Leadership experts Beta Mannix and Sunita Sah discuss strategies for women to navigate the challenges of healthcare leadership, covering everything from building influence and negotiating effectively to developing authentic leadership skills and professional networks.
Find out more about Cornell’s Women in Healthcare Leadership Program: https://ecornell.short.gy/iruMud
Dr. Sah’s new book, Defy, available everywhere. For more information: https://www.sunitasah.com/defy
Women are taking on leadership roles across healthcare at unprecedented rates — yet the path is rarely straightforward. In this Keynotes conversation, Professor Elizabeth Mannix, an expert on leadership and networks, and Professor Sunita Sah, an expert on leadership and negotiations and national bestselling author of “DEFY: The Power of No in a World that Demands Yes,” will share what it takes for women to lead effectively in one of today’s most complex and high‑stakes industries.
Drawing on both research and real‑world experience, Professors Sah and Mannix will explore the capabilities that help women navigate uncertainty, build influence, and drive meaningful change within healthcare organizations.
Whether you are an emerging leader or an experienced professional looking to expand your impact, this session offers practical insights from the upcoming Women in Healthcare Leadership certificate program.
What You'll Learn
INTRO:
Welcome to Cornell Keynotes. On today's episode, we're examining a critical challenge in one of our most essential industries, how women can lead effectively in healthcare's complex, high stakes environment. Healthcare is one of the most demanding industries out there where decisions can have rippling consequences.
Resources are often constrained. And you're trying to coordinate among independent minded professionals and organizations that don't always align, influence, authenticity, and courage are effectively required for the job. Our guest co-hosts today are Cornell Professor Beta Manix, who is an expert on leadership and networks and Professor Sunita Sah.
Who is an expert on leadership and negotiations and is a national bestselling author of the book, defy the Power of No. In a World That Demands Yes Drawing on both research and real world experience, they'll explore practical strategies for negotiating effectively, [00:01:00] building strong professional networks, and standing up with confidence in high stakes conversations.
These are all insights from their newly launched Women in Healthcare Leadership Certificate program. And for more on that, check the episode notes. And now here's Beta and Sunita's conversation on women in healthcare leadership.
So we're here to talk about women and healthcare leadership, which is three specific things, women, healthcare, leadership. So let's break this down a little bit. It might be reasonable to ask what is unique about leading in healthcare? So, Sunita, you started your career as a physician and then you decided, well, an MD wasn't quite enough.
So you went on to get a PhD. To do research in some of the topics that we're gonna talk about today, like speaking up, critical thinking and negotiation. Let's start with this question. What makes leaving in healthcare so unique?
It's a great question and [00:02:00] it's personal for me. When I was practicing medicine in the uk, I experienced this every day.
So I think there are three main pressures that make healthcare leadership uniquely challenging. So first of all, the stakes are high. It's immediate, it's human. You could be putting lives at risk. So every decision, whether it's at the bedside or in the boardroom, really has real consequences for patients and their family.
So high stakes. Second, there's constant pressure coming from resource constraints, staffing shortages all the time, and medical knowledge evolves pretty fast, so it's hard to keep up with. So you're always on ground or you're feeling like you're on ground. That's always shifting. And the third main pressure, and this is the one I find really fascinating too, to really analyze and think about, is that healthcare is made up of many different [00:03:00] trained experts and they all value their professional autonomy, their agency.
So you can have a surgeon who sees a problem one way, a nurse who sees it another way, an administrator that sees it another way entirely, and each one. They bring , deep expertise to the problem, and have different ideas about what the right course of action is. So good and effective patient care really requires all those people having to coordinate often under time pressure and with very different perspectives.
So you have to make good decisions as a leader, but you also have to create. Conditions where the right information surfaces and where people do feel able to speak up when they need to, and that tension between hierarchy and voice is exactly what drew me from clinical practice to the research. I really wanted to understand why it's so hard to speak up in these environments and what we can do about it.
Now you've also spent a long time [00:04:00] Beta on thinking about how women lead and women are on the front lines of healthcare every single day. So how can we ensure that their voices shape decisions at the very top?
Yeah, exactly. I think there's so many great opportunities for women in healthcare in particular, but we also know that sometimes kind of getting to the top of any profession that includes healthcare can be difficult.
