Analytic Design Group

In the last few months I’ve been forced to negotiate far more and for many more things than ever before in my life. I’ve discovered that I hate it. Really. It’s so hard. I’ve also discovered that I’m not alone. In their book Women Don't Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation--and Positive Strategies for Change , Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever explain the primary differences in the way women and men approach negotiations.

The biggest deal for me was that men tend to look at negotiating as if it were a game. They play to win, they practice all the time, and they don’t take it as a personal failure or a threat to the relationship when the negotiations are not successful. Women, on the other hand, fear negotiations so much they will take extreme steps to avoid it. We don’t prepare, we don’t trust ourselves, we settle for far less than men do, we take it uber personally when things don’t go so great and to make matters worse, when we do negotiate we tend to shoot ourselves in the foot by sabotaging the negotiation.

So here I sit on the tail end of major negotiation. Without going into detail, the deal didn’t work out. I had been super nervous going in to it in spite of the fact that whether or not the deal went through, I was (and am) in a great position, I had done my research and I felt strongly heading into the whole thing that the people I was dealing with were trustworthy and fair minded.

The thing I was most afraid of was that I’d not be able to negotiate well, that I would not get a fair deal. The other fear that was there was that the relationship I’d had with the people I was negotiating with would somehow be ruined if I didn’t accept what they offered.

In the end I had to walk away. The deal being offered didn’t meet my needs. I can understand why they offered the deal they did but it wasn’t the right deal for me. And how did it all work out? Well, they were disappointed but accepted my decision. We hope to do business again in the future and I feel empowered.

Do I still fear negotiations? Well, we'll see what happens the next time...