Women don’t ask.

That was the premise — and the title — of a book published in 2003 by Linda Babcock, James M. Walton Professor of Economics at Carnegie Mellon University’s H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, and successful writer and editor Sara Laschever.

Women Don’t Ask explored the uncomfortable truths about gender and negotiation and exposed the obstacles that keep women from negotiating effectively for themselves. While men seem to have no trouble negotiating and asking for what they need, women hesitate or fail to ask at all.

Social conditioning and cultural expectations are among the causes of these gendered differences. Tragically these differences produce well-documented economic costs for women, haunting them over the course of a lifetime. For example, according to the Women Don’t Ask web site, “By not negotiating a first salary, an individual stands to lose more than $500,000 by age 60 — and men are more than four times as likely as women to negotiate a first salary.”

This book touched a raw nerve for the many women who read it; indeed, so overwhelming was the response to Women Don’t Ask that Babcock and Laschever went to work on a sequel.

The result is Ask for It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want, a book filled with practical advice; real-world negotiation stories from the authors, the women who have contacted them as a result of their work, and Babcock’s students; and a detailed four-phase program with exercises for preparing for and succeeding in life’s negotiations.

Phase One teaches women to recognize that “Everything Is Negotiable”. As anyone knows, the toughest negotiation can be with yourself, and the authors help readers begin by asking questions of themselves to identify and clarify their professional and personal goals. Phase Two teaches readers how to “Lay the Groundwork”, reviewing the skills and concepts of basic negotiation strategy. Among the most important lessons? Information is power — and the authors explain how and where to get it to strengthen your bargaining position.

Phase Three, “Get Ready”, pushes women to aim high when it comes to negotiating. It covers cooperative bargaining; ascertaining your worth; using logrolling or trade-offs to get past jams and build value; and how to make the first offer. Best of all, it even comes equipped with a “Negotiation Gym” — a six-week program of increasingly difficult negotiation exercises that will help women build negotiation muscles and develop stamina and strength in preparation for tougher negotiation challenges. No one will ever kick sand in your face again.

Phase Four shows how women can “Put It All Together” — to practice in advance by role playing with a friend, to avoid making concessions prematurely, to create the right impression to influence your counterpart at the table, and, finally, to close the deal.

An appendix helpfully provides a detailed worksheet to help women prepare for negotiations, along with a link to the web site where readers can download a PDF version.

Ask for It recounts numerous stories of women facing negotiations at work and in their lives, across a range of industries and professions, which bring the lessons to memorable life. However, as convincing as these anecdotes may be, I would have welcomed more examples of negotiations in blue-collar settings, my one quibble with an otherwise excellent book.

What makes this book a must-read for men, too, and not just for women are its unpleasant revelations about the realities of hidden bias against women at the negotiation table. The authors exhort readers to take responsibility themselves for combating gender bias, not just that of others but particularly their own. They remind readers that all of us regardless of gender possess assumptions and unexamined beliefs about women in negotiation. They point to studies that indicate that while aggression earns men points at the negotiation table, it punishes women with backlash and disapproval. And, while the authors fiercely advocate for women at the negotiation table, the chapter on “Likability” with its insistence that women avoid aggressive tactics and “be nice” while bargaining, will no doubt leave some readers bristling. However, until the world changes how it views women in negotiation, it’s hard to argue with the studies the authors cite.

There is much to admire about this gutsy book with its commitment to helping women really succeed at negotiating. Even the title itself serves as a defiant call to action. Babcock and Laschever explain in the forward that the title represents a deliberate effort to reclaim a phrase weighted with negative meaning for women and instead assert it as an emblem of power:

For centuries the phrase “asking for it” has been used as an accusing finger to point at women. A woman who’d been sexually assault was “asking for it”. A woman who’d been the victim of spousal abuse must have provoked her partner — she “asked for it”.

Our goal is to help women ask for and get the things they — we — really want, to claim the phrase “asking for it” as our own and transform it into a dynamic tool for increasing our happiness and pursuing our dreams.

