Join Sarah Noll Wilson and guest Kathryn Valentine as they discuss negotiation strategies tailored for women, navigating workplace biases, and fostering inclusive cultures. Through personal anecdotes and research insights, they explore empowering women to advocate for themselves and promote gender equality in professional settings.
Kathryn Valentine is the CEO of Worthmore Strategies, where she leverages over a decade of research gendered business skills to help companies advance female talent. A top-rated speaker, her clients include multi-national organizations such as JP Morgan, KPMG and TIAA. Her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company and Forbes; she has been invited to speak on her research at Harvard, Wharton and Kellogg business schools.
- Website: www.worthmorestrategies.com
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/kval
- 75+ Negotiation Secrets: main-union-183.myflodesk.com/75things
TRANSCRIPT
Sarah Noll Wilson
Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of Conversations on Conversations where each week we explore a topic to help us have more powerful conversations with ourselves and others. I’m your host Sarah Noll Wilson. And joining me this week is Miss Kathryn Valentine, where we will be exploring the very important topic of women in negotiation. Here’s a little bit more about Kathryn. She is the CEO of Worth More Strategies where she leverages over a decade of research in gendered business skills to help companies advance female talent. She is a top rated speaker. Her clients include multinational organizations such as JP Morgan KPMG, and TIAA. Her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and Forbes. She has been invited to speak on her research at Harvard, Wharton and Kellogg Business Schools. Please join me in welcoming Kathryn Valentine to the show. Kathryn! Thank you for braving the weather and joining us today. Welcome to the show.
Kathryn Valentine
So excited to be with you. It is much better than just watching it rain.
Sarah Noll Wilson
(laughs) So just for people to know and just you know, we believe in honesty and full transparency. Kathryn is under one of her first tornado watches. And so we’re going to be playing this by ear, based out of Atlanta, Georgia, and so they don’t get them down there. So this will be a fun chat.
Kathryn Valentine
Currently, I think it’s like most of our snow days where it, we get a snow day and then the kids stay home and it just rains.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, sure. Well, let’s hope that that’s the case. Okay, Kathryn, before we get into your research, your work and digging into all those yummy topics. What, what else do you want us to know about you?
Kathryn Valentine
What an interesting and broad question. So I’m married with two kids, two boys, and they are just so much fun to be around. And recently, I don’t know if you follow Laura Vanderkam, but I’ve been using a lot of her time management strategies. And she, and have figured out a way to go to dance class again, which I haven’t done in like 20 years, and I’m having so much fun.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Good for you.
Kathryn Valentine
It’s great. It’s me and a bunch of like, 55 year old women, and it’s just delightful.
Sarah Noll Wilson
I, you know, there is something about – did you used to dance when you’re younger?
Kathryn Valentine
Yes.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, there’s some, I figured, there’s something about reconnecting with things that brought you a lot of joy as a kid and being able to be unapologetic about it that I think is so important for like self care and healing.
Kathryn Valentine
And for the past 10 years, I mean, especially with kids and COVID, and everything, it’s been, how can I possibly find two hours?
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Kathryn Valentine
But it has been so much fun.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Can you, can you give me the like shortest bullet point of the lessons you learned from her work that’s helped you? Because I’m unfamiliar with Laura’s work.
Kathryn Valentine
Oh from Laura’s work? I thought you meant from dance class. I was like, I mean, I could try.
Sarah Noll Wilson
There are people (laughs) Oh, I mean, you can show us some moves, we can add into the bonus content. Um, no, I have no doubt that other people are thinking exactly what I was thinking of… so what’s the secret?
Kathryn Valentine
Okay. So I read Laura’s book, last December Tranquillity By Tuesday, and she has a bunch, but this is just her most recent one. And one of the things that’s in it is this chapter on how to design your ideal schedule, where you actually lay out what you would do every hour for a week. And at first it was it does. I mean, it takes about a half an hour to figure it out. And I thought to myself, like, why am I doing this? It’s never gonna work. And frankly, I hit my ideal week, pretty much never. But so many things have gotten worked into my life because I wrote down what I was hoping for. And then things ended up sort of channeling that way, right? So now I pick my son up from school, on Fridays, we do parent walk up, and it’s like, it’s the best feeling. And I never could figure out how to get it done before I laid out the ideal schedule. So that one tool has really changed things for me.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Oh, I love that. And thanks for sharing that. Because, you know, sometimes we have to just be really clear about what we want in our life to to see it as a possibility. It can be so easy to be like No, it can’t. And let’s be honest, like and sometimes it can, right. Like there’s sometimes there’s there’s a privilege we have when we can work in that kind of stuff. But when we do it’s so important. Okay, Kathryn, I know you and I had a pre-conversation. But what I’m curious about is, talk to us about your journey to the work you’re doing. What, what fueled your passion, and the research that you’re doing to want to not only help women be able to show up differently, so they can be more effective, but also so you can help people who don’t identify as women, you know, our male allies, to be able to think differently about negotiation.
