Empower Hour with Kathryn Valentine
What do you typically think of when you hear the word “negotiation”? 70% of women associate negotiation with money - but negotiation can really cover a wide spectrum of options from money, to flexibility, benefits, or even additional support.
To celebrate Women’s History Month at NAWA, Kathryn Valentine of Worthmore Negotiations walked our group through an “empower hour” focused on negotiating successfully as a woman.
So, why negotiate? There are numerous benefits to negotiation. When we negotiate, we can improve our financial futures, advance our careers, but also increase our value and lessen stress, along with many other benefits. Turns out, employers gain from this as well, because as employee satisfaction increases, they are more likely to stay - increasing employee retention along with it.
Kathryn shared 2 principles for negotiating successfully as a woman:
Take a Collaborative Approach
This isn’t us versus them - and doesn’t need to be approached competitively. In your ask, focus on the problem at hand, and how coming up with this solution together can help to benefit the team, company, client, etc.
Ask Communally
Start with your Past Accomplishments and demonstrate how they contribute to the Future Vision (Big Goal). Then, tie in your specific Ask, and Stop to hear their feedback.
Negotiating this way eliminates risk, and often feels more authentic to us as women. It gives us the support we need to continue to achieve and deliver in a way that benefits everyone.
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Meet Kathryn Valentine
Kathryn is the Founder of Worthmore Strategies, a consulting firm focused on achieving gender parity in the workplace by empowering women to ask for what they need to be happy, productive, and successful in their careers. Her work has been featured in Fast Company, Adweek, Working Mother and Forbes.
Kathryn graduated from the University of Virginia, where she was a Jefferson Scholar, and started her career at McKinsey. She has an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management. While in business school, she researched how to negotiate specifically as a woman; that work is the foundation of her research-based approach to women’s leadership development.
Kathryn currently lives in Atlanta with her husband and their two sons. She enjoys running, reading and burns everything she tries to cook.