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9 Getting More at Work

An honors graduate of Harvard Business School was hired by a major company in California. Within three years of her hiring, the three people who hired her—CEO, president, and executive vice president—were gone: retired, fired, or just left. The new management team intended to fire her along with the rest of the old team.

But it turned out that her job was inviolate. That’s because when she was hired, she realized that she might be in trouble down the road. The three people who hired her were each twenty-five years older than she. She knew they would be gone long before her career hit its stride.

So for three years she did favors for a variety of company departments that had nothing to do with her job description. She did this after hours, on weekends, at lunch breaks, and sometimes when she could work it in as part of her job. She collected friends throughout the company. So when the new management team came in, there was a hue and cry throughout the company: “This woman is indispensable! You cannot get rid of her!” Her job was saved.

This manager was essentially involved in a three-year negotiation with the rest of the company. And they didn’t even know they were involved in a negotiation. You think this is Machiavellian and manipulative? Well, whom did it hurt? No one. In fact, the company got free work for three years out of her. And the company saved a valued employee from being lost to corporate politics.

Relations between employers and employees are getting more difficult. The traditional trade-off was that employees would contribute their loyalty, skill, and time in return for job stability and a living wage. Unions sought to codify that. In recent years, however, the balance of power has clearly shifted toward employers in most areas.

In such an environment, savvy negotiation skills are critical. I tell my students who are having a hard time with prospective employers on job interviews: “This is the nicest they will ever be to you.” So if there’s a problem now, watch out!

The market is crowded with job advice: say this, wear that, ask this, prepare for that. The problem with much of this advice is that it is intended to be applied to every situation. But as noted throughout Getting More, one size does not fit all. Effective negotiation is situational. So the most important thing to do regarding jobs is to understand the other party. And to understand the people who influence the other party. Only then can you develop a negotiation strategy for a given situation.

That means you may have different negotiation strategies for different people in the same firm. It takes more work, but it is much more precise and effective. The goal is to make yourself more valuable in the company organization. The higher your perceived value, the further you’ll advance in your career, and the harder it will be to get rid of you in an economic downturn.

Let’s start with the woman from Harvard Business School profiled at the beginning of this chapter. First, she thought about her goals—a long-term career at the company. Next, she thought of any problems she might encounter in meeting those goals: her mentors leaving before she did. Then she identified the third parties who could help her: other departments. She thought about their needs—including event planning, advertising, and marketing advice. She prepared. She was incremental. She paid a lot of attention to relationships.

Expanding relationships is essential in virtually all job situations. Companies, even small ones, can be very political places. The more you identify and ally with the people who can help you, the better position you are in. Other people can serve as an early-warning system when things start to go awry. They will give you information to help you pursue company opportunities. They will come to your aid if things get rough. They will give your projects higher priority. They will help you out in a pinch.

Below are some of the key types of people who can help you after you get the job. Some can help you get the job in the first place. Reach out to them. Have coffee or lunch with them.

People Who’ve Been There Forever. Look for someone who has been around for a long time, has been put out to pasture, and is often ignored by others. They know where everything is buried. Talk to them, value them. Every company has one or more people like this. They know all the pitfalls and politics. They will give you information that will be critical in meeting your goals and protecting yourself. People Who Have Left. Many of these people have seen the company at its worst. They know what the company can’t do for people. You may need to take some of what they say with a grain of salt. They may have bad feelings or a hidden agenda. But you will usually get the unvarnished story. If you are looking for a job and they left on good terms, they may make calls for you. Information Technology (IT) People. Many people seem to hate the IT department. Learn to love the IT department, or at least one or two people in it. Most people could not do their jobs effectively without IT. When the IT supporting your work has a problem, you want someone to fix it immediately, even if it’s the weekend. Librarians. Not all companies have them. But these people are better at research than almost anyone in the company. They will make your work—and you—better. Cleaning Staff. Most managers consider them invisible, but they know a lot. They hear a lot. They see a lot. Security Guards. When you’ve forgotten your pass, when you need a client to be quickly let in, when you want to get into a locked office where you’ve left some documents, a security guard you’ve made a relationship with will help you. Say “Hi” to someone daily. Give a holiday tip. Strike up a sports conversation. Administrative Staff. Also called the permanent staff. Executives and managers come and go; a lot of the administrative staff stays for a career. They can create ugly gossip—or positive buzz. Make them part of your team. Bring them cookies at holidays. Other Staff. Copy and fax room, cafeteria workers, travel department, maintenance people—all of these people will help you in a deadline when you have to have something to do your job, or you need information. Human Resources. The HR people are generally the captains of “No.” Their main job is to protect the company. But they are not monolithic. Make friends, starting with more junior people. Show an interest in what they do. They will be happy to explain their job to you. HR often has a fair amount of say on personnel (and personal) issues. People on Whom You and Your Department Depend. Are there outside vendors, restaurants, or printers that your department depends on? The more these people know and like you, the more you will be able to get favors for your department. Do you have their cell-phone numbers? Are there any tips you got from your travel department, for example, that you provide to outside vendors?