Kathryn Valentine
So I started my career at McKinsey, which was, I think, a very, you know, a lovely place to start, I was very lucky that way. And fairly ambitious, wanted to do well and started reading the books for like women in leadership. And again, this was not yesterday, this was awhile ago. And the books were like 101 Things You’re Doing Wrong By Being A Woman. (laughter) And it was just very depressing. And so like, that’s the backdrop. And then I was getting my MBA, I was doing my MBA internship. And I decided that I wanted to negotiate to be placed on another team, because I’d finished the project in like four weeks. And so I cancelled all my plans for the weekend, read all the books, underlined them, highlighted them, Googled how do I negotiate, wrote a script, practice the script. No one’s ever accused me of under preparing, right? And so I did everything the experts told me to do, went in and had this conversation at 10 am. By 10:05, I had managed to offend the coordinator completely, like I had no idea how this happened. By 10:10, I was being told I wasn’t a culture fit, which obviously means I wasn’t gonna get the job.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Kathryn Valentine
And if I wasn’t gonna get the job, the internship didn’t make sense anymore. So per company protocol, I was escorted out of the building by security, and deposited on the sidewalk. And so I’m like standing on the sidewalk with like, that box, like that cardboard box of your things. And I’m trying to figure out what the heck just happened, like I was one of the top interns and then all of a sudden, I didn’t have a job in less time than it takes to get a latte. And so I was in a very fortunate position where I had a year of business school left, so I went back to Northwestern. And I started to figure out what had happened. And at that point in time, the research on negotiating specifically as a woman was just coming out. And so I went as deep as possible. And what I learned in that time was one, negotiation is gendered, what I can say and what my brother can say lands differently. Two, most of the advice out there, like the advice I had consumed is actually created for men. It just doesn’t come with that warning. And three, there’s a solution –
Sarah Noll Wilson
And let’s and let’s be really explicit, likely white men.
Kathryn Valentine
Yeah.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Because when it comes to, –
Kathryn Valentine
Because that’s who was in the work, yeah.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Cuz that’s, that’s who’s in the positions of power, right? Like, and that’s who’s in the, you know, like, yeah.
Kathryn Valentine
Yes. And so, and then the third thing I learned is there was a solution, there was a research based solution. That’s very well known in academic circles, but had not been connected to, you know, professional women who could use it now, to be more successful. And so that became my mission. And then what’s happened recently, is really expanding the aperture to, oh, it’s not just negotiation, it turns out many business skills have been created and are discussed through a white male lens. But there have been these, there are these incredible gender researchers who have been doing research for, you know, Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, Georgetown, who’ve been doing research for a solid 10, if not 15 or 20 years on this topic. And so what my job is now is to bring the research insights straight to professional women who can use it. And so this is negotiation, which we’ll talk about today. It’s also networking, we need to network differently. It’s time management. One of the reasons I’m deep on Laura Vanderkam right now. It’s career management strategies. It is how do you advance in the workplace, those are also different. And so that’s what we’re building out right now. And so to your point, you know, I think the value for women is, you’ve been handed tools that weren’t built for you. And then the world gives you, makes you feel bad when they don’t work for you, let’s actually give you some tools that are built for you. And you can choose. In any situation, you can choose which one fits better, which one feels more authentic, but at least we’re going to give you some tools, some more tools. And then for non women in the workplace, your team performance is hindered, if only half the people can say what they need to be successful. Your team performance is hindered, if only half the people can network with the folks they need in other departments to get the, right, like there are so many ways in which women are being undercut. And if you as a non woman in the workplace, understand those, your teams are going to be much more successful.
Sarah Noll Wilson
There, there is so much to unpack here. And I’m trying to slow down my brain enough to talk about this. I, I need to go back and find it. But just yesterday, I was on LinkedIn and somebody had posted this really powerful video. It was so simple. And it was basically like a student asking what’s the difference between aggression and being assertive. And the teacher’s response was gender and race. And, and that point that you brought up is something that is worth amplifying, that most of how business operates, most of the books that are out there were written through very specific lens for a specific type of person. And, and it can be hard and uncomfortable. I know, for folks who, you know, like for our male colleagues to understand, like, we’re not playing by the same rules. You’re not going to get the same feedback, you’re not going to have the same experiences, you will not have to deal with just some of the bullshit that we have to deal with just like, you know, as a white woman, I’m not going to deal with the same stuff that my women of color colleagues are experiencing. And, and I just want to say this, because this is something that I’ve been wrestling with myself in our own work is being really transparent about what’s the lens that we’re looking at this through, and how do we bring in different perspectives? Because you know, you made that comment of those books you read? Like, it didn’t come with a warning to say this, this wasn’t designed for me. How, how are you? I kind of want to just start there for a second. How do you approach your work to understand a name, right, like the lens in which you’re looking through? Just because I think that that’s something we don’t talk about enough.
Kathryn Valentine
So I was raised by a single mom, who was in the workforce. And there were, you know, as you can imagine, the dinnertime conversation was all kinds of things. She was also in the workforce in the deep south as a divorced woman in the 80s. Right?
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Kathryn Valentine
But one of the things that we found when she retired, is that she had been paid about 40% less than her male colleagues for 30 years.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Wow.
Kathryn Valentine
Which is, I mean, if you add that up, that’s a real big difference in retirement.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Kathryn Valentine
And so I think, to your point of like, what’s the lens? Sometimes I feel like, I’m not even as good at that as I want to be because I was raised solely through the female lens.
Yeah. Sure.
And so that’s just the default way that I see things. The other kind of thing that popped into my mind when you were talking in terms of lens is, I think it also helps to talk about, you know, not only how this is helpful for women, and for males or non women, but also how it’s helpful for companies.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Kathryn Valentine
So McKinsey did this research showing that true gender equity would add $28 trillion to global GDP, which is, right, it’s one of those numbers that you almost can’t contextualize.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, yeah.
Kathryn Valentine
So, that’s the annual revenue of Apple, Amazon Mehta and Google combined, multiply by 25.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Wow!
Kathryn Valentine
And so companies want a piece of that growth. But I think they also, and many of them are, I’ve been really amazed at how progressive some of these companies are, but many of them are starting to understand that the only way to grab that growth is if they can enable women to have conversations that we have not been enabled to have that allow us to deliver more value, advance further, stay longer, like conversations that we’ve been locked out of so far.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, yeah.
