BUS183: Leadership Skills for Women in the Workplace: Advocate for More, 1st class
This week I started BUS183: Leadership Skills for Women in the Workplace: Advocate for More, which is a 5 week course through the Stanford Continuing Studies that is taught by Nita Singh Kaushal.
The course is designed to teach how to develop a proactive and effective approach when it comes to negotiation. Specifically, how to implement valuable information gathering techniques in order to determine the right target. Also examine how thoughtful preparation and positioning can achieve constructive dialogue, creative problem-solving, and mutually beneficial outcomes. This course will feature engaging lectures, interactive discussions, real-world case studies, scripts, and templates.
The first class was an hour long and consisted of the teacher presenting content format. There were some interesting tidbits that I want to highlight that resonated with me.
Potential Mental Roadblocks that prevent or can negatively influence negotiation:
I find that I have two mental challenges that prevent me from confidently advocating for myself in regards to negotiating:
I feel so lucky to be working in tech where there is money, because my first 10 years of my career in nonprofit, where the amount of money I make now and the flexibility within my job far exceeds what I thought I would ever have
As a first generation Mexican/American woman, collectivism and harmony is core to my identity and negotiating just for myself “feels” wrong. I’ve work around this icky feeling, but framing advocating
Another interesting item that Nita presented was that during the negotiations of salary for a new job, who you are negotiating with will influence that upper limit. The exception portion of the graph below is situations like you have a offer from a competing company.
Why I’m taking this course:
First off, I think having a course like this designed for women is huge. In an ideal world it wouldn’t matter if you were a woman, non-binary, gender non-conforming or a man when it comes to negotiation. But that’s not reality.
I am hoping to learn practical negotiation skills vs theory or studies on how men and women negotiation is different. The section in the class description “implement valuable information
gathering techniques in order to determine the right target” is why I am taking this course. I want to understand how to identify the right data and how to leverage it.
