Want to Raise Your Profile? Ask for A Raise!

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A lesser-known benefit of asking for a raise:

When you get outside your comfort zone and ask for a raise, you raise your profile.

In your leader’s eyes, and in your own eyes. When you ask for more than what your leader or manager has offered, this positions you automatically as someone who goes for what she wants. Someone who WILL take the risk that she might not get it, at least not right then. Someone who will also more than likely do the same for your organization.

I was recently interviewed by women.com and shared my top 5 tips for asking for a raise, and 3 things to avoid doing. I also shared a brief story about a client who successfully negotiated a more than 20% increase, in part by recruiting an ally for her cause. Click on the women dot com logo to check out the full article here:

My client was initially offered far less when she asked for a raise to a specific amount. She stuck with her number and ended up with more than a 20% salary increase. The added benefit: Her leader told her he appreciated how prepared she was for the conversation, and noted that she was being a great advocate for herself.

Boom! Profile raised.

The benefit of raising your profile can far out-weigh and even outlast any increase in salary, position, benefits or responsibility. Asking for a raise or promotion positions you as someone to take seriously. Someone who takes her work and her value seriously.

You can take the other road, keep your head down and focus on delivering great work, and hope they notice and reward your efforts, without your having to ask for it.  But let me ask you:

How’s that working for you?

Here’s some math: Over the course of your career, you could be leaving behind $1,500,000 by not asking. That’s a lot of zeros. A lot of shoes — a lot of family vacations– a lot more time in good health.

If you aren’t asking for more because you are nervous, afraid or unsure of what to say, this only means that asking for a raise is not familiar to you. Get some help from someone who can help you figure it out, help you practice and rehearse the conversation. Work with a coach or advisor, or a peer who has done it successfully. Join a community where others are practicing these new skills too.

Then buckle up buttercup! Grab a bit of courage and go ahead and ask!

I’d love to hear any of your experiences with how asking for a raise has raised your profile. I know we can all use hearing some encouraging stories.
Women negotiating

The 5 Cs to Authentic Negotiation

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Last week I had the privilege of speaking at the Vancouver Chapter of Lean In Canada on the topic Master the Art of Negotiating and Get the Yes! Vancouver Chapter President Florence Yeung neatly summarized the key points from my talk on her own Blog. Her article so nicely captures my five-point authentic negotiation model I am sharing it here in full, with Florence’s permission:

Can you use better negotiation skills?

I think all of us can. Most women are afraid of negotiating and are 2.5X more likely to feel anxious about it than men.

I recently attended an event where the guest speaker, Carrie Gallant, taught us the 5 C’s to negotiate authentically and found these tips to be helpful so I want to share it with our readers with Carrie’s permission.

CLARIFY TO AMPLIFY

Be clear about what it is you are negotiating about. Are both sides clear on what is at stake and what is being negotiated? Laying out a clear and focused foundation for the negotiation helps set the stage for a successful negotiation.

CONNECT TO PARTNER AND PROFIT

When we think of negotiation we often feel like it’s us against them, it’s a win-lose situation. What needs to change with your mindset is that negotiating can be a partnership. A true ‘win’ in negotiation is when both sides get the majority of what they want, not when both sides ‘meet in the middle’.

So connect with your partner and grow the pie bigger, through understanding their objectives, how they want to be treated, and truly listen to understand their needs.

COLLABORATE TO CREATE YES

It can be as simple as using language such as ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ in your conversation. Similar to the point above, you want to take a collaborative approach, how can you both get what you want and grow the pie bigger overall? You will need to get creative with your options and potential outcomes, but that is what negotiation is supposed to do, flesh out all the options that could work for both parties.

CRAFT THE CONVERSATION

The best approach to take is to be calm and assertive. Easier said than done of course, but if you put in the necessary prep work to think through every possible scenario, every possible question and potential answer from your negotiation partner, you are much more likely to achieve success.

Some tactics would be to consider your openers, building your questions strategy, testing assumptions, and when to make an offer (whoever makes the first offer places an anchor for the negotiation).