Kathryn Valentine
And so that’s why I mean, when I went to my husband, and I was like, I’m leaving McKinsey! I’m starting a new company, I’m gonna teach women how to negotiate! Companies are gonna pay me! (laughter) He was like, this seems like a bad idea. And, and I’ve been so excited by the companies that are like, No, that’s the old way of looking at it, the new way of looking at it is we need you to have a voice or we’re not going to be able to be successful.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, yeah. And, and part of that is, right, because we see this a lot, companies go, we need to diversify, we need more diversity on our team. So we’re going to hire more people who are different than what we have. But none of them interrogate and are willing to see, own and change the ways they silence people who are different than the norm, the ways they exclude people. And, you know, I mean, I just had a, I just had a situation last week where somebody shared an example of, I’m the only woman on my leadership team, and they go to all these events, like major events talking, I’m talking World Series, and she’s not invited. And they don’t see that as a problem. And like, and that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s the work, right? Because, to your point, so much, I feel like so much for so long, of the language to women is you need to be more confident, you need to speak up more, you need to be more assertive, instead of it being like you’re playing in a game that wasn’t built for you. So let’s name that. And hey, people who are in power, who aren’t women, you need to understand the role you play in silencing those voices. And then we need to figure out how to play the game differently. Right? What? Yeah, go ahead.
Kathryn Valentine
Agreed. And I think for women, it’s because you’re playing in an environment that wasn’t built for you. You actually need to be able to negotiate more often because the, you know, the framework plopping you into doesn’t fit you. So you got to negotiate on the A, at the core of it. B, in all kinds of different ways. So I would argue that the skill of negotiating is actually that much more powerful, because we need to negotiate to try and make this fit. And then for the non women, one of the things that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is, and I’d be curious if this is your experience, but I run into so many. And actually, in this one, I ran into so many leaders, who happen to be men, who genuinely want to do this better. But in some way, an environment has been created, where even asking the questions feels risky, and actually legally could be risky. And so I’ve been recently trying to think about how do we become resources, where, you know, a leader can just call us and ask whatever you want to ask, because you need to know the information to achieve what you genuinely want to achieve. I think they’re, sometimes I talked to people who seem to think that it’s all intentional. And that’s just not what I found in my work with leaders.
Sarah Noll Wilson
It’s not, I mean, I mean, you go to any, I mean, we all have unchecked bias, we all operate from deep rooted systems based off of our culture our upbringing, right, media, all of that. And, and, you know, I think that point is interesting of of it not feeling safe to ask some of those questions. And I think you’re absolutely right, having the place to say, like, let’s talk about the stuff that maybe you’re afraid or uncomfortable or not sure that you can ask someone. And, and part of it, too, is like and like let us support you or somebody like you do the labor, instead of asking a woman who’s dealing with it, who might not necessarily have the the answers to it. So there’s two things I’m curious about. One, I love, absolutely love that point that you made of, then we have to negotiate so much more. And one of the things that I know you share as a really great resource, and we’ll we’ll put it in the show notes, is, there’s so many different things for us to think about negotiating, right? And so often, we think about only negotiating on salary. And so I would love to dig into, expand our – And I also love you’re just such a fan of people’s language, let’s expand the aperture. Like what are other ways in areas that we need to be thinking about negotiating that we aren’t maybe on a regular basis.
Kathryn Valentine
So Sarah, this is one of those questions I can nerd out on for a really long time.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Okay, let’s geek out on it!
Kathryn Valentine
I’m going to try it, I’m going to try and be concise. So we have spent –
Sarah Noll Wilson
Or don’t. (laughter)
Kathryn Valentine
Thank you for that permission. We’ve spent the past decade putting together a list of 75 things we’ve seen women successfully negotiate and you can get that on our website. But to your point, let me kind of I’m gonna take it in buckets. One is the financial bucket. Most people think about base pay. What we know from work done by Claudia Goldin, who won the Nobel Prize last year, is that if you want to maximize your financial earnings over the course of your career, you would actually negotiate career progression, you would negotiate promotions, much more than you would negotiate raises, because the promotion doesn’t come with an extra 3%, it comes with an extra 20%. And you’re in a new pay band. Right? And so there’s a lot more room there. So financially, A, think about negotiating that. B, think about negotiating stock options, the gender wage gap is 20%. The gender gap in stock options is 80%.
Sarah Noll Wilson
(inhales)
Kathryn Valentine
Men on average, get $105,000 in stock options, and women get $26,000 in stock options that’s compounded by the fact that 17% fewer women are offered stock option to begin with. So let’s think about stock options. Let’s think about equity, gender gap there is 40%. Let’s think about 401k benefits, let’s think about performance benefit, performance bonuses, like there’s all kinds of different buckets we can go into there. The other thing that I encourage people to think about when we do our corporate work, it’s around opportunities to increase your impact. So how, would it be helpful if you had a new tool? Would it be helpful if you did a different training? Would it be helpful if you sit in on those meetings? Or got those high profile assignments? Or were embedded with the client or had more team members? You know, what is it that you need to deliver the impact that you’re capable of? And then what is it that you need to reduce your stress? There are you know, we can talk about how many hours you work ,when you work those hours, where you work those hours, who you work those hours with? I mean, there’s all kinds of different ways you can negotiate what your job responsibilities are. You can negotiate what your job responsibilities aren’t, right? There’s all kinds of things like that. And so, you know, one of the workplace negotiations I did that always comes to my, my mind on this one is when my, I was raised partially by my grandparents, see thread on having a single mom. And I was always really close with them. And when my grandfather passed away, my grandmother just stopped. She just stopped eating, she stopped taking medicine, she just stopped. And so they were in Texas and I was in Philadelphia, there’s no way my employer would have known this, right? And I got to have a conversation, which was, hey, as you know, I’ve been doing really good work. This thing happened in my life, I’m really worried about my grandmother, and it’s impacting my ability to deliver right now. So what I want to propose to you, and this was, you know, 10 years before COVID, when no one did this, but what I want to propose to you is, I’d like to go to Texas, and I’d like to work from there for about a month, just because there will be another body in her house with her and it will make her eat. And I was three times more productive there than I was sitting in a cubicle in Philly just worrying. But I think those are the kinds of things that, you know, we shouldn’t be able to have those conversations without worrying about backlash.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Impact, increasing your impact.I’m curious if you can speak to one of the things that we know is that often women, the feedback women are given, is different than the feedback men are given. One of the things we also know is that a lot of times the tasks that are given to women don’t have the same kind of exposure and impact as their male counterparts. And I’m curious, I assume that this, you know, like, I just, I just want to be like, I know, you know, all of this. So let’s just talk about this stuff that I know a little bit about and expand on it. But can you, can you just dig into that a bit, that idea of impact, because not all impact is the same when it comes to career progression, not all impact is the same when it comes to exposure, when it comes to being able to show your strengths. And so I would love to just, I would just love to hear you tease that out a bit and, and geek out on it. So that we can understand that better. Because boy, you know, it’s okay. So and it was interesting. So something personal happen. My niece, Monica, she’s 17 16, 17. And she was voted to be the secretary of an organization within her school. And because she’s really organized, and da da da. I said great, and make sure that your voice is still heard. And it was interesting, because she was like, oh, no, no, it will because that’s why they wanted me in this position. Like, I am telling you that usually the person who’s the note taker, are women. And usually they’re so focused on capturing everyone else’s, that they don’t have the time or headspace to speak up and or they’re minimized and dismissed as not being as valuable. So I’m just telling you, this is a common trap. And I want you to be super aware of it. So anyway, the floor is yours.