Particularly, we know that from some of the work that I've done, so I've looked at some of the data that we have about what it takes for women to rise to the top of their careers. And one of the things we've seen, whether we look at clinicians or non-clinicians, is trying to understand what women can do to be more proactive about these things.
, And so we looked at in variety of different ways. We asked women some several different questions and then we tracked them over time. And so we started to see that there were a few things that women could specifically do to help [00:05:00] themselves, and one of the things we found is that when women lead with purpose, it makes a tremendous difference.
Now, let me back up for a minute and say that when we ask people. What is your purpose? Or are you leading with purpose? It can be a little daunting. Now, healthcare, of course, is very much compatible with this because many people go into healthcare, whether you're a clinician or a non-clinician, whether you're in a healthcare or hospital setting, or biotech or pharma with purpose.
But if you ask somebody, can you tell me your purpose? Many people will say, and I have experience with this, um, eh, maybe, or sort of, but they may not be able to articulate it cleanly and clearly. But it turns out, if you are able to, if you're able to be clear about the contribution you want to make that is larger and bigger than [00:06:00] yourself and the impact that you want to make, it actually truly makes a difference.
Now, why might this be. Well, it starts with self-awareness. So self-awareness is actually the foundation of purpose. It starts with the idea that you're clear about who you are. Where you want to go and how you're going to get there. And I think we're gonna see this has a lot of the links to some of the things that you've studied, especially with that.
How do I wanna get there piece, because if you think about internal self-awareness, what this has to do with, what are my values? What motivates me? What are my passions? What are my aspirations? It's really deeply understanding who you are and also what are your strengths. But you also wanna know your external self-awareness.
So how am I impacting other people? How do they experience me? And of course, that has to do with influence and leading. So the internal side [00:07:00] is, am I making my choices wisely? And the external side is, am I leading well? And when you put those things together, it's really the foundation of purpose. It allows you to lead well and understand where are you contributing wisely now.
This can seem daunting. It is something that it doesn't just pop into your head. It's something that you have to spend a fair amount of time on. And what we found is that it can take structure. It can take having a framework or a template to work through and really deeply understand both these pieces of internal and external awareness and then move that into, translate that into purpose.
But it's worth it, not only because it helps you to know yourself better and your impact on others. But also when you lead with purpose, What matters here is clarity of decision making. People [00:08:00] experience you as more trustworthy, as more credible. They understand what we're doing and why, and then it leads to more.
, Alignment and motivation amongst your team members. It leads to building more of , a stronger reputation and building stronger relationships among others. And as you say, so many of the things in healthcare, it's difficult. People have competing priorities. People have restrictions on resources.
And part of what you need to do is to be able to pull people together and align them among your strategic priorities. And that can take deep diving down into being clear about what is important. , And one of the things we try to do, for example, in our certificate program is to give people a template or clarity around how do you move to diving deeply into self-awareness.
To be really clear about your purpose. So some structure around this [00:09:00] really can help quite a bit to lead you to the next steps, which can be around how do I speak up for what matters? How do I influence people? How do I negotiate well to build that foundation? That leads you to be able to take action, which is what you really want to be able to do to move your career forward.
, And that really gets me to thinking about many of the things that you've studied, , in particular around closing that gap between where you are and where you wanna be. Which is, how do I get there? And I know you've studied this extensively, , in particular around negotiation. I think you've just come from teaching negotiation,
, So tell us a little bit about that. What do we know about how women in particular can be more effective negotiators once they know what they want?
, So much of what I study comes down to that type of decision making. , Why do smart, capable people go along with things that they know aren't right?
And it plays [00:10:00] out, , in negotiations. It plays out in decision making. I'm teaching both this week, , including in healthcare. And here's what most people get wrong about negotiation. We often think about it as being just about. When we want to negotiate for a new job, a new salary and new contracts, these sort of big formal moments, but we actually negotiate every single day with our team, with our administrators, with patients, with our family.
Like any interpersonal interaction, there's some form of negotiation. So anytime you're balancing those competing needs and you're trying to reach an outcome, that's a negotiation. And what we've been discussing this week in class has been that every negotiation involves three goals. We often always think about the financial one, the economic outcome, what you're trying to get, the price, the cost, but there's also two other goals.