One tool that is often overlooked in negotiation is silence. After you make your offer, don’t be in a haste to jump in and justify your needs, just stay silent, and wait for the other party to respond. Silence is golden.

COMMIT AND CELEBRATE

The end of a negotiation is perceived to be the point when both parties shake hands, signaling that an agreement has been reached. However, in Carrie’s words, a sprinter doesn’t stop right at the finish line, their adrenaline takes them far beyond the finish line before they can come to a complete stop. Agreement is great, but now you need ‘commitment‘.

  • Who is going to do what?
  • When are they going to do it?
  • How are they going to do it?

You need to outline all the next steps that need to be actioned to get the ball rolling, THEN you can celebrate.

While we have outlined some of the key negotiation principles Carrie shared with us during the event, there are many benefits to schedule a one-on-one with a negotiation expert like Carrie. They can help you built your negotiation strategy to get the most out of a salary negotiation, taking you further in your career.

Original article posted on Florence’s site at Pendulum Magazine.

If you’re looking to build your negotiation and influencing muscles, check out the E.A.R.N. Your Worth™ Leaders Lab online program.

The Art of Wooing the Sale

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Book Review: The Art of Woo

Note: A version of this article appeared in the June 2010 Edition of Make It Business: Inspiring Small Businesses to Think Big

Everyone sells.

Whether you like it or hate it; are good at or, well, suck at it.  We are all salespeople, of one kind or another.

Whether you are a small business owner negotiating with Wal-Mart, a lawyer looking for new clients, or planning your summer vacation with your spouse, you are always selling. Selling widgets, selling your business plan to financers, or selling your vacation hot-spot to your spouse – it all starts with your idea that you want them to buy, or buy into.

What if you add a little romance?  What if you WOO them?

The Art of Woo

That’s exactly what G. Richard Shell and Mario Moussa propose in The Art of Woo:  Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas. “WOO” stands for “Winning Others Over” – an acronym adopted from Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton in their seminal work: Now Discover Your Strengths (since updated to StrengthsFinder 2.0.).

The Art of Woo starts with YOU. As with anything important successful persuasion, influence or negotiation depends a great deal on your preparation.  The early chapters are worth delving into, as they build the foundation for your preparation by assessing your persuasion style and the context.

The Art of Woo shows you how to:

  • Build a bridge to THEM, and their beliefs, language, and style
  • Connect your ideas to their goals
  • Pitch your proposal, and
  • Secure their commitment.

If you are looking to master the art of selling your ideas, study each chapter in depth, as each one is worthy of its own book. The first chapter Includes a quick and easy four-step guide. You will find “Ten Questions for Would-Be Wooers” in the Appendix.

Neither a light read nor a quick-fix solution, The Art of Woo is still an accessible read. Broadly applicable and rich with plenty of real-life examples – from Nelson Mandela to Sam Wharton – The Art of Woo is like a self-study version of a five-day workshop. Indeed, Shell and Moussa are Directors of the Wharton School’s Strategic Persuasion Workshop. Costing a fraction of their workshop, The Art of Woo is one of the most valuable business books out there.

My only beef with The Art of Woo is its matryoshka-like structure: nesting so many steps and processes within each other detracts from the elegant simplicity of the core four steps, and potentially confuses the reader. A trifling quibble in the end, as this book fully maps out relationship-based persuasion from start to finish.

Your Intentions Matter

Finally, The Art of Woo finishes right back with YOU – your character and integrity. Ending with a compelling real-life WorldCom-type tale of why it matters less whether you master the Art of Woo than what your intentions are when you Woo, the authors leave readers with a simple litmus test that reveals what kind of “idea salesperson” they are.

As in Shell’s previous book, Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People, character and ethics influence the bottom line.

And that won me over.

Like to read more? Check out other book recommendations in the Resources tab.

 

Scott McGillivray’s 6 Keys to Negotiation

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Knowledge Empowers You™.

