Catherine! Started a new job in March direct supervisor quit in June
i inherit all of her projects more responsibilities working long hours to keep
up with the workload i want to raise how do i ask you know what Catherine i wouldn't overthink this
i think you just take that chat there and you you verbalize it to him say hey look you know what
i i uh i've been doing these responsibilities for my for my boss for what like three months
give or take maybe right for three months which i'm happy to do and thrilled to get the
opportunity to learn i'd like to know if this will continue so one of the things that you want to do
is you never want to go to them and say i'm doing this job i want to raise if they say catherine
this is temporary we just hired somebody you're going back to your normal responsibilities right
i in any negotiation if you really think about all the direction that i give you it's always
about asking all the questions first to make sure you have no unanswered or inaccurate assumptions
so you want to say okay look i've so first off if when they gave me these responsibilities now you
may have asked them this already but let's go andy time machine we're going back going back to the
beginning we're going back we're going back to to june supervisor quits they say catherine the great
you're in wonderful hey i just wanted an idea is this something you want me to take on temporarily
do we have a plan to uh replenish backfill use whatever term you want my boss or is there an
opportunity for me to prove myself i would have went through all that right then instantly okay
so let's say you you know that or you don't either way so you now it's three months later
go back to them and and say i now if you know and they told you that now you want to confirm that so
is it still our plan that you are looking for somebody or have i done enough to prove myself
that you might blah blah blah wanna you know move me into this so you gotta reconfirm if
if you had a direction you need to reconfirm the direction before you ask for the raise
if you didn't confirm initially it's okay what's done is done you go to them now and say hey look
i've really been thrilled to have the opportunity to do all these extra things and while it is more
work i'm i'm getting this great opportunity to learn all these things blah blah blah and
i've developed these skills um i i want to know is is our plan to to stick with this
format where i'm going to continue to do this stop let them tell you if they say catherine
ginger's telling you hey that's go go with that so okay we're gonna do that great if we do that would
you consider uh adjusting my compensation based on these new sets of responsibilities question stop
right that's what you want to do and then okay uh catherine we have no intention of doing that
now you make your argument okay but you know when you hired me and you paid me the salary
that's eighty thousand dollars the assumption was these are the things i'm doing and while i i
genuinely appreciate all these additional responsibilities but if i'm going to continue
to do this there's a tremendous amount more value not to mention i'm working a lot more hours
so i just want to make sure that i'm being paid fairly with my contribution if you're not going to
do that right now is there a time throughout the year where i'll be given the opportunity to get
promoted if so when will that be so like is it you know at the end of the year is it december is it
next you know march what is it so you want to have that dialogue and it doesn't need to be overly
aggressive these are very fair questions now it's three months 12 weeks okay so that you're talking
about you know i mean with if you got 12 weeks you got 60 days that you've been doing this job
right five days a week give or take it's not a really long time so they could just be seeing how
it goes evaluating it and maybe they are going to give you a raise maybe there is a maybe there is
a protocol in place or maybe there is a a couple times throughout the year where they do reviews
or whatever but that's how i would bring that up and i would ask questions before i make a request
so that's that's how i would handle that and that's basically how i would handle any
salary negotiation by asking questions uh actually i'm wondering if i wanna
you know what i'm i'm gonna give you i'm gonna give you a little i'm gonna give you
a little something extra here okay so there's i don't know that i've ever said this this way
to this group meaning i don't know that i've ever said i've not said this publicly anywhere about
when i think about negotiating uh pay raises in internally and i've i've given you kind of
snippets of how i think conceptually about about salary negotiation and and different
tactics and techniques but you you need to think about stuff in in kind of in five pieces
all right so there's the there's the primer whenever you're discussing something with somebody
like this let's just assume this is salary talk but you know i want to i want to make this
work and i i believe that we will based on what i've seen and so on so let's say you're getting
your promotion your number your salary your new job offer whatever there's a there's a primer that
that that puts them in a welcoming position and if you are wondering why it's primer's a proper term
and priming somebody in a discussion moves their emotional state to where you want it which is in
this case in an open and welcoming view you don't want them defensive and you want them to open up
the command so to speak right so okay so i want to make this work
i i'm sure we will all that good stuff so you don't have anything to worry about
right the the second thing is you want to acknowledge that you understand their viewpoint
so in your case catherine um now i want okay what you're doing naturally this is not a
you know what a front on you your your your your reaction as a human is i'm doing more and and
we've never none of us had an experience that we were not at the absolute center of right meaning
the world the world in our experiences especially in these experiences is revolving around us
and the world that's revolving around you catherine is i'm doing more work and i'm
not getting paid more now i want you to take yourself out of the equation for a second and
now put yourself in their shoes i'm in a lurch man catherine's boss just left what am i going to do
what's my best course of action right now and what's my best course of action long term and
so on and so so if you if you intercepted your thoughts for a second and you think about them
and acknowledge it and say you know what uh you know i can't imagine how difficult it is
to immediately lose somebody especially after i just started and especially it being a surprise
uh so you know i i i feel for you right i understand your viewpoint you're acknowledging
they want to do this as smartly and as economically and i don't know the backdrop of why
that person left but maybe they made a mistake and they're nervous and maybe they don't want to hire
somebody right away maybe they do want to give you an opportunity maybe this is the safer route
i could tell you as an employer and as a recruiter having the wrong person in the job is way worse
than having no person in the job it's true okay so now you want to say to them part two
i know how you feel i get it i understand i've looked at this from your standpoint and i can only
imagine how frustrating that is okay third part is go to your value but but i'm doing a lot of stuff
now you make the value argument i'm doing this here's what it means i'm doing this here's what
it means you're only paying me 80. it's a 100 000 job right so what's the plan here
right so that's the third that's the third part and then then then the fourth part is
i'm doing this job i'm doing like two jobs my job 80 this job 100 that's 180. could you
imagine if i wasn't here how much money you would have to pay for these two jobs
okay now it's not 80 it's 180. right so now that's what's called a juxtaposition so you're getting
them to look at it differently now it's like oh my god right that puts it in perspective like when i
say my leadership program is only 81 cents a day because it is what do you pay for that coffee
right that coffee that latte buy you 10 days in my program right that's totally you don't think
that way all right but but now now it's like holy smokes i i'm getting 180 000 worth of what cost
slash value for only a hundred if i give her 20 more and she'd be happy and i'd be happy
kind of thing right like so you got to go through these evolutions and then of course
you know then then then you can go depending on your situation into the well you know i'll
i'll do this and you can keep looking for somebody else and then what you do is you go into the fifth
section of this is go ahead and look go ahead and try go ahead and find somebody else
go ahead and write and then when they do that standing still you look better meaning dang well
catherine's already up to speed on all this stuff why would i want to hire this person
i mean this is like a crap shoot right five pieces right there those are considerations when you get
in a situation like this by the way i am going super deep in november i know that's a couple of
months out in my leadership training in in the and we're going to be talking about negotiating
pay raises so we're going to go really deep on these uh on on these kinds of lessons so it's uh
you know it's it's uh if it's something that you want to consider it's a great it's a great
time to be doing that but catherine these are i i just i i i'm always trying to give you guys
different ways of looking at it so something clicks or something registers or you find that
tactic that works for you or your situation so i i know i really went on there but that's
that's a pretty good way of looking at it so i hope that helps you and i
hope everybody benefited from that because you all should be negotiating like crazy right now
i mean employers are i just got an email like a few hours ago from somebody in my
in my in my boot camp who's got i gotta reply back to him now but it you know just a huge huge race
because of what he did and this is happening day in and day out not just week in and week out