Do Women Find Negotiating More Stressful Than Men Do?
Often yes! Why?
Because of our capacity for empathy; we are generally better at it than men. We are more sensitive to subtle signals and we constantly read others’ energies, feelings and reactions while doing whatever it is we are doing.
That’s the case even when we are heavily involved in technical or analytical work. For example I remember years ago being involved in financial analysis teams. Even when we were fully concentrating on our data analysis, evaluations and logical deductions, the women on the team knew “the lay of the land” mood-wise in the department.
Please don’t misunderstand me; I’m not saying that women are weaker negotiators. We may know how you feel, but we’re also very dedicated to getting the job done: great prices, great contract terms.
In the process of negotiating a lower price on the purchasing contract, a woman wouldn’t have just managed the flow of the interaction and handled objections while keeping both her objective and bottom line in mind, she would have also identified and processed the various parties’ emotions. Which means she would have had to also manage her reactions (even if only internal). Feeling the conflicts more acutely, she is bound to feel more stress.
What kind of person finds negotiating enjoyable and easy? He or she is able to focus on the goals and process while detaching from the feelings (or believes that the other side’s wellbeing is none of his or her concern).
I don’t know about you, but most women don’t fit that description.
Once again, that does not mean that women are poor negotiators. As I said earlier, we tend to be very responsible so we won’t let our side down. Also, history has proven countless times that not taking the “losing” party to the cleaners is most often the best strategy in the long run. And that’s a point that women in general, understand quite well.
Other People’s Success
The last sentence on last week’s post caused a reaction: I was listing a few problems faced by affluent children, and said that it was another example of how success can cause problems if it’s not managed properly. But it was their parents (or earlier generations) that were successful, so some thought it wasn’t a good example of a success trap.
True enough; but there are similarities in the corporate world. For example, what if you got transferred to a division that has been the star performer for years; don’t you think you’d be affected by that success even if you didn’t personally contribute to it?
Managers in those circumstances feel the pressure of having to keep up the same rate of performance or be branded as the ones who broke the winning record.
What if you found that the high performance was attained at the expense of long term financial health and/or practices detrimental to the environment or employees’ well being? What if these practices could continue for a few years yet before things start unraveling, giving you enough time to get a big promotion?
You’d have important decisions to make, decisions that would impact you personally, and all caused by other people’s success.
Why Would High Marks at School Be Bad For Your Career?
For one thing, the ability to relate to people is the main success factor in business (more about that in later posts). Many of us paid the price for high marks with long hours of concentrated work, leaving little time to pursue other interests.
I know that I would go through my MBA differently knowing what I know; I would spend a lot less time with my nose in books, and a lot more being involved in various activities with people. Of course, it’s a balance.
Making high marks a priority can also prevent a student from experimenting with a new subject and with taking risks on choosing a project topic. Looking back, I see I missed great opportunities to learn a lot more than what I did, not only about subjects, but also about how to think your way through more uncertain territory. (Thankfully, I came to my senses later in life).
Finally, I’ve observed that many people who have worked hard at school and then in their careers don’t know themselves that well. They never devoted time and attention to exploring who they really are, and can find out that they spent their lives climbing the ladder only to find that it’s against the wrong wall.
Electronic Leash
I was traveling for most of May, partly for business and partly for pleasure, and the month flew by. I had decided that writing blog posts was not my highest priority; looking after individuals’ needs was as well as taking a break.
But I felt like a slacker for not posting, which of course is ridiculous. It’s just another example of how we let electronics keep us on a leash: checking our e-mails and bringing our blackberries and laptops on our trips.
Yes, if we don’t deal with them the e-mail volume gets ridiculous; and there may be a deal going down. But by being so available, we trained people to get us involved rather than deal with matters themselves. And taking an electro-break is absolutely essential to our wellbeing and future performance.
Did you know that our brain recharges best when we give it a change of pace? It wants us to do something different and checking messages on our blackberry while we’re on the beach spoils the whole thing. Sort of like looking at our watch when on a romantic date.
“I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up”: Laughing at Failure
Remember that commercial, sometime in the 80s, I think. It’s been spoofed many times since, more than it deserves to be. I mean the acting isn’t Oscar material, but it isn’t bad enough to warrant the kind of derision it got over the years. So what’s going on here?
For that matter, what’s so funny about someone slipping on a banana peel? Mainly the fact that it’s not us doing it. Laughing expresses our gladness that we’re not in their boots, and also maybe is a bit of an “exorcism” of something we don’t want for ourselves. Laugh and it won’t seem like a big deal.
Now unless your body is vulnerable (age, injuries), slipping on a peel doesn’t cause much harm. But being elderly, alone, and unable to get up, now that’s frightening when you think of it.
And that’s the point: laughter prevents us from thinking about it. It distances us from the fear or being alone and vulnerable. Of lying there in pain, not knowing how to get help.
