Episode 165: Yes, You Can Negotiate During Covid
/Show transcript:
Welcome to The Broad Experience, the show about women, the workplace, and success. I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte.
This time…many of us are working like mad during this pandemic, but are we asking for what we want and need at work?
“Is now an OK time to ask? Because everyone’s under stress, because my company laid off a bunch of people, because the company’s not doing well, because I’m worried that they’re gonna get upset with me.”
Getting what you want in difficult times. Coming up on The Broad Experience.
As I think about what is happening to women’s careers right now, one of the things I’ve been thinking about is negotiation. At the best of times a lot of women are reluctant to negotiate – asking for something for ourselves goes against how we’ve been socialized. In a time like this…if I were working for an organization right now I know I’d be held back by all the usual things – not wanting to make a nuisance of myself at a terrible time, seeing things from the company’s perspective…and yet I know from past work I’ve done on this topic that people can negotiate successfully pretty much any time.
I wanted to talk to someone about how to get what you want at work during Covid.
So recently I sat down with Foniti Iconomopoulos. She lives in Toronto. She began her career working in manufacturing, ended up doing all the negotiation with the big customers like Wal Mart…then she went on to work for a company that did negotiation training. And several years ago she went out on her own – she started her own business teaching negotiation techniques within companies, and to MBA students, and speaking at conferences.
Fotini says she came by this knowledge naturally…
“I’ve been negotiating my whole life. If you’ve seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding that is indeed exactly how I grew up, without exaggeration. So negotiating with a big fat Greek dad certainly primed me for a lot of the stuff I do today in the corporate world.”
AM-T: “Well talking of culture, Canada is a big immigrant nation. You’re in Toronto and that’s a really popular city for new immigrants to settle in. I wonder with your female clients and your students who are from immigrant backgrounds, do they find it harder to negotiate at all?”
“I do think culture absolutely affects how we negotiate without question. It depends on which culture. As a woman born to Greek immigrant parents it’s part of our culture to negotiate everything. I’ve watched my dad negotiate everything growing up and my mom is that sly negotiator where you don’t realize she’s negotiating but she is. So that’s our culture, if you were to go to a market in Greece which I did growing up, that’s part of the cultural norms, you assume you’re gonna negotiate.
I teach MBA classes that are full of international students. And I’d say Canada in general is still a very young country, it’s not like the US that was founded over a couple hundred years ago. My parents only came here in the 60s and 70s and they’re considered to have been here a long time. So when I look at some of my Indian students who come in, they’re again used to some of that cultural norm of negotiating for everything. But then I look at some of the other elements of those cultures too and I go, women are raised to be more submissive, raised not to raise their voices and so on, and they bring that with them as well. And so some of my students and the people I talk to are really good at adapting to the current environment, going ‘I’m gonna leave my baggage behind,’ but others at a subconscious level have a hard time disentangling themselves from those cultural norms, and so it takes me to push them and go, why aren’t you asking, and they go, I don’t know, I guess because I never saw my mom asking, I didn’t do it, or because I was told you mustn’t speak before being spoken to, I didn’t bother dong it.”
AM-T: So we’re in this moment now where I bet so many women who still have their jobs, they’re working like crazy, it’s a nutty time as we still go through Covid in many parts of the world. And they’d love to ask for something at work whether it’s the raise, more flexibility, anything, but they think, ‘oh, I don’t think now’s the right time, everything’s so difficult.’ I bet there are lots of people secretly wishing they could ask for something but they’re not. What are you hearing on that score…am I onto something?”
“You are, for sure, it truly breaks my heart to read about all the statistics we’re seeing now in a Covid world where women are the ones who are being set back. They’re managing the conflict at home, managing the education, they are literally taking a back seat to everything that needs to be done. I am hearing about so many women who are reaching out to me, whether they were former MBA students I was teaching, former audiences in my keynotes, even some corporate clients – they’re saying, I’m struggling, but is now an OK time to ask, because everyone’s under stress, because my company laid off a bunch of people, because the company’s not doing well, because I’m worried that they’re gonna get upset with me.
And there are so many excuses to not do it…but my world has always been about helping people to find the reasons to do it. It’s about finding your value, understanding the value you bring, and not only that but finding a way to do it where there won’t be any repercussions, where you can mitigate the risk of being seen as greedy, abrasive, bitchy, and all of those things.”