Scott McGillivray used this trademarked K.E.Y. phrase in his short presentation on real estate investing. The popular host of HGTV’s Income Property and the new Buyer’s Bootcamp shared his wisdom and experience in the art of negotiation and real estate investing with flashes of his megawatt smile.

Scott sprinkled his presentation with some behavioural economics (think Robert Cialdini’s laws of influence) and positive psychology, with a quote from Shawn Achor at the end:

“The more you believe in your own ability to succeed, the more likely it is that you will.”

 

Scott shared a few key nuggets on the art of negotiating a great deal, which was number two in his list of ten things for real estate investors, right after education in the number one spot.

Highlights from Scott’s short tutorial on the art of negotiation:

  • Focus on fundamentals over emotion. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the excitement. Do your research.
  • Be savvy. Real Estate agents are savvy; buyers need to be savvy too.
  • Older is wiser. Bidding wars happen on properties that are recently listed. Look for properties that have been on the market for a while. Older listings don’t get as many views, and often mean the buyer initially listed over-value, then discounted. And many buyers are put off by discounted listings because they perceive there must have been something wrong. This creates an opportunity to…
  • Solve a problem for the seller. Sellers are motivated for many reasons outside of the sale price of their home. Maybe they need a short closing date. If you’re in a position to meet that need, you can probably exchange that for a reduction in the sale price. That worked for me in my first home purchase when I learned the seller had a 30 day close on their next home and wanted to avoid bridge financing. This knowledge and my counter offer netted me an 18% reduction in the sale price.
  • Be good at putting in offers and put in different types of offers.
  • Be firm on your price and be willing to walk away. (You’ve heard me say this one before.) Nine out of ten offers that Scott makes are rejected by the seller. And yet…he has a multi-million dollar portfolio of real estate investments.

What I liked most about seeing Scott’s presentation was his showing up consistently (one of Cialdini’s laws of influence). He shows up in person as the same person he shows up on his reality TV shows. I like how he treats people. After the show, I had a chance to speak with a few of his team, and they echoed my assessment – he’s the same guy to work with.

I recalled from an early episode on Income Property when Scott emphasized that treating your tenants well is good business. Give them a nice place to live and treat them well, and they will treat your property well. Yes!

When I was buying my first home in Toronto I wanted an income suite to support my single-income mortgage. My standard for the second suite was that it had to be something I would live in myself. It bugged me to see other income property owners with suites that were dirty, uncared for and substandard. How would you feel living there?

Scott shared a poignant story about a long term tenant who recently moved out. Scott’s practice in welcoming new tenants is to leave them a welcome card and a bottle of wine. This tenant left his apartment after nine years, with a card and a bottle of wine for Scott. The law of reciprocity in action!

A reminder again of my first house in Toronto. After viewing 30 homes before finding the right one, my realtor gifted me with a lovely bowl she saw me admire in a local café we frequented to compare notes after a viewing, PLUS a cheque for $300 to help fund my renovations to install a separate suite in the single family home. Now that’s class! I remembered that gesture, recommended her often, and I still use that bowl.

Scott obviously lives by what he teaches, and his passion for helping others do the same was evident in his message:

Knowledge without action is just data. Implementation is key to succeed. 

 

What can you implement from these lessons in your own negotiations?

If you’re looking to build your negotiation and influencing muscles, check out the E.A.R.N. Your Worth™ Leaders Lab online program.

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7 Signs You Could Be Under-Earning

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Are you Under-Earning?

Weighing Options-FreeDigitalPhotosNet-David Castillo Dominici-ID-10077789

You might be under earning – earning less than your worth – even if you make over six figures!

How do you know if you are?  There are several signs of under-earning, some common and some not so common.

Barbara Stanny defines an Under-Earner as “someone who makes less than she needs or desires despite efforts to do otherwise.”

Red Alert! Before you read further, I want you to stop. Even if you already recognize yourself here, be kind to yourself. Do not label yourself as an “under-earner”. Focus instead on the signs of under-earning behaviours. Because you can shift and even swap them out for more self-affirming behaviours that will move you closer to earning your true worth.