Why am I talking about this here? Because it reminds me of how we fear failure.
We fear it and either discount its possibility too much by refusing to consider how to minimize its likelihood or impact, or we give too much energy to trying to prevent it even if it’s a remote possibility.
And for many of us, it’s particularly hard to bounce back after setbacks, personal or professional. It’s a skill I was never taught in business school; I think because of the usual mindset, you know the one that says: “Failing is for losers and don’t think about being a loser or you’ll become one.” Yet it’s a skill we really need to learn. We are going to fail many times in our lifetimes. That’s for sure, unless we do nothing, risk anything. And that’s the biggest failure of all.
So how do you bounce back when you feel like a failure? That topic was so interesting to me I chose it as my contribution to a book I co-authored with other coaches. Here’s the link if you want to look into it: http://www.topcoachesshare.com/volume3/HeleneDesruisseaux
Nothing is as Tiring as Pointless Work
My most draining days have been when they were full of long, hard work of the kind that I dislike doing, and either:
- I didn’t see the point of it all
- Or I didn’t see when it would end.
It seems like nothing is as tiring as pointlessness. We humans are problem solving machines. We need context. We function better when we see a cause and effect, a beginning and an end. After all, we think in stories and stories have a plot, some logic to them.
So why wouldn’t we understand why we do the work we do?
- Because our environment is too full of confusing and ever changing circumstances,
- Because the decision makers aren’t sharing the information,
- Or because we are too busy to remember the reasons why.
In the first case, we have to learn to navigate through chaos better (and that’s quite a skill). In the second case, we can ask; most people would respond well to constructive questions. If they don’t, it’s a clue we might want to work elsewhere.
The third case requires us to take time to identify or remember our purpose. What’s the real goal of this project/job/unit/company again?
That applies to our overall business or work as well. Knowing why we do what we do is probably the most essential requirement of a good life. And making a living isn’t a good enough reason.
How to Pace Ourselves at Work
In my last post, I talked about how studies conclusively show that we perform much better if we take periodic breaks; not only do we take less time to complete our work, but we make less mistakes.
Now most people including me find it hard to remember to do that in the heat of deadlines, when all we can think of is to hurry and push harder to fulfill our promise. So it’s really important to ingrain good “break” behaviors, turning them into habits that we do without thinking.
And if we are the boss, we need to come to terms with what we consider to be productive breaks, and what is goofing off.
For example, it is recommended that we take a 10 minute walkabout every 90 minutes. It is important that we move around during that break, because thinking uses up a lot of oxygen, which we need to replenish in our cells. Examples of “productive” walkabouts are:
- Visiting other staff to chat about how things are doing
- Walking to the water cooler and drinking water while stretching and bonding with co workers (as long as the talk is not destructive to individual or group morale)
- Walking around the block clearing our mind to leave room for creative problem solving ideas
- If we work in a home office, getting up to drink water, walking the dog, petting the cat, or cleaning something (maintaining strict time boundaries to prevent it from turning into a way of procrastinating)
Another recommendation is to take a minute break for every 30 minutes of concentrated work. That can be a perfect opportunity to observe our thoughts and feelings while deep breathing and doing a quick stretch.
It sounds like no big deal, but it makes a big difference to both our performance and our energy levels. The quick energy techniques that I teach are based on our physiology, and people report that they make a measurable difference in how they feel about their day; not only in what they accomplished but also in how they feel physically and emotionally.
Why Hard Work Doesn’t Necessarily Pay Off
You are facing a major deadline. The best way to perform at your best is to:
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Buckle down and focus on the job until it’s done.
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Make sure you keep up with the social chats around the water cooler.
Studies have shown that by far, the best alternative is…the second one. Surprised? Most people are. But it makes sense, when you look at how our bodies and brains are designed.
We work best when we alternate between periods of activity and periods of rest. Athletes know this. They know that training non stop will backfire on their performance. Yet somehow, we think that we are built differently for our “thinking” activities than our physical ones.
One of the studies’ findings was that we cause more mistakes and wasted time by working for long and continuous time periods. When we work for longer than 30 minutes on a task, it takes us 5 times longer to solve the problem.
So by taking well-timed breaks, we not only improve the quality of our work, we end up saving time and feeling less frenzied. What do we mean by well-timed? If possible, a 10 minute walkabout every 90 minutes or so, and a minute pause for every 30 minutes of concentrated work.
I’m not suggesting promoting employees who goof around. What I am saying is that what contributes to productivity isn’t the time spent on work, but the energy invested it in. And human beings have more and better quality energy when they take the right kinds of breaks.
The Time Management Fiasco
How much energy we have at the end of a day depends on:
- What we did during the day
- How we did it
- Why we did it
- How resilient we are.
In this post, I’ll touch on the “What”.
“Oh no! We’re not going to hear the time management lecture again, are we?”
I know, we’ve all heard it so many times: prioritize, delegate what you can, chunk the rest. So my question is: How come most of us are still so swamped?
