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How To Advocate For Yourself To Make More Money With Claire Wasserman

Millie Ngai-Lenoir

Claire Wasserman is the founder of ‘Ladies Get Paid’ a leading platform that champions the professional and financial advancement of women.

In just a few years, ‘Ladies Get Paid’ has grown from an informal gathering of women in a small New York apartment discussing their relationship with money, to a global community with over 100,000 women, exchanging over 2 million messages since launching in 2016. 

Claire is passionate about women’s professional empowerment, becoming a leader in the conversation and working endlessly to normalise talking openly about money and salaries. 

She has now put together all she’s learnt about this into her first book ‘Ladies get Paid’: the pre-eminent guide on how women can get recognised and rewarded at work.

We’ve been working from home for a full year, and we know the pandemic has disproportionately impacted women, so I was curious to get Claire’s insights on how we can still show our value as we work remotely, and ultimately get paid what we deserve.  

Claire also shares how we can open the conversation around money with our peers, the power she has seen in having your own personal board of career advisors, her one piece of negotiation advice everyone should know, how to overcome imposter syndrome and why we should consider investing for our future.  💕

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You can listen (40 min) and subscribe here:

Apple Podcasts

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1. getting paid your worth

While we can all acknowledge that closing the gender pay gap is a critical issue in society, not everyone has the time to advocate for equal pay on a national scale. Instead, advocating for yourself to make more money through salary negotiation is one way in which you can make a difference (one woman at a time!), thereby not only benefitting yourself but other women within your community. Negotiating your compensation during your early career is especially important given that it will equip you with the ability to raise your salary over the span of your career. This is because your salary history will often inform how you evaluate the prospective pay at your next job. In fact, research from Professor Linda Babcock shows that executive women who negotiated their first salaries out of university stood to make $500,000 more over their working lives than those who did not. Clearly, effective salary negotiation is vital to acknowledging our market value, maximising our lifetime earnings and closing the gender pay gap. However, the conflicting messages that women are forced to contend with in society have left many of us feeling like we would rather not negotiate for fear of rocking the boat.

In ‘Ladies Get Paid’, Claire explains that whether you realise it or not, you negotiate every day. Whether it is deciding on what film to watch with your partner or working out where to eat with your friends, negotiating is fundamentally about arriving at a solution that satisfies everyone. Despite the fact that we negotiate throughout the course of our daily lives, negotiating our salaries can feel like a completely different ball game. Many women face the fear of rejection and worry about how they will be perceived when asking for more. This is no surprise given that negotiating is at odds with how we have been socialised to behave as women. From a young age, we are taught that ‘good girls’ are accommodating, humble and grateful for what they are given - in other words, “nice girls don’t ask” (HBR, 2003). Hence, recognising your market value and getting paid your market worth begins with shifting your mindset where negotiation is concerned.

Claire argues that it is important to understand that negotiating is just a natural process of getting a job, and that employers expect you to counter their proposed offers in almost all cases. Negotiating does not have to be rude or combative, rather it is a conversation in which you demonstrate to your employer that you are capable, confident and comfortable with what you have to offer. If you fear that countering an employment offer will cost you the opportunity, remind yourself that, given the investment made by the company in the recruitment process, the employer will want to come to an agreement with you. You have more leverage that you might think. Further, by under-pricing yourself, there is a strong chance that you will become demotivated on the job, resulting in a worse outcome for both you and your employer were you not to negotiate.

Prior to negotiation, it is important that you do your market research to understand your market value. Do not base your valuation on the pay from your previous job. Claire explains that many women base their salary expectations on their previous salary, often adding twenty percent to this number. The issue with this method is the implicit assumption that your original salary was fair. Leveraging online platforms such as ‘PayScale’, ‘Glassdoor’ and ‘LinkedIn’ for free salary gauges based on job title, skills, experience, and education can be game changing for realising your market worth. It can also be illuminating to talk to ‘real’ people by discussing your salary with peers working in the same role as you to get a sense of whether you are being lowballed by your current or potential employer. When you arrive at your own market valuation, Claire suggests her ‘guardrail’ method for entering the process of salary negotiation. Within the salary range you have determined, select three numbers to act as ‘guardrails’ from which you may provide yourself with a negotiation framework: the number at the top of the pay band should challenge you to negotiate hard; the number in the middle of the pay band should satisfy your salary requirements; finally, you must identify your bottom line – this is a salary below which you will choose to walk away from the opportunity. Having multiple salary numbers in mind will help you know what to counter your prospective employer’s offer with. Remember that negotiation does not stop at your salary. There are factors that make up your full compensation such as flexible working arrangements, coaching and expense accounts that you should negotiate for. When entering such negotiation, it is helpful to consider how you can present your case as a benefit to your employer’s busienss. For example, by getting them to pay for a professional development course, you can argue to your employer during negotiation that it will make you more productive on the job - winner winner.

