticipating her new role as a single mother, she'd prepared for the challenges she foresaw.
On the day before we met, she was shocked when the most senior member of her department visited her office and announced that the department had decided she should become the next department chair when she returned from maternity leave. “No way,” she told him. She was already afraid she'd be overwhelmed just keeping up with her normal teaching, research, and service roles. Still, her senior colleague persisted: it was her turn to take the role, he said; other members of the department had taken their turn. Again, she told him no. After some back and forth where he persisted and she resisted, he told her that she was not being a team player in the department. It was that insult that put her over the edge. When she arrived at our tennis match, she told me she was going to quit the university. I observed that this was a precipitous move, given that she had tenure!
It was clear to me that she had not seen this request as an opportunity to negotiate.
Opportunities to Negotiate
It's often difficult to identify negotiating opportunities during occasions like these. Whether such exchanges look like a request or more like an order, they are embedded in ongoing structures and relationships within the organization—what we call the negotiated order.
Consider some examples from situations where people are asked to do something:
- A dean asks a female colleague to teach an extra session of an oversubscribed course that they need her to do because of high student demand. Already very busy, she says no. The dean then asks her male colleague and he says sure—as long as he doesn't have to teach it again for the next three years!
- A partner in a professional services firm is promoted to lead her office. Firm leaders believe she's the right person to lead a turnaround in the practice, and she excitedly says yes. After eighteen months, she brings the group to breakeven but is then taken out of the role. She'd never thought to negotiate what the expectations for a turnaround would be.
As we saw in chapter 1, even very senior women often fail to negotiate anything about the role, its contours, even its compensation when offered a new role—even when it's a role they don't want. They assume that turning down an opportunity might mean it will never come again, so they feel they have to say yes. Too few recognize the ways they could negotiate to make the role fit the person they are and what they want to accomplish.
It's not just requests that go unnoticed when it comes to potential negotiating possibilities. One of my colleagues incurred the wrath of those around her when she took a rigid stance about an administrative issue. Absolutely convinced that she was “right,” she kept arming herself with legal arguments about her position.1 Since then, she's suffered the consequences of her actions: an erosion of once-cordial relationships with her colleagues and the administration. What she failed to appreciate was that she could hold her interest in the merits of her position yet still leave room for the possibility of a negotiated outcome.
These examples could easily lead us to subscribe to the notion that “women don't ask.”2 But the issues are a bit more complicated—because they have to do with different negotiating contexts.
Getting in Your Own Way
We discussed the difference between n-negotiations and N-negotiations in chapter 1. One thing this distinction helps us to recognize is that negotiators can get in their own way as they prepare to negotiate for themselves—in a number of ways. There are also a number of steps you can take to overcome these tendencies.
Don't Miss Opportunities to Negotiate
Since the problems are embedded in organizational routines, it can take effort merely to see a new situation as potentially negotiable. When asked to take on extra responsibilities, people can feel their only options are black and white: yes or no. I am struck in the programs I teach by the number of people whose goal is to learn to say no more often, a position that eradicates any further possibilities. Instead, I encourage people to think about these situations as ripe for negotiation.
Some of the research suggests that men may be more likely to recognize situations as negotiable—at least if we believe what they report in online surveys. Such research establishes that men are likely to have negotiated more recently than women.3 But while gender difference is the attributed reason,4 there may be more at play.