I collected quite a list of signs of under-earning behaviour from what I hear from my clients, in my speaking engagements and through informal surveys – and I’m going to share the Top Signs of Under-Earning with you over the next few weeks. I’m also going to share some tips that will empower you to overcome these signs of under-earning.

Empowerment begins with Awareness. Awareness of both your strengths and blind spots – where you may not be experiencing the results you could.

Let’s begin raising that awareness today.

Notice which of these signs show up in your life. You might be surprised!

7 Signs You Could Be Under-Earning:

Checkmark greenYou KNOW you are worth more than you are being paid. You’re just not sure how to prove that. You find it difficult to articulate what your worth is exactly, and are baffled how others seem to do it.

Checkmark greenYour strengths, talents or genius are your “best kept secret”. You often hear others say, “I didn’t know you could do that!” or, “I didn’t know you were an expert in that!”

Checkmark greenYou keep getting passed over for promotions or business opportunities. You see others getting ahead who are less qualified than you.

Checkmark greenYou are not working in your “Genius Zone” 80% of the time. Most of the time you do work that you could delegate or stop doing altogether. You could be leveraging your time doing what you are really good at, that comes easy for you, and has the biggest impact.

Checkmark greenYou sit on the outside ring at important meetings, gravitating to the social crowd rather than the influencer crowd. It’s easier to sit at the back and socialize with your peers, than to put yourself “out there”, sit in the hot seat at the Big Table. You shy away from standing out.

Checkmark greenYou stay in your “comfort zone” and don’t take any risks. You’ve been hurt or penalized before, and you don’t want to experience that again.

Each of these signs of under-earning is a symptom of the #1 Sign of Under-Earning on today’s list:

Checkmark greenYou are not Shining Your Light.

Rather than getting help (coaching, mentoring, training) to boost your capacity to handle difficult of situations that challenge you (having a difficult conversation, standing up for yourself, asking or negotiating for something), you hang back where it’s comfortable and stay small.

By being the Shrinking Violet rather than risking being cut down as a Tall Poppy, you are also shrinking from opportunities for others to SEE you, to see what you are capable of, to see your Genius.

If you are waiting for them to notice you…well if you are playing small, how can they? Find a way to let them know what you are up to.

If you think this is bragging, and you don’t want to “brag”, then re-think. Re-frame it as “sharing”. You’re already good at sharing right? Share what you are doing, what you are capable of, what you have achieved. HELP them to notice YOU.

Shining your light is not about being alone in the spotlight (although that’s okay too!). It’s about allowing your true self, your authentic self, your one wild and precious* self to shine. It’s about not dimming your own light.

Isn’t it time?

It is.

It’s time to stop under-earning. To start doing something that you CAN do right now.

What is one step you could take this week that would shine your light, just a little bit more?

Share your plans in the comments box below.

If you resonate with one or more of these signs of under-earning or struggle with negotiating for your worth, I’m offering one of my E.A.R.N. Your Worth™ Breakthrough Session right now, on a first come, first served basis. With Gender Pay Day approaching in April, I’d like to help some people who know they’re in this situation and are up for shining their light, asking for or negotiating their true worth.

If you want one of these sessions, shoot me an email and let me know what you’re struggling with. Tell me a little bit about your situation, why you should get one of these sessions and we’ll book it.

 

*Acknowledgement to the delightful Mary Oliver and her poem Summer: “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?”

Mindful Leadership

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The Power of Mindful Leadership

June 24 @ 9:30 am – 5:00 pm

Carrie and CricketWhat do Emotional Intelligence guru Daniel Goleman, New York designer Eileen Fisher, and the Dali Lama have in common with corporate giants like Google, General Foods, Goldman Sachs, and Apple?

They are all committed to incorporating mindfulness practice and techniques into their lives and corporate culture in order to improve their bottom line by making better decisions, reducing stress, and living with more joy and creativity.

Focus, clarity, creativity, compassion, and courage.

