Financial Women's Association

In my first opportunity to partner with the Financial Women's Association (FWA), PricewaterhouseCoopers in San Francisco are hosting a members-only networking breakfast on June 26, and I will be speaking about Winning at the Game of Office Politics (I know office politics is not everyone's favorite topic, but it actually is one of mine!).

Registration and details are at the FWA web site.

Negotiation as a Way of Life

As part of our presentation, Negotiation as a Way of Life, for a group of Oracle's high-potential women at the Oracle Women's Leadership Conference (OWL) today, Leslie and I shared some of the most recent (scary) data on women and negotiation from Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide, By Babcock and Laschever:

In surveys, women were 2.5 times more likely than men to say they feel "a great deal of apprehension" about negotiating.

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Men initiate negotiations about four times as often as women do.

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20 percent of adult women say they never negotiate at all, even though they often recognize negotiation as appropriate and necessary.

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When asked to pick metaphors for the process of negotiating, men picked “winning a ballgame” and a “wrestling match”. Women said “going to the dentist”.

I asked the group of 100 women "How many of you would rather go to the dentist than negotiate? I was joking when I asked, but a few hands were raised!

The solution we advised is to stop thinking of negotiation as a skill to be used only in rare, high-stakes business circumstances. Instead, think of negotiation as a way of life, meaning that the best way to master this skill is to negotiate everything, every day, in every conversation you encounter.

Examples are: negotiate who cooks dinner, negotiate who will drive the carpool, negotiate which movie to watch, negotiate who will help you on a project... etc. Until negotiation becomes a natural way of life.

Professional Business Women of California Conference

The Professional Business Women Of California Conference (PBWC) in San Francisco is always incredible, and yesterday's event did not disappoint. I have lost count of the number of PBWC conferences I've attended, and with that the number of incredible women I have met and stayed in touch with as a result. Our women's leadership seminar programs for Oracle and Genesys came via women we met at PBWC in 2006. Some highlights:

Our VP Business Development (and Women's Leadership Coach) Leslie Scida flew in from Denver (she is such a frequent guest at our home, we renamed the guest bedroom Leslie's Room). Kim Zilliox joined us for her first official event as a WLC coach. The entire team came together for the first time!

To celebrate what has been a breakthrough year for WLC, we hosted a client appreciation event at our exhibit booth (with champagne and handmade chocolates from Saratoga Chocolates -- for those of you who are considering becoming clients!) and schmoozed with clients from Oracle, Cisco, Chevron, and Delta Dental. WLC = Women Love Chocolate!