This is not simply a book about changing the way women negotiate. Instead, Babcock and Laschever have ambitiously set out to change women’s lives.

Any of us can join the revolution — all we have to do is ask.

Five years ago Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever published Women Don’t Ask, a book that ripped the lid off of one of negotiation’s most intractable problems: the challenges that women face in negotiating successfully. They examined the barriers — institutional, cultural, and social — that hold women back and provided strategies to help women conquer the gender divide at the negotiation table to ask for and get what they want.

Women Don’t Ask touched a responsive chord in women nationally and internationally, many of whom had encountered these barriers up close. Many women contacted the authors to thank them for writing a book that opened up their eyes to negotiation’s possibilities and to ask for help with their own negotiations. This enthusiastic response motivated Babcock and Laschever to write a second book, the recently published Ask for It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want.

I plan to post a review of this book later this week, but one thing I can tell you right now is that it may be one of the best books on negotiation I’ve ever read. What Tammy Lenski recently did for mediation marketing, Ask for It does for real women facing real-world negotiations — women who want practical, common sense advice and tools for being effective negotiators. The advice is so good though and the revelations about gender issues at the negotiation table so disturbing that men should read it, too — not just to learn better ways to negotiate but to find out how any of us can battle gender bias in negotiation.

The Ask for It web site provides support for negotiating women, everything from downloadable worksheets and information to links to online resources, including Babcock’s work helping girls learn to negotiate.

There’s even (be still my heart) a blog. Although the blog is new with just three posts so far, if “Scary Monster(.com)” and “Cut Throat Bitch“, with their gutsy commentary on negotiation and gender, are any indication of what’s to come, this is one negotiation blog you’ll want to follow.

This weekend I finished reading Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic — and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. A recounting of nineteenth-century London’s battle with cholera, it proved to be one of those books so riveting I could not bear to put it down.

It is at bottom an etiology of error — uncovering how mistaken beliefs about the causes of disease take hold, thrive, and persist, with disastrous consequences for public health. It considers important questions:

The history of knowledge conventionally focuses on the breakthrough ideas and conceptual leaps. But the blind spots on the map, the dark continents of error and prejudice, carry their own mystery as well. How could so many intelligent people be so grievously wrong for such an extended period of time? How could they ignore so much overwhelming evidence that contradicted their most basic theories? These questions, too, deserve their own discipline — the sociology of error.

This book delivers as well a message of optimism about intellectual courage and unblinkered vision — how two men struggled to cast off bad ideas and pursue better ones — ideas that ultimately led to the defeat of a deadly disease.

For anyone fascinated by human judgment and cognition, this book offers a reminder, rooted in history, of the importance of the second glance, of the ability to see anew.

It’s official — successful professional mediator and ADR marketing coach Tammy Lenski has announced that her book, Making Mediation Your Day Job, is at last on online store bookshelves.

I’ve had a chance to read the book for myself. Here’s what I think:

Shakespeare once wrote, “This above all: to thine own self be true.” These words, written 400 years ago, resonate today. They do so especially for the many professional mediators who cringe at the very thought of marketing — with its associations with shameless self-promotion, glad-handing, and cold-calling. For many mediators, marketing just feels wrong.

Now, at long last, there’s a guidebook that achieves something no other mediation marketing resource has done. It helps mediators do the impossible: become more effective marketers and remain true to themselves and their work. Dr. Tammy Lenski, a mediator and mediation marketing coach who has run her own successful practice since 1997, has created Making Mediation Your Day Job, the definitive resource for mediators who want a realistic, practical blueprint for marketing their practice.

The clue to Dr. Lenski’s formula for success is in the second half of the title of the book: How to Market Your ADR Business Using Mediation Principles You Already Know. She asks readers, “Would you enjoy marketing more if your primary aim isn’t selling and self-promotion? I’m betting most of you would say yes.” Like the skilled practitioner she is, she reframes, inviting readers to see marketing anew, “as dialogue or as a learning conversation”, something mediators already know how to do, and do well.

