Coaching Women – Contribution And Compensation

Some of the most challenging coaching and mentoring relationships that I’ve had at work have been with young women.

Here’s an example: One of the hardest conversations for a person to have with their supervisor is asking for a raise. The position that one must take is essentially, “I feel I have earned a higher rate of pay.” Finding the right words to say that without feeling overly insecure, and delivering the ask in an impactful way are important. However, the decision of a company to pay a team member more depends on more than the asker’s delivery; there are many considerations including whether a promotion or adjustment in rank is also merited, whether the role is expanded into more areas of responsibility, whether the company has the funds to commit and wants to commit them to retain the person, and what the market rate for the role tends to be. It’s a lot.

I’ve been asked for raises many times. I haven’t kept tally on the number of yeses vs. nos, but parts of many such conversations have left an impression. And one main impression that the women tend to leave is that if the raise is not immediately granted, they wonder if it has to do with being a woman.

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Let me be clear: I was once that young woman. Long before I managed others, I was once a young woman who for a period of about two weeks felt overworked, underpaid, and indispensable. I was often complimented for my “incredible horsepower,” which I took to mean that I could always find ways to do more. When there was extra work that needed a home, I was glad to pick it up. Then it got so that a manager in an adjacent department left, and I was given his whole job – without any increase in pay, rank, or even recognition.

I took it personally, and wrote to my boss and another supervisory person, and copied our head of HR. I had a litany of grievances all more or less amounting to feeling underappreciated. There was another more damning angle to my anger: Was it because I was a woman?

I felt that I had a lot of evidence to suggest that the company was broadly inhospitable to women. For starters, not a single senior executive was female. The women senior managers (the few that were) were in support roles rather than in P&L roles. Many were never married and/or childless. I didn’t see a lot of role models, and I concluded that that was because the company didn’t prioritize or support women.

Little did I know that this was the reality of most companies in America, and that women had historically chosen to opt out or offramp as they had children, and, and, and. In thinking back, my dissatisfaction had much to do with not seeing the world that I wanted to be in. I wanted to see the people that I wanted to become in the roles that I wanted to grow into. I wanted my career to be abundantly modeled by prior generations of women.

That was a wishful thought on my part. But the wish took a bitter turn when I felt taken for granted. I started to see myself as wronged in a system that didn’t care about women. There was plenty of media support to boost the cacophony of noises in my head: women only earned 78 cents on the dollar, women couldn’t on ramp after off ramping, women were ignored in meetings, women who married became less worth investing in at work, and on and on.

The noise stopped when the second person on my email asked to speak. I got a stern lecture first of all about airing my grievances in such a manner rather than more constructively. I took it in, and then got the gift of some good advice: Work opportunities come to people who contribute consistently and get along well with others. And they should be asked for, politely, and persistently. The work has to precede the other ask, though. Ideally, the body of work should speak for itself.

In hindsight, the missing ingredient in my ask was patience. I had impressed a lot of people, and was well liked throughout the organization. Eventually, I was offered a significant promotion and the opportunity to earn 50% more. By then, I had decided to move on, and ultimately left with the well wishes of my boss and team.

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What I’d want to say to a younger me is this:

Don’t listen to the noise about women in the workplace and the litany of disadvantages we may have. It doesn’t help you live the life you have, and it doesn’t help you be a great worker or teammate. The noise is insidious, fomenting feelings of insecurity and unrest. Be positive, believe in yourself, and remind your boss that you want to be well compensated – after all, why just stop at “fair”?

Finally, create alternative opportunities for yourself. The market for your talent is immense; test it from time to time. It’ll help you realize that you are choosing to work where you are for what you earn, and enable you to own your own reality rather than feeling trapped in it.

Great decisions come from a wealth of good options. So go make those options, woman!