2. overcoming perfectionism and the imposter syndrome

Claire argues that before you can begin to advocate for yourself, internal work is required to understand your self-worth: you must examine the innermost beliefs that you carry into your life and into your workplace. Only once you have established a foundation for self-belief can you effectively negotiate. You must deeply believe that you are worthy of advocacy. Perfectionism and the imposter syndrome are two subtly entrenched enemies that can knock your self-worth, instead leading to burn-out, dissatisfaction and limitation over the course of your career.

Claire defines perfectionism as the core belief that “anything less than flawless is a failure, an in turn, we are the failure”, while the imposter syndrome reflects the core belief that you are inadequate despite evidence suggesting the contrary – in other words, we think that we are not as good as we present ourselves to be. Perfectionism and the imposter syndrome are both inextricably linked in the sense that both phenomena stem from the conditioning that our worth is contingent upon how we perform against society’s standards. By contorting ourselves to gain the approval of others, we can lose sight of what will make us successful in our careers and what fulfils us.

Perfectionist tendencies and the imposter syndrome have been documented to be more prevalent in women that men and this trend begins at an early age. According to research by Girlguiding UK showed that over a quarter of seven to ten year old girls felt the need to be perfect. It is also plain to see that this pressure to be ‘perfect’ continues well into adult life: an internal survey of women working at Hewlett-Packard found that women applied for a promotion only when they met one hundred percent of the qualifications, while their male counterparts applied when they met just fifty percent. When we constantly strive for unachievable standards in order to showcase to ourselves and to others that we are ‘worthy’, we overwork ourselves and risk burnout. In addition, imposter syndrome and perfectionism keep us from taking up space as we avoid being ambitious, taking risks and creative pursuits in our career. Effectively, perfectionism leads us closer to failure since the loss of self belief that comes from falling short of unrealistic standards can force us into a vicious cycle in which we are hindered in our willingness to try, take risks and learn.

In this episode, Claire explains how you can overcome these shackling phenomena by “getting out of your head”. This will require you to shift your mindset from making assumptions about what others are thinking to what will maximise your learning and enjoyment in the process of your work. It is important to be mindful when thoughts of self-doubt creep into your head: acknowledge these thoughts of what you feel like you ‘should’ being doing and replace these thoughts with strategies for what you ‘can’ be doing to make tangible progress. Finally, you must summon the ability to forgive yourself by finding a way to step back and see yourself from the outside, silencing your inner critic in the process.

3. discover your superpower

Did you know that you have hidden superpowers? That is not to say that you have super strength like the hulk or super-human speed like Wonder Woman. Your superpower exits in your specific genius: your unique, personal and specialised skill that enhances your way of working. Your superpower may not be tangible, but it will have a major impact on the people around you, inspiring other members of your team to bring their own personal bests to work. Your superpower is something which comes naturally to you, an element of your person that is so ingrained in who you are you may not even recognise it.

Claire explains that identifying your superpower is critical to effective negotiation and interviewing. Superpowers demonstrate not just what you can do, but who you are and what you can contribute to the workplace. Some examples of superpowers include, but are not limited to:

  • Leadership - when others benefit from your direction and naturally follow your directives

  • Fast learner - when you can process and apply new information quickly

  • Teacher - when you can effortlessly educate others and, therefore, take your team to the next level

  • Positivity - when you have the ability to keep morale high when times become testing

  • Team builder - when you can connect people and help them collaborate better through their differences

When in an interview or negotiating your salary, you must showcase your superpower to your employer, showcasing the things that make you unique and enable you to contribute significant value to your team. This is especially given that employers are not just looking for people who have the right skills for the job, but how they fit within the team culture and perform more broadly. Claire warns that you should not just assume your employer knows what your superpowers are: you must articulate them and provide examples of how they have impacted your work. Claire tells us that her initial superpower was empathy - the ability to make people feel heard and, consequently, do their best work. It was this superpower that made her successful in creating the 100,000 member strong global community, Ladies Get Paid, since she could encourage other women to openly talk about their relationship with money. Over time, your superpowers will evolve, and Claire explains that her real strength now is being an inspiring communicator. You can discover your superpower by seeking the perspective of your colleagues and friends that know you best and, once you can clearly identify your superpower, carve out your career path in a direction that is aligned with your superpower to maximise you personal and professional success.

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You can listen (40 min) and subscribe here:

Apple Podcasts

Acast

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Resources: 

You can follow and connect with Claire at: