Saturday Morning RoundsA weekly round-up of career & negotiation content for women physicians What got our attention Just this past week we've had a couple different clients struggle with what we like to call "apologizing their way into an ask." We were doing some negotiation role-plays to practice for their actual upcoming negotiations, and they had a lot of trouble with saying "I'm sorry" - or something like it - before every back-and-forth exchange. This is a super-common issue for our clients, and we wrote about it around this time last year after one of the democratic debates. While a lot has changed since then in the world, not much has changed about our stance on the topic - so if you find that this is something you struggle with, keep reading: A couple of weeks back we were watching the December democratic debates when an interesting question was posed. The candidates were asked, "in the spirit of the season," to either give a gift or apologize for something, to their fellow candidates. What happened next led to one of those unsurprised-but-still-disappointed looooong sigh moments. Every single one of the men offered a gift - in most cases their book. Both of the women on stage offered an apology for "getting worked up" or "being blunt," respectively. Turns out, apologizing is an incredibly complex, still unsolved conundrum in the worlds of both psychology and economics. So we did a deep dive on some of the best resources to summarize what we know so far about the topic:
But none of them do justice to the single most important thing we can do when it comes to our apologies, which is to STOP GIVING SO DAMN MANY OF THEM! We'll explain why and how in our "tip of the week" Who we're following Any time we're reading about economics we can't help but give a shout-out to our favorite BossB economist, Dr. Emily Oster, PhD (@ProfEmilyOster). She focuses her work on what we believe to be the most systematically intractable component of the gender gap - having and raising kids. Even though she doesn't focus on the workplace implications of family life, her Twitter feed is a treasure trove of well-curated content on those topics and funny/endearing personal posts. BBMD tip of the week There's a central tension that has to be addressed anytime we talk about apologizing:
So how can we throw out the "bathwater" of over-apologizing, and at the same time spare the "baby" of emotional intelligence & resonance? We're so glad you asked! Here are a few quick rules to help you:
Quote we're contemplating Food for thought on why we have this urge and how to replace the important role it plays without undermining our position:
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Have a wonderful weekend, y'all! |