Your Own Terms

3How Not to SabotageYour Negotiating Power

To be a successful negotiator, a woman has to delicately combine the demanding, hard-nosed, numbers-driven male approach with the empathetic, warm, supportive female approach—and she has to do each of these things at the right time. In an article for the European Business Review titled “Women Leaders: The Gender Trap,” authors Ginka Toegel and Jean-Louis Barsoux comment on this tightrope walk. Women have to adapt their behavior “depending on whether they are dealing upward or downward.”¹ You have to be factual, strategic, and able to make hard decisions with your boss, but supportive, nurturing, and fair to employees. The following shows how a person can sabotage her own negotiating power.

Graciela Meibar, ...