Kathryn Valentine
This is an amazing, like, amazingly rich thing to go into. So I have feedback, I have tasks, and I have a trick. On the feedback side. One of my very favorite women, who’s incredibly, incredibly successful, has this saying which she, you know, doesn’t share widely, but the saying is, give me a list or promote me. And that is the mentality for every feedback session, which I love, which is basically we know that we know that bias is removed, the more specific you can get. And it is very possible to drive towards specificity in those feedback conversations as a woman without igniting backlash. So for example, your manager says, Oh, you just don’t have executive presence or whatever the heck it is, right? You say, Oh, what an interesting point. What does that look like to you? Oh, so if I demonstrated X, Y and Z, then I would have strong executive presence. Okay. Well, the second point that you said, I don’t actually understand how I would do that. Can you talk to me more about what that looks like? You are going to make them tell you how you can do this. And if if at any point in time, the meeting you feel like there’ll be like you don’t understand exactly specifically what to go do then keep asking questions. And then at the end, you write the note, right? There’s like, thanks so much for the time, here’s what I heard from you, here’s what I’m going to do. And then every time you do it, you send them another note. Thanks so much for the time. Here’s what I did, you know, it meant the team did X,Y and Z, so grateful. And, you know, if it’s not authentic, then then don’t do that. But it is a really good way of you know, if you’re getting feedback that’s nebulous, just ask questions until it’s not nebulous.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Kathryn Valentine
The trick there at a higher level, is we know that men are promoted based on potential and women are promoted based on performance, which means that and which means that even in an organization with only 3% bias, it’s going to take women twice as long to reach executive levels. Right? So basically, it’ll take you 16 years instead of eight. And so what we need to think about is, if we know that’s how things work without interruption, like, yes, we should fix the structures, that should happen. In the meantime, I’m really focused on giving women tools so that they can be successful in the structures now so that we can change them. So if we know that that’s what’s happening, what do we do? What we do is we have a midpoint review that actually matters. My theory is that midpoint reviews are the most important conversation that women have every year. Because if you only start your negotiation in your annual review, then it’s a surprise, right? There’s all these things. Oh, we haven’t done that yet. You haven’t done that yet. You haven’t done that yet. But if you have the conversation six months earlier, Hey, when we have our annual review, I’d like to be asked to be promoted to VP, can you tell me what I would need to demonstrate to prove that I’m ready for that? Oh, well, you need to X, Y and Z. Oh, I need to run a P&L? That’s so interesting. I don’t actually have a P&L to run, how would I do that? And then your boss is like, Oh, that’s right. Let me figure out how to make that work for you. Or let me think, let me give you this part of my P&L, let me, whatever it is, right, but you’re having this conversation in a way, so that they’re telling you exactly what boxes you need to check, you’re checking them every time you’re emailing them to let them know, you checked the box, so that by the time you get to your annual review, it is sort of predetermined, because you’ve been having that conversation for six months already.
Sarah Noll Wilson
The, I, that’s so, so interesting. And also that point of following up and making it visible, making, because it’s not, I’m not making my progress visible out of contempt, or resentment, it’s informing. That is definitely a pattern I’ve seen in a lot of folks, but I see it more often in women. And you know, and I’ll say this, I’m a Midwest woman, we were raised to not think, you know, don’t get too big for your britches, don’t, you know, we confuse humility with low self esteem. And, and one of the things is, is that there’s this assumption that if I do good work, it’ll be seen and recognized. And that’s just bullshit.
Kathryn Valentine
Well, because it doesn’t acknowledge the fact that everyone’s incredibly busy, I miss things all day long.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Right. Right.
Kathryn Valentine
So to our bosses. And so I think for this one, when when it’s sharing your wins, I don’t think of it as a braggy way I think of it as like a celebrating together, because you you told me that I need to work on X. I worked on X. And as a result, we just landed a new account. Like, that’s great for both of us. I want to share that win.