The relationship, the relational [00:11:00] goal. You've got to work with many people tomorrow. And then the reputational goal, what are other people going to think? They learn about this negotiation and the outcome. And in healthcare when you see the same people every day, those relationship and relational reputational goals, they carry a lot of weight.
But what I see my research over and over again is that the negotiation often fails before it even starts. Not because people like this skill. Because they're afraid to do the negotiation in the first place. So if we think about what happens when I was a junior physician and, , disagreeing with a senior physician's treatment, many of us did that.
, We saw this, but we would rarely challenge it out loud, although we would discuss it in private. Oh, perhaps when a nurse manager knows that her unit needs more resources and she needs to make a case to someone with more authority. So whenever there's this power [00:12:00] differential, people are far more likely to comply.
Even , if we have better information, we defer to authority, not. Because we agree, but because of that social cost of pushing, it just feels too high. And this led me to discover in my research and something I've really examined extensively now is a psychological process I call insinuation anxiety.
So it's a distinct type of anxiety when we get concerned or we worry about rejecting somebody else's recommendation or pushing back on it because you don't wanna send a signal of distrust. We don't want anyone else to think that we don't trust them. So instead of saying something, the junior doctor to the physician, or even the nurse to the physician, especially if it's in front of the patient, we don't wanna signal that.
We think somebody else cannot be trusted or that they're incompetent, that they don't. Respect their expertise. So we try and sort of maintain this [00:13:00] harmonious relationship when really we should be speaking up in those situations where it's necessary. And once you know about insinuation anxiety, that you don't want to insinuate or imply that someone can be trusted.
You see it everywhere. . Your a friend gives you advice about a decision and you don't wanna say no to them. Even at the hairdressers, when they're telling you to trust you with a new cut and you're thinking, no, stop. It's there. It's there. You just go along with things. And in healthcare organization, the stakes are just so much higher and we need to.
A lot more about how we can reduce this aspect of insinuation anxiety because another part of my research discovered something that I call the voice empathy gap. So my colleagues and I, we, conducted a survey. We interviewed 50 nurse managers and 50 nurses and asked them similar questions about why they didn't speak up about errors [00:14:00] in their unit.
And the nurse managers had very different answers to the nurses. So the nurses would say that they didn't feel safe. That was one of the main reasons they don't feel safe, that they don't know what the consequences would be of speaking up, whether it was financial safety, keeping the job, psychological safety, it was not safe to speak up.
But there was also another very important reason why they didn't speak up. And some of the things that I heard was. It's not that I fear speaking up. I've done it many times before, but nothing changes. So it wasn't effective. So both safety and whether it was going to be effective were on their mind, but the nurse managers would say something completely different.
They were saying it's because. The nurses don't have the confidence or ability to speak up or that they're not taking responsibility. So when there's this gap, it is really quite worrisome because if we're blaming the wrong things as managers or leaders, we are [00:15:00] not going to fix the actual problem, and that's why.
Building strong relationships and networks really matter a lot because you can have real trust. The cost of speaking goes down. We need to create these cultures where it's both safe and effective to speak up so people feel free to what I call defy, or just negotiate and advocate without fear of damaging the relationship.
The two are very deeply connected.
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's interesting , that your research has shown that there could be both reasons that people are perhaps ruminating on and creating kind of the what if, the what if, the what if that could go too far, and then that may stop them, but then there are actual real experiences people are having with frankly.
Nothing has happened, nothing has changed. But that perhaps that if there were other, what sometimes what I think about, when we might talk about in a minute, if there were other kinds of [00:16:00] more structural reasons that could help but kind of bolster there actual being. Change, actual having some influence to motivate the change that that could also help.
But unfortunately, if you have the experience where even once or twice nothing has actually changed, then you can really easily just withdraw and say that, well. The fight just isn't worth it at this point, right? Yes. And so the people are more likely to do exactly as you say and say, well, I'm not gonna risk putting myself through.
As you say, that level of anxiety of the other things that could possibly happen, that just seems to even more exacerbated. So I'm going to pull back and not put myself out there for this reason.
