To learn more visit www.thenoclub.com or check out Linda’s book, “The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women’s Dead-End Work” now available at Amazon.com.

Hi! I’m John.

And I’m Julie.

We’re the hosts of the Hartford Fund’s human-centric investing podcast.

Every other week we’re talking with inspiring thought leaders to hear their best ideas for how you can transform your relationships with your clients.

Let’s go!

Welcome to the Human Centric Investing Podcast, Linda. We’re so happy to have you here with us today.

Hey, thanks for having me.

So Linda, I’m excited to have you on the podcast today too. And where I wanted to start was asking you to share a little with our audience about your history and teaching and the subject matter you taught on. How did you come to it? And how do you think you’ve impacted people over time? Just through making them aware of things that we may not otherwise be aware of.

Yeah, well, it’s been a long career. I’ve been at Carnegie Mellon University for 35 years. And ever since I arrived, I taught negotiation and always really enjoyed it. And never really thought much about gender differences. Wasn’t studied very much in the literature. And I thought, well of course, that’s a thing in the past, maybe previous decades there were differences, but now there’s not. And then I had a series of experiences that really opened my eye. To the role of gender in negotiation. And I’ll tell you about the kind of aha moment that I had. Sure. So I used to direct our PhD program. And so one day I had a bunch of female students come into my office. And so my job is to problem solve for them, help them along with their programs. And they came in to talk to me because they were really upset. And what they were upset about is that the female students had all been assigned to be teaching assistants in courses to professors. And the male PhD students had been assigned to actually teach their own courses. You can imagine that’s a huge disparity in terms of what they got paid, but also preparation for their next role as faculty. You know, the male students were gonna have a leg up on the female students who had only been TAs. So they were really upset about this disparity and listening to them, I got quite upset upon hearing about this. And so I went down to talk to the associate dean who handles teaching assignments. And that guy actually happened to be my husband. So he was gonna be in big trouble because this was his fault, of course. And so I approached him, I said, you know, Mark, what’s happening here? Why are the guys teaching and the women are TAs? And he said, well, that’s weird. I hadn’t noticed that pattern. And we looked at the list of all the assignments and sure enough, the men were teaching, the women were TAs. And what he realized is that each one of the guys had come to him and said, hey, I wanna teach this year, what can I teach? All the women had not said anything. They had just been given their regular teaching assistant assignments. And what he said to me is, the women just didn’t ask. And I was really struck by that, because when I went back to talk to the women about it, they figured that if they had been allowed to teach, someone would have sent around an email saying, hey, who wants to teach this year? And so they were waiting for the opportunity to be asked and to be offered to teach. And the more I thought about the history of the interactions I’d had with the students in the program, I noticed this pattern. And there really wasn’t any research on it. And so I spent the next 20 years doing research on this. And what I discovered through study after study after study is that men are just more likely to initiate negotiations to ask for what they want. You know, it’s not that men and women necessarily negotiate differently. It’s how often they initiate negotiations. And as you might imagine, this is a really big deal because so much of what we have in life comes through our own initiative about standing up for ourselves and asking for what we want. And so that’s kind of how I got started on this journey.

That’s so interesting and I read your book and I remember reading that story and it was just so powerful. I had to stop for a moment and think about it. What do you find in terms of why do men tend to ask more frequently or stand up for themselves or negotiate or whatever we want to call it? I’m just curious in your research.

Yeah, a lot of it, in fact, most of it has to do with how boys and girls, men and women, are socialized in our society. And so women are taught to think about others first. Men are taught be assertive, to be agentic. And those lessons get reinforced from the time that boys and girl are children, all throughout adulthood. And so it creates barriers for women in terms of women not feeling entitled to ask. Not realizing that they can ask, being very anxious about asking because it’s counter normative, counter to what they’re supposed to do. And of course, women are worried about backlash against them if they do negotiate because society comes down harder on women than men when they negotiate. And so it’s really through this process of lifelong socialization. Women end up facing these barriers that are no fault of their own, but they’re about what society is telling them. And these are really powerful and play a huge role in affecting this gender difference in who negotiate.

So I would think, Linda, that as I think of myself as a financial professional, maybe the leader of a team, I think there’s two things I’d want to understand. The first is, you know, how could I counsel women on my team to overcome some of these social obstacles? And then the second would be, how might I create an environment or how might, I think differently in terms of letting them know it’s okay to ask or it’s it tell me. Kind of where they think their direction is heading. So let’s start with the first one. What did you say to those PhD students or how did you counsel them? When you tried to tell them, it’s okay for you to ask. What were some of the techniques or kind of what changed in their mindset?