What I am talking about here is building your own coalition. It takes time, it takes effort and thought. But it takes less time and work than finding another job, or not getting the promotions and raises you might otherwise get.

Be incremental about this. Ask people about their job. Find out their dreams and fears. Give them information when you can. Offer them advice or a set of helpful hands. Start with a single person or two. What you are doing is collecting as much information as you can about the place where you work or want to work.

Is the organization nervous about something? Do they need help in a foreign language? A reliable intermediary with another culture? Staff in some region or on a holiday? Can you supply that information it is hard for them to procure except at great cost?

Ellen Walsh was new to a public relations company, working with two other people. No one knew her capabilities. Then she found out that a well-regarded employee was leaving. “No one wanted his job,” she said. “His job was to hire interns.” Ellen realized that volunteering for the job would make the company grateful. It would also allow her to meet a lot more people, some of whom would eventually work for the company, and help build her own base of support.

SPECIFIC SUCCESSES

Earlier in the book I referred to a student who, using course tools, was able to get twelve consecutive final-round interviews after being rejected eighteen times the previous semester. How did he do it? First the student, Mehul Trivedi, found out more specifically the needs of each firm and department to which he was applying. He used the negotiation preparation model outlined in Chapter 7 to prepare thoroughly for each interview. He identified the key decision-makers and collected specific information about each person who would interview him. Through the Wharton alumni network he found people who had recently left the firm, or knew the firm. He phoned associates with whom he had been friendly, and Wharton grads who worked at the firm. He asked about unfilled needs.

He realized that he had written a general résumé that would work only partially for all the firms to which he applied. But each of these firms had different specific needs: different skill sets, experience, locations, working hours, and conditions. Within each firm, different departments had different needs.

After he did that research, he rewrote his résumé, matching it to each firm and department. He sent it to the specific people who had the biggest perceived need: department heads, team leaders, human resources. He went through a role-reversal exercise with his wife, who videotaped him; they both studied the tape and made style changes. Mehul was able to anticipate at least two-thirds of the questions he was later asked. He showed in each case how he met or exceeded the firm’s (or department’s) standards, and he worked to make human connections in all cases.

“The results were astounding,” he said. In many cases he was invited back for final-round interviews even before the first-round interview was concluded.

He said he had initially been skeptical of the course’s model, noting that the people were at least half the reason why a firm reached agreements, and that the “substance” was, at most, 10 percent. But his experience proved the model’s validity, he said. His chosen job was as a stock analyst, and he picked his firm before all the interviews were complete. Still, he said, the tools he learned can be applied to any situation. And he has applied them in the thirteen years since.

Mehul’s approach was tailored specifically to each situation. That is how one gets good jobs. I look at hundreds of résumés per year. Yet almost no one writes a résumé reflecting any meaningful research about our enterprise. Mehul’s experience has been replicated time and again by my students.

When Gaurav Tewari applied to work for a major technology firm in Silicon Valley, he knew exactly which two departments he could benefit most, and why. He asked people he knew to email reference letters to relevant interviewers. He had the firm’s hiring standards down cold, including quotes from its mission statement. And sure enough, he got the job. He is now a principal at Highland Capital Partners in Boston.

Even in tough economic times, there are lots of ways to get in the door. Yi Zhang could not get a job at a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley because he didn’t have start-up experience. But he learned the company was very interested in Internet phone technology, in which Yi had expertise.

“So I offered free consulting,” Yi said. Once inside the firm, you are in the information flow; you learn about opportunities. Volunteers often become employees. The firm used Yi’s work on technology and market analysis in an investment they were considering. He perfectly positioned himself for when the firm decided to invest. At the least, Yi built his résumé.

After a few months, the firm started to pay him. He turned it into a similar job in his native Shanghai. “Even after the door is closed, try a second and third time,” he said. “Provide them with a specific solution. It takes time, but it works.”

Some people cannot afford to give up their time without pay. Perhaps you can do this in lieu of a second job. Or on weekends. The key is to be persistent and to continue to find creative ways to get in the door.

Mark Sorial was rejected by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the investment banking arm of the World Bank, for a job in Cairo. After the rejection, he asked the IFC why he was turned down. He was told that a senior IFC official didn’t think he had the required technical skills. So he wrote a letter to his contact there, reframing his work at Wharton as two years of training in private equity and emerging markets.

“I realize that your team has made its decision regarding my candidacy, but I am hoping you will give me a chance should this position or another become available,” Mark wrote, in a tactful and humble way. But Mark went further, and this is a key step: he offered to take a test of the IFC’s choosing to demonstrate his technical skills. In other words, he was persistent, but not pushy.

Within a couple of months, a problem developed with the other candidate. The IFC took Mark up on his offer of a test. His results were great and exceeded the expectations of the skeptical senior IFC executive. Mark was hired for his dream job, as an associate investment officer in Cairo. “The negotiation tools I learned changed the way I view the negotiation process,” he said. “I had a framework to prepare. It enabled me to be firm without damaging the relationship.”