AM-T: “Right. Well talk about what women can do now, then. Because a very early story I did on negotiation years ago, 15 years ago, I’ll never forget, this older white guy said, women are great employees because they always see things from my point of view, they always see things from the company’s point of view. I mean he knew the situation and he was half laughing but he was like, ‘they do back down sooner than men because the minute I say well, you know, now’s not a great time for us, they’ll back off.’”
“So it’s about taking that soundbite, what you just said of they see things from my point of view, and from the company’s point of view, and using it to your advantage So what you’re going to ask for, how does that help the company? If you need flextime or to manage your kid or just take a mental break, how is that gonna be helpful to you and then how is that gonna translate to…be helpful to the company? If you can give me this flextime or thing I’m asking for it’s gonna make me a much more productive employee, it’s going to make this job more sustainable, whatever that thing is that’s gonna benefit the organization, all that is, is re-framing. But you need to not put your own needs aside, you need to not be a victim of your own empathy. And that’s what I tell women all the time, you’re great at thinking how is this gonna benefit the team or how can I help the organization right now or I don’t want to be a burden to the organization right now. That is the empathy gone too far. How do I make sure my needs are taken care of right now, in the context of how does it help the organization move forward? Because the truth of the matter is if you are burning out, if you are overdoing it, you are not putting 100% into everything, you’re making more mistakes, eventually you’re just gonna quit because you’re gonna say I can’t do this job and manage everything else that’s going on. Or it may be something as simple as, I found my peers are getting paid more than me and I’m pissed off. It’s gonna fill you with resentment and you won’t be that productive employee. So it might be as simple as framing it as hey, I want to make sure I’m the most productive, that I’m feeling valued, and when I’m feeling valued I’m giving it my all and you’re getting a lot more out of me. What can we do to maximize my productivity here? What can we do to make sure I am feeling valued here the way others are feeling valued?
So the form of a question is a great tactical way of managing it. But not a question of permission, it’s not, can you do this for me? Because that gives them the option to say no. It’s how do you work on this for me, what do we do to make this a reality?”
AM-T: “Now what about money though, because I can see how a lot of people might choose to negotiate for, say, more flexibility in lieu of negotiating for money, because they feel like this is a terrible time to ask for more money. But what would you say about asking for more money at a time like this?”
“I would say know the situation; go in and do your research about context. Is the company suffering? Are they truly laying people off because they’re barely keeping the lights on? That might be a terrible time to ask for money. But you can still position yourself to set up a better time to do it. If the company is down on their luck or suffering because of Covid…you can be the one who acknowledges and is empathetic and says, ‘I get that now is not a great time. We are gonna have to talk about this at some point, what do we need to see in terms of a turnaround? When do you expect things to get better?’ I would almost prefer you to set up your next negotiation now. Because you’re demonstrating that I’m not gonna be ignored, but I’m also not gonna be a jerk who’s asking for something I know you can’t afford to do right now.”
Then again some companies are doing OK right now – even if it’s harder for employees to actually do their work for all the usual Covid reasons.
“Everybody might be a bit more stressed out because we’re juggling a bunch more responsibilities or it’s harder to do it remotely, but if there’s still cashflows coming in the way there was before, OR some companies are even thriving right now. Why in the hell would you hold back from doing it? That’s the question I make people ask themselves.”
This past summer Fotini heard from a woman she’d helped through a negotiation a couple of years ago, when she first started in a new job.
“And she said, ‘it’s time for me to get a promotion and a raise and I’m not getting enough. But I do know the company is suffering, they laid off a bunch of people, a bunch took pay cuts, however my department is carrying a bunch of other departments.’ Well shouldn’t this person be rewarded for that? How do you make them acknowledge that? How do you make them go you’re right, if it wasn’t for your team and what you’re churning out we wouldn’t be able to keep those other people employed. So then it’s about having that conversation of what can you do right now? And if now’s not the right time, when is? When can we do something, how can we make it retroactive, how can we make sure I’m feeling rewarded for this? Because I’ll end up on the brink of burnout and if that happens it’s not gonna be good for anybody.
And she ended up getting a phenomenal result. She said it’s not what we would have had in past years, but she said ‘I almost didn’t ask for anything. So I feel good that I got some increase and a promise of in six months we’ll review and see what we can do to improve things later.’”
So as Fotini says, negotiation is a matter of persuasion and engagement as much as anything else. Seeing things from the other side’s point of view - but not too much.
When I posted about this topic on Facebook a while ago one listener in Ireland emailed me. She was worried because she’s on maternity leave and was due to be promoted – then all promotions got canceled in Covid. She’s worried she’s at home, with 3 kids, out of it. Feels like she’ll be forgotten about by the time she goes back to work.