The Time Management Fiasco
I won’t surprise anyone by saying that we will always be asked to do more, to do as much as we allow ourselves to take on. No one is protecting us, our time or our health. So it’s up to us to set boundaries…and rarely do we do that well, if at all.
Why not? There are many reasons, from fear of failure to not taking the time to organize ourselves, and I want to touch on a few interesting ones that usually don’t get discussed that much:
Immediate, lower priority tasks seduce us.
Time management expert Alex Mackenzie found in his surveys, that most executives don’t get to their most important tasks until mid afternoon. So it’s a common “disease”.
It hits us because we want the sense of accomplishment that comes with finishing something concrete. Lower priority items tend to be shorter, easier, and we’re not as tempted to procrastinate with them since they are not as emotionally charged as the project that could impact our success…one way or another.
The cure? Making absolutely sure that we take time to “script” our day; to decide where we are going to direct our attention. It’s not just “one of those” time management tools; it prevents us from wasting our lives away on things that don’t matter most to us.
The dispensability factor
No matter what we say, many of us don’t trust others to do the job right unless we are involved. And/or we subconsciously think that if we are not kept “in the loop”, it diminishes our self-importance. (How could things function without me?)
The cure? Asking ourselves what might really go wrong. Maybe we can create a way to minimize those instances. And wouldn’t the occasional slipup be worthwhile in exchange for freeing up our time and attention?
Strengths vs. Weaknesses
Everyone agrees that we are so much more tired after doing work we don’t like. But somehow, we don’t use that fact in planning our work.
As a business owner, executive or manager, we can choose to work in our areas of strength, and hire for our weaknesses. Notice over the next week what kind of work leaves you drained, as challenge your thinking: do you really have to do this yourself?
What matters to us
We always have a greater reserve of energy for doing work that is aligned with what we feel is important. So why wouldn’t we spend some time reflecting on what we do, to make sure that, as much as possible, we devote our time to what matters to us.
Even within the confines of “having to make a living”, we can find ways of adjusting our work to reflect our values. In some cases, it might take a while to get there (often with the assistance of a mentor, coach or friend), but it’s worth the investment. We are talking about our lives here.
What is really draining your energy?
Yes, most of us would feel better if we changed our nutrition and fitness behaviors. But as important as they are, they are not the root cause of our personal” deflation”.
Root Causes
The root causes are more likely our feelings. Skeptical? Well, how much more energized do you think you would be at the end of the day if you did not:
- Worry about getting business results or the next promotion
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Fear losing your job, or your customers
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Feel angry at all the impossible demands made of you
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Always brace yourself for the next problem
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Hate (or came to hate) the work you do, or the environment you’re in
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Underneath it all, distrust most (or all) people
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Feel like you’re running on endless treadmill with no end in sight
“Ok, but that doesn’t help me much”, you might say. “I have to work, and those things just come with it. Everyone’s in the same boat.”
Lots of people are, but not everyone.
And lots of people are tired, so tired they don’t recognize themselves as the person they once were.
Too tired to do anything but work and workout
We live in the land of sleep-deprived, caffeine-boosted, win-at-all-cost adrenaline junkies. Our physical, emotional and energetic systems are so depleted we only have energy for the “revved up” activities: the workplace and the gym.
“Wait a minute, isn’t that contradictory, being too tired for anything but high-energy activities?”
Not really. In order to relate to family and friends, we have to be emotionally present, to be receptive to the nuances of their needs. We also have to be willing to show ours. But when we are tired, we are shut down. We can all recognize this because we have all done it, snapped at someone and then apologized later, saying we were “too tired”.
But even when we are tired, we can brace ourselves for the next task demanded of us, as long as it doesn’t require too much subtlety (since that requires us to have access to all of our resources and we’re not functioning on all cylinders).
So we can function and even look formidable, but we are bulls in a china shop. And despite what some people may believe that doesn’t lead to a high quality performance, especially in the long-term. Business success depends on relationships and people either steer clear of a bull or try to trap it. But I digress; more about performance some other time, let me get back to energy levels.
The consequences of pushing yourself
Remember what happened in the past when you knew you had to keep going for a deadline and pushed yourself to keep going when you were tired? I do. Eventually, I:
- Made errors I wouldn’t have otherwise, which I had to take extra time to correct
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Teed a few people off wanting immediate service in my rush (at the coffee shop, printer, receptionist, legal department, etc.), which means I had to repair relationships
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Had no life outside of work
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Didn’t perform as well on the next project as I would normally have if I hadn’t burnt myself out
Eventually, it can lead to a more pervasive burnout situation, and/or a certain kind of rigidity in thinking, leadership and communication style, and general attitude.
“But what else can I do, I have deadlines to meet”.
Yes, there’s the rub. The answer is more complex than can be answered in a blog post, but I’ll cover a few ideas next week.
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