This was posted this week. The post is here. It is a response to this post:
My comments are in brackets.
So how does a woman get a large raise at work?
The short answer is, watch Jordan Peterson
I interviewed my wife to write this article. She's a numbers person and it takes her, in her opinion, too long to write anything meaningful that's worth time she has to put into it.
In terms of her personality. She's a hard worker. She's a fast learner when it comes to figuring out the bureaucratic rules of number handling. She enjoys doing our taxes. She gets joy out of finding obscure rules that shift pennies from one side of the column to another. When she spots a discrepancy, and if it is there she will, she obsesses until the numbers add up. She has perfectionism streak that results in needing to occasionally talk her down from her tree. She hates computers, cell phones and phones in general.
[This sets her apart. Few people enjoy assessing numbers. This means that she has minimal competition. Also, her manager does not understand what she is doing. He is afraid of her. What if she leaves? His department will be in trouble. He will have trouble replacing her in a week or maybe a month. He will be under pressure. His superiors will be watching him. Managers are insecure. They want minimal monitoring.]
After a few minor attempts at other jobs and a failed run at college, she joined the Air Force. The first part of her career was as crew chief of a cargo aircraft. The last portion of her career was in management. She then took 15 years out of the workforce to help raise our children. During that time she helped keep my books at my various home businesses and took enough accounting courses to get a certificate but not a degree in accounting.
[A degree helps, but competence trumps a degree. Your initial strategy is to get into a position in which you can demonstrate your competence.]
Three years ago she re-entered the workforce. Initially she worked through a Temp agency in order to find a suitable workplace. A financial institution realized what they had after a few weeks and courted her for a job.
I wrote her resume. One thing the military teaches is how to write documents that sing your own praises. Over the years one loses all sense of shame in taking the ordinary and writing it in near heroic ways. I used our home businesses to change 15 years out of the workforce into 15 years of uninterrupted experience. A good reason to keep some form of small business venture going at all times.
In two years she went from the new girl, to the person that people with ten years on the job went to for assistance. At her first review she was unprepared. They offered her the standard annual raise. She complained that she worked harder than most people around her and that many of them depended on her to get their jobs done. With a lot of hand wringing, management “generously” decided to double her annual raise. They were adamant that was unheard of and that she shouldn't expect such a raise ever again. The annual raise typically is less than inflation.
[She initially refused to capitulate. Most people capitulate the first time. Every time you capitulate, you send a signal: "I am submissive." My friend, multimillionaire real estate investor Jack Miller, put it this way: "When negotiating, keep asking for more until the person says 'no.'" Employers know this. Employees don't.]
Her next annual review was approaching and she was trying come up with a strategy. Jordan Peterson didn't help her with strategy as much as he did with mindset.
[Mindset is crucial. I think this is why Peterson is successful. He helps weak-willed people develop a stand-up-straight mindset.]
Initially, she had come up with a presentation showing everything she did. I suggested a tweak. Her presentation should start out like this. “Tomorrow I die in a car crash.”
[This is a brilliant opening line. Steal it. Here is why it will work. First, the manager has never seen this before. It catches him off guard. Second, it sends a crucial signal: "This person knows why I am vulnerable: the risk of high replacement cost."]
At that point she explains to the manager what will fail to happen without her, what things only she knows, how long her section will be behind while training, how long it will take to train replacements and at what point the section will be both caught up and at normal output.
[This follows the direct-response copywriter's rule: "Lead with the benefit. Follow with the proof." The benefit: "You get to keep me on the payroll. I am valuable." The proof: "Here's why I am valuable."]
She talked to former co-workers that had moved to other locations. She kept in touch. She asked them all what she would make at their location. She didn't want to be so confrontational as to demand a raise or she would go elsewhere. She didn't need to.
[You must find out what you are worth outside the corporation, which has few internal price signals. Price signals come from outside. This knowledge of your comparable worth will give you confidence. The manager knows you know. This puts him at a disadvantage.]
So what of Peterson? Initially she was stuck on asking for a little more than her last raise. Likely they would have met it, or given her the same as last time. Peterson motivated her to ask for what she deserved.
She first saw the Newman interview. One of the things she walked away with was Jordan's take on agreeableness and women's proclivity towards that trait. She searched on “Jordan Peterson women agreeableness.” Then she watched over 8 hours of video.
Her key takeaways:
1. JP said that if he were a business owner, he'd key on hiring middle-aged women with a high sense of responsibility. Due to their natural agreeableness, he as an owner could count on high work output, excellent quality, the worker not taking ownership of accomplishments and taking whatever pay is offered without direct complaint. This got her angry and motivated.2. JP also spoke of the difference between how an agreeable person and disagreeable person differ in expectations of the outcome of negotiations. Disagreeable people fully expect to walk out of a negotiation with more than they came in with. Agreeable people are hopeful of a break-even situation, but are willing to give in from the break-even point if the other party presents reasonable arguments for why that can't be done. The agreeable person wants to avoid confrontation and tends to accept counter arguments in negotiations that they know are unreasonable or false.
3. JP noted that agreeable people are agreeable because they have received verbal rewards for that behavior all their life. They fear looking disagreeable. They think the other party won't view them favorably unless they are agreeable. However, if the other party is agreeable as well, they will take your arguments mostly at face value. If the other party is disagreeable, they will admire you for playing the game. In terms of likability it is hard for the agreeable person, taking on the trappings of disagreement to suffer a loss, as long as they are reasonable and polite.
The main result was that she asked for far more than she would have without JP's videos.
The meeting was with her immediate supervisor and the section manager.
First she presented her car crash scenario. The manager kept looking to the supervisor to see if my wife was overselling. The supervisor just shrugged his shoulders repeatedly.
She then gave the manager a report with several detailed suggestions on how to boost the productivity and quality of the section.
She then handed the manager a piece of paper with her suggested new salary on it. The manager said “I can't authorize this. We have a specific budget for worker pay and it can't be exceeded.”
[He is now toast. He has sent the worst possible message: "I lack authority. I am an order-taker. My superiors do not trust my judgment." He invokes the authority of a piece of paper that in all likelihood does not exist. He is on the defensive.]
My wife acknowledged what the manager had said and then explained that the proposal would likely have to be presented to the next level up the chain of command. The manager said, “Oh, well he doesn't have that kind of authority either.” My wife suggested going up yet another level. The manager said, “The CEO can't even approve this!” My wife said, “If the proposal needs to go to the CEO, I'm comfortable that what I wrote can stand on its own merit.”
[Now he says that not only is he not trusted by senior management, neither is his manager. This sends a message: "We are all rabbits." Even worse, he is arguing nonsense: even the CEO lacks this authority. She properly called his bluff.]
The manager asked my wife how she has generated the level of compensation she had requested. She mentioned the names of the people she had spoken to. This had the nice effect of not being so confrontational as to threaten leaving, but let them know she was fishing in other ponds.
Finally the manager tried to show how her benefits made her pay much higher than what it looked on paper. My wife said how much she appreciated the benefits but that she had considered them when comparing her salary to other financial institutions.
After a week of waiting, she received 4.5 times the standard annual raise.
[Go, thou, and do likewise.]
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