Using humor, anecdotes, and real-life examples drawn from her clients, her students, and her own experience, Dr. Lenski encourages her readers to step outside their comfort zone and draw upon the professional skills they already have to build opportunities. She also offers sensible productivity tips, business planning advice, and useful exercises that help mediators master marketing.

What also distinguishes this work from the numerous resources available now on mediation marketing is its emphasis on professional integrity — on honoring the profession through a commitment to mediation excellence. Dr. Lenski reminds readers that it’s not just good marketing that matters; mediators also have a duty to uphold standards of excellence and develop their professional skills. She wisely observes, “In the end, it’s the quality of the work you deliver that’s going to help keep the clients coming.”

More than a book, Making Mediation Your Day Job functions like an honest conversation with a wise and caring friend. Dr. Lenski writes as someone who has been there and understands where and why any of us get stuck when it comes to marketing. She’s there to nudge us forward, with encouragement and straight talk. Making Mediation Your Day Job offers authentic, real-world advice for mediators who want to use marketing to take their practice to the next level — and all the while stay true to themselves and their work.

Congratulations, Tammy!

According to Newton’s Third Law of Motion, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

This must surely apply to the dispute resolution field. Consider this:

Exhibit 1: Action.

Family lawyers in Massachusetts, including esteemed family mediation pioneer John Fiske, are currently working to replace references in state law to “custody” and “visitation” — words laden with negative associations for parents facing divorce — with the terms “parental rights and responsibilities” and “parenting plans” — language which is far less inflammatory and likely to provoke conflict. If Massachusetts takes this step, it will join other states like its neighbor New Hampshire which have already incorporated such changes into law.  I have seen first-hand how destructive the traditional language can be and how much anxiety it arouses; those who work with families and couples in conflict as I have will no doubt welcome this change.

Exhibit 2: Equal and Opposite Reaction.

Every year I take the last week in December off and enjoy some of that time catching up on my reading. One of the books I added to my library is the tremendously entertaining pocket reference, William Drennan’s Advocacy Words: A Thesaurus. From the preface:

Effective word use is vital for anyone active in the law. For the attorney arguing a case or preparing a brief, for the jurist writing an opinion, even for the law student, words are the ammunition needed to make the point.

Quite an image, huh? Now this from the book’s description in the American Bar Association’s bookstore, which keeps the combat metaphors coming:

If you are a litigator, Advocacy Words can help you decimate opposing counsel’s position. If you are writing a brief, it can help you compose a convincing argument. If you are a jurist, it can help your opinions ring with the strength of your legal judgment. And if you are a law student, Advocacy Words can help you to hone your combative legal skills. Use the verbal dynamite in Advocacy Words to promote your position effectively. Let it be your companion in painting the verbal picture you want. Keep it handy to help you move others to your point of view.

In a way, it’s like reverse reframing.

The book is organized into two parts. Part one provides favorable words in one column with critical synonyms suggested in another; part two reverses it, with critical words in one column, with their favorable synonyms in the second.

For example, in part one, the critical “conspiracy, deal” are suggested substitutes for the favorable “agreement”; “confused, indecisive” for “considering alternative opinions”; and “manipulable, docile, meek, pliant, compliant, collaborative, toadying” for “cooperative”. Meanwhile, in part two, the favorable “frank exchange of ideas, frank discussion” is offered for the critical “argument”, and “flexible negotiator” for “soft-liner”.

See? Fun!

Imagine for a moment that your house is infested with termites. You are desperate to find someone who can rid your home of these destructive pests once and for all.

Now imagine as you call the pest control services listed in your local phone directory that strong social taboos forbid you from actually using the word “termite” to describe your problem. You have no choice but to resort to awkward euphemisms and embarrassed silences as you attempt to explain to the professionals that your home is infested with, er, you-know-what.

That’s pretty much the problem that Bob Sutton confronts in his newly published book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t.