There are many situations at work in which the issue is thorny and can jeopardize the relationship if one is not careful. Many people just don’t attempt the negotiation and get less. But with the use of the strategies in Getting More, you can do the negotiation with far less risk. Besides identifying common interests, you can find common enemies. If you can find something both parties are against, it can strengthen the bond and reframe the entire situation.

Aleksandr Hromcenco, a director of clinical information in the pharmaceutical industry, wanted to change his annual performance review from “met” to “exceeded.” He had just received the company’s annual Clinical Innovation Award, a big emblem of his value. But it was announced after his review, so it had not been counted.

It’s hard to get people to change a decision they have made. In this case, Alex thought his boss would simply say, “Well, we’ll include it next year.” So Alex reframed the situation: he asked his manager why annual reviews had to be submitted before all the data were in. That didn’t seem fair to anyone, including managers, he said. Only two people in his department had ever received the Clinical Innovation Award. Surely if his manager had known about this, Alex said, his evaluation would have been higher. Alex showed his boss how they were both disadvantaged by the system. His boss redid the review. Result: a $13,500 increase in annual salary.

Another strategy to gain more at work is to reduce their perceived risk. A U.S. Air Force energy manager did not want to proceed with a $14 million solar energy project proposed by Honeywell for Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. The Air Force manager told Ranjit Bhopal of Honeywell that she had bad experiences with energy service companies. Ranjit immediately said, “If I were in your shoes, I would feel the same way.” This validated the manager’s perceptions, provided an emotional payment, and made her more interested in listening.

Ranjit then differentiated his project from her past experiences, using references and evidence. He proposed an incremental start: only $200,000 for the renewable-energy part of the $14 million project. This reduced perceived risk further. And Ranjit said a senior Honeywell official would show up for the dedication, valuing her efforts. She agreed. The test was successful, and now the whole project is being done. It took careful planning, multiple tools, and much sensitivity to the other party.

Simply by asking people about their fears, you can often get the information you need to persuade them. Ben Hughes lived far from a bar review course location. He wanted to do the self-study option at home. It was more expensive, and his law firm opposed self-study courses. Ben was told that some new associates who previously took the self-study course failed the bar exam.

But Ben decided to mitigate the firm’s perceived risk, unfounded or not. So he noted to the firm’s managers that he had worked at the firm for two summers already. “You know me pretty well,” he said. “Don’t you think I would study well on my own?” He also noted the firm’s policy of being flexible with employees (standards). The firm agreed to the self-study and the extra $600 cost.

By now it should be clear that a key negotiation skill is asking questions: finding the perceptions and pictures in the other person’s head, and finding out about the situation.

Dack LaMarque thought he was worth more to his new employer than the $85,000 he had been offered, even in a bad economy.

This is the kind of conversation that needs to be in person. So Dack went to Portland, Oregon, to talk face-to-face with the head of the company. “I started the conversation not about salary,” Dack said. “I started with his vision for the company. I asked him how he saw me fitting into that vision.”

As the CEO answered and saw more clearly the match with Dack, Dack’s perceived value began to rise for the CEO. When the CEO finally asked Dack for his salary range, “I asked him what standard he was thinking about,” Dack said. The CEO said he was willing to pay the money that Dack and his wife needed to maintain their lifestyle.

This was a great standard. Dack told him that figure was $120,000. The CEO said yes.

Dack then asked if equity was possible if he made “a significant difference to the organization.” CEOs like to hear people talk like this. They settled on 3 to 5 percent to start, adjusted upward in two to three years if performance indicated it. So Dack received a 41 percent increase in salary, and equity, by asking for more information and using it to increase his value in the eyes of the CEO. Although he has since left the company for a private equity firm, Dack has maintained his relationship with the CEO and retained stock in the company.

Another student, an attorney from Brazil, wanted a promotion to senior attorney when he went back to his law firm after a year of study in the United States. But salaries and positions were frozen due to Brazil’s economic crisis. The attorney met with the senior partner of the firm over lunch. First, he asked the partner about his kids, and the prospects for the firm. “The partner talked a lot about the firm and his expectations,” the attorney said. Every time the partner mentioned an expectation, the attorney nodded his head and said he was committed to doing that. By the end of the lunch, the attorney had been made a senior attorney.

Christopher Damm, a physician, was trying to position himself as a marketing consultant for a medical products company. “The project leader did not know me or my skill set,” Christopher said. “He saw me as a physician rather than a marketing consultant.”

Instead of trying to sell the project leader, Chris asked questions. He asked the project leader about his goals, and the skills that were needed. He asked the project leader to describe his problems, vision, and standards. “Only late in the conversation did I match my qualifications to his comments,” Chris reported. His engagement increased from four hours to six days, with the possibility of much more. He was now a physician and a marketing consultant.

He did it by (a) finding out the other side’s needs, (b) discovering how they evaluated things, and (c) matching his skills explicitly to the other party’s needs.