Yeah, that's exactly right. And especially we see this when there's strong hierarchies as well, like in healthcare and so building a network really helps, I think, to work across those power differences.
And I wanted Beta. , In what you've studied, where can more junior people really access [00:17:00] people at the top?
Yeah, it's a great question. One of the things that I'm always interested in trying to talk to people about building a network and building a set of relationships and in particular talking to women about this.
But I'll be honest with you, as soon as I start to say the word network, many women are like, oh, please, I don't wanna hear about building a network. And I think part of the reason has to do with just the word network and the association that. It often has for in particular women with the idea of what networking brings up.
So it often brings up the, , after hours schmoozing or going to the bar or holding a glass of wine in your hand and talking about nonsense. When people, what they really are thinking is, look, I'd rather be either home with my family or doing something. I prefer doing whatever that might be. Or even frankly, working as opposed to doing something that doesn't seem like it could have a real.
Payoff for me, whatever that payoff might [00:18:00] be. , And what I'd like to say to people is that let's maybe even take the word networking out of it for a minute and instead say what is absolutely true and the research would show. Is that men and women should be pursuing building these relationships differently.
We know that we prefer to do this differently. Men tend to be fine with a more transactional approach. On average, at least women met tend to prefer and are actually more successful with building what we think of as tighter circles, more genuine relationships. , But I will also say that one of the things that women can really be more successful with is thinking about what are your goals?
And it really goes back to, , thinking about. Women are busy, and it's one of the reasons when we ask, , do you have a well developed sense of what is your purpose? Or , have you dived deep into self-awareness? Or do you have a strong like negotiation plan? [00:19:00] One of the reasons people don't do some of these things is because we are so busy.
So stepping back and saying. Let's figure out what is it that you want to accomplish? Is it furthering your career? Is it moving laterally? Is it learning? So one thing, as you said at the very beginning, one of the reasons we think about the sort of healthcare, the complexity of healthcare, is the speed at which medical knowledge is moving.
Well, you may not be able to learn at all. But one thing , that breadth of relationships can help you with is frankly understanding differences in, for example, public policy or regulations or people who are in biotech. When you go outside your silo, it can be incredibly helpful because like many of us.
We spend a lot of our time talking to the same people over and over again, we talk to people who are in our same specialty or [00:20:00] we, and we can end up with a little bit of an echo chamber, but if we can reach out to a few people with some diversity of opinions and ideas, what that can do is help us with learning.
It can help us with our goals around a whole variety of things. , We often have myths around networking, which can be that it's inauthentic or it's only about reaching up or it takes too much time, or it's only for the extroverted, but frankly. None of those things are true if we really think about what is it that I am trying to accomplish.
And one of the things that I often will say too, is that when you reach out to somebody to ask whether it's for their advice or for their help, don't think about it so much as who you know, but think about it more as who you would like to have know you. Because what you're also doing is you are granting them a gift of telling them that you respect them, [00:21:00] that you are telling them that you care about their opinion and their ideas, and they're also getting to know you a little bit better.
Because if you only think about yourself as somebody who has all the, you know, I have all these skills, abilities, ideas, and values, and I'm just gonna do everything by myself. Then what you're doing is you're saying, I have all this human capital. But I'm not actually able to use it as effectively as I could because I'm not actually reaching out to let other people know about who I am through my, what we call social capital.
And social capital allows people to think about you when they're saying. Oh wait, I have a new team I'm forming or a new interesting challenges that I'm trying to put together or I, a new, maybe a task force that I'm putting together. And when you are top of mind because of who knows you, you are somebody [00:22:00] that may come to mind for faster than.
If they don't know you. So that's one of the reasons that building these relationships can be so important is that it puts you at risk, we say, for opportunity at risk, for new ideas, at risk, for challenges, right? And we talk a lot this about this again, in the certificate program, we tried to really come at it from the perspective of know what you care about.
Spend your time. Well, you don't have to have an enormous network of people or do it in a way that's not genuine or authentic to you. But it can also make things like negotiating, for example, collaborating, reaching out across departments or across organizations much more comfortable. It can build your confidence, it can build your trust when you already have started to develop the foundation of these relationships, and that is really important.
