September 8, 2022

Keeping Your Cool in Salary Negotiations

One big problem people have when negotiating for a job or a raise is that they get in their own way. Negotiating unleashes a brew of emotions – fear of rejection, a lack of confidence, doubts – that can sabotage them. The British have coined a word for this type of anxiety: collywobbles.

Moshe Cohen, author of “Collywobbles: How to Negotiate When Negotiations Make You Nervous,” consults with companies and individuals on leadership and negotiation strategies. But his idea for the book came out of the graduate classes on negotiation he teaches at Boston University. Cohen realized that even when students are fully prepared for a negotiation, they will choke in the moment. He agreed to share some of his insights in the book, which examines negotiating from the perspective of someone who has anxiety. He recently published his second book inspired by the pandemic lockdown: “Optimism is a Choice and Other Timeless Ideas.”

What are collywobbles and how do they manifest in salary negotiations?  

Collywobbles is a British term that means butterflies in your stomach. And people get nervous when they go to negotiate. I wrote “Collywobbles” for a student who works full-time and negotiates every day for her boss but can’t negotiate with her boss because she gets too nervous. She works really hard and never gets that raise or promotion because she never asks for it. The question I answer in my book is: how does she overcome that?

Are women worse negotiators than men and why?

Yes, for two reasons. One is socialization. Generally, I think women are brought up to be more aware of and care about relationships, and they fear that if they advocate for themselves they’re going to damage relationships. Men are socialized to be much more oblivious to those things and freer to ask for things. Men will do things that might damage the relationship but aren’t aware they’re doing it.

The second thing is society’s expectations. If women are strong self-advocates, very often there’s a backlash and they get punished for it in ways that men don’t. If I, as a man, am pushy at my job, I’m seen as a go-getter. If you’re pushy, you’re seen as a bitch. The combination of how society socializes women and how it responds to women is a really intimidating factor.

How about people of color?

I’m certainly not an expert on that but here’s what I’ve observed. One exercise I give my students is that they have to go out and ask for stuff until 10 people say no. They can go to stores and ask for discounts – anything. An African student came to me and said, “How can I ask for a discount when the second I walk into a store employees start following me around?” Once again, context is important. Do people negotiate differently when they’re in a context where they feel comfortable and less likely to incur a backlash? African students negotiate very differently here than they do in Africa where they may have a societal status that entitles them to ask for more. When they’re in this country, they’re just seen as a minority. …
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