With compensation, it is especially important to know what the other party is thinking before asking for something specific. Otherwise you may end up negotiating against yourself. Paul Kavanaugh, a banker in New York City, was having a conversation with his boss at salary review time. “What are your expectations?” the boss asked. Paul said this was an “interesting” question, but could not specifically answer it without first knowing the standards against which salary and bonus were set. His boss described them.

“Where on this scale, roughly, do you think my performance fits?” Paul asked. To his astonishment, his boss “came up with a number that was almost twice what I had in mind.” To make sure his boss felt he answered the question, Paul then asked for somewhat more than the boss offered. The boss then felt good about standing firm on his offer. I tend to look at this as an emotional payment, not manipulation. Paul was not trying to be extreme, but only trying to make the boss feel better. Most interesting about this is that Paul had not sufficiently prepared for the meeting, he said. By asking questions, he was able to gain time and information that helped him exceed his goals.

Small talk is almost always big talk, even in job situations. Will Chen wanted to transfer to a different group at the investment bank where he worked. He asked three times, and each time he was told no. So he scheduled an informational interview with the human resources manager in New York City. He wanted to make a personal connection with her. In the meeting, he asked what her favorite food was. Vietnamese. Will knew all the best Vietnamese restaurants, websites, recipes, and chefs. He found a connection. And he got the transfer.

INTERVIEWS

Entire books are written about job interviews, so I don’t want to duplicate what’s out there. But I do want to make suggestions through the lens of Getting More.

First, when someone asks you a question, answer it immediately and succinctly. Or let them know what information you need to answer it. People hate it when others don’t answer their questions. Don’t you? It’s a bad politician’s tactic: obfuscating, being evasive. The signal you’re giving off is “I’ve got something to hide.” Second, with some cultural exceptions (mostly outside the United States), direct eye contact is good. But don’t stare! Smiling and other social niceties convey social skill. Stay focused on the other person. People want to work around others whom they like and trust. They read extra meaning into small things. If you’re early, you come across as motivated. If you’re late, well, will you be late for work if you get the job? Will you be late on work assignments?

Asking a job candidate to give an example of their reliability is more telling than asking them the best or worst experience they ever had. “Best” and “worst” are too often lazy questions. When was their character tested? If you’re an employer, you want to find out what someone else is made of. When did they have to do something really difficult to support someone else?

If you’re a job applicant, you want to ask how the company retains, trains, and promotes people in their careers. What is the company’s philosophy of work? You should have a set of thoughtful questions gleaned from the research you’ve done on the company. When you’ve spent considerable time researching the company, it shows how motivated you are. It makes you appear as a self-starter. You don’t need fifty questions, just three to five. You should have pitched your résumé to the company’s specific needs. So you should talk about those needs, and your skills in meeting them.

STANDARDS

Standards are the law of an organization. People can try to use politics to go around the standards, just as people break the law in society. But the standards are always there. So one should always be conscious of them.

The organization’s standards are a big protection—legal and organizational—against being treated unfairly. Read all the relevant personnel manuals. Document every instance of unfairness in light of the organization’s stated policies. Be dispassionate when you point this out: don’t make yourself the issue.

One student was hired by a major consulting firm, which offered him a $35,000 tuition reimbursement for the second year of his MBA program. His actual costs turned out to be $51,380. The firm would not renegotiate. The student did some research and found out that the firm had capped its tuition reimbursement at the cost of another, less expensive business school.

The student then researched his own firm’s standards: it had offered to “reimburse second-year fees.” It didn’t say “second-year fees based on the cheaper school.” Also, other firms in the consulting industry pegged tuition reimbursement to each student’s chosen school.

The result: the student got the extra $16,380. “Framing the problem as one of fairness rather than one of compensation helped greatly,” the student said. This is a great use of reframing standards in the work context.

Reframing standards is key in the job market. You often have to lead the other party, step-by-step, to where you want them to go. Don Cordeiro wanted to land a job with a large private-equity firm in Brazil. But he had no experience in the field. A large number of experienced candidates were applying.

However, Don understood that the real issue for firms is not experience but skills. Experience is only an indicator of skills. The best indicator is, of course, the skills themselves. So Don asked the hiring partner about the kinds of talent that the firm was lacking. “People-related issues,” the partner said. “Team formation, entrepreneurial abilities, fit.”

This was all Don needed. He pointed out the skills he had developed over the years in his various nonfinancial entrepreneurial ventures: developing teams, dealing with an entrepreneurial environment, finding ways to overcome differences in an organization. “I then mentioned that I had no experience in finance or private equity,” Don said. “I let him establish the relevance of my background to the industry.” Although Don took a management consulting job in São Paulo before the process was finished, the private-equity firm moved him up from nowhere to being a leading contender.

Himanshu Bahuguna was denied relocation expenses to Asia for a job after graduation from business school. But the firm did provide such expenses for new hires in the United States. He asked why the firm provided $10,000 in expenses for a new hire moving ninety minutes from Philadelphia to New York, but provided $0 to a new hire moving halfway around the world. He got the expenses. He added that instead of negotiating with human resources, he asked his own group, which valued him more, to go to bat for him inside the firm.

