2016 Session | Negotiating at Work: Turn Small Wins Into Big Gains

Young women professionals are opting out of their jobs in significant numbers and the usual explanations do not apply. They don’t leave to have families, although some do. Rather they leave because they are burned out by the burdens of extra work. They don’t see the promise of career opportunities and future advancement. And they get paid less. Negotiation is an overlooked alternative to opting out—it empowers you to stay in the game. Learn how to negotiate at work and obtain the tools at your fingertips to help you get opportunities, promotions, flexibility, buy-in, support and credit for your work. This interactive session brings together a mother/daughter duo to share their experiences in gender, negotiation and real-life experiences from the trenches, to recognize the opportunities you are passing up each and every day. Together, they will help you prepare and position yourselves to get difficult conversations started, help you find solutions that work for all parties and offer tools to deal with the challenges you encounter along the way. Participants will learn that by negotiating, you can find ways to succeed at work without sacrificing a home and community life. Attendees will walk away with:

Concrete advice on how to recognize opportunities to negotiate and bolster your confidence prior to the negotiation;
Strategies to get the other person to the table and engage in creative problem solving, even when they don’t recognize the issue; and
Techniques to turn “asks” into a negotiation and advance “stuck” negotiations to reach a successful conclusion.

Speakers:

Deborah M. Kolb, Ph.D., Deloitte Ellen Gabriel professor emerita, Simmons College School of Management, and former executive director, program on negotiation, Harvard Law School
Elizabeth Kolb Robillard, MBA, VP, operations & partnerships, Lytics

Emcee: Sara Conahan, director of community & philanthropy, Suffolk Construction