Arbitration & Mediation

Two Ways to Close the Wage and Income Gap in June and Ten Reasons to Invest in Negotiation Training Today

By Victoria Pynchon

• Take the month-long online coached She Negotiates! course (after getting your tasting sample for free here); or,
• Take the live three-hour Negotiation for Women Workshop at the Pasadena Women's City Club on June 10 at 7 p.m. - details here.

I've said before that what I do for a living is to "rationalize numbers."  All of the diagnostic tools and Ivy League brains in the world cannot predict the result of litigation.  And even those bold enough to predict to their clients that they have, say, a 75% chance of prevailing on liability and a 50% chance of prevailing on damages, must admit that the unpredictable judge or crazy juror who slips past voir dire can turn near certain victory into crushing defeat.  And yet we continue to pour our resources - time, money and energy - into litigation and trial.

Mediators, like me, rationalize settlement numbers for a living.  We talk about justice and uncertainty; about loss and accountability; about human frailty, accidental injury, and, the innumerable ways in which "the truth" can be tracked down in its hiding place - naked and trembling - only to have it vanish in a puff of smoke before our own incredulous eyes.

So how do I rationalize numbers?  Like a real estate agent, I deal in comparables, as do the attorneys who have told their cilents what they believe their "cases" are "worth."  Last month a mother was awarded $100 million for the care of her brain damaged infant - a child injured (or not) as a result of mold in the mother's apartment during her pregnancy.  Last year, a smoker's widower was awarded $5 million for his wife's death by lung cancer, but the award was decreased to five bucks because the jury assigned 99% of the negligence to the smoker herself. 

The claims adjuster or the company president uses these comparables to justify settlement; to document the file; to satisfy the bureaucracy.  The plaintiff uses them to put an end to the suffering litigation invariably becomes, whether he believes justice has been accomplished or not.

Pre-trial victories and losses, smoking guns and impeaching evidence.  Diminishing returns.  Sunk costs.

So I'm pretty good at the valuation game because I spent half an adult life-time playing Hasbro's "Litigation" and five years helping others surrender their game pieces to the Bank.

I'm going to rationalize these numbers for you.

• $99 for a three-hour negotiation seminar.
• $375 for a month-long negotiation course.

Reason Nos. 1 through 4 (Lost Opportunities)

• the woman who negotiates her first salary (and every raise thereafter) will earn at least a million dollars more over the course of her career than the woman who does not.
• women pay nearly $1400 more than their male peers when purchasing a car to avoid having to negotiate with the sales person.
• women earn 33 cents less then their male peers and continue to do so despite the passage of laws meant to end wage discrimination and thirty years of "feminist" consciousness raising and self-esteem building.
• women lawyers today earn as much as 40 cents less than their male peers, despite the fact that their numbers in our nation's law schools have been at least one-third for the past thirty years.

Learn to negotiate and purchase a vehicle.  By investing $100 or $375 today in a negotiation course for women, you'll save at least $1400 on your next car purchase, putting at least $1,000 in your pocket above and beyond the cost of the course.  And that's on just one negotiation.

Learn to negotiate and close the pay gap for yourself only.  You're making $50,000 a year.  Add 33 cents on each of those dollars and you make an additional $16,500 next year.  You're making $100,000 a year.  Add 33 cents on each of those dollars and you make an additional $33,000 next year.  $100 or $375 investment for $16 to $30,000 benefit.  And you're buying lottery tickets in the hope of increases of that magnitude.

Reasons 5 through 10 (Comparable Value as a Cost to Course Participants)

• a semester-long negotiation course at the Straus Institute where I earned my LL.M in 2006 costs $2,280.
• the 42-hour Straus Institute settlement negotiation course costs $2,195
• the type of business or financial consulting that our month-long negotiation course offers would cost a business person somewhere between $250 and $500 per hour.
• hiring a mediator to help you negotiate the resolution of a dispute will cost the parties to that dispute somewhere between $75 and $250 per hour each.
• psychotherapy to help you gain the confidence you need to value your services highly enough and then to negotiate that value for yourself would cost you somewhere between $150 and $300 per 50-minute hour.

My business partner, Lisa Gates of Craving Balance is doing a little brain-storming on the relationship between a negotiation course for women and the value it delivers herself.  I'll add to this list as we continue to generate them.

Don't you owe it to yourself to finally acquire this fundamental life skill today?

Full post as published by Settle It Now Negotiation Blog on May 23, 2010 (boomark / email).