Roswell Osborne spent two hours on industry research and found that Microsoft offered $25,000 more to someone of his experience than eBay was offering him. When he brought that to eBay’s attention, he was able to secure an additional $10,000 signing bonus. “That’s $5,000 an hour for my efforts,” he said. But after a month, his department was dissolved. He noted that he had given eBay a one-year commitment at their request, turned down other jobs, and that the company must have known about the restructuring before he came on board.

Roswell got a $70,000 severance package, gained from using standards and preparation. He decided to use all this extra money to start his own e-commerce business in San Antonio. “You keep preparing and practicing,” he said. “And then, when you need it, it’s there.”

Here is one more, a bit thornier. A manager at a major company was denied a promotion due to the recession and a limited budget. Then the manager saw the employer’s guidelines, which indicated that he should have been two levels higher. Politely, he showed the guidelines to his boss, and added that the higher title would prompt more credibility from customers. He got the promotion and a salary increase, using standards, third parties, and interests.

If the boss gets irritated, politely ask why. You are just asking the company to follow its own standards. Doesn’t the company want persistent employees?

I teach my students not to accept ambiguous answers. Shervin Limbert, a consultant for a Lebanese gas-oil company, was told that he would get a “discretionary bonus.” In Shervin’s world, however, the phrase meant little or nothing.

So Shervin asked his employer how his value to the company would be calculated. Were there any standards? He then enumerated the value he had brought to the company so far. This included significant contacts in Kuwait for favorable terms on a contract he had brought in. As a result, he received a promise of a $30,000 bonus.

Once you become comfortable with using standards, they can serve you continually in doing a better job. John Moreno saved his company, Teton, $12,000 by persuading Fluor Enterprises to let Teton use Fluor’s high-speed computer line.

Fluor technology people at first said security concerns barred Teton, a Georgia industrial construction company, from sharing Fluor’s high-speed computer line. So John contacted someone else he knew at Fluor and asked if Fluor was sharing its high-speed line with anyone else. The answer was yes! How was security protected in that arrangement? The other company bought a router and firewall. John went back with this information to the Fluor IT people and offered to do the same. He also pointed out that Fluor and Teton had just completed a strategic agreement.

“Once confronted with the fact that Fluor had set the standard by allowing another contractor to share the connection,” John said, “the Fluor IT people could no longer say, ‘Corporate just won’t allow it.’ ” John was very pleasant about it. But he was firm. And he met his goals. He’s since been promoted to head of his division.

As noted throughout Getting More, a key part of framing is reframing. You take a company’s framing and ask them to look at it a different way. This often makes it easier for them to meet your goals.

Judy Sher accepted a job at Fidelity Investments on December 4, thirteen days after the company’s deadline for bonus checks that year. Getting a bonus check before year’s end would save Judy more than $10,000 in taxes. She called up the decision-maker in human resources and blamed the bad economy (common enemy): her decision to join Fidelity had been delayed by the fact that her partner had a tough time finding a job. Judy then added that it was less than two weeks since the deadline, which was very close to the deadline. Couldn’t they make an exception (standards)?

Judy got the check that year. She first established a human connection with the person at HR. Then she gave the HR person framing to enable them to sell it to their own constituency.

Adam Kane used reframing to get his company, Erickson Retirement Communities, to accept a $50 million project. Erickson develops and operates mostly upscale retirement communities; there are 30,000 residents in nineteen states. Adam, a senior vice president, wanted to go into the low-income market. The company was initially uninterested in this new market. So Adam contacted an executive who had just been appointed head of a new division: new products.

“They were thinking a new product meant, say, health care products,” Adam said. But he reframed “low-income residences” as a “new product.” The new product director, looking for something substantial, got behind the idea and the company approved it.

If you are good enough at using negotiating tools, you can find negotiation room in situations that appear watertight to others. Some years ago a former student wanted to transfer offices at McKinsey without having to go through a time-consuming, stressful review process similar to when the employee was hired. McKinsey said it was standard policy. So the employee used another McKinsey standard: its “One firm” policy; that is, the same standards throughout the firm worldwide.

If McKinsey is one firm, the employee asked, why do employees have to go through a formal review when transferring offices? Aren’t the original hiring standards the same everywhere? McKinsey could have dug in its heels. But smart firms know that by violating their own standards, they will soon start to lose the best recruits. The employee got the transfer. This shows that you can meet your goals using their standards even when they are a big, powerful, worldwide firm.

Josh Furchtman’s new firm said they would not move him twice, once to his parents for the summer and once to the city where he was working. He wanted to know: What if the total moving costs were less than the firm’s usual cost for one move? Wasn’t it really a budget problem? Josh found cheaper movers, and the firm paid for both moves. This was reframing the standard from “only one move” to “adhering to the budget limit.”