. Now let me [00:23:00] ask you though, , it's an interesting question because one of the things we've been talking about are some of the things that when we, when you know what you want, you can start to develop some of these skills around making decisions, around negotiating, about building relationships.
But you've also started to mention this idea around. Being able to stand up for what you want and being able to make some of these decisions that have to do with. What I hear is saying no when sometimes the default is Yes. And , you've written a whole book about this called Defy, which has to do with some of the research that you've mentioned, and also I think one of the reasons why you really moved from being a practicing physician into doing a lot of research around this.
, Tell me more a little bit about why your passion is so much about that and why you decided that this was really something you wanted to make sure that was out there , and wrote an entire book about it.
, It is very deeply personal, but it involves both [00:24:00] my personal and then my professional career and research that I did.
So I grew up , in the uk and , I remember even asking my dad when I was young, what does my name Sunita mean? And he said, in Sanscript, Sunita means good. And I. Mainly lived up to that. But what do we mean by good for many women? The messages that we get is to be nice, to be polite, to do as you're told to obey.
And even my first career in medicine was really being good and complying with being told that medicine is the best thing that you can do. And I'm very glad that I did it because I became so fascinated by. That single powerful word defy and why some people could speak up when it matters so much more easily than I could.
And I really wanted to study that in more depth, especially in high stakes situations when we know that we need to be saying something, we don't, we are not actually living in alignment with our values. [00:25:00] And if we think about what the word defiance actually means, if you look at the Oxford English dictionary, , to Defy is.
Defined as to challenge the power of another person boldly and openly. And we think that about defiance. We think it's about being disruptive, being difficult. I'm not one to normally disagree with the Oxford English dictionary having grown up in the uk, but I do think that this definition is too narrow and it doesn't honor our agency.
And so after decades of research and observation, I came to this revelation that we've misunderstood what it means to defy. So my definition of defiance is that to defy is simply. Acting in accordance with your true values when there is pressure to do otherwise. So we reframe it from something negative, rare, and risky into something [00:26:00] positive, accessible, meaningful, and even pro-social.
And that's why I am so deeply passionate about it because for many of us, we've been socialized to comply. We've been wired to go along, and that voice empathy gap that I mentioned before between the nurses and the nurse managers, it works here too. When someone stays silent in a meeting or in a negotiation.
The people in power assume it's a lack of confidence, a lack of ability, a lack of responsibility, but we know that often the real reason is that the environment doesn't. Feel safe enough or it's not gonna be effective to defy. And that's really why I wrote the book, because I see defiance as a skill.
It's not a personality, but a practice. Not something you're born with, but something you can build. And, I also use a framework I call the Defiance Compass, which has three main questions in it. And this relates back a lot back [00:27:00] to what you were saying about finding your purpose.
Because the very first question is, who am I? Which is what are my core values? Because if you don't know that, you don't know what you stand for and what decision you're going to make. So really delving into that is important. And I have all my executive students, including in healthcare leadership, really think about what their values are and write them down.
Because even the research shows, if you know that, if you know who you are, you're more likely to act in alignment with them, and you have a lower stress response. Your cortisol levels are lower. The second question is, what type of situation is this? And this is where you're looking externally to figure out whether it's safe.
Not every situation is safe to defy. Will it be safe and will it have positive impact? They're the two questions I see people asking most of the time in these situations, especially in healthcare environments. And then the last question is. What does a person like me do in a situation like [00:28:00] this? And this is where we can tap into our responsibilities, our purpose, and our values.
Again, we are really thinking about. Who am I again? What does someone like me do in this situation? So what's our aspirational selves? Who we want to be? Rather than ending up in a situation where we think, oh, that wasn't me. We want to be saying that this is us. So when we can make decisions from a place of values that again and again, we become someone.
Who we can recognize that others can depend on, and that really represents our integrity. So those three questions, I think, can change so much because defiance isn't about a particular personality type. It's about practice and a skillset. That's where it connects quite directly to what you were saying and also, , what you are also looking at in terms of resilience.
Every time you speak up, every time you hold your ground, that defiance compass, what does someone like me do in a [00:29:00] situation like this? It leads back to who am I? So it's a kind of circular thing that it's going back to because who you are really is dependent on what you do again and again.
