Negotiating Women: Never Negotiate Out of Fear, But Never Fear to Negotiate --

Video below is part I of an interview on negotiation challenges, strategies and tactics for women with Vicki Flaugher, founder of SmartWoman Guides. The full audio of the video is here along with Ms. Flaugher's kind comments about our conversation.

Ms. Flaugher describes her site resources as follows:

If you’re a beginning female entrepreneur or a women who is thinking about starting in business for herself, you have found your tribe. You have arrived at a safe place to talk about business. Especially if you are 35-55 years old, you are going to love this site because that’s a magic age time. You really discover who you are during those years and finally decide to do what you love instead of just what you’re “supposed” to do. The spirit of that revelation and all the promise it holds is why this site was created.

Now, Part I of Negotiating Women!

"Never Fear to Negotiate" from JFK's Inaugural Address with video here.

So let us begin anew -- remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate. Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.

Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms, and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.

Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.

Let both sides unite to heed, in all corners of the earth, the command of Isaiah -- to "undo the heavy burdens, and [to] let the oppressed go free."

And, if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor -- not a new balance of power, but a new world of law -- where the strong are just, and the weak secure, and the peace preserved.

All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days; nor in the life of this Administration; nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.

A Few Good Links for Professional/Business Women

• Becoming Your Stellar Self
• Boomer Women Marketing Group
• Brain Based Business
• Brains on Purpose
• Brazen Careerist
• Build a Solo Practice (legal)
• Career Goddess
• Conscious Business
• Conscious Business (small business)
• Design Your Writing Life
• Dr. Tammy Lenski's Conflict Coaching
• Idealawg (law and inspiration)
• Inspired Business Growth
• Leadership and Women Lawyers
• Magical List of Women Bloggers
• Making the Jump-Legal Career Alternatives
• Mediation Channel
• My Shingle (law)
• Pink Magazine
• Small Business Blog: Women in Business
• Small Business Trends
• The Marketing Mix
• The New Charm School
• Women's Leadership Exchange
• Wonder Branding: Marketing to Wome

Please Join Us at Our Comprehensive PWNSC Ning! Site

Before today, our network has been scattered across social networking platforms -- on Meetup; Blogger; Yahoo Site Builder; LinkedIn; and, Twitter!

This scattering of our online presence has made it unnecessarily difficult to focus our communications with one another and, as you can imagine, unduly time-consuming for your faithful leader.

I recently joined Mina Sirkin's excellent Law Marketing "ning" community and have found it to be easy to use, informative to follow and efficient to gather community members together. If you're a legal professional, do run right on over to Law Marketing and join that community today!

Over the next few weeks, I'll be consolidating the Professional Women's Network of Southern California here.

PLEASE JOIN US.

Mentoring Circles Can Beat Recessionary Blues

I've always recommended barter when cash is tight. In an early post entitled The Benefits of Barter, I explained how interest-based barter is not simply for small-fry.

AT&T used interest-based negotiation tactics and bartering in its 1999 fight with Comcast Corporation for the acquisition of MediaOne Group. All parties were at impasse until AT&T offered to provide Comcast with surplus AT&T cable systems that would fill Comcast's critical need for additional subscribers -- 2 million to be exact. In exchange, Comcast withdrew its $48 billion bid for MediaOne, leaving AT&T as the only potential purchaser in the field.

Interest-based negotitions such as the AT&T-Comcast deal go beyond evaluating the strength of the parties' "positions" (or muscle) by engaging them in a mutual exploration and assessment of everyone's needs and resources -- a process that can create new buisness opportunities or relationships that increase the value of Business A without concomitantly decreasing the value of Business B.

"This type of negotiation begins with all community resources and know-how with the goal of increasing the well-being of all stakeholders rather than assuring victory to one of them," I wrote.

For those of us in the wisdom business, much of what we have to barter is our ability to mentor and be mentored. The Professional Women's Network of Southern California is, essentially, a "mentoring circle," in which each member teaches, each member learns, and each member connects every other member to her network.

Now, the Women Lawyer's of Los Angeles is putting its wheels on recovery road by kicking off its existing Mentoring Circle Program to meet the challenges of the coming year.

For a number of years, the WLALA Career Mentoring Committee has organized a West LA Mentoring Circle for WLALA members to meet and support each other's career development over lively dinner conversation. These meetings have served as a forum for participants to share stories, goals and advice. Over the years the women involved in the Mentoring Circle have become a close-knit group of champions for one another's success.