Anders Bjork was rejoining a firm that offered him a salary similar to those junior to him. He asked his new manager if he had more experience and responsibilities than those junior. “Yes,” he was told. “So should I receive the same pay?” he asked. Result: 15 percent salary increase. Anders, now a private equity director in New York, used framing, standards, and asking questions. Tone is also important; it was a relationship situation. He was very respectful in asking.

I could go on and on. A search of our database shows many hundreds of examples. They will work for you, too. Let’s try just one more. Allan Castro was told his signing bonus was being cut due to a poor economy. Allan got a company brochure saying they “pay competitive rates.” Allan brought this with him to a meeting with a human resources manager, along with industry standards showing that the compensation offered to him was low even in a poor economy. He received $5,000 more.

In using standards, it is important to ask for precedents. “Have you ever done this before?” and “Have you ever made an exception?” should be part of your everyday vocabulary.

TRADING ITEMS OF UNEQUAL VALUE

We’ve discussed the notion of intangibles. Here’s how to meet your goals on the job by finding things to trade that don’t cost you very much—but that the other side values.

Christopher Kelly could only pay a new hire the same salary as his old firm. This was unacceptable to the candidate. “I tried hard to understand his long-term goals,” Chris said. “I wanted to find out the reasons for his unhappiness in his current job.”

Chris found out that the candidate wanted to get an MBA eventually. Chris told him the company could pay for it. Chris asked what else the candidate was interested in. “He indicated that adding the word ‘manager’ to his job title would be very valuable to him,” said Chris, who heads a weather services company. “Not a problem for us.” The candidate accepted the job at the offered salary.

Once you see it in action, it seems simple. But you actually have to systematically and precisely go through the process.

Vikas Bansal, a manager at a major financial services company in New York, was trying to get one of his direct reports to work harder. Threats generally wreck motivation. Vikas realized that employee morale was already low due to decreases in salary and layoffs in a difficult economic environment. So instead he asked the employee, John, to explain his concerns and future career hopes. “I patiently listened,” Vikas said. “I tried to understand his needs. Then I summarized them to make sure I got it right.”

Vikas found out that John’s wife was expecting a child that summer. Work schedule flexibility would be greatly appreciated. So Vikas listed his five top work priorities he wanted from John. In return, he offered John flexibility in working over the summer, including working from home. “He got excited,” Vikas said. John left the meeting on fire, and his work greatly improved. It remains improved to this day, Vikas added.

Creative options to attract and keep employees are limited only by the imagination of either side. Similar to Chris Kelly, John Moreno was trying to hire an employee whom the company could not pay more in salary than his old job did. John, the Teton Industrial Construction manager mentioned a few pages ago, knew the candidate lived in a small apartment with his wife and three children. “His wife wanted a home of their own,” John said. They owned a piece of land but couldn’t afford the house. “We offered to install the foundation,” John said. The result? The candidate accepted the job.

Ask for a list of intangibles that don’t cost the company much, whether you are a candidate, employee, or manager. There are discounts on health club memberships or travel, moving expenses, lower-interest loans using the company’s credit rating, flex time. All are good ways to bridge gaps in compensation and other negotiation terms.

Aravind Immaneni needed another staff member. And the compliance director at his company had an unused staff slot. But the compliance director was new and didn’t want to give up the slot, Aravind said. “He thought giving up the slot could lower his status in the company,” Aravind realized after doing role reversal.

So Aravind reviewed possible items to trade. They included sharing an administrative assistant and giving the new compliance director a corner office. Aravind also discovered that the compliance director hated doing audits. Aravind met with the director in the director’s office (so he felt more important) and reviewed the various intangibles. The director picked getting help with the audit. Aravind did the audit and the director turned over the staff slot. “Role reversal made the negotiation easy,” Aravind said.

Aravind, a senior vice president of a major financial services firm, was senior to the director. Thus, Aravind could have gone over the director’s head and forced him to turn over the staff position. But Aravind found that trading things of unequal value preserved the relationship. “Looking at things from his viewpoint gave me a better way to do the negotiation,” Aravind said.

To make such a trade, one has to be constructive. Tom Greer wanted to move an employee, Brian, from an engagement with one client to the team for another client. Brian had specific skills the second team could use. Brian’s colleague complained that his staff was being unfairly taken.

Tom, a media and entertainment partner for a major accounting firm, did not respond in kind. “I offered to make a more experienced senior associate available as a substitute for Brian,” Tom said. It met everyone’s goals.

Work life is filled with millions of these daily negotiations. They will make work a hassle if not handled successfully. The tools outlined here are antidotes to hassle.

Susan Pirollo said her boss resented the “special treatment” she got by being allowed to attend an executive MBA program. He called her time off to attend school “excessive,” even though the company had committed to it. But this wasn’t about being right, Susan realized. She thought about what her boss was really feeling—overworked.