These are the five qualities Harvard Business School professor Bill George believes create the right chemistry for today’s best leaders to succeed, the resilience to cope with the many challenges coming their way and the resolve to sustain long­-term success.

If you think about it, it just makes sense.

The foundation of real and powerful leadership is the ability to clear one’s mind, focus on what is important, and release the clutter borne of too much information and multi­-tasking.

Which of these leadership qualities and strengths do you bring to your team? How are you at self-­leading and moving through challenges? What gaps in your leadership are apparent to others that may not be apparent to you?

The Power of Mindful Leadership Intensive

Horses as prey animals live naturally in a constant state of mindful awareness. They spend most of their time playing awareness and leadership games with each other in order to hone their survival and leadership skills. As SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) in leadership and mindfulness, horses can teach us a lot about our own leadership and mindfulness skills.

This experiential workshop will immerse you in the qualities and competencies of mindful leadership through engagement with the horses in simple ground exercises, as well as group discussions and debriefs. We will explore what mindful leadership means to us, how we are as leaders, what is working for us as leaders, and what the gaps are in awareness and how to resolve them.

What can I expect? 

You will:

  • Have a deeply personal and insightful experience with the horses as well as with the other workshop participants
  • Expand your awareness of your strengths and areas of growth as a Mindful Leader, including your impact on others and your relationships
  • Align your vision of yourself as leader with your actions and behaviour
  • Learn how to move through the states of awareness to resolve challenges
  • Apply what you learn to gain a better understanding of your presence as a leader and to fully embody and sustain the improvement to your mindful leadership.

Who is this for?

Professional women who want to up their game and expand their leadership skillset and emotional intelligence through mindful awareness.

Enrolment is limited so book early! Click here to register 

The fee for the day includes catered lunch and refreshment breaks. Please wear comfortable layered clothing suitable for the outdoors as we will spend some of the time outside with the horses. Boots or sturdy footwear is required. Non-refundable deposit: $150

Relevant Reading:

Developing Mindful Leaders for the C-Suite, Harvard Business Review, Bill George, http://bit.ly/1g2Q0lg

The Focused Leader, Harvard Business Review, Daniel Goleman, http://bit.ly/1EHUPMR

Future of Work: Mindfulness as a Leadership Practice, Forbes, http://onforb.es/1ipkM9T

EQ = ML + (A+C) + CC, Blog post, Evelyn McKelvie, http://bit.ly/1EeDQPX

 

Choose Registration Type


+ GOOGLE CALENDAR+ ICAL EXPORT

Details

Date: June 24
Time: 9:30 am – 5:00 pm

Venue

Wisteria Acres
8648 Armstrong Road
Langley, British ColumbiaV1M 2R3 Canada+ Google Map
 
Questions? Let us know…

Five Truths about Women, Negotiation & Money

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No economic skill has as much riding on it  as does negotiation

~Leigh Thompson, Northwester University

Women and Money

This is especially true for women – research shows that in simple negotiations – like a salary or a car negotiation – women do worse than men. Two things most women will negotiate several times in their lives!

The Hard Truth:

Negotiation is about an exchange of value, and historically women have not had their own economic value to exchange, with two exceptions (and oldest “professions”: Mom, and well, you know the other one).

Plus, the idea of “negotiation” turns many women off – the models for negotiating appear too masculine, or aggressive. Research supports this; re-frame “negotiation” into “opportunities for asking” and women fare better.

The Good Truth:

Negotiation is a learnable skill, both art and science. The same research showed that when women are empowered with the skills and knowledge, they can negotiate results as good as or better than men. Women tend to be inherently more adept at listening, empathizing with others; connecting and building relationships – all skills that are fundamental in negotiating effectively.

When women are empowered to see these “feminine” skills as valuable, they do better.

The Long Truth:

Negotiating is also a way of life; standing up for what is important to you (including your ability to help others).

Fundamentally negotiating is about asking for what you want, influencing others to cooperate with you, and as importantly, it’s about saying “no” to what you don’t want & negotiating something better.