The WLALA Career Mentoring Committee is excited to expand mentoring opportunities for WLALA members by starting a Downtown Mentoring Circle. If you are interested in mentoring others or benefitting from the experience of other WLALA members, please join us for the first meeting of our new Downtown Mentoring Circle at Bonaventure Brewing Company at 6:30 on January 29.

Our discussion topic will be career goals and objectives for 2009. Please RSVP to Jessica Pink (jlpink@allenmatkins.com) if you plan to attend.

Bonaventure Brewing Co.
404 South Figueroa St. Suite 418A
Los Angeles CA 90071
(213) 236-0802

We look forward to seeing you!

Your Career Mentoring Chairs,

Gigi and Jessica

Check it out! And for women AND men professionals in all parts of the country, you couldn't do better by yourself and your business than to start your own mentoring circle.

Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Frenemies? Do We Undermine One Another's Careers?

Food for thought from today's New York Times (and yes there have been times when a law firm with a substantial number of women partners felt like . . . well . . . HEATHERS!) For full article click here.

[T]o this day, a pink elephant is lurking in the room, and we pretend it’s not there. For years, I have heard behind closed doors from women — young and old, up and down the ladder — that we can be our own worst enemies at work.

Let me stress that throughout my career, I’ve benefited in countless ways from the advice and support of my female colleagues, just as so many others have.

But while women have come a long way in removing workplace barriers, one of the last remaining obstacles is how they treat one another. Instead of helping to build one another’s careers, they sometimes derail them — for example, by limiting access to important meetings and committees; withholding information, assignments and promotions; or blocking the way to mentors and higher-ups.

And if you are a woman and happen to have a female co-worker who is a bully, watch out. A recent study by the Workplace Bullying Institute examining office behaviors — like verbal abuse, job sabotage, misuse of authority and destroying of relationships — found that female bullies aim at other women more than 70 percent of the time. Bullies who are men, by contrast, tend to be equal-opportunity tormentors when it comes to the gender of their target.

Just in case you're too young for Heathers, here's a clip & here's my favorite Heathers' quote:

You were nothing before you met me. You were playing Barbies with Betty Finn. You were a Bluebird. You were a Brownie. You were a Girl Scout Cookie.

Women Lawyers!! How to Deal with Difficult Clients

Women Lawyers' Association of Los Angeles presents:

"How to Deal with Difficult Clients" January 12, 2009 at 6:30 p.m. McCormick & Schmick's at 633 West Fifth Street, Fourth Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90071

Sooner or later, almost every lawyer encounters a client whose behavior becomes problematic as the case wears on. A client who previously seemed only slightly neurotic will begin phoning incessantly, asking for multiple updates each day. Sometimes a client who appeared to have no psychological issues at all will seemingly undergo a personality change, becoming accusatory and suspicious.

This seminar covers how to deal with these types of clients, walking a fine line encompassing ethical conduct toward the client, while also protecting the attorney. Featured speakers will be Ellen A. Pansky of Pansky & Markle, a firm that specializes in advising lawyers in legal ethics and risk management; and Mary Baron, a licensed clinical social worker.

Ms. Baron will address the psychological aspects of handling and communicating with delicate clients, and Ms. Pansky will discuss the ethical issues involved.

Cost: $35 WLALA Members, $45 Non-Members

Sign up here!

Diversity Good Value for Hard Economic Times

From Our Time to Act.

In 2007, the Corporate Leavers Survey was released by the Level Playing Field Institute, and it showed that each year more than 2 million professionals and managers voluntarily leave their jobs due to unfairness…at a cost to employers of $64 billion annually. $64 billion is real money. Just as there are generally racial disparities in retention rates, there are also disparities among those that leave their jobs due to unfairness. Persons of color are more than three times more likely to leave solely due to unfairness in the workplace. So we have a great opportunity to protect our bottom line by creating and supporting healthy and inclusive cultures.

This report from the Center for American Progress Action Fund shows that due to gender pay inequity the difference between the median wages of all full-time working men and women over a 40 year period — deprives women of $434,000, on average, over the course of their working life. According to the research and advocacy organization, Catalyst, women represent half of all managers and professionals in the workforce, yet their leadership representation has dwindled from 16.4% of humble 2% of these positions.

So…when it comes to having organizational cultures that are inclusive and able to truly identify, integrate and reward talent there is still a great deal of room for progress. Make sure that your organizational culture, your practices and policies are not pushing some of your talent out the door. To more efficiently retain your workforce and get more for what you are spending, a few suggestions:

For those suggestions, and the entire post, click here.