Sarah Noll Wilson
I love that so much. And, and sometimes, you know, one of the things when I’m working with a leader, regardless, is how do you make your your changes in thinking visible? How do you make the moments you’re catching yourself more visible? How do you draw that really direct line between exactly like you said, You gave me this feedback. I appreciate it. Here’s what I’ve done. Here’s what I’ve learned about it. Here’s what like, here’s how this conversation went differently than it wouldn’t have, like than it would have if I had followed my old ways. The other thing that’s interesting, I’m curious to get your thoughts. I want to be I don’t want to be careful about how I say this. But I’m, I’m being thoughtful. Because again, it’s not. It’s not manipulative. But when you can bring it back to, you told me to do this and so this is what I’m doing. There is an element of reminding that person again, not in a manipulative way. Like, I’m, I’m changing because of you, like a little bit of stroking their ego of like, Hey, thank you for that feedback.
Kathryn Valentine
Well, it’s the IKEA effect, right? When people build something, –
Sarah Noll Wilson
Tell me more.
Kathryn Valentine
Oh, when people participate in something, they believe that it is seven times more valuable than if they didn’t participate in it. So people who like build furniture are like, Well, this must be worth $500. Versus if they just buy it. It’s like 100 bucks or whatever, right?
Sarah Noll Wilson
Wait. Give me that stat again, because I love it so much and I’m totally going to use.
Kathryn Valentine
The IKEA effect is what it’s called. But it’s when people participate in something they see it as more valuable. The random $100, $500 thing I gave, yeah, those are just illustrative numbers. So that’s what you’re doing with the person you’re working with is we’re going somewhere together. Oh, that’s how I get on that path. Great. Hey, I want to let you know that advice you gave me, it worked really well. Here’s what I’m doing next.
Sarah Noll Wilson
It’s what I – god, I love – that it’s such a gift for me, because we think about that through the lens of including team members in strategies because people are more likely to commit to something they create. But I’ve never, I’ve never held it in the perspective from a leadership mentoring coaching perspective.
Kathryn Valentine
Well, like performance management of your career. Yeah, plus I mean, plus also, it’s just like it’s more fun when you do it with other people. The wins get celebrated differently.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. Okay. Can we? You said you had a list. Were there other things that you wanted to? Because I feel like that that is a really juicy bit of, of insight.
Kathryn Valentine
We’ll we hit feedback and we hit the random trick –
Sarah Noll Wilson
Before I asked you a different question.
Kathryn Valentine
If you want to go deeper in tasks we can or we can flip over to whatever.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Can we do just let’s just talk about it? Let’s do an abbreviation of that. Because it is important for, again, for people to understand, you know, I was working with a leader once and we had done a full, we call them gap audits, right? We understand how do they want to show up, we interview people, and we’re gathering like, where are the gaps? And one of the things that had come out of his his assessment is that both men and women perceived him to behaving to be behaving in ways that were sexist.
Kathryn Valentine
Oh, how interesting.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. It was super fascinating. And, and props to this guy, because he so beautifully caught himself saying, There’s no way that could be true, and then changed it to how might it be. And that was such a fundamental shift. It was, it was, it was one of my favorite clients to work with, because he was willing to sit with and wrestle and see like, oh, shit, I see where this is showing up. And one of them was related to tasks. He would only ever ask women to take notes, he would only ever ask women to organize events, he would only ever ask women to do stuff that wasn’t always critical to the business.
Kathryn Valentine
So two thoughts on that. One is, and I feel like collectively, you know, this is not a you thing. But collectively, we do not acknowledge often enough that like, it’s hard to be a woman in the workforce. It’s hard to be a man in the workforce right now. It’s hard to be, you know, transgender, like, it’s hard for everyone, because it’s changing.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Kathryn Valentine
And so I do I love being part of the women’s leadership community. But also, I always want to be really sensitive around the fact that like, it’s way harder to be a man working than it was 30 years ago.
Sarah Noll Wilson
You bet it is.
Kathryn Valentine
And so to your point of how your client who happened to be a male navigated that, like, that’s incredible leadership right there. That’s, that’s amazing. So in terms of the task, the research that we have, and this is by Linda Babcock and her team coming out of Carnegie Mellon, is that women are asked to do 200 hours of non promotable tasks every year. That’s, that’s a month. The other thing that they looked at, is how this is different for junior women and senior women. And the answer is it’s not, it’s actually about the same amount. But we’re responding differently. Senior women tend to work 250 hours more per year simply to compensate for the 200 hours of non promotable tasks they’re being they’re doing, which is a huge driver of burnout in executive levels for women. Junior women, currently, tend to actually work as much as their male colleagues, but because, let’s call it 8% of their effort is being directed to non promotable tasks, they’re not advancing as quickly. So, figuring out how to unravel this non promotable task thing is really important. And it’s happening for two reasons. One, women are twice as likely to be asked to do a non promotable task. But we’re also twice as likely to say yes.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, yeah.
Kathryn Valentine
And part of that is because the gendered nature of backlash, and so I highly recommend the No Club and they give like actually a formula for saying no to avoid backlash and all of that stuff. But it is, to your point, the task assignment is something else we’re gonna have to unravel as sort of the next frontier.
Sarah Noll Wilson
I, I don’t know that I’ve heard the phrase non promotable tasks set as explicitly as simply and as like, clearly, as you just said that, and it’s an interesting, even that is an interesting –
Kathryn Valentine
Framing?