Yeah, you know, it’s a great question because there are kind of two, when I think about the long-term change, there are two ways to go about it. One is the short-term. How can we affect women’s behavior given that they face these constraints? And then how, in the long run, can I make the environment more conducive for women to negotiate? And those are really the two parts, I think, of your question. And the first part is... You know, I did a lot of research about effective negotiation tactics. I wrote several books on how women can recognize more opportunities to negotiate and how they can do so effectively. Because one of their biggest fears is that they may face negative consequences to negotiating. So the style that me and other negotiation professionals recommend is a cooperative kind of, you probably heard the term, win-win negotiating style. And that is one in which... Least likely to have women incur backlash from negotiating, because it’s more about discussing, problem-solving, let’s work on this together rather than a confrontational negotiation. And so that helps women be less anxious about negotiation when you approach it in that way, and reduces the chance that there will be a backlash against them. And so it can really encourage women that, hey, this is a tool I can use, and that there will be positive, not negative consequences for me. And so that’s sort of one route in terms of thinking about what can women do? What can other people do so that they don’t create this environment in which men negotiate and women don’t, say the people that work for you? I think the first is really to recognize that this is going on. And so to realize if you distribute resources to your team based upon who asks, it’s not going to be gender neutral, right? It’s going to favor the men if they’re more likely to ask. And so realizing Is this the way I want to allocate resources? And if so, you need to be very clear to your team members, hey, you know, you to talk to me when things go wrong, when you need help, when you resources. You know, I’m here to help you solve this problem. And so you’re creating this environment that says, hey, it’s okay to negotiate in this context here. So those are kind of two ideas that I had.

When I speak with teams, I always think it’s interesting for people to recognize sort of what some of their natural, I call them superpowers are, right? The things that give them energy and that they do really well. How can a team leader sort of help individuals on their team extract those things and then hopefully, you know, align them with roles and responsibilities or tasks that are equitable around the team?

When you think about it, women are actually really good negotiators. In fact, women outperform men negotiating when they’re negotiating on behalf of somebody else. So it’s not that women lack these skills, but they’re not used to thinking about using them for themselves. And so you can harness women’s ability that they have for advocating for team members, for advocating their clients, and get them to recognize these are valuable assets that you bring to the table. And to encourage them using those assets.

So, Linda, I know one of the things you said that is backlash, right? So, when men say no, it’s more acceptable or doesn’t result in as much backlash. If we’re talking to female audience members who are leading teams, I mean, obviously, you can’t say yes to everything, right. So, what would be the advice you give women in terms of when it comes time to say no? How do we best do that and maybe minimize that backlash that you mentioned?

Yeah, I mean, saying no is the flip side of asking, you know, you’re on the receiving side of an ask, and the same advice applies as to how you would negotiate for asking is how you negotiate to someone who has requested something of you. And that is to engage in a cooperative problem-solving dialog. So if it’s a no, you need to explain why it’s no, what it would take to be Yes. What else could I do if this is a no? What else might work instead? And so to see it as a dialog and problem solving, a discussion, cooperation, those are all words that I would use for effective negotiation, no matter which side you’re on, whether you’re asking or you’re on the receiving side and you have to decline someone to really engage it in that cooperative way.

So we shouldn’t regard no as a failure necessarily. It’s just no, we weren’t able to reach agreement.

Yeah, in fact, you know, if you never heard no when you were negotiating, it means that you never asked for enough, right? Because when you get a no, it means you really pushed up against some boundary. And if everyone always said yes to you, then it should make you realize, okay, I think I’m leaving things on the table. So no can be a sign of success. No is a, well, what would it take for it to be yes in the future? And that gives you information that you can then act on, you know? You want somewhat different responsibilities at work. Well, maybe I’m not ready for them now, but asking my team leader, what is it that I need to do to make sure that the next time I ask, I am ready, and how can we work on that together? And so no can be actually a really positive thing and not something that you should be afraid of, necessarily.

I would say the answer is always no, unless... You ask, right?

No, no, that’s definitely right.

You know, it’s interesting when you think about the tasks and sort of assigning them. In your research, are there tendencies for women to be assigned maybe more clerical or foundational type tasks on a team, even if they’re that’s not necessarily their primary role? Just whether it’s out of habit or maybe they just do it really well or quickly or efficiently. Is that something that you’ve come across in your conversations and research over the last 20 years?

