Episode 1: Workhorse vs. Racehorse

👋 Yo! Welcome to the next episode of Negotiating like the Man where you learn how to grow your career and income with better negotiation strategy in less than 5 minutes. 

You can only be one…so which do you try to be?

Every team dynamic is unique, but these two profiles always exist. 

There is the person who always volunteers to take notes, send the meeting invite, or take the first step to get you started (workhorse).

Then there is the person your boss always defers to in order to get shit done. Your boss works to protect their time and treats them as a limited resource (racehorse). 

Now define the persona of these people. Most often you’ll find the workhorses are female, people of color, or both. The racehorses tend to be male and white. 

This isn’t a coincidence. It goes back to how we were raised - the behaviors we model now. 

For me personally, scarcity mindset has been a driving factor in my behavior. I love Dave Lu’s explanation here 👇️

Scarcity mindset leads to consistently keeping your head down, being grateful for what you have and never asking for more. 

This mindset translated to never asking for the promotion for fear of being perceived as ungrateful. It translated to not negotiating salary for a new job. 

It wasn’t until years later that I realized what I missed out on:

• Coworkers making 15-30% more than me for the same role

• Sign-on bonuses and other variable bonuses (I was told it was not policy to have bonuses, but my coworkers were able to negotiate them) 

• Being passed over for promotion or a promotion being held hostage if I worked with coworkers who had a reputation for being extremely challenging (aka toxic)

Yes, Farhan we get it but what YOU don’t understand is that we don’t have the same options being women. We have been conditioned to not advocate for ourselves, so we end up being the workhorse.

Totally hear you. 

Here’s what you can do: show your work

Doing the work doesn’t matter if no one knows. Document the from <> to and share with your boss, your team, and other stakeholders. 

Drive awareness to what problem you’re working on, how you are thinking about solving it and then share the results. Share the potential paths considered, other folks involved, how long it took and finally the impact it made on the business. 

Here’s a real note I sent to a member of the senior leadership team (CEO’s direct reports) to go from workhorse to racehorse:

JFYI - no action needed

Working on a project I thought you’d find interesting. Turns out our customer success team doesn’t get alerted when customers start using parts of the product, so they are often surprised when someone is under-consuming. Apparently, they have been asking but haven’t been able to get this work prioritized. 

I chatted with (x-functional partner) and he’s confident it’s a low lift to get them something useful this Q. Will keep you posted.

Let’s break this down:

1. Make it clear this is simply an inform but still relevant to them (you should be selective with who you send these types of messages to)

2. Give enough context (problem) and impact (e.g. surprise when someone is under-consuming). Even if it’s not your ‘job’ to solve this issue, you have made it clear you’re working on something that really matters for this business.

3. Share the solution — in this case I was able to get buy-in from a partner in analytics (limited / hard to get resources) to get something delivered where others have been unsuccessful in the past.

4. End with results — this is early stage, so I didn’t but if it were a recap then I’d share the results/feedback/next steps.

The more you share, the faster your perception changes. Over time your informs turn into conversations and now you have your own relationships (without relying on someone else).

You gain more control on your destiny. Let me know if this was helpful for you. See ya next week 👋 

Newsletter forwarded to you? Subscribe below 👇️ 

✅ Find all resources here.

📆 Looking to connect? Find me on LinkedIn or grab some time on my cal here.

✨ Special thank you to Gigi Marquez who suggested I start this newsletter 🙏