One element of this is that it's quite possible that women and men have varying ability to access the kinds of information that would help them recognize negotiation as a possibility. A colleague of mine observes that male faculty members are more likely than women to negotiate. She doesn't attribute this to a deficiency in the women; rather, she realizes that male colleagues have role models and supporters who coach them and demonstrate how it is done. It is likely that men within organizations have networks that grant them more and better access to information about the negotiated order itself—around what types of issues are negotiable and possible outcomes.5
Don't Bargain Yourself Down
There are other ways that people can get in their own way. If they feel as though they're on less secure ground, they may tend to focus on their own weaknesses and bargain themselves down. When pricing contracts, a colleague of mine routinely estimates the number of days she will need to prepare and then subtracts a day. She has made the first concession in her head: she rationally figures out what should be a legitimate opening offer, then discounts it. Sadly, this is all too common. Either we cannot imagine achieving something, or we worry that the other party will see it as unrealistic or too aggressive. Indeed, some research suggests that women may be more likely to drop their opening offer from what they originally intended.6 And if we are to believe, as Henry Kissinger suggests, that one's opening offer is as good as it will get, then making a first concession in one's head can be a real handicap!7
Setting lower goals isn't the only way we bargain ourselves down. We often focus so much on negotiating about one issue that we decide not to bring up other things that are important to us and necessary—to do our jobs effectively. For example, women can sometimes be so grateful about the flexible work options they've already negotiated that they fail to ask about other issues.8 The fact that you've arranged to work remotely one day a week shouldn't keep you from asking to serve on the new task force that reports to the chief information officer. The challenge is to feel empowered by past negotiations—not let them hinder you from asking for more.
Don't Let Expectations Limit Your Options
There's a third way that potential negotiators can undermine themselves in negotiation: letting projections and expectations limit their options. For example, there is frequently the cultural expectation that a woman will be collaborative when negotiating on her own behalf by putting others' interests before her own. Such an expectation can create a dilemma or double bind for her. In other words, she is expected to be communal, when it is agency that determines successful negotiation outcomes.
Acting Communally versus Acting with Agency.
This expectation has several implications. First, it forces a woman to choose between efficacy as a negotiator (having agency) and fulfilling gender stereotypes of niceness and accommodation (being communal). These kinds of double binds occur when women are faced with acting in accordance with ideas of femininity—when others judge them as less competent—or acting in accordance with ideas of masculinity, whether others see them as aggressive and unlikable. (We discuss double binds more thoroughly in chapter 4.)
This dichotomizing of style choices evokes a private-sphere ethic of care: because women are associated with caregiving, they are expected to put others' needs before their own.9 In the context of negotiation, this can mean that a woman is expected to make accommodations or feel responsibility for ensuring that all parties are satisfied with a deal. When she “owns” that responsibility, she may put others' interests before her own and make concessions that fail to benefit her. Indeed, they might actually result in suboptimal deals for everyone involved.
Owning the Responsibility That Everyone Leave Satisfied.
In her work on relational practice, our colleague Joyce Fletcher has described this tendency to feel responsible for ensuring that all parties are satisfied at the end of a negotiation. As Fletcher demonstrates, this is not a positive approach to relationships or to the task of getting work done. Indeed, she labels this behavior relational malpractice: it's possible for women to focus so much on what others want that they lose their authority and fail to make use of their expertise.10 They may be focused on being liked or trying to create a caring environment at the expense of completing the task at hand. Fletcher suggests that whatever stance one takes needs to be connected to what is necessary for the task at hand. Thus, when a negotiator focuses on what is likely to be best for all parties—herself included—she is less likely to sacrifice her own interests for those of others. She can take up her own agency in the service of community and accomplish the dual tasks of doing well for herself and for others.
These observations about potential pitfalls of negotiating for oneself require us to think about preparation in a somewhat different way. We have discussed the importance of gathering good information so that you can feel that what you ask for is defensible. But more is involved in getting you to feel more secure in asking, especially when issues of legitimacy may be involved. You must have the tools to be an effective advocate for yourself in order to create interdependence with the other party—which you need to get negotiations going and to keep them going.
Positioning to Negotiate
In N-negotiations, we generally consider that parties are positioned to negotiate.11 There's an assumed structure to the negotiation; the parties have roles—say, buyer and seller—and they are theoretically engaged in trying to make a deal. Obviously there are many slips twixt this coming together and the actual deal; every year, an entire industry publishes books on this very subject. While getting to yes is obviously a challenge, there is a shared understanding in the N-negotiations that the parties are engaged in some form of bargaining—whether it succeeds or not.
“Constructing” n-Negotiations
Organizational n-negotiations are less clear-cut.12 Roles may be murky: you or the other person might not even know you're involved in a negotiation. Furthermore, buyers and sellers implicitly understand their interdependence in a way that n-negotiators may not. These n-negotiations often have to be “constructed,” in the sense that someone needs to take some actions in order to get them started.