Yeah, absolutely. That’s actually the second line of my research that I’ve been doing for the last about 15 years. And that is on what we call, okay, it’s a mouthful, so wait a minute, non-promotable tasks. Okay, so every job has tasks at work that aren’t the kind of core job responsibilities, but maybe our support staff, support tasks, they are coordinating, they are helping others, they are You know, planning social events are all the things that make the organization work, but maybe never show up in your performance evaluation. So we call those non-promotable tasks. And they’re important. They need to be done. Someone has to do them. And what we find is that women are much more likely to be asked to do these tasks than men, and women are more likely to say yes to do this task when they’re asked to these tasks that are men. And so what it means is that, women do more of these. Well, what are the consequences for women’s careers? Well, if you have a similar situated man and a woman, and they’re spending their time differently, the man is focused more on those promotable tasks that are gonna show up on his performance evaluation, and the woman is doing some of those, sure, but she’s also saddled with all these other tasks that no one will ever really thank her or reward her for. She is going to look not as productive, not because she’s inherently less productive, but because she is spending her time in a different way, and it really drags down women’s careers. And so this is what we’ve identified as sort of a problem that we see that’s been hiding in plain sight for quite a long time and has a major impact on the differential advancement rates of men and women at work.

So Linda, in that situation, again, I’m sure it’s kind of coming at the problem from both sides. One, for the managers to really look at the tasks and maybe the time use of people in their team. But what do you say to the woman who knows that she’s spending her time on a lot of this stuff just because nobody else will do it, but it needs to get done? Does she need to develop a strategy to bring this to the surface to have that conversation? Is that really the step she needs to think about?

Absolutely, it’s the same kind of question you asked me earlier about there are two paths to correcting this problem, right? One is the women changing their behavior, one of the managers changing behavior. So, yes, both. Okay. One is that she can initiate a conversation with her manager saying, you know, here are the things that I’m doing, I’m not sure I’m spending my time doing the most high valued things I can be to really produce for this organization. How can we reallocate my time so that I am really bringing maximal effectiveness here to the job? And that’s going to be in an employer’s incentive to want to help her with, right? That employer wants her also to be as productive as she can. On the management side, that person really needs to look at how he or she allocates tasks. When, say, the manager has a task that needs to be allocated, it’s non-promotable, does he or she automatically think of a woman first and ask her? Well, maybe there needs to more different mechanisms to assign work. Maybe we should rotate these tasks so that men and women do them equally, right? Maybe we should just make sure that we assign them so that the distribution of this non-promotable work is equal, so there’s a lot can be done. And it’s really not hard just being more thoughtful about how your employees are spending their time and to allocate them so that everyone has a chance to succeed. Not that you’re dragging women’s careers down. By the way that you’re allocating tasks. No manager wants to do that. And so just being a little bit more thoughtful and deliberative about how work is assigned.

It sounds to me like a lot of this comes down to habits too, right, and breaking just some habits or routines that have been put into place. Right, maybe the leader is just in the habit of assigning something to somebody and it works and so if it’s not broken, why fix it? Or conversely. If the woman, say she’s, you know, just always takes notes at the meetings, right? Because she looks around and nobody else is. So she starts taking the notes and maybe that kind of falls into that non-promotable task category, but it’s just sort of a habit. It’s been going on for two years, you know, how, so maybe hitting the pause button and assessing some of those habits and everyone committing to saying, okay, let’s really think about some of these things and, and create maybe some new, you know, more positive habits or pathways.

Absolutely, you know, taking notes in a meeting is a big one because when you’re taking notes, you’re writing down, summarizing, you’re not as actively participating. And so you actually may be more overlooked in terms of your contributions. Anyone can take notes in the meeting. It’s not hard. And it’s just a matter of fairly allocating that task so that everyone has a chance. And you might say, well, Julia, she’s so good at taking. Notes at a meeting. But I’m really sure John, if he tried really hard, could also take good notes. Maybe he just hasn’t been given the chance to do it. And so it gives you a chance to get more skill development across different members of your team.

Or maybe you even leverage technology and say, let’s use an AI note taker, right? Let’s just farm this out to something that isn’t even a person on the team. But again, I think it’s that innovation mindset and sort of nixing the, well, we’ve always done it this way, so we might as well keep doing it this kind of a thought process.

Exactly. And you’re right that it’s just, it’s about habits and maybe we have some bad habits and we’re using a certain level of professional to do something that maybe we could get AI to do or we could some staff support to free up a person’s time. And so we’re just being more careful about how employees spend their time. Cause when you think about it, that’s your most valuable resource. It’s what people are doing day to day, every minute when they’re at work. And you want that to be maximally effective. And so thinking about what are those tasks that that person does especially well that will add the most value.

