Much has been made of The Great Resignation of 2021. With that comes a whole lot of opportunities for negotiation. Maybe you quit your job and now have a new offer to consider. Or perhaps the pandemic made you reevaluate your quality of life and you want to propose a more flexible schedule to your boss.

You’ve got so much to gain from negotiating for yourself. Yet for so many of us, embarking on a negotiation fills us with a sense of dread? That’s normal, explains Victoria Medvec, a professor of management and organizations at Kellogg and CEO of Medvec and Associates consulting firm. “We get really afraid. Even experienced negotiators tend to get really afraid around that negotiation,” she says.

Today, we’ll get some advice from Medvec on how to approach negotiating for yourself so that both parties are happy with the outcome.

How to Negotiate for What You Want

Much of our innate discomfort with negotiation is our fear of being told “no.” But Medvec says to stop right there: “‘No’ is not the ending in a negotiation; ‘no’ is the beginning. ‘No’ is not a wall I run into; ‘no’ is the window I climb through that says, ‘game on, let’s go!’”

Medvec shared this and other tools and strategies, which come from her new book, Negotiate Without Fear, in a recent The Insightful Leader Live webinar. A few key pieces of advice:

Focus on the other side’s goals: If you’re negotiating a new offer or a promotion, be sure that you’re laser-focused on what the other side needs and how you can help them meet those needs. Medvec has a clever test for this: a “pronoun checker.” If you find yourself saying “I” and “me” a lot, you’re on the wrong track. “As I go into the negotiation, I have to have a compelling message, and that message needs to focus on the company, not me,” Medvec says. “This is one of the hardest things for people to do when they’re negotiating for themselves. … Why? Because what I want is so salient to me.”

Differentiate yourself: Why are you the right person for this job or the right employee to get a flexible schedule? You need to show the other side what sets you apart. And make sure you are highlighting differences that are meaningful in this context. If you’re fluent in Arabic, but your company has no plans to do business in the Middle East, then that’s not a differentiator. But, rest assured, you do have things that set you apart. “I find differentiators in everyone I talk to,” Medvec says. “Everybody has unique capabilities, unique competencies, unique knowledge.” Maybe yours is that you have a long-time relationship with an important client. Or you speak Arabic, and your potential new employer is about to open a Dubai office.

Maximize your outcomes: This is why you’re negotiating, right? (And probably why you’re reading this email.) So how do you get more of what you want? One key, Medvec says, is giving the other party options. So, first, figure out all the issues on the table. This likely includes salary but may also include remote vs. in-person work, job title, or sales targets. Then mix and match these issues into a few different options, keeping in mind what is easy for you to compromise on, what’s easy for them to compromise on, and what’s going to be contentious. “I am a huge fan of going to the table with three options at the same time,” Medvec says. “Multiple offers let the other side feel like they have a choice. People love choice. They feel better about having a choice. And they’re going to react better to having a choice.” And the better they react, the better off you’ll be at the end of the negotiation.

You can hear more of Medvec’s advice, including a matrix to use to understand all the issues on the table, in this episode of The Insightful Leader podcast.

What Do You Want to Know?



We would love to hear from you, dear reader, to know what topics you’d like us to tackle in an upcoming newsletter. Please send any questions you have to insight@kellogg.northwestern.edu. We’ll try to find a professor to answer them or track down some research that can help. And don’t be shy—you can remain anonymous if you’d like.



How to Navigate Work Relationships in a Virtual World



The pandemic made it abundantly clear that what works well in person does not necessarily translate perfectly to online. Luckily, professor Leigh Thompson will be offering advice on how to navigate the virtual world in our next The Insightful Leader Live webinar. She’ll share 6 best practices, from running a productive (and creative) meeting to nailing that all-important “virtual handshake.”



The free, one-hour webinar takes place at noon central time on Dec. 2. You can register here.

See you next week!

—Emily Stone, senior editor
Kellogg Insight