As a dispute resolution professional with a specialty in workplace consulting, I have read more books and articles than I can possibly count on dealing with difficult people. While many of them are excellent, none of them has fully delivered the goods when it comes to the most toxic workplace problem there is.

That’s probably due to the fact that until now nobody has had the guts to name the problem for what it is. Thanks to Sutton, that’s all changed.

As Sutton explains in his introduction, no other word quite does the job:

When I encounter a mean-spirited person, the first thing I think is: “Wow, what an asshole!”

I bet you do, too. You might call such people bullies, creeps, jerks, weasels, tormentors, tyrants, serial slammers, despots, or unconstrained egomaniacs, but for me at least, asshole best captures the fear and loathing that I have for these nasty people.

And judging from the overwhelmingly response Sutton’s book has received, including the many people who have stepped forward to share stories of their own encounters with assholes (as well as from the excited reactions from the colleagues and friends to whom I introduced the book), Sutton’s dead right. “Asshole” taps into associations, memories, and emotions that lesser synonyms simply can’t.

(Which is why I have decided to use the word in both the title and body of this post. If I offend any of my readers, I apologize. It’s not a failure of either imagination or vocabulary; authenticity demands it. Besides, if I followed the example of other writers and replaced letters in the offending word with asterisks–A******–you and I would both know what I meant, and neither one of us would be fooled. The word is still there, hidden behind its typographical fig leaf.)

Despite being a slim volume (only 210 pages in length), this book is crammed with useful information and ideas, along with numerous real-life anecdotes which bring the text to memorable life. Sutton describes the behavior that sets assholes apart from the rest of us, including one factor that is always present: assholes tend to target those with less power or status, and provides a test to determine whether you might be one, too.

Sutton also provides a list of factors by which readers can gauge the TCA–”Total Cost of Assholes”–in their own companies to reveal the high cost in financial and human capital that assholes pose. And he offers wise counsel for implementing and enforcing a “no asshole” rule, including smart hiring strategies, and has tips on keeping your own inner asshole in check.

Mediators in particular will appreciate Sutton’s advice that organizations should “teach people how to fight”. He is clear that organizations should not “replace assholes” with “conflict-averse wimps” and emphasizes that friction can be good for organizations–it’s not the fact that you fight, it’s how you fight that matters. So long as disagreement and argumentation is constructive not demeaning, organizations, people, and ideas can all thrive.

Sutton recounts the experiences of organizations in teaching their members how to fight fairly. And he makes no bones about how difficult an undertaking this can be, demanding constant vigilance and a commitment to rigorous self-reflection. He acknowledges how “messy and difficult it can be to fight with other people over ideas without acting like an asshole”.

In fact, it is Sutton’s self-honesty that stands among this book’s greatest strengths. Throughout, Sutton is candid with readers as he recounts his struggles to confront and neutralize his own tendency to be an asshole–a struggle that any of us who are willing to admit that we can be assholes, too, can relate to.

This book is not without its flaws, although they are minor. The book is weakest when it offers advice to those who are targets of assholes. Victims of bullying behavior probably won’t be helped by mantras like “look for small wins” and “hope for the best; expect the worst”. And although Sutton does remind readers that quitting is always an option, it may not be possible for people in tough financial circumstances in a tight job market. Documenting the behavior, seeking help from human resources or higher level management, building a coalition with others who are affected to seek change as a group, and getting legal advice from an employment lawyer may be more realistic and productive courses of action for victims to pursue.

It’s also disappointing to see an entire chapter devoted to “The Virtues of Assholes”–these schmucks don’t need any encouragement. (And I can’t help but wonder whether the successful assholes he describes might have achieved even greater success had they used their powers–ambition, determination, vision–for good not evil.)

These minor quibbles aside, this book is an outstanding contribution to the large body of work on building effective workplaces. Its courage and honesty in confronting a problem that no one seems to want to name set it apart. Anyone who cares about building a civilized workplace–human resources professionals, workplace consultants, mediators, and others–will find value in its pages.

Even if they have to hide the cover in a plain brown wrapper.

