131: What Companies Will Never Tell You About Negotiating Your Salary

Hey lady leader, welcome back. And if you are new here, this is the first time that you are listening and you're hearing the sound of my voice, I am so glad that you found us. I'm Dr. Nicole Bryan, your host and your biggest cheerleader.

I am an executive leadership coach, a work addiction psychologist, and a former Fortune 500 executive. And I created this podcast specifically for you, the ambitious, introverted, professional black woman who knows that she is meant for more. Here we talk about getting you promoted to the executive level, growing into the leader that your title requires, and building a team that actually performs. And we do all of it without you having to shrink yourself, fake being extroverted, or overwork yourself into the ground.

Now, if any of that sounds like what you need, then stay tuned because we are about to get into something good. Before we dive in, I want to tell you about the sponsor of today's episode. And lady leader, this one is near and dear to my heart because I put it together just for you. I'm hosting a two-day live leadership intensive called Name Your Number: How to Negotiate Your Salary with Confidence, even in an uncertain economy.

Because let's be real, too many of us are leaving money on the table. And that ends now. Over those two days, we're going to build your personal roadmap so you know exactly what to ask for, how to ask for it, and how to walk into that conversation without second guessing yourself, no matter what's happening in the economy. Spots are limited, so head to the link in the show notes and let's get you paid for the value that you bring.

I've spent years of my career on the other side of the salary negotiation table. Not as a coach, not as a consultant, but as the person making compensation decisions and approving compensation decisions. As a chief human resources officer, I was in the rooms where those conversations happened. I saw the spreadsheets.

I knew the salary bands. I knew how much room we actually had in the budget. I knew what it took to move the number and what didn't move it at all. And I'm about to tell you what human resources will never say out loud.

Not because human resources is your enemy, but because human resources, part of that department's responsibility, is also to protect the company. Now that's not cynicism, that's just how the system is set up. Today, however, I'm giving you the insider briefing that you were never supposed to have. So let's talk about what HR knows that you don't.

Let's actually talk about what's happening behind those closed doors. The first thing that I want you to know is that there is almost always more room in the offer than they show you. Now, the first number that a company puts on the table is rarely their ceiling, right? Most companies are smart enough to start at a number to give them a little bit of wiggle room, assuming that you are going to negotiate in some way, shape, form, or fashion.

The number that they put on the table, that's their opening position. Most candidates, the vast majority of candidates, whether you're an internal candidate or an external candidate, just accept that first number from the company. But the ones that don't, the ones who come back professionally and strategically with a counter, almost always get more. Not always everything they ask for, but more.

And now I have seen this happen hundreds, if not thousands, of times from the inside. The second thing is that salary bans are wider than you think. Now we talked about this in episode 129. So if you didn't listen to that episode, definitely go back and take a listen.

But I want to go deeper here. Inside most organizations, there is a formal salary structure with bands that span a significantly wide range. Human Resources knows exactly where your role falls in that band. They know how much room exists above your current salary within that structure.

You, on the other hand, almost never know either of those things unless you ask the right questions. The third thing that I want you to know in terms of insider information is that your manager probably cannot say yes. Now, this is the one that surprises most people. When you walk into your manager's office and you make the case for a salary increase, your manager in most organizations does not have the sole authority to approve that himself or herself.

Compensation decisions above a certain threshold always have to go to human resources or go to finance or go to the next senior level manager or supervisor in your reporting chain. Sometimes it has to go all the way to the executive team, which means if you are only having the conversation with your direct manager or your direct supervisor, you may be having it with the wrong person, or at least not the only person who actually matters in this decision. The fourth thing that I want you to know is that timing matters more than most people realize.

Now, what do I mean by this? Human resources and finance teams set compensation budgets on a cycle. In most organizations, that cycle is annual. It goes according to your fiscal year.

