Knowing Your Value (16 page)

Born’s agency wanted to regulate these financial instruments, and that made some very powerful men angry. Born recalls, “They said I was pressing it. Well, I believed it. I thought that the country was in danger. I thought that the American public was going to suffer if we didn’t do something.”

She was publicly pilloried as being “difficult,” “stubborn,” and “strident.”

Born says that she had to ignore those labels. “If you stick to your guns, we all know that a woman behaving the way a man would is described by a different adjective,” she tells me. “But when it’s important, it’s important to do more to be heard.” Now, a decade later, she can laugh about her own bad press, but she asks, “I mean, how many men are called
strident
?”

Still, Born was basically forced out of her job by then Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.

Sheila Bair insists, “Don’t be embarrassed about sticking up for yourself and proposing good ideas. Try and carry the day at meetings, and if someone else tries to poach [your ideas],
stand up for yourself and say, ‘Well, that’s exactly what I just said.’ You can do that politely—you don’t have to be confrontational.”

Carol Bartz, however, is happy to be confrontational. When this happens to her, she tells me, “I say, ‘I think I just said that about ten minutes ago.’ I do that. Come on, they are not going to get away with that shit. I say, ‘I said that ten minutes ago, what was it about the way I said that that didn’t really work for you guys?’ You have to do that. There’s nothing wrong with that—it’s a perfectly legitimate question.”

Bartz points out that men will also use the passive-aggressive tactic of not responding at all. “You know, where they seem to agree but they really don’t,” she says. “I’ve always said, if you have an opinion, I don’t care what it is, we have a starting point. Which means I can convince you differently and you can convince me differently. But if I don’t know what you’re thinking and then you leave and I think you think one thing and you never did, we will never get anything done.”

Elizabeth Warren says what has worked best for her is “to let the men talk, but then to say, ‘Yes, but let me ask that question again . . . maybe I didn’t quite hear the answer, but let me push on that again,’ because it means I’m listening, I’m treating this as a two-way conversation and I have noticed that you danced away from the central point. . . . For me that’s always been the most effective.”

But former GE CEO Jack Welch argues that women don’t have to do anything to be heard: “When we’re in a
meeting and a woman speaks up—because they don’t often speak up—when they do you can hear a pin drop.”

I think he’s probably right in situations where there’s only one or two women: you stand out by virtue of being the only one of your kind. But more often than not, women have to try harder to be heard.

All the tools mentioned here add up to one piece of advice: be confident enough to raise your hand. Men just seem to have an easier time doing it, but making yourself visible is no less important for women. Bringing attention to yourself, your ideas, and your achievements means you’ll be scrutinized. And if you fail, people will ask whether any woman can handle the job. But it’s hard to get ahead if you’re invisible.

Personally, I can use each one of these pieces of advice on the set of
Morning Joe
, and I work every day to keep them in mind.

MY STORY, WITH SUZE ORMAN, CAROL BARTZ, LESLEY JANE SEYMOUR, KATE WHITE, ARIANNA HUFFINGTON, DONNY DEUTSCH, VALERIE JARRETT, TINA BROWN, HANNAH RILEY BOWLES, CAROL SMITH, NORA EPHRON, FRANK FLYNN, DONALD TRUMP, JACK WELCH, AND JOY BEHAR

P
ersonal-finance expert Suze Orman says the reason my attempts to get a raise failed is that I didn’t know how to “negotiate like a powerful woman.” I should have done my homework and come to the table armed with information and alternatives, not just a catalog of emotions and selfdoubt. “The problem is that fear of failure comes when you haven’t properly prepared for success,” she says. “I am sure that you went in to negotiate your salary from a place of fear, and fear is one of the main internal obstacles to wealth.”

What follows is a wealth of advice from a variety of women (and men) about what to do (and not do) when you’re asking for a raise or negotiating a job offer.

In her book
Women & Money
:
Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny,
Suze Orman gives detailed advice to women on how to protect themselves financially and get the money they deserve. She orders women who want a raise to be prepared. First, document your achievements, and put together a list of all the ways you have met and exceeded expectations. Then, “Tell your boss you want to set up a meeting to discuss your compensation. Prior to that meeting, you are to give your boss a one-page outline of your achievements. Not ten pages—one page. The idea is that you are stating in clear terms what value you have brought to the company and why now is the time for the company to show that it values your effort.”

The fact that you deserve a raise or haven’t had one in years is not a persuasive argument. What makes a persuasive argument are solid facts and figures about what you’ve done and what other people, with the same skills and experience and accomplishments, are making for the same job.