Fotini says with maternity leave ideally you’ll plan it out and be strategic. In a pre-Covid world she used to tell people…
“…if you’re gonna go into the office and visit with the baby, strategically plan it so you do it when the bosses are gonna be around, because you want to make sure you are top of mind to them. You want to stay relevant, you want to remind them I still exist.”
Depending where in the world you are, doing that is less easy during Covid. But she says the same principles she’s already talked about apply to coming back from your leave and not getting sidelined. It’s about reminding people of your strengths, and presenting yourself as someone who can help them solve problems.
“If you can present yourself as someone who wants to relieve some of their stress why wouldn’t they want to have a conversation with you, why wouldn’t they want to carve out time in a Zoom meeting or whatever it might look like? And I’d also be cognizant of doing that same networking of people around the organization, know what’s going on, what moves have been made, who’s in what positions now, what positions have become available, what the culture is like, what moves have been made since the last time you were there…stay in touch with your friends.
Should you be able to just tap out and enjoy your year or however long you have without thinking about work? Sure, but the reality is you’re gonna have to go back, so why not set yourself up for success? So do a little bit of that groundwork…it’s power, information that you’ll use to make yourself relevant again so you can demonstrate that you’re not entirely out of the loop.”
AM-T: In talking about this you’ve reminded me to ask about something else, which is, isn’t this stuff a bit trickier now that most of us, many of the people listening to this, will not yet be back in a physical office with your managers and your colleagues? It’s all very well asking for things when you’re looking at someone face to face, but how would you suggest that we tackle these kinds of questions in a virtual world and actually that extends to networking as well, to keeping in touch with people and reminding them that we exist?
“Yeah, my preference is to avoid email. I don’t know about you but I am more and more inundated with emails now than I’ve ever been before because everyone is sitting at a computer. I feel like difficult or crucial conversations are always done better in a face-to-face world. Face-to-face now for us just means Zoom or whatever tool you’re using. I do prefer to have that visual representation of some kind, because we communicate in 3 ways: we communicate using our words, we communicate our sounds and we communicate using our non-verbal communication. When you eliminate any of those forms and you reduce it to a phone call for example, they can’t see the look of endearment on your face, the look of concern, trust, empathy, any of those things, there’s room for misinterpretation there…maybe that was sarcasm, maybe it wasn’t – people can’t see your face. If you’re doing it over email, there’s a reason there’s a million and one emojis…or an acronym like LOL…it’s because there’s so much room for misinterpretation…so you might be misinterpreted as abrasive or any of these things if you haven’t taken your time to think through carefully the sandwich of cooperation.
So when you’re writing an email it’s hey, hope you had a good weekend, at the beginning of Covid it was hope you’re staying healthy, but you want to start with that warmth, get to the meat of the sandwich and end again with a bit more warmth. With email you don’t want to end it with let me know your thoughts, you don’t want to leave it out there to the ether as a passive comment they can or can’t respond to, if they feel like it. It’s finishing it with a question of, when is the best time for us to have a conversation about this? So if you are going to be reaching out to kick off this process, to even ask for a Zoom meeting, it’s not saying, ‘I’d love to talk to you, when do you have time?’ signed Fotini. No, it’s ‘when is the best time for us to have this conversation? I’ve got openings on Thursdays and Tuesdays, which is most appropriate for you?’ Now because it’s in the form of a question, socially we are compelled to answer a question, there’s an action that’s asked of us, and because of that, once I answer that question, the principles of persuasion show us that at a subconscious level I feel accountable to what I just answered to you. So if I say, Thursday is the best time, now I feel like I have to carve out that time on Thursday, I’m not likely to ignore you, I’ve opened the door for us to have this conversation on Thursday.”
She says if you really hate the idea of a video meeting to talk about this you could do it by email. But she says if you are going to negotiate this way, you need to think really carefully about how you phrase things. You should ask someone else to look over the email to make sure it comes across the way you want it to, because it’s so easy to come off wrong in writing – and you don’t want to be using emojis in a negotiation.
I want to end the show where we began, with this idea of the role culture plays in our lives.
Several years ago Fotini was getting ready to teach her first ever negotiation workshop in her non-native language of Greek.
“I speak Greek at home but it’s very…simplified, like a kid in the second grade would speak the level of Greek that I speak at home.”
She was going to be speaking at a company in Athens. Greece is a patriarchal society. She knew that, she grew up around it. She also knew the likelihood was that this group of executives would be almost 100% male.