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, it’s an interesting framing. And it’s a reflection and again, not just for men, because we know the bias exists for both men and women, right? We all have gendered bias within us, depending on how we were raised. But that idea of even just thinking, are people even clear – well, I mean, I know the answer, but are they even clear about what is the promotable task versus a non promotable task and who are you, I mean, like, that’s an interesting, that’s an interesting assessment all onto its own or an audit
Kathryn Valentine
Well, and – so I just finished working with a client last month and I had so much fun working with them because what they did is a leadership discussion of, A, what is non promotable tasks, B, given the research what do we see in our company and, C, what are the systems that we’re going to use to equalize that? So now instead of that one person always taking notes, they just draw straws at the beginning of every meeting, right? Like there’s there, they’ve come up with some pretty creative little ways. But then they also did a training for all the women on what is a non promotable task? And when it happens, how do we handle it? And you know, A, there’s a lot of ways you can say no, which we just alluded to, but, B, one of the questions is, oh, why are you, you know, why am I qualified to do that task? Or why? Why are you choosing me? And I think if you said that, without the whole company being trained, it gets a little tricky. But in this situation where all the leaders had been trained, it just, it’s just a nice trigger of like, Oh, I was asking you because you did it last time. Right? And so it just, it’s just a nice, again, you have to train the whole culture. So that’s non combative, but it’s a nice way to catch yourself.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Let’s, –
Kathryn Valentine
And women, by the way, women do it at the same frequency men do it. Like it’s not just men handing this to women, this is also women handing it to women.
Sarah Noll Wilson
And that’s, and that’s an important, that is absolutely an important thing to share. Again, we all we have internalized, right, sexism, racism, you know, patriarchy, all of that. I mean, like, it’s, it’s within all of us, especially in, you know, Western American culture. You, I want to, I want to pull the thread a bit on approaching things in a non combative way. I want to share with you an example of an experience I had that and I’m curious to get your perspective on like, using that as just a leveraging point of here’s how people receive women negotiating different. Just like in the example that you shared, right? So I used to work in HR. And while I wasn’t a part of, I wasn’t in the decision for compensation, but I was I was privy to observing how those conversations went. And pretty consistently, what I noticed is that if somebody was promoted internally and was a man and the man negotiating his salary, it was usually met with some kind of comment of, and we just got to do what we need to do to be able to keep him here, because he’s such a valuable asset. And the story, when women would push back was, she just needs to be grateful for what we’ve given her. And it was such a clear shift, it was such a clear difference in how the negotiation was received. So I would love to hear what are some of those common biases that show up? You know, you use the word combative, right? How do we approach it in a way that’s non combative? But I want to tease that out a little bit more, because that’s really important for people to understand that we’ve been talking about how it’s different because of gender. But I want to get, I want to get even more details around what does that look like, typically?
Kathryn Valentine
So, I’m going to take you back to sort of like 101 level, and feel free to guide me a little bit here. But the 101 level on backlash and negotiations is that you’re at a higher risk of negotiations and gender non congruent conversations. So that means that men are at a higher risk when they’re negotiating flexibility. And women are at higher risk when you’re negotiating everything else, right? Like when you’re negotiating promotion, when you’re negotiating more resources, when you’re negotiating pay, when you’re negotiating all of the traditional career things. And so that’s, what, what is happening there is we’re taking societal concepts of gender, right? So males, agency, women, other focused, we’re putting it in an environment where most people think of it as a combative, winner take all situation. And that just ignites those gender concepts. And together, that’s what’s causing backlash. And the backlash we’re seeing is not like the 1950s Mad Men-isk stuff. I mean, I would say, honestly, even what you were quoting is like a little bit on the heavy side, like what we’re seeing now is, you’re no longer invited to that presentation. You’re no longer invited to drink. So you’re just like very quietly sidelined, quietly enough that sometimes you think it’s in your own mind, it usually isn’t, right? So that –we
Sarah Noll Wilson
We call it quiet retaliation, like it’s, it’s not always obvious, it’s actually real subtle.
Kathryn Valentine
That’s a perfect term for it. That is, because of that, which ends up only compounding that, women tend to wait to negotiate until their backs are against the wall. And when your back is against the wall, you are inherently gonna have a harder time negotiating, you’re just not going to get the same – negotiation is much better as an offensive move than a defensive move. But because of the risk of backlash, women tend to wait until there’s absolutely no other choice. We have solutions to that, which I’m happy to run you through. But that’s kind of to your point of like what you heard. That’s sort of what’s going on.
Sarah Noll Wilson
It’s, a, gender congruence is again, you know, –
Kathryn Valentine
Isn’t that interesting?
Sarah Noll Wilson
It and it makes a ton of sense. I mean, it’s soon as you said it was like, oh, yeah, of course, of course that’s the case.
Kathryn Valentine
This is the thing about gender negotiations is it’s so obvious once you see it, yet, every major publication still writes negotiation articles as if we’re all the same.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. And we’re not.
Kathryn Valentine
We’re not.
Sarah Noll Wilson
What – I just I want to just hire you for like a day and be like, give me all of your wisdom and insight because I also am such a like, data girl too like a data nerd. So I love, I love the stats, just being –
Kathryn Valentine
Even the research is fun.
Sarah Noll Wilson
It just, it just brings it to life in a way that isn’t like, well, this is my experience. Well, I, you know, I talked to my friend, and she said, she’s never experienced this, like, okay, like.
Kathryn Valentine
Well, what I get a lot is women who are like, Well, I mentioned it to such and such, but they said, like, the risk of backlash was just in my own mind. And a lot of times, you know, it’s not the risk of backlash. It’s like, you know, the risk of seeming greedy or not a team player, all these other ways that we say backlash, more commonly. They say it’s just in my head, it’s like, okay, well, please stop talking to them about negotiation. Because we know from research that women are at a much higher rate, risk of backlash than men are so.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Well, and, and, and that feeds into so many things beyond even negotiating. That feeds into giving feedback, that feeds into the cost, the risk cost calculation we’re doing to speak up when you feel like you have experienced harm, when you have experienced harassment, when you have felt like you were unfairly treated. Because we know and I don’t remember what the stats, but it’s substantial, that there will be backlash when you are part of the nondominant group who’s speaking up against it. And I was just talking to this incredible person recently, you know, and she was struggling, and she was like, it’s so hard, because I’m not the only woman experiencing it in my company. But every woman who comes to me is like, I just want to get this off my chest, please don’t say anything, because I know, it’s just gonna make it worse. And, and which is so frustrating that that is the reality. But then the other side of it is exactly exactly what you’re talking to. And again, maybe there’s a conversation in the future of how do we receive this better. Like, I’m thinking of all the times, and I’m a little like, I’m – listeners, you can hear that I’m worked up about it, because like, I just recently had to deal with somebody who was a part of a session, who had been drinking, not to excuse his behavior, but said something fairly derogatory to me. And when I brought it up to their leadership team, the response was, I’m sure they meant it in a loving way. The response was not I’m sorry that that happened. That’s inappropriate. That’s not, right? So anyway.