Let me say it again: You are not prepared unless you know the market value of your contributions. I can’t stress this enough. Why is it such a big secret? Seriously. What are you worth? What I’ve learned is, you should constantly be asking people about salary. Really wrap your arms around what work is worth what. The more you talk to people and the closer you get to them, the more they will tell you. Go ahead—ask. At this point I pretty much know what everybody is getting paid at
MSNBC, and I think that’s part of my job, in terms of knowing my value.

For decades, companies have prohibited their employees from sharing information about their wages. In January 2009, Congress introduced the Paycheck Fairness Act, which was intended to ensure that women get paid as well as men for equal work. But the legislation, which would have made it easier for women to sue employers who pay them less than men and made it illegal for employers to retaliate against workers who shared information about wage practices, was defeated by the Senate in November 2010.

Even if you’re prohibited from asking your colleagues directly about their own salaries, general information about salary ranges is widely available. This is the value of interviewing at other companies and maintaining contacts across your industry. I encourage people to talk—not just to other women in your field, who may be making less just like you, but to men as well. You can find out what people think the range is or what they think you should be making without directly asking about their salary or telling them yours. Over time, you really do learn the market rate for certain positions. I have a husband in my industry, which helps. I know what local anchors make compared with what network anchors make, what anchors make compared with what reporters make. Naturally every case is different, but you can get a sense of the range.

If you’re in an industry that uses them, agents can be a great resource on the subject of fair market value. Because agents represent more than one person, they should be able to fill you in on what others make—or at least give you a ballpark.
And if they’re giving you bad information, they are not good agents. It’s their job to be in the know. So utilize them wisely. Don’t just wait for the phone to ring. Make a strategy, and then stick to it.

But it’s also just kind of instinctive. I mean, seriously. I signed a contract that I intuitively knew was not right. I knew that I was worth more. But I let fear, and the potential of being disliked, supersede my instincts.

When I started at MSNBC again, as a freelancer, I knew what I signed up for. I had no complaints about that. And by the way, punching in at the same time and punching out at the same time every day—to me that was worth my making a lot less. That was fine. But when I started on
Morning Joe
, when I started to become part of a brand of two people, Joe and Mika, or when we became a team of Joe, Mika, and Willie, then we were a commodity. I knew what they were making, and yet I accepted less. I would love to believe that I’m alone in that stupidity. But I fear I’m one of many.

Researchers say part of the reason why women don’t know what their peers are earning is social norms. They may not feel that discussing money is appropriate, because making a ton of money fulfills a masculine ideal, not a feminine one.
Despite the fact that we’ve been in the workforce for generations, the cultural ideal of women as caregivers hasn’t shifted. Women are still expected to be more selfless than men, so even talking about money—let alone asking for it—makes us uncomfortable.

Carol Bartz says that while women will compare themselves with their colleagues, “the women don’t always find out as easily what everybody else makes. The men seem to find out somehow. And I don’t know why that is.”

These days it’s easier than ever to find out what people make. Employees share salary information on Web sites such as
Vault.com
and
Glassdoor.com
; sites like
Payscale.com
and
Salary.com
can give you an idea of salaries for comparative positions in your geographic area. But nothing beats talking with people.

More
magazine editor-in-chief Lesley Jane Seymour says, “A big problem with women is that they go in not having done their homework; they don’t know what everybody else is making . . . If you do your homework, then you walk in and you present your facts and you can say, ‘Here’s what other people in this company at the same level are paid. Let me show you all the facts and figures.’ ” Seymour doesn’t think it’s easy for anyone to ask for a raise, even men, because in that situation you feel like a child asking for their allowance. Everybody struggles. Again, “The key is to do your research. The most important thing that people don’t realize, especially women, is you can’t go in there expecting people to take care of you and that they’re going to be fair. They’re going to try to get the best deal they can.”

Cosmopolitan
’s Kate White offers some advice about timing: “Often women wait to deal with their raise when it’s announced to them, but by that time it’s already etched into the budget. You need to go in a month or so before you know they’re going to start giving the raises and just say, ‘Look, I know you’re probably planning the budget, and I’d just like an opportunity to tell you how much my job has expanded this year, and I hope my raise can reflect this.’ ”

If you’re prepared—you’ve documented your achievements and you know the fair market value of your work—it should be easier to take the emotion out of asking for a raise. It’s no longer about you, it’s about the facts in front of you.