Since this blog goes a long way in defining my online persona, I generally take care in what I say and how I say it. As a mediator who pays close attention to language and communication, I know how much words matter.

However, the following post requires me to use a word that your mother would wash your mouth out with soap for saying. If foul language offends you, then I will not be offended if you would prefer to skip over this post.

********************************************

Every workplace has one–often several. They are a radioactive source of conflict, negativity, and stress. Chances are you’ve worked alongside one. In fact, on occasion in our lives, if we’re truly honest with ourselves, we’ve been one.

I’m talking about the subject of the latest book by Bob Sutton, Professor of Management Science and Engineering in the Stanford Engineering School, and Co-Director of the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization. Coming out in February 2007 is The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, a book that offers advice on understanding, neutralizing, and inoculating your workplace against this workplace scourge.

If you’re wondering why Sutton put the “A” word in the title of his new book, it wasn’t due to lack of imagination or vocabulary. In Sutton’s view, as he explains on his blog, “asshole” carries a visceral clout no other word can:

… no other word works as well for describing these demeaning and mean-spirited people. …when I tangle with [a] nasty person, I don’t think “what a jerk” or “what an abusive person.” The first thing that comes to mind is “what an asshole.” That is also the word that nearly everyone I know uses to describe these creeps, even though they may later censor it…

That certainly resonated with me, and probably with any mediator who has ever dealt with workplace conflict. It undoubtedly resonates with anyone who has ever held a job.

Especially in a workplace filled, with, well, you know who.

I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on the deterioration of public discourse and the suppression of dissent that has become so commonplace here in the U.S. It’s hard not to, given how prevalent its symptoms are.

I was therefore intrigued (and amused) to discover via the Law & Society Blog a list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries (make sure your pop-up blockers are fully activated unless you want to be inundated with Ann Coulter ads), chosen by a specially selected panel of conservative scholars and public policy leaders at Human Events, a right-wing publication.

In descending order of their degree of harmfulness, these books are:

1. The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
2. Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler
3. Quotations from Chairman Mao, Mao Zedong
4. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (The Kinsey Report), Alfred Kinsey
5. Democracy and Education, John Dewey
6. Das Kapital, Karl Marx
7. The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
8. The Course of Positive Philosophy, Auguste Comte
9. Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietschze
10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes

Books that didn’t make the short list but earned honorable mentions were:

The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich
What Is To Be Done, V.I. Lenin
Authoritarian Personality, Theodor Adorno
On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
Beyond Freedom and Dignity, B.F. Skinner
Reflections on Violence, Georges Sorel
The Promise of American Life, Herbert Croly
The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
Madness and Civilization, Michel Foucault
Soviet Communism: A New Civilization, Sidney and Beatrice Webb
Coming of Age in Samoa, Margaret Mead
Unsafe at Any Speed, Ralph Nader
Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci
Silent Spring, Rachel Carson
Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon
Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud
The Greening of America, Charles Reich
The Limits to Growth, Club of Rome
Descent of Man, Charles Darwin

Apart from the couple of titles authored by homicidal dictators, the selection of these books is baffling (Unsafe at Any Speed? Silent Spring? You’re kidding, right?).

What exactly makes these books so harmful? By whose standard? And so now what? Are we now to banish these books from college syllabi? Slap parental advisory stickers on them? Burn them?

(Given the scorn which some conservatives delight to heap upon conflict resolution, it is surprising that Getting to Yes failed to receive even an honorable mention.)

One can only hope that the fact that these books have been labeled as “Most Harmful” will produce a delightfully ironic and unintended effect: make these books an alluring forbidden fruit to entice a whole new generation of young minds to read works like On Liberty, The Origin of Species, and The Feminine Mystique.

And, of course, to weigh for themselves the intrinsic worth of the ideas contained within.

(Book collectors take note. Setting aside the notion of a free marketplace of ideas, these books have worth in a different kind of marketplace: first editions of these works are not only rare but highly valuable.)