Kathryn Valentine
Let me, you just give me two examples, Sarah. Let’s talk about the impact of that on the company.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yes. I love you.
Kathryn Valentine
So companies understand that in order to achieve growth, they need to leverage all of the talent that’s available to them, not just half of it. And you know, the research that I’m deep in on is the gender lens, it’s not all the other lenses that are equally valid. It’s just not my area of expertise.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. Yeah.
Kathryn Valentine
So companies know that in order to achieve growth, they have to leverage all talent, not just half talent. And frankly, they’re getting pretty decent at recruiting in female talent. But now they’re in a position where if they cannot support that female talent, they’re just – it’s all about, they’re just wasting all of the resources that they have recruited, trained and onboard. And so when you gave both of those examples, that hurts the company way more than it hurts the talented female. Because there’s a lot of great companies to work at now as a woman. I mean, there are, the clients that I work with, the things that they are doing are absolutely incredible. And so if you are a talented female, there’s a company that would be great for you. It’s more to your point the companies that are still doing things like that, it’s only going to hurt them.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. Yeah. That’s such a it’s such a great reframe, because the reality is it’s you know, it’s that whole what becomes near to you becomes dear to you. And sometimes that’s like somebody you know, but it’s also this is hurting your bottom line.
Kathryn Valentine
And that’s why, and that’s what a business is, right? A business is –
Sarah Noll Wilson
Exactly. Yeah. And I just I appreciate how you’re constantly just using that language of like, you want to be successful? You have to leverage all your talent, not just half of it, not just 75% of it, not just 20% of it, like you got to leverage all of it. And that means creating a space for everyone to be able to show up. Oh man, Kathryn.
Kathryn Valentine
Sarah, it looks like I’ve absolutely exhausted you. Sarah has her head in her hands right now. (laughs)
Sarah Noll Wilson
I do for listeners. I, I’m not speechless, it’s just part of it is like, my brain is going in a 1000 miles per hour.
Kathryn Valentine
It’s like a big bowl of spaghetti. There’s so many different things. Yeah.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, cuz I use the analogy of like, it’s a tangled up ball of Christmas lights with yarn and other stuff. And we’re just starting to like piece together and pull it, pull it out. What would be one or two critical things that you would want any woman who is listening to this, to think about differently? Or consider saying differently? And I know that that’s a big ask because you’re probably having 1000.
Kathryn Valentine
It’s not.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Oh, it’s not? I love it!
Kathryn Valentine
Here’s my number one. If there’s one thing to think about, it’s how to ask relationally. So the research out of Harvard shows that if you can demonstrate, when you’re negotiating, if you can demonstrate that your ask is both legitimate and beneficial, then you are, A, more likely to be successful, but, B, you can virtually eliminate the risk of backlash. And if we give women tools that allows them to ask for things that increase their impact, decrease their stress. But we’ve eliminated the risk there, to your point, the cost benefit analysis becomes different. And now all of a sudden, you can ask for whatever the heck you want. Because the worst case is you hear no and that no doesn’t carry with being sidelined or escorted out of the building by security. Right? And so here’s how a relational ask works.
Sarah Noll Wilson
I was just gonna ask you, what does it look like?
Kathryn Valentine
So when I, I don’t do client work anymore, like one-on-one coaching, but when I used to, I would tell clients for the first year like, oh, it needs to be, you know, legitimate and beneficial. And the clients are like, what does that even mean? And so we created a formula, a trademark formula for how to set the conversation up. And what that is, is, one, past performance. Two, future vision that everyone’s excited about. Three, your ask, and then four, stop talking. We would find that in an attempt to make your negotiation partner feel better, or women would start negotiating against themselves. So what that looks like is, let’s say you wanted to negotiate a promotion. As you know, I’ve been able to increase, I’m going to use sales because it’s easy to monetize. But I’ve been able to increase sales by 10% last year. I think I can do that again this year. In order to do that, though, I wanted to talk about being promoted to director level, because when I’m meeting clients externally with a manager title, they don’t think that I can get done the things I’m promising them. But with the director title, I will signal the credibility that allows me to convert the sale. What do you think? Okay, no managers gonna say no to that, like you just told them, you’re gonna bring them more money. And so when you exhibit the good work that you’ve done, make an ask that we’re all excited about, right? So a lot of times, it’s like, whatever your business goal is, but then what you need to do that ask – I worked with a woman, Claire, who, you know, as you know, we’ve been able to onboard, we just released the new onboarding program, people are being able to be on boarded in 40%, less time than they used to. We think we can roll this out to all markets next year. But in order to do that, I need to work the hours I’m most productive. So when I talk to you about being offline after 6 pm every night, what do you think? Right? And they had this conversation, it’s a collaborative discussion, her boss pointed out that they have a big report due on Friday morning. So now she’s offline, you know, at 6 pm, four days a week, not five. Fine. Way better than, she was working till 10 pm before, right? And so that would be like the one thing I would hand as a tool to listeners, to women listeners is think about laying out your ask that way.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, that’s brilliant. That’s brilliant. I feel like that’s a really lovely place for us to wind down our conversation, because I have no doubt that you are just this wealth of insight and, and for people who are listening –
Kathryn Valentine
Sarah, I’m just gonna record this, and I’m gonna play it for my children every time they’re like, No! I’m a wealth of insight.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Hey, you know, our mutual friend Alison Fragale, we call each other wing women. So if you ever need a wing woman to be like, you’re amazing, and, and it’s so valuable. I’m so grateful that you are on the show. I’m so glad that the weather worked out that we were able to have this conversation. And since it’s the first time you’ve been on the show, I ask everyone this question, and I would love to hear your answer. You know, this whole show is about just exploring conversations with ourselves and other people. What was a conversation for you personal, professional, whether it was with yourself or with someone else that was transformative for you.
