Women in Leadership: Negotiation Skills

Negotiation Skills

Many women say they would rather go to the dentist than negotiate for themselves. Why? Women are taught early to create equity in relationships. When you negotiate with someone and you feel that you're taking something away from them, that feels like a violation of the social contract with which you were raised. There's little wonder, then, that negotiation feels deeply uncomfortable for many women.

Yet negotiating is a critical skill that everyone, especially women, has to practice and master in order to be an effective leader. In this course from Cornell Professor Deborah Streeter, you will practice key behaviors that help negotiations, including asking for what you want — something most women are not taught to do. The course emphasises the gender dimension of negotiation strategies and the critical skills on which women leaders in particular need to focus. This course will be most helpful for women leaders who are not already practiced and comfortable in negotiation settings, and those who find negotiating stressful, uncomfortable, and difficult. Negotiating is a routine part of daily life and leadership, and approaching it with confidence and skill signals that you know your worth.

Key Course Takeaways

Determine the personal negotiation style that works best for you

Develop strategies for leveraging past successes to improve future negotiations

Identify effective negotiation techniques, including reframing and creative visualization

Practice the critical negotiation skill of asking

Applies Toward the Following Certificates

• Women in Leadership
• Women in Product