So she studied up on business Greek, spent a lot of time with her head in a dictionary. She knew that as a young woman, then in her early 30s, going into a roomful of senior, middle-aged Greek men she had to present herself in just the right way.
“And at the end of the workshop this one woman who was there came over and she goes, I just need to shake your hand. And I said why? She goes, I don’t know how you did it, I know these guys, they had their phones down the whole time, they were listening to you the whole time, and it was just about how I commanded myself in the very beginning of this thing. Because I walked in and I was clearly much younger than them, AND I wasn’t speaking Greek the way they did, and they knew I was from Canada. And I had enough intrigue for them to go who is this person and why does my boss trust that she’s gonna be the best person for me to listen to?
But I also commanded myself with a little bit of…I have students in my classes who are quite nervous about the fact they don’t speak English as a first language, or their language skills aren’t as good as they’d like for them to be. And I said look, when I go into Athens and I run a workshop I say flat out, look, clearly this is not my first language it’s one of four languages that I speak, and if you prefer me to do this in English so I’m more comfortable I’m happy to do that – I’m doing you a favor basically, read between the lines, that I’m speaking to you in Greek right now. There’s this element of confidence slash arrogance, it’s a healthy level of arrogance to go yeah, I’m not speaking Greek the way you do but I know you don’t speak English the way I do and I know you don’t speak the other languages I do, so listen up gentlemen – that’s kind of the undertone of everything I say, but I have to be careful I don’t push the arrogance so far that I turn them off. And that’s really an intuitive thing, it’s really watching the faces and everything else in the room as well. I’ll say I won them over by the end of the session, they were like, next time you’re in the country let us know and we’ll take you out for dinner, and so on, so there’s a lot with the cultural norms that helped me along that path as well. It was an uphill battle going in but I came with all the ammunition I needed to make sure I was ready for that battle.”
AM-T: “And finally, what do you think your two cultures, or the two main cultures in your life, Greek culture and Canadian culture, how do you think they’ve contributed to you as a woman in the workplace?”
“That’s a tough one. I always felt like I have this dichotomy in my brain – of when I was a kid, even as an adult, people ask what’s your background, where are you from? As if it’s not assumed I’m not from Canada. It’s a little bit offensive, I know people are just curious because I don’t look like a typical Caucasian woman even though on paper I am considered Caucasian. I’ve experience racism, I’ve listened to people say awful things to my dad, the ‘go back to where you came from’ kind of stuff that is burned into my memory. So I try to make sure I don’t hold that against everybody when I’m walking around society. When someone asks me what’s my background I try to make sure I’m not offended by it, and I think that’s the Canadianism coming out in me.
I do think the assertiveness I have is very much my Greek roots. I think the cooperativeness I have is very much my Canadian roots. Because I came from a workplace that told us ‘you don’t want to be liked, you need to be respected.’ I’ve come from studying the subject for so long that I understand likeabilty is actually a very important piece of negotiation and persuasion. So I think that Canadian-ness has helped me to tap into the likeability. That’s not to say Greeks aren’t likeable people, we are a very hospitable bunch…there’s an element of hospitality that I know is deep in my DNA. But I do know the Canadian polite stuff is not overwhelming for me because I have this other element of my personality to bring it back. I do think those cultures are battling at some point…but I think I’ve found a happy medium of those two things. Because Canadians are famous for apologizing for everything and I’m definitely not that person. But I think it’s my upbringing with my dad especially that has that very, very Greek extreme. And then I’m surrounded by students and children and coworkers who have that very Canadian extreme – I’ve just found a place where they can both live in harmony which I think has been the key to so much of my success.”
Thanks to Fotini Iconomopoulos for being my guest on this show.
She has a book coming out next spring – it’s called Say Less, Get More – Unconventional Negotiation Techniques to Get What You Want.
I will link you to Fotini’s website under this episode at The Broad Experience.com. And if you want to hear more on negotiation you’ll find two episodes I did about this in 2018 – they are episodes 128 and 129. And it’s thanks to Natalie Reynolds, my guest, in episode 128 that I found Fotini in the first place.
That’s the Broad Experience for this time.
You can find me in all the usual places or email me at Ashley at TheBroadExperience.com – I’m always grateful to get any feedback you may have. Also if you enjoy the show and you haven’t reviewed it yet I’d love it if you could do that – that’s on Apple Podcasts. It actually does seem to help the podcast stand out and get found so it’s really worth it to me.
We’ll continue this series about what’s happening to women’s careers right now, next time.
I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte. Thanks for listening.