Kathryn Valentine
I had the privilege about 15 years ago of getting to work with an executive coach who, she was a PhD in, I don’t know something smart. But one of the things that blew my mind is when I got to talking to her, she did not take client work in July or December. And I was like, That’s so interesting. Tell me about that. And she was like, Well, I found two things. One in July, my clients were all on vacation or their teams were on vacation, or they were thinking about vacation. So the conversations weren’t as helpful to them. And the same thing in December, right, they were in the middle of the holidays, the conversations weren’t as helpful, it felt a little bit more like a to do for them than me delivering value the way that I’m so capable of doing. And also, I realized that the bulk of my children’s memories were being made in those two months. And she was like, so, I just changed the expectation, you know, the expectation is you meet with the coach once a month, every month for 12 months, or whatever. She was like, so I just changed. And it was just one of those moments for me where before that I had assumed this is the way we do things, right. This is the way they’ve always been done. This is the way we do them. And it was the first time I talked to someone that was like, But why? And how else can we do them that makes more sense, because a lot of the world has changed since the Model T. And that was that’s, that was such a huge changing point for me. She’s an incredible, She’s incredible.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, that’s beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. Kathryn, I have no doubt that there are people who are listening to this who want to connect with you who want to learn more about your work. So what, what is the best way for people to learn about you and get the opportunity to work with you?
Kathryn Valentine
Sarah, thank you so much for mentioning that. I would say first of all, if you want the resource on the 75 Things You Can Negotiate, go to our website, it’s Worth More Strategies dot com. You can download it there. Secondly, if you’re part of a woman’s group, and you ever need a speaker, please let me know. Like the only way I get these resources to people right now is predominantly through speaking. And then you know, I’m kind of casually on LinkedIn, if you want to connect there.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, I love it. I already want to talk to you about some clients that I want to collaborate with you on, do some work so we’ll chat.
Kathryn Valentine
I would love to hang more. But Sarah, also like, thank you for the opportunity to just have this conversation with you.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, no, I mean, thank you for the work you’re doing. Thank you for the the depth of expertise you bring to it, your willingness to constantly evolve with it. I think that’s something I always admire in people who don’t get caught in, well, I know this so this is the one way I do it. But it’s like, well, here’s what we know now, here’s how it’s evolved. And here’s how it’s changing. Is just you’re such a gift. And I’m so grateful that we were invited, and I just can’t wait to continue to learn from you and follow your journey and support you and do whatever needs to happen. So we can get your work into as many people’s hands as possible. So consider me big, big Team Kathryn, for sure.
Kathryn Valentine
Thank you. And also, I will be playing that in my air pods before I go on stage next time. It’s so helpful. Thank you so much. I feel wonderful.
Sarah Noll Wilson
(laughs) Good. Thank you for being on the show, my dear.
Our guest this week has been Kathryn Valentine. And as you can pick up I was just absorbing everything that she had to offer in that conversation. And one of the things that I’m really chewing on was that model that she shared at the end of past performance, future wishes, what do you need and the ask and then just keep quiet. I love having a good structured framework for how to have conversations that can feel tricky, in that is just a massive, massive gift. And we want to hear from you, as always. end us a message at podcast at Sarah Noll Wilson dot com. And let us know what came up for you, resonated for you, what were you chewing on as a result of this conversation? And for those of you who have been listening for a while or if you’re first time listeners and you want to support the show, please be sure if you haven’t already to rate, review and subscribe to the show on your preferred podcast platform. This helps us to increase our exposure so we can continue to bring on amazing guests like Kathryn Valentine. And another way you can support the show is by becoming a patron. You can go to patreon dot com slash conversations on conversations where your financial support supports the entire team that makes this show possible. Not only do you get early episodes that are ad free, but you also get access to some pretty cool swag.
So speaking of the team, let’s give them some love. To our producer Nick Wilson, our sound editor Drew Noll, our transcriptionist Becky Reinert, our marketing consultant Jessica Burdg and the rest of the SNoWCo crew. Thank you all so much. And just one big final thank you to Kathryn Valentine, for bringing her insights, her wisdom, and pushing us all to think about how we can show up more powerfully for ourselves and others. And that my friends wraps up this week’s episode of Conversations on Conversations. Thank you all so much for listening, for showing up for us and for yourself. And remember, when we can change the conversations we have with ourselves and others, I do believe we can change the world. So till next week, please be sure to rest, rehydrate and we will see you again soon.
Sarah Noll Wilson is on a mission to help leaders build and rebuild teams. She aims to empower leaders to understand and honor the beautiful complexity of the humans they serve. Through her work as an Executive Coach, an in-demand Keynote Speaker, Researcher, Contributor to Harvard Business Review, and Bestselling Author of “Don’t Feed the Elephants”, Sarah helps leaders close the gap between what they intend to do and the actual impact they make. She hosts the podcast “Conversations on Conversations”, is certified in Co-Active Coaching and Conversational Intelligence, and is a frequent guest lecturer at universities. In addition to her work with organizations, Sarah is a passionate advocate for mental health.