Well I was just going to say I find even in my coaching with financial professionals that oftentimes the lead financial professional who is a seasoned person that has been doing this for decades is still stuck in some of the maybe paperwork or clerical type items because they say, you know, it only takes me five minutes and I can do it with my eyes closed and sort of getting stuck in the, it would take me 45 minutes over multiple days to teach someone else how to do it. So I think, again, just even changing our minds that are asking ourselves, what is the highest and best use of my time? And then sort of working back from there, oftentimes I think can be an interesting thought process.

Yeah, you’re right. Because we are creatures of habit and we don’t spend that time that it takes up front to do something differently even though it might have a really good benefit in the long run.

I love the idea, Linda, of kind of rotating those tasks, because there’s always going to be the conversation about that we have to hire another staff person to do something. Well, we all agree, gee, we want to be careful about how we invest that money. So there’s going to a certain number of things that we’re going to have to do on the team. But I think, take note taking, for example, I can assure you that Julie’s notes will look completely different than mine. But at the end of the day, we all have to produce a product that the entire team is pleased with. Maybe in doing so, I pick up some ideas from Julie about how she effectively did it. We both learn the flaws and the tools that were given to produce these notes. Like if I’m just gonna pump them into AI, I gotta be really careful about how it handles this area of our work. So I think we should look at it, not just as a, oh, who’s gotta do the mundane tasks, but it’s, is there something to be learned? Can it be done a better way? Can it be done more efficiently unless we get more eyes on it or we’re just going to hire somebody to do it? We were probably not going to discover that as quickly

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you make a great point in that people are bringing different outlooks and perspectives and so sharing these tasks might encourage more, even more group learning. So yeah, absolutely

Well, speaking of sharing, Linda, we have a little segment we like to do on our podcast that we call the lightning round of questions. And this has nothing to do with what we’ve spoken about so far on our podcasts. And I don’t mean to take you by surprise, but here’s what we like do for our audience. When our guests come on the show, Julie and I like to ask a number of questions that are unrelated to your expertise or teaching, but more about you as a person. I assure you, they’re not threatening and they’re not hard, but what we’re looking for is- and there’s no

There’s no right or wrong answer, right?

Bingo, bingo, we’re looking for the first thing that enters your mind and it often leads to some pretty funny interactions. So if you’re okay with doing that, I’ll ask Julie to start with our first question.

I’m good. Let’s go.

Okay. What’s your go-to karaoke song?

Oh, nothing. I would never get up and sing.

Oh.

I get it.

I know, it’s disappointing.

What was the first concert you ever went to, Linda?

The Rolling Stones.

Nice.

Oh, that’s an awesome one. On a scale of 1 to 10, how good of a driver are you?

A 10, of course.

No negotiation there.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Ballet dancer.

What’s your favorite app on your phone?

Oh... Um... My aura ring that keeps track of my health.

Yeah.

That’s good.

That is a good one. What’s your favorite way to unwind after a long day?

Uh... Take a swim on the beach.

What’s your superpower in one word? Since we were talking about superpowers earlier.

Negotiation, of course.

I love it.

What’s a hobby that you always wanted to try but haven’t had a chance to yet?

Um, I haven’t had a chance to try. Well, I’ve tried many, many things. I’m not sure that I have any unexplored hobbies.

That’s good.

That’s great.

That’s a life well lived, being lived.

Yes. What’s your favorite podcast, besides the Human Centric Investing podcast, of course?

The Hidden Brain.

What was that again? I didn’t hear that.

The Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam.

Nice.

I can’t wait to check that out.

It’s awesome.

What’s your favorite board game or card game?

Monopoly, I am an economist, so, Monopoly.

There you go.

Thank you so much, Linda, for joining us today to share your insights and expertise on negotiation. And for our audience, if you’re interested in learning more, please feel free to visit Linda’s website at thenoclub.com. You can also check out her other books called Women Don’t Ask and ask for it. Again, Linda. Thank you. So much for all that you shared with us today.

Great. Well, thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about my work.

Thanks for listening to the Hartford Fund’s Human-Centric Investing Podcast. If you’d like to tune in for more episodes, don’t forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube.

And if you’d like to be a guest and share your best ideas for transforming client relationships, email us at guestbooking at HartfordFunds.com. We’d love to hear from you.

Talk to you soon.

The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the guest who is not affiliated with Hartford Funds.