Let's say that you want to negotiate for a promotion or a new project, but your boss is oblivious to the issue. Or you're assigned a project with no discussion expected and no clear objective. Or you want to create a flexible work schedule. In all of these situations, it is not sufficient merely to have ideas to propose once the negotiations are under way. You have to get them started, which requires two different processes. First, you have to get yourself into a position to negotiate—that is, establish yourself in the role of negotiator. Second, you have to prepare to position yourself in relation to the other party to get the negotiations off the ground.
Both steps are captured in the concept of positioning.
Positioning: Your Role as Negotiator
When experts speak about getting ready to negotiate, they typically focus on helping the person figure out what she wants, her interests in the negotiation, her aspirations, her walkaway, and her walkaway alternatives.13 Then she's advised to think similarly about what these are on other side. But the notion of positioning to negotiate is somewhat different. Drawing from a tradition that's different from the psychological and decision sciences most popular in negotiation theory, positioning has its roots in communication and discourse analysis; it refers to the ways that negotiators seek to construct legitimate social roles and identities for themselves, subject to the expectations and constraints of the social structures in which they operate.14 The idea is that we do not play a static role during a negotiation; it is not something totally up to the individual or set by the other's expectations. This role is negotiated just as much as the issues to be discussed are.15 And a significant part of that negotiation is creating interdependence between you and the other person.
Positioning: The Other Person's Role
The late Jeff Rubin once observed that negotiation is the quintessential illustration of interdependence. Just as clapping requires two hands working in synchrony, so negotiation requires two parties moving to a common center.16
We can think of interdependence in two primary ways. The first concerns your relationship with the person with whom you plan to negotiate and the value that person sees in you. People negotiate with you because you have something they want. So a first task in preparing is to assess that value.
The second approach to analyzing interdependence, the more common in the negotiation field, is to consider alternatives outside the negotiation. The idea is captured by using the acronym BATNA: the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement.17 Positioning yourself in a negotiation requires that you prepare to take stock of your value and assess the relative BATNAs for yourself and the other person; then you figure out how you'll use that information in the negotiation. We discuss the details of BATNA later in the chapter; for now, let's look at Charlotte's situation.
Taking Stock of Your Value
Participants in my workshops often ask me about how they can become more confident negotiating. It is a concern that many have when they enter into n-negotiations. I always tell them that it is not a matter of just looking in the mirror and saying, “I'm self-confident.” That doesn't work. Rather, you need to take stock of your value. It often helps to have people who can work through some of the issues with you. There are many ways to assess your value in a negotiation—for one thing, the skills and competence you bring to the job. Then there are the experiences you've had: building a well-functioning team, the successful projects you've participated on and maybe led. There is the hard work and commitment you give to your team, to your colleagues, to your clients and customers. There are innovations you might have introduced. All of these accomplishments help you take stock. But they do not necessarily get you to the place where you are working toward establishing the kind of interdependence that would get negotiations off the ground.
Set Your Value in a Currency That the Other Party Values
To fully take stock of your value, you need to think about what the other party values. You can start with some general observations. If you want to negotiate with the chief financial officer, highlighting your team-building accomplishments will not be especially persuasive; your revenue or cost-cutting innovations are what matter most to her. So the first step is to consider what about your performance is most important for the other person to know. What is your value proposition to her?