So instead of lashing back, Susan suggested that perhaps she could do more to help her boss. She asked which of his duties she could take over. She offered to use personal time to do it. By staying calm and pleasant, she reduced her boss’s resentment. “It’s so important in any negotiation to just stop, put yourself in their shoes, and think of the world from their perspective,” said Susan, now a senior manager at a pharmaceutical firm near Philadelphia.

THIRD PARTIES

Allying with third parties is especially important at work. Organizations respect strength in numbers, since they are creatures of numbers. An organization represents an alliance by its members. Third parties also help if you don’t have enough (a) authority, (b) persuasiveness on your own, (c) credibility, (d) connection to the decision-maker, or (e) emotional distance from the situation. Essentially, this is the skill of building coalitions.

Eric Lammers wanted to meet with the CFO of Reliance Resources to pitch a deal. He had never spoken to the CFO. And the CFO didn’t generally meet with people he didn’t know. Sending him a letter out of the blue seemed useless.

But Eric did know the company’s treasurer, who in turn knew the CFO. Eric met the treasurer personally to show his motivation and present a stronger case. Eric also came up with framing for the treasurer to describe the proposal in one phrase: “liquidity options,” a big need of the company. This was so persuasive that the CFO invited Eric, the treasurer, and the company’s vice president of finance to the meeting.

Ram Vittal used third parties to collect information for him. Ram expected to get his green card upon joining a banking firm; it would reduce the risk to him in the event of a change in U.S. visa policy. But the human resources director told him the company’s “standard policy” was a one-year probation. “They were intransigent,” Ram said. So Ram went to the person in the company who would be most sympathetic.

He asked the vice president of the group that hired him. The vice president knew of other cases where green card processing had started as of the hiring date. The vice president got the process started right away. “I used to think that these stories about negotiation successes had fairy-tale endings,” said Ram, who later joined Goldman Sachs, where he is now a vice president. “But I found that if you consciously use these tools and think the process through, in fact they are practical.” Most important, he said, is making sure all parties get something from the process.

As such, the first choice, not available to Ram in the visa case, is to give something to the other side to further a relationship, instead of going around them. Shaping your proposal based on the pictures in their heads is one way to do it. Elisa Eiger wanted to be an internal consultant in her Alabama publishing company, but HR’s policy was not to create new positions.

Elisa met with the HR director and asked what skills the company still needed. She “made a big effort to keep quiet” as the director outlined the skills. Elisa then summarized the apparent shared interests based on what she had heard, and explained how a position could be fashioned to meet those needs. Elisa had tailored the position to the director’s comments. “The director offered to assist me in writing my job proposal and paved the way for me to get the job,” Elisa said.

Ofotsu Tetteh Kujorjie, one of my students from Ghana, wanted to discuss the terms of a job offer with the company’s CEO. The CEO didn’t have time: take the job or leave it, now, Ofotsu was told. So Ofotsu phoned the CEO’s executive assistant, whom he had met, and asked if there were any projects the CEO needed done. There were.

Ofotsu wrote to the CEO, saying he wanted to join the firm but had some questions about the terms. In return for having a discussion in person when Ofotsu returned to Ghana over Christmas break, Ofotsu offered to work on some of the CEO’s projects, which Ofotsu named. This prompted a phone call from the CEO to say the delay was fine. Ofotsu did projects for the CEO, then went back to school and got an advanced degree in law at Georgetown. “The door is open; he still calls when he comes to town,” Ofotsu said. He had used interests and third parties, and was also very straight with the CEO.

BEING INCREMENTAL

Most of the negotiations in this chapter, and in this book, are incremental: not asking for everything at once. This is one of the hardest things for people to learn. Other parties usually don’t want to risk a big change. In every negotiation, think of ways to divide the process into steps. It doesn’t necessarily take longer, because the alternative is often no deal at all.

Camilla Cho worked a summer at Warner Home Video and was offered a full-time job upon graduation. In the meantime she realized that she would rather pursue a finance/strategy career in Warner’s media and entertainment division. But she knew she could not move inside the firm without the approval of her boss, Jeff.

However, merely asking Jeff about moving could make her appear ungrateful. Jeff had given her a great opportunity amid hundreds of applicants. It could damage their relationship and her career.

“After putting myself in Jeff’s shoes,” Camilla said, “I realized that my goal of an immediate transfer was unrealistic. So I focused instead on small steps: contacts and cross-company exposure first.”

Camilla asked Jeff if she could do finance and strategy work some of the time, as this was a long-term interest. Jeff said that as long as Camilla did her current job, he had no problem with her long-term interests. Acquiring additional skills in key areas was always beneficial to the company.

“You can’t always get what you want immediately,” said Camilla, who is now vice president of Outside.in, an electronic news Internet company. “But you should be able to plot a course that will get you there eventually.” Camilla got closer to her goals and met her boss’s current needs. Success depends to a large degree on how you frame the issue.

Being incremental also means asking others questions about situations instead of taking on the whole problem yourself. When she was a student at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Sarah Lewis was hired to work twenty hours per week for a premier New York City law firm. But she was assigned much more than that by two of the firm’s partners.