If, however, you are making your case outside of that fiscal year or outside of that cycle, after budgets have already been allocated, then you are literally trying to swim upstream. So knowing when your organization's compensation review cycle happens and timing your conversation accordingly is one of the most underutilized strategies that I know of. The fifth thing that happens behind closed doors that you're not aware of is that documentation changes everything. So when a manager goes to bat for an employee's salary increase internally, they need to make a case to human resources and to finance and even to their boss.

The stronger the documentation that manager brings, with market data, performance evidence, business impact, the stronger their case. Which means your job is not just to convince your manager that you deserve an increase. Your job is even bigger than that, even more important than that, because you have to give your manager the ammunition they need to fight for you in rooms that you're not in. I see this mistake happen over and over again where you think it's your job to convince your manager that you deserve an increase, and then you wash your hands of the situation and expect that your manager is going to go and get it for you.

But this it doesn't work that way. You have a responsibility to make sure that you are establishing the business case, that you know your market data, that you can show your manager, not just plead with him or her to get their empathy for your situation. You want to make sure that they are armed with the right information that's going to essentially guarantee that you get what you asked for. What's been happening because you don't have all of this information, because you are not necessarily privy until now about what's happening behind closed doors, you've been negotiating without a playbook.

You've been doing one of two things. You've either washed your hands of negotiating because you feel like it's too scary, it's too intimidating, you don't know how to go about it, or you have been negotiating, but you've been negotiating without knowing the full playbook. Today, I'm giving you a few pages of that exact playbook. Now, one of the objections that I hear a lot is I wouldn't even know where to start.

I want to negotiate. I think I deserve more than what I'm getting right now, but I don't even know where to start to figure that out. I hear this objection most often from the women that I work with. And I want to call it out because if this is where you are, it's not a personal failure.

Knowing where to find market compensation data is not intuitive. And understanding how to read a salary ban is not something that most people are taught. Knowing who in your organization actually has decision-making authority over compensation, that information is very rarely transparent. You don't know where to start because nobody ever showed you where the starting line is.

That's not a reflection of your intelligence or your capability. It's a reflection of how everything is set up and the fact that it wasn't designed to make this easy for you. The good news is that the starting line does exist. The information is in fact out there, and the strategies are learnable skills.

And you don't have to figure it out alone. The information gap is definitely real, but it is closable. Now, I'm not giving you the full how today. That lives in the two-day intensive that we are going to be doing in just a couple of days.

But here are a few things to get you thinking and to get you started on closing that gap for yourself. The first thing is find out when your organization's compensation review cycle happens. You can either ask HR directly, you can ask finance directly. It's not a suspicious question.

Frame it as wanting to be prepared and proactive about your career development. Most HR teams will tell you. The second thing that you can do to prepare is start researching market data for your role right now. There are a few resources, a few free resources that are available to you.

You can look at LinkedIn salary, you can look on Glassdoor, you can look on the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You can also look at industry-specific salary surveys. You don't need a subscription or a consultant to start gathering data. You just need to actually carve out the time and start looking.

The third thing you can do in preparation is identify who actually has compensation decision-making authority inside your company, inside your organization. Is it your direct manager? Is it human resources? Is it a compensation committee?

Maybe it's the CFO. Knowing who needs to say yes and who influences that yes is critical before you ever walk into that conversation. Now the fourth thing that you can start doing is building your impact file today. Document your contributions, your wins, your results, the problems that you solve, the revenue that you influence, the costs that you save.

Every piece of evidence that makes your case stronger. The women who I see win in compensation conversations don't pull this together the night before or the weekend before. They've been building it over time. Knowledge is not enough to help you negotiate your salary, but it is where everything starts.

Now, if this was helpful and you want to go from knowing what to do to actually doing it, that is actually how we're going to spend our time in my free two-day intensive. Name your number, how to negotiate your salary with confidence, even in an uncertain economy. This leadership intensive, this workshop is the exact workshop that I wish had existed when I was on the other side of that table watching talented black women walk out of compensation conversations with less than they deserved.

I know what works because I've seen what works from both sides. Your link is in the show notes. And if you're coming, come ready to work. They've had the playbook this whole time.

In this workshop, you get your copy. In the meantime, keep leading your introvert way.