Next, you need to think about your value proposition in a more finely grained way—that is, what is it now? I have often observed that people think the person with whom they're negotiating appreciates their value and is aware of their accomplishments. A more useful rule is to assume that your performance doesn't speak for itself. If you've been doing a good job, it is not clear that the person with whom you want to negotiate knows about it. So you really need to do two things here: figure out what your value proposition is and find ways to make it visible.18
Of course, this doesn't always come naturally. Sometimes we shy away from opportunities to demonstrate our value to the organization. Sheryl Sandberg recounts an ‘aha’ moment after attending the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. She'd been self-conscious about the title of the event and opted to change the title on the web calendar she and her Google colleagues shared.19 Afterward, she was chided by a Fortune editor for not owning her power now that she was listed along the ranks of Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina, and Oprah Winfrey.20
If Sheryl Sandberg can be reflexively self-conscious about owning her power, it's not surprising that this is something many find difficult. Still, there are several simple actions you can take to document your value. As in Sandberg's case, you can make your calendar public so colleagues can see whom you meet with or present to. You can keep a record of positive feedback that you receive in case there are opportunities to share it with your team or boss. On a more routine basis, you can celebrate the achievements of your peers, teams, and direct reports to demonstrate the effectiveness of your leadership. When someone praises you or your team, you could even ask them to mention how well you did to your boss or other colleagues.21 We discuss this further in chapter 4.
Challenge 1: Figure Out What Your Value Proposition Is
This can be tricky. A leader once told me that somebody who wants an opportunity should be forthright and boldly ask for it—advice he gave to both men and women without reflecting on whether it would be heard differently. Yet we know that sometimes women face a double bind in which acting assertively can challenge traditional stereotypes about women. As a result, they can experience a social cost to assertively putting themselves forward and risk being perceived of as pushy, demanding, or overly self-promoting.22 We need to take these considerations into account when finding ways to make our own value visible.
Identify Your Challenges.
Taking stock of your value also requires that you consider the less-stellar parts of your performance and discern where you are vulnerable. Thinking honestly about your weaknesses means considering what the other party might identify as counterpoints to the claims you make. Maybe your team didn't meet your target this year. While you might have good reasons to explain the shortfall, it may still be seen as a point against you. That would particularly be the case if you think the other party is likely to resist what you're asking for. Think about Alicia's example from the Introduction; though she had been in her role for four years, she was still considered unseasoned in her company, so she will need to think about how to position this when she negotiates for the promotion.
Challenges Can Have a Gendered Dimension.
A woman's career track can present a challenge when certain experiences—say, overseas assignments—are deemed a requirement.23 We know that while not a weakness per se, motherhood is sometimes used as a reason for excluding women from certain roles.24 This is why being aware of your potential vulnerabilities in a situation is an important step in positioning yourself for a negotiation. This will prepare you to deal with these issues if the other person brings them up during a negotiation—which they likely will, particularly if you're negotiating about something that the other party finds difficult. Being prepared to deal with challenges means having an account or story that you can tell which explains possible shortcomings.
Let's Consider Charlotte's Challenge.
First, it looks as though Charlotte does not have much of a track record of negotiating for herself. We know that she failed to negotiate anything about the role each time she got a new assignment or promotion—which might mean that she's trained people, including the CEO, to expect that she is not likely to negotiate. Indeed, when she picked up Bill's work, it was probably the best time to negotiate. This pattern can be hard to break out of; the longer you go without negotiating, the greater the expectation is that you won't do so and the harder it is to feel confident speaking up.
This situation is complicated by different perspectives on the issue. Charlotte may feel she is being overlooked, whereas the CEO is unlikely to see it that way. In fact, the CEO likely hasn't had the experience of being overlooked, so it might be hard for him to identify with her. Gender may be playing a subtle role; maybe women don't come to mind when vice president roles open up. All of this means that Charlotte needs to be prepared for a surprised reaction from the CEO. He may even deny that there is an issue.
It is clear that Charlotte wants the VP role formerly held by her previous boss. But it is not at all clear that the CEO sees her as the incumbent for this role, even though she's been doing it in an acting capacity for some time. So Charlotte needs to take stock and ask herself why he should give her that role. What does she bring to the table? She has a consistent track record of performance. In this negotiation, her value proposition seems quite compelling. She clearly has good relationships with clients and has demonstrated that she's willing to jump in when work needs doing. Witness her taking on Bill's role, even though it added considerably to her workload. Her immediate value proposition is that she has already been doing the role—and quite successfully: she landed a new client with the promise of substantial revenues.