I really like that way of thinking about it because it takes it into a place where you are acting courageously but not recklessly because it's always grounded in who you are, your values.
And you're also asking the question, is it safe? , Because in some environments you are going to have to look to see, , what could potentially happen. I'm not , going out without having some strategy behind that. Or, I'm also understanding what is this environment like?
And I also love this idea too, that, , many of the things we've talked about today, whether it's critical thinking, negotiation, these are things that people are born with networking, but sometimes people will say, oh, that person's a great networker. These are skills you can learn, and yes, you might have to work at it.
And yes, you have to take some time to do things like, again. I think about cultivating [00:30:00] your values, spending some time to think about what they are, and , it's both through introspection, it's through experience, . They may change over time, even so as you grow and mature, as you experience new things.
But it's important, I think exactly right, too. Write them down to look at them every day to think about them when you are making decisions. , And then when you're negotiating, then it also says, what am I willing to accept? What am I saying no to in this case if I don't speak up? Which can be really important too.
And you're absolutely right. I think that brings me to thinking about which, , is something I've become really interested in, is this idea of resilience. . Which I think goes quite a long way with this companion to being able to. Really stand up for what you want, being really able to speak up, because sometimes that's extremely stressful and can be extremely difficult, but you have to also acknowledge that you are going [00:31:00] into an environment where you're saying, I may be experiencing.
Stress. Now, I may be experiencing like the physical, manifestation of what's going to happen here. So we know, , many people who are listening to us are in the healthcare field. We know what stress can feel like. , The feeling of , your heartbeat is racing or your stomach is upset or your palms are sweating.
And so one question is, what's the narrative , that you tell yourself during that? Do you tell yourself, this is debilitating, this is difficult? , Or do you tell yourself, I can learn something from this. This is a challenge I can face. This is something that is going to allow me to feel. Both not only focused in this moment, but also optimistic that even though this is difficult, it allows me to both acknowledge how I'm feeling, but also to be clear about I'm doing this because it is part of my value set.
I'm doing this because in fact, it's [00:32:00] hard. , When I talk to people about this, one of the things I often ask is, well. Living a life of meaning. Living a life of purpose wasn't meant to be easy. , We choose to do some of these difficult things, whether it has to do with taking on an important challenge at work or running a business, or frankly raising a family.
Those things are not easy. And so because they aren't easy, because they're difficult and , because they're connected to our values, they are going to involve. Both stress, but also they can evolve the idea of how do we act with resilience. And I think that one thing to think about is resilience isn't just going through it and then bouncing back and a couple days later saying, alright, I had a difficult shift and now I'm okay.
Instead, it's basically building a set of tools that prepare you for that difficult situation. Both with a mindset about being able to face the challenge [00:33:00] and learning from it. So going into that with what are the things that I need to be focused to be energized and to be prepared, but also building the social connections that you might need as well.
And then an after plan as well. So what do I need to do to take care of myself as well? This makes me think a bit, one of the things I know we both have talked about is this idea of having a third place is one thing. Mm-hmm. That can be very helpful. So some of us do things like meditate or listen to music or walk , as a way of taking care of ourselves.
But I know you've talked a lot about, , recovery through like a third place. Do you wanna share a little bit about that?
I think it's wonderful to have somewhere different from home and work that you can go to and really find, , a different outlet for yourself. It's one way to manage stress.
So if you're experiencing, people can experience stress at home, there's responsibilities there, and also stress [00:34:00] at work. So having somewhere where it's. The gym, whether it's going like on walks with friends or listening to music somewhere else to be where you can recharge. It's something that's really nourishing to yourself and you can give yourself permission to be true to who you really are.
And I think in those moments when we take that pause, we can actually connect more with our. Values and our purpose and start thinking about what is it that we need to do in those difficult moments, those stressful moments, and we get a lot more clarity that way.
Yeah, absolutely. I agree. I wanna ask, , go back to the negotiation piece and let me ask if there's something, there are one or two things that you might suggest that people do that would be, , key to preparing for a negotiation for a maybe for a difficult negotiation.
, What might you suggest, and is there anything. Specific that you might say that women in particular [00:35:00] could do that would be helpful? Or is there just a universal for preparation?
