New book looks at women's negotiating skills

Linda Babcock, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University, had been teaching negotiations and dispute resolution for years before she had an epiphany about why women weren't achieving the same results as men in negotiable situations.Put simply, the women didn't ask for what they wanted.Babcock realized the disparity between the sexes when some female graduate students asked her why they had been assigned jobs as teaching assistants while men in the same degree program were teaching their own courses. She posed the question to the associate dean who made the teaching assignments (who also happened to be her husband). He told her any student could teach a class if he or she had a good idea for a course, the ability to teach it and could do it at a reasonable cost. While men had asked him to teach, the women had not."It kind of hit me over the head," said Babcock, who went on to research why women were much less likely to initiate negotiations. That research ultimately led to her widely praised 2003 book, "Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide," which she co-authored with Sara Laschever.In response to overwhelming feedback from readers who wanted more specific negotiating skills, the pair teamed on a new book, "Ask for It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want." The hardcover book will hit store shelves and Internet book sites next week.While "Women Don't Ask" brought the issue to light, "Ask for It" provides very specific steps to negotiate effectively, said Babcock."The first book was an explanation of the phenomenon and where it comes from. But readers wanted more. People wanted to know what to do ... more tools to learn how to negotiate." "Ask for It" supplies the strategies, she said, starting with a "pre-negotiation" process that begins long before you sit down with your boss, your spouse, your contractor or with whomever you plan to negotiate.It's comparable to getting in physical shape, the authors write in a chapter called, "Negotiation Gym: Work Up a Sweat." Just as you wouldn't launch an exercise regime by running a marathon, don't decide to ask for a raise and meet with your boss the next day.They advise following a six-week plan that starts with "easy warm-ups" such as negotiating for small things like asking to leave work an hour early to attend a going-away party for a colleague, or asking your partner to take a day off from work to wait at home for the cable installer instead of just instinctively doing it yourself.Then work up to more challenging negotiations in later weeks. For instance, if your boss asks you to stay on with the company and telecommute when your spouse is transferred to another state, ask the boss to pay for a high-speed Internet connection for your new home office.The six-week plan should include negotiating for things even if you expect you won't get them, said Babcock. "If you don't ever hear 'no,' you haven't set your targets high enough. You should take more calculated risks." .....Babcock conceded that she was surprised by the enormous reception for her first book, which was published by Princeton University Press. It was translated into six languages, and newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations nationwide sought her for interviews."That doesn't typically happen for university press books because they're more confined to academic areas. But it really resonated with women so hard. They said, 'Yeah. You're right. I don't negotiate.'"E-mail Joyce Gannon at jgannon(at)post-gazette.com (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)