Challenge 2: Plan to Make Your Value Visible
Charlotte will have to think hard about how she makes that value proposition visible to the CEO, since he might not know precisely the role she played in landing the client. There are a number of ways she might make this value visible to him. Perhaps there are some communications from the client to Charlotte that she can pass on to the CEO or bring to their meeting. Maybe there are others from her firm on the sales team who might be able to let the CEO know the role Charlotte played. Charlotte herself can be prepared to do this, perhaps before the meeting with the CEO or at its start. Maybe she could transmit some messages from the client or have other members of the firm vouch for her.
The role of allies in making the case can be particularly important for those who worry about the reaction of claiming too much credit for themselves. Many suggest that when women do claim this credit, they are best advised to do so by emphasizing their own role but giving credit to a team as well.25 As Charlotte considers ways to position herself and make her value visible, knowing more about the CEO and how he responds to different types of overtures, a topic we discussed in chapter 1, would help her prepare.
Putting Challenges in a Positive Light.
Charlotte also needs to work through how she will deal with possible perceptions of her shortcomings—and she has several. We know that she has no track record in negotiating and might have missed her best chance when her boss left the position vacant. Of course, it is possible to see this as a potential strength, as her time filling in gave her a chance to prove herself. Indeed, potentially this is her major vulnerability: it is not clear she has the range of skills or the depth of experience to be appointed vice president. So how can she deal with this potential vulnerability?
Since we can expect her vulnerabilities to come up in the negotiation, she needs to develop a narrative that puts them in a positive light so she's ready when the CEO raises the topic of her inexperience as a barrier to her taking the role. Her response will need to demonstrate that she has the experience, demonstrated by her picking up the VP responsibility. But she also needs to be realistic; she is obviously not as experienced as someone who has been a vice president of client advisory services for more than a few months. So she'll want to go in with ideas about how she might compensate for this—ideas about people who could mentor her, for example.
Because of her relative lack of experience, it is quite possible that the CEO has other candidates in mind. Therefore, Charlotte needs a way to discuss her relative strengths compared to, say, someone who comes to the firm from the outside. All her years working at the firm in different capacities have given her firm-specific human capital that can give her an advantage in pulling together and leading engagement teams.26 If the CEO questions her experience, Charlotte can point not only to what she has accomplished in the role, but also to how she plans to get the help she needs to grow. If the CEO brings up a plan to hire from the outside, she can talk about how her experience in the firm makes her a better candidate.
Recognizing Vulnerabilities, Advocating for Yourself.
By working through your vulnerable areas, you are better prepared when challenges come up. Being ready with these kinds of stories or accounts positions you to advocate for yourself. It will also help to have some clear ideas about how to implement the role in a way that makes it easy for the CEO to say yes—which we discuss in more detail in a later chapter.
BATNA: Positioning Yourself in Light of Alternatives to Agreement
The concept of BATNA—the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement—was introduced with the publication of Getting to Yes in 1980 and refers to the choices you would have to accept if you cannot reach an agreement. BATNA, in other words, sets the bounds for the range of acceptable outcomes in negotiation. As BATNA is generally introduced in work on negotiation, it is used to help negotiators figure out their bottom line or reservation price. In other words, it helps calculate the point at which you would walk away from a potential deal.27
While the notion of a deal and alternatives outside it become more complicated in n-negotiations, they're still quite relevant. The assessment of the BATNAs between parties gives us one way to analyze relative bargaining power.
BATNA in the Context of n-Negotiations
In most books on negotiation, the concept of BATNA is introduced very close to the beginning, since the clearest and most obvious way to discuss BATNA is in terms of distributive or single-issue negotiation. If you are going to negotiate about price, the strategic way to think about making a good deal is to consider your other choices.
Recall my Ethiopian students bargaining over tablecloths in chapter 1. Having compared prices of comparable cloths, they were ready to set an upper limit on the price they would pay. This is what we call their reservation price: that price either above which (as buyer) or below which (as seller) they would walk away.28 My students knew what they would pay, and they had the alternative of ending negotiations with one vendor and going to a new one if the bargaining wasn't fruitful. This makes it clear that having a well-defined BATNA is important: it lessens the chance that you will overpay for something or undervalue what you are selling. That's why most negotiation books will tell you that the first step is to figure out your BATNA—even better, to have multiple BATNAs.