Yeah, I think one of the things that we want to think about when we're preparing for negotiations is that if you feel quite anxious going into a negotiation, you can make yourself feel better by knowing that the amount of preparation you do beforehand that is actually.
Leads more directly to the performance. So the amount of variance in the performance is very highly correlated with the preparation that you do beforehand. So if you are the type of person to get anxious or nervous about that, that's really comforting to know that a lot of the outcome is determined by what you do beforehand.
So how can we prepare for that negotiation in numerous ways? But one of the most powerful ways is really to think about what we call. BATNA our best alternative to the negotiated agreement because this is the thing that really gives you power in a negotiation. , If you [00:36:00] have an alternative and everybody can find one.
And what we want to do is try to improve that alternative. So say for example, you are in a particular workplace and, , you don't believe that you are getting paid the salary that you should be paid. Then start thinking about what your options are. Is it just the job you're in, or could you find something else that could give you a more powerful BATNA?
And once we have, and then we expand, like what our alternatives are, this gives us the power to walk away from a deal that's not very good. So I would always say try to find your BATNA and try to improve your BATNA, , as one of the first steps in a negotiation. And then the second thing that's really shown to be great is to be aspirational.
Because often we just accept things that come our way, and we don't even go to the negotiation table. And again, the research shows that if we set aspirational targets, we are more [00:37:00] likely to end up there.
Yeah, absolutely. That's terrific. I'll start and let's see what you have to say here was how to approach somebody if you're interested in,, having a mentor.
So what would be the first way to approach them? And what I think here is that really don't, necessarily go to somebody and say, Hey, would you be my mentor? Because that's not really, that's right away a big commitment on both parties. But really it starts off with. Knowing what you want to ask them about.
So what is it that you're interested in? And it can really be anything from trying to understand a little bit more about, could you tell me a little bit about how your career progression, moved from where you are to where you are now? Would you be willing to have a half an hour, coffee chat with me?
It doesn't have to be a commitment for the next, let's do six months, , every other week. No, no. It starts with a short. Would you be willing and be clear about what your goals are? What the initial time commitment is. And the other big important thing to me is that you drive the [00:38:00] conversation, be clear about what the ask is, and then at the end of the conversation, if it went well, then you can ask, would you be willing to meet again perhaps in a month's time with, and then also with some follow up.
So this is what I learned, this is what I'm going to do next or, and if you asked for advice. So , maybe it was more of an advice conversation. Like, I'm interested in trying to understand more about how to deal with, let's say, a difficult colleague or develop a relationship with my boss. Might be more effective follow up if you took some of the advice and then it builds from there.
So that's basically the advice I often give people is that you start slow. Most people will say yes if someone says no. Don't take it personally. They're either busy, maybe they're mentoring too many other people, but don't stop there. Then look for someone else to have that kind of conversation with.
It's completely fine.
Yeah, I think that's a great blueprint and what I would add is. [00:39:00] Don't try and find like a single mentor or a guru, that there's no single guru that's gonna help you in every situation and to be able to mentor you so you can get different things from different people.
So if you do want like , what we call an informational interview, . You can even call someone and say, I really like how you achieve this, or like, you are my role model in this area. I would love to know how you got there. So that's one aspect. It might just be a one-off coffee and that's fine.
That's absolutely fine. You can ask to meet again if there's more that you need to know. But I think just developing those relationships and not having the expectation that. There's gonna be one single person in your career that's going to be able to guide and mentor you through all the different steps that you'll be taking.
So again, this is a little bit like having that sort of board of advisors that you have. So different people, different perspectives, and even people outside your company. I think that's a great thing to do, just anyone you admire and you like how they achieved [00:40:00] something or you want to know how they handle certain challenges, you can ask them how did you handle it, and then that can give you some information about your own challenges and what you can take away from that.
A lot of what we've been talking about today , is having permission, to lead in a way that's true to you or to negotiate for what you need or to say no when something doesn't.
Sit right. Even when it's uncomfortable. And, , if there's one thing I, I do want people to take away, it's that you don't have to wait for some big dramatic moment to start. You can basically start small and. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable in small ways so that you can be ready when the big moment arrives.
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