Sarah wisely decided to frame this as not her problem. She contacted both partners and gave them the details of the amount and kind of work she had been assigned by each. She asked them to decide what she should do, since she could work only twenty hours per week.

“The partners talked with each other and reallocated my time,” said Sarah, now a company counsel in New York. She started the negotiation with little control or power. But she was able to regain control over her job and life by giving away the problem in a first, small step. She didn’t say she was overwhelmed. She didn’t say it was a problem. She just presented the issue in a matter-of-fact way.

TERMINATION

If you are terminated from your job, this is also a negotiation opportunity. Many people get angry or otherwise emotional and don’t think clearly. They often panic or threaten. Most regions, however, favor the employer, which usually has the resources to fight. If you calmly negotiate, employers are usually willing to give you more. They can give you many things that don’t cost them much.

First, ask if you can resign. Find a reason that’s true and well-crafted. Second, ask for a nondisclosure agreement limiting their comments when later asked for references. For example: “She resigned on March 23 for business reasons. Our privacy policy prevents us from disclosing other information.” If you don’t do that, your former employer may tell a potential employer that you are “not eligible for rehire.”

Third, some firms may let you be an unpaid consultant for a period. Others may even let you maintain an office, keep a phone line, or have your phone line forwarded. Ask for the use of company outplacement services; some firms will pay a recruiter to help you. Others will give you a letter of reference. Extended health insurance is often available. Sometimes you can get your laptop or other equipment for free or cheap.

Most firms and industries have standard severance packages: for example, one week’s pay per every year of service. Sometimes more is provided—find out when, such as elimination of your department through no fault of your own. Read the employee handbook for ideas. Browse the Internet. Don’t sign anything immediately unless the package is clearly substantial. Tell them you want a day or two to collect your thoughts. If they try to fire you for cause, ask for chapter and verse—dispute it strongly. A high threshold of proof is usually required. And if you documented your good deeds, as suggested earlier, the employer will have a hard time proving cause.

If you fit into a special category, invoke it. You will get more, even without having a lawyer: women over forty, protected class of race or gender, and so forth. Don’t be belligerent; just bring it up and ask what they can provide, saying you will sign a no-suit agreement. Again, be calm but firm: you will get more.

Unless the company is gracious and giving, I always advise fired employees to consult an employment lawyer. Even after that, you should still try to do the negotiation yourself, to preserve good feelings. But especially if they are difficult, you may want to cite specific rights that you have. Look for third parties in the company (or outside) who know the management and can put in a good word for you. It can make a significant difference in the employer’s generosity. Only the most insensitive employers have the stomach for a messy process.

Finally, the more outrageous they are, the happier you should be. If they do something illegal or improper, you could be owed more money. Just take notes and find a third party to consult about it. Keep your head; it’s not the end of the world. Eventually, you will get more.

All this advice goes as well for employers. The more you treat employees with dignity and fairness, even as you are firing them, the less likely they are to retaliate and cause you more grief than necessary.

THEIR SENSIBILITIES

It is important to focus on the signals a prospective employer sends. For example, a company scheduled Laura Beech for an interview in New York at the same time that she had been assigned a school presentation. Instead of suffering a bad grade, Laura presented the problem to the employer. The first scheduling person refused to help her. But Laura’s interview contact at the firm agreed.

The first person was essentially saying that the firm felt it was okay to hurt Laura academically and force her to break commitments for its own convenience. Clearly, it wasn’t the position of the entire company, but you should ask questions before accepting a job at that kind of firm. Laura is now a credit card company executive in New York.

Even if you are very junior in a company, without much power or influence, you can use these tools to enhance your career. Eric Delbridge was at a meeting with some senior people in his company. Instead of stating his opinion, he pointed out facts and standards, and asked what others thought of them. They began to see contradictions and support his private viewpoint. “Even though you are the most junior person in the room,” said Eric, who is now a Chicago hedge fund analyst, “good negotiation skills can help you reach your goals in an almost invisible manner.”

My students use the tools to learn from mistakes and eventually meet their goals. Dr. Stephan Petranker, who took my course at NYU, applied for the director of anesthesiology post at a hospital. He met the hospital’s CEO without doing much research on the CEO’s goals.

Stephan said he would improve patient care and focus on excellence. But it turned out that the CEO was more interested in cost-cutting and logistics. “I thought the common ground was excellence in patient care,” Stephan said. “The CEO wanted financial decisions that cut staff.” He didn’t get the job.

On his next job interview, ten members of a search committee interviewed him for thirty minutes each, back to back. “I asked each interviewer what I could expect from the next interviewer,” Stephan said. “I consciously tried to put myself in the interviewer’s seat and determine what would convince them I was the right man for the job. I asked each how I could present myself to make myself stand out from the other qualified candidates—and they told me.” And he got the job.

If you use these processes, you will increase your chances of getting a job, keeping a job, doing better at a job—or finding better employees. The best thing about it is that it’s not hard to do. And it will give you the most important thing you need in producing a better workplace: a structured process to get more with reliability and confidence.