Next, you would want to know as much as you can about the other party's BATNA, because knowing both your own and theirs brings clarity to the range of possible deals you could make. My students could evaluate several factors to consider the various vendors' BATNAs in the Ethiopian market; for instance, bad weather or low crowds would suggest the vendors had fewer customers, and the number of vendors selling tablecloths would give a sense of how much competition they have.
BATNAs Are Clear in Some Contexts.
Figuring out your BATNA is naturally clearer in some situations than others. Compensation negotiation is one. When negotiating for a new job, it helps to have another offer. That second offer is a BATNA, and it is likely not as good as the one you are negotiating about. If it were, you'd take it. Almost by definition, your BATNA is never as good as the deal you hope to make.
Improving Your BATNA Can Improve Your Agreement.
If you don't have a good BATNA, try to improve it. It is time well spent to, say, get another offer or find another buyer: doing so helps you assess offers and counteroffers more confidently and probably more rationally. In this regard, the axiom that “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” applies. Wishing you have a BATNA does not make it so.29
It's important to be creative in how you conceptualize BATNA. I often use the example of Almaz, who runs a small textile company in the outskirts of a major African city. She has responded to changes in the economy by shifting production from high-end decorative sweaters to simpler garments that will sell for a lower price. As a result, she no longer needs the high-end stitching machine she acquired several years ago. A European designer offers to buy the machine for a fraction of what Almaz paid several years ago. She knows what it would cost to buy a new machine—considerably more than she is being offered—but she doesn't know what price to accept for her used machine. Although Almaz does not have another buyer, which would give her a clear BATNA, she investigates other options: what it would cost to haul the machine away, the charitable tax advantage she might get by donating it to a nongovernmental organization that works with women to develop handmade goods, and the benefit of the status quo: keeping the machine but selling high-end sweaters only to the tourist market. Considering each of these alternatives helps her figure out a realistic reservation price. When she knows her alternatives, she can then determine whether to negotiate with the designer and at what price she would walk away.
BATNAs Are Less Clear in n-Negotiations.
Consider the negotiation (or lack thereof) I introduced at the start of the chapter. My tennis partner said at the outset of our conversation that she was prepared to quit—a BATNA—rather than take on the extra responsibilities of the department chair. “A bit precipitous,” I responded, since she had tenure.
Let's say you want to negotiate a flexible work arrangement. What will you do if you don't get it? Sure, you could quit. Again, it's hardly desirable, but perhaps a necessary option. Or you could stick with your full-time role, which would be the status quo. Although it is quite easy to talk glibly about developing your BATNA in negotiations at work, it can be a challenge. And what does that mean as a practical matter in the negotiation? This brings us to a discussion of bargaining power.
Analyzing the Parties' Interdependence.
Power in negotiation is typically defined by considering the nature of the interdependence of the parties.30 One who is more dependent on a deal is presumed to have less bargaining power; the reverse is true for those less dependent. Dependence, independence, and interdependence can all be analyzed through the parties' relative BATNAs. Thus, negotiators with good BATNAs are presumably in more powerful positions in negotiation: they're more independent and less dependent on a deal. Obviously other dimensions of power are also relevant: access to resources, hierarchical position, and access to influential others, to name a few.
In organizational negotiations, BATNA is an important counterweight to most people's initial presumptions that bargaining power is correlated with position in the hierarchy. We tend to assume that bosses will have more power in a negotiation than do those who report to them.31 This is often the case; however, a subordinate with a great BATNA might enter a negotiation in a more powerful position than a boss with weak alternatives or a high level of dependence on her subordinate.
A negotiator who seems to have few viable alternatives to an agreement may be negotiating with someone who is in a similar situation. We might glibly say that a negotiator has a BATNA of quitting, which is generally not a great alternative. But we don't want to minimize the costs of that option when we consider the other party's BATNA. If our negotiator does quit, her boss faces hiring and training costs, lost time, and the personal cost of having to get someone new up to speed. It's important to keep in mind that even if your alternatives aren't great, your counterpart's might not be either.
