 That's a big gender difference. Men almost always negotiate before they leave. Women often get frustrated and leave without negotiating. You should never leave without negotiating. You should always see if I could try to improve this situation, make it better, make it what I want before I just depart. What's up everybody and welcome to the show today. We drop great content each and every week and we wanna make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that you're gonna have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell and if you've gotten a lot of value out of this make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. So let's talk about the one that probably strikes the most fear in our listeners and that's negotiating your salary. Whether that's starting a new job or whether that's being in a role for a long time and getting that great performance review and seeing others around you get raises and promotions. This is a moment that science has shown has a dramatic impact in compounding over our career and really sets the top earners apart from those who are just average or below average earners. And of course there's a lot of science in the way that sex plays a role in this and that men are more likely to negotiate than women which often impacts their earnings. So let's talk about how we can approach negotiating for our salary to get what we deserve while at the same time creating that win for our employer. So I agree that it is absolutely one of the most feared negotiations and that's why in the book in every single chapter there's this section on how to negotiate for yourself. Take this and use it when you're doing this for yourself. And I think that it's really important that we give people confidence because as you said women are less likely to negotiate for themselves than men are but many men do not negotiate for themselves either. So there are lots of people who are uncomfortable negotiating for themselves. And if you were to ask me what are a few key pieces to that negotiation, the first one I would offer up is that I never have the discussion purely about my salary. I would argue there's no such thing as a salary negotiation. There's an employment discussion and that employment discussion involves a lot of issues outside of salary. So it's absolutely focused on the first objective which is addressing the other side's pressing business needs. How do my differentiators address their needs? What am I uniquely positioned to help them with? And so I always say, you wanna start by thinking about the other side's needs. And I often will liken it to a train and say that the car, the engine, the engine is the other side's pressing business needs. And the next car back is how your differentiators address their needs. And the car after that might be a bet on how one of your differentiators would actually achieve some measurable goal for them over the coming year that might be tied to a performance-based bonus. And the next car back are how the rest of my differentiators will address their needs. And the caboose, it's attached to the train but it's at the far end. The caboose is where my salary is. The caboose is holding my salary, it's holding the moving expenses, it's holding the start date. They're all there. They're all a part of the conversation. But the story is never about the caboose. The story is always about the engine because that keeps the train moving forward successfully. If you start to make the story about the caboose, the train starts to go backward, it falls off the tracks, the whole thing falls apart. So you've gotta make sure that the story focuses on them, not on you. And you wanna make sure that the story is about the entire package of how you're going to do something in particular for them. I've got a great story that highlights this if you have time for a quick story. Okay, so I had a woman who was in my women's senior leadership program at Kellogg. This is a program for very high potential women. And our goal is to keep them in and move them up to the C-suite. And this woman was very close to the top. She was literally reporting to the CEO and she would eventually become a CEO. But she was gonna quit her job. And when she came to my program on the very first day, she told me she was quitting because she was so sick of traveling. She was traveling all the time. She was traveling so often that her children refused to call her mom. They would only call her by her first name. So she was quitting. And I have a real passion on keeping women in and moving them up to the most senior levels. And my first thing that I said to her is, you know, quitting doesn't have an expiration date. It's not like if you don't quit today, you can't quit tomorrow. So why don't you first go and try to change the situation before you just quit? But that, you mentioned gender differences, AJ. And that's a big gender difference. Men almost always negotiate before they leave. Women often get frustrated and leave without negotiating. You should never leave without negotiating. You should always see if I could try to improve the situation, make it better, make it what I want before I just depart. So I convinced her that she would go in and negotiate. Now a lot of people faced with that would probably go in and talk about how their kids needed them home more often or how they needed to travel less or how they needed to be in the office more. But that would all be about me, myself and I and not about the company and their needs. So I said to her, you know, why would it be good for the company if you were traveling less often? And what was uncovered is that this company had just had two drugs recently approved by the FDA in really rapid succession. And this biotech was a relatively small biotech. No one there had ever brought multiple drugs to market at the same time, except for her. She had done it because she had worked in big pharma before she went to this biotech. So she went in and rather than saying, my kids need me at home more often, she said, you know, I know that our highest goal right now is to get these two products to market by this day. The analysts are expecting this. Our entire share price is resting on our ability to get these two drugs to market by this day. And I am confident that I'm uniquely positioned to be able to do that. I've done it before. But to do that, I need to be here every single day working with the team. The reality is there are lots of other people who could call in our customers as well as I could. But I can get those two drugs to market by this day and meet the analysts' expectations. And what she was able to do was to get almost no travel. She also got a promotion and a pay raise at the same time. Why did she do that? Because she made the story focus on them. That's why the first car is not about you. It's not about your goals. It's about the company's needs. And if you start an employment discussion based on the company's needs, rather than yourself, you will succeed. And you might think that's only true for someone senior who's reporting to the CEO. But in my book, I've got an example of that for a high school student working in an ice cream shop. So the reality is you go from ice cream shop as a senior in high school to CEO contender. And that issue applies. It's true for every one of us. We drop great content each and every week. We want to make sure that you guys get notified. And in order to do that, you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. Well, let's dig into that for a second because we've talked about the differences in negotiating and gender. But what about generational? Now, you had brought up the student who worked at the ice cream shop. And you also in your book had talked about helping some of these companies replace their older employees with younger staff. And so all day, every day, I think everyone has been bombarded about what is wrong with these millennials. And we have certainly had our fair share of young folks working for us. And we have seen some things there. So in your work, what have you noticed? So one of the things I've noticed that I would say is probably the biggest generational difference in negotiation is the communication channel that people select to use to negotiate. And I always say, say it, don't send it and see them when you say it, right? Say it, don't send it and see them when you say it that I want to seek synchronicity when I negotiate. I want to be in a synchronous channel. So I would love to be face to face. And if I could be face to face, that is absolutely bar none, face to face in person sitting in the room is the best. But when I can't do that, I should take some lessons from what we learned through the pandemic. In the pandemic, the technology platforms to communicate virtually really improved dramatically. So there's no reason now for me to just be on the phone. I can see you when I say it in a virtual platform with my video on. So I want to say it, don't send it, see them when you say it. If I can't be in a room, I want to be on a virtual platform. And that's a big generational difference because a lot of younger people love to negotiate by a text or negotiate by email or leave each other text messages. And that's not appropriate. We want to seek synchronicity. And that's the key. We can't get the synchronicity of the nonverbal communication, the signals of the emotional intent that the other person is feeling or thinking in that moment. If we're not in the room, if we're not on the Zoom, if we're not in real time, sure, it is easier to send an email. I get it. It's easier to sit there, think through your thoughts, list them all out, send it to your peers, ask your dad for his opinion and get that draft ready and hit send. But that's not going to lead to the success you're looking for in your career. It's actually going to set the wrong tone. It's going to tell the other person that you're negotiating with that you don't have the confidence to be in the room, to ask for what you want, to state your needs and your desires and understand where they're coming from and actually negotiate because sending your needs and your desires is not negotiating. Sending an email is not negotiating. It is a back and forth and a dialogue to reach an agreement.