In a workshop I've taught with women scientists, I use a case study in which a boss asks a young woman to work on a project that doesn't interest her. When we discuss BATNA, people agree that she is unlikely to have good alternatives. But interestingly they almost universally believe that her boss does have good alternatives; for example, he could ask somebody else to do it. While that is certainly his possible BATNA, it assumes that he asked her because she was the first person he saw when he emerged from his office that morning! We have to recognize that his BATNA might not be that good; he likely asked her because she has the skill set he needs for the project. This means she then has some leverage in the negotiation to craft an arrangement that works.
What Charlotte's Case Teaches Us
Analyzing Charlotte's BATNA.
Let's return to Charlotte. She has several potential BATNAs. She could go to work for the new client. In order for that to be a viable alternative, she would need to explore this seriously. That is something she could pursue prior to her negotiations with the CEO. She has other alternatives; she could dial back and just continue to focus on her role as a director, which would have obvious implications for both her and the firm. After having been exposed to the challenge of the VP role she has been doing, she is likely to find the director role less challenging. This might make it more likely that she would then explore other external job possibilities. And of course, one BATNA that is always a possibility is the status quo—she can keep doing her job and that of the VP who just left. Clearly Charlotte has alternatives. They probably don't excite her, but that is the nature of BATNAs: if they were just as good, she'd be doing them. Still, having clear BATNAs gives her leverage in the negotiation. She is not totally dependent on a deal with the CEO.
Analyzing the Other Party's BATNA.
The CEO has alternatives too. He could hire a vice president from the outside. Indeed, he may be preparing to do this. However, there are clear drawbacks to hiring someone from outside the organization. It takes a new person time to get up to speed, to learn about the organization and its culture. The CEO might have others in the organization besides Charlotte whom he can promote. In this case, the costs might be less than hiring an outsider. But the fact that he has not already done so suggests that he's content to have Charlotte continue in the dual roles she's been playing. As an aside, it would help Charlotte position herself if she had this contextual information (see chapter 1) about the CEO's plans for the role. And of course, it is always possible that the CEO might still be unwilling to negotiate—even recognizing that Charlotte has alternatives and that his might not be that attractive. But it is clear that in this situation, the CEO has a pretty sweet deal: Charlotte is doing two jobs, presumably well, given that she landed the new client, and he is paying her for just one—the lesser-status one at that. The CEO might prefer the status quo, although she would likely not.
Both Charlotte and the CEO have alternatives outside the negotiation—but who has the better ones? That would help us answer the question of who is more dependent on the deal.
This is a difficult question to answer. And that's the point. While each has alternatives, it looks as if they—and the firm as a whole—would be better off if they could negotiate an agreement that works for Charlotte and the firm. Establishing interdependence (not thinking solely of dependence and independence) creates the conditions for a more fruitful negotiation. While analyzing and developing alternatives is critical to positioning oneself, fostering interdependence is something that happens once bargaining commences. This is a topic we return to in chapter 7.
Second-Generation Issues and Small Wins
Gendered opportunity structures—that is, situations where certain jobs are seen to be more appropriate for men and others for women—are the undercurrent in Charlotte's situation. Despite the fact that she's been doing the job of VP, the CEO does not automatically see her in this role. To the degree that Charlotte negotiates with the CEO about her role, it may be a moment of learning for the CEO. He would have to consider what criteria he uses to judge a candidate's suitability. Charlotte has been in an acting role. In what ways is that developmental ground for the VP role? Might that be a way to groom people in the firm? If the firm is challenged by not having women in senior leadership roles, maybe Charlotte's negotiation will start a new practice.
By negotiating for the role she has been doing, she is also forcing the firm to think more clearly about criteria for leadership roles. Charlotte compels the CEO to clarify the skills and experiences required for the VP role. Often women are highly rated on their performance but yet not seen as having the potential for more senior roles. This situation forces the CEO to be clear with Charlotte about why she does not have what it takes. That kind of clarity and transparency makes it much more likely that people will have a better road map for their own development.
For this and other materials, visit www.deborahmkolb.com.