Other Hard Truths:

The biggest challenge for women is negotiating for themselves – and surprisingly this includes high-level executive and professionals who negotiate for a living. Some barriers that cause this difference include messages about what a woman “should be” or can be; about money and who should make it, manage it and keep it. We have some work as a society to help change these expectations of both women and men.

Here’s the critical factor that bottom-lines Leigh Thompson’s quote from the introduction: women have a longer-term economic and financial life span than men. Not only is a woman expected to live longer, but 60 is now the new 40 and many women are bearing and raising children later in life. Tolerating gender pay inequity and getting paid less than you are worth is not a viable strategy.

The good news is that women everywhere are waking up. Women in the public eye, celebrities like Robin Wright are taking their pay equity issues public.

Organizations are losing talented women in their 30s when gender pay practices are revealed as less that equal.

More than ever, its time for a woman to ride her own white horse – take the reins and be a “Gallant Leader” in your own life!

Negotiate your best life; manage your own economic well-being. If you’ve ever been on a trail ride, you know the best thing about riding your own white horse is riding the trail with those you love!

If you’re looking to expand your negotiation skill set, mindset and action set, check out the upcoming Professional Negotiation and Influencing program in Vancouver June 16-17. Grab your copy of the complimentary Gallant Negotiator Blueprint.

Firsts ARE Relevant

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Female Jockey

When was a girl, I wanted to be the very FIRST female jockey. I was horse-mad. If you ever have been, you know what I am talking about. It consumed me. My imagination, my time and my reading list. Whenever I could, the horse-madness consumed my weekends at “the barn”. I ran the scholastic book club mail orders in my class; I would spend all of my allowance to max out the minimum order of five books if there weren’t enough orders, just to get the one I really wanted about a horse. I could rattle off every winner of the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes and the few Triple Crown winners.

Secretariat was my hero. Really. I don’t remember having human heroes (male or female) as a girl. I wanted to be in it. I wanted to fly with Secretariat, to be the lucky person who could fly that fast attached to his back like – well like a fly. His primary jockey, Ron Turcotte, was Canadian. I was Canadian too, and small enough, so I just KNEW. Knew with the unwavering clarity and belief that a child can have. Knew that I could do it. That WE could do it. The horse and I.

I think I was 7 or 8 when my “dream” of being the first female jockey was dashed. Diane Crump took the reins in her first professional race in 1969, then 1970 as first female jockey in the Kentucky Derby. (It would be another 23 years before a woman jockey won a Triple Crown race, when Julie Krone won the Belmont Stakes.

That was a barn-burner. Three short years later Bille Jean King famously challenged Bobby Riggs to a tennis match – and WON!!

Belief barriers were falling everywhere, just like when Roger Banister blasted through the barrier to the four-minute mile. No one thought it could be done, would ever be done. Or SHOULD be done, in many cases for women.

Turns out, it was just a thought. A thought in Roger Banisters case, that it was humanly, physically impossible. A thought in Billie Jean King’s case, that it was womanly, physically impossible. A thought, in Diane Crump’s case, that allowing a woman jockey would ruin the “sport of Kings”.

As a girl, somehow I just knew it WAS possible for a female jockey to make it in a sport dominated by men. Women are smaller right? Many race horse exercisers are women for that reason. Isn’t this the one sport where it made sense for women to compete against men?

There was something even then in my attraction to FIRSTs.

I used to think all this focus on FIRST when I was a girl was part of my inner competitiveness, a desire to push myself. What I see now, is that my excitement to want to be the first female jockey, then the  first female race car driver – that was about my wanting to be all that I COULD be, and wanting to prove that I could, that a woman COULD do those things.

The notion of being First, was really about my needing to see someone in the saddle that looked like me. I wanted someone in the race that looked like I did in my imagination. It wasn’t fair that these jockeys and race car drivers didn’t look like anyone like me. A girl. How would it be possible for me to cure horses’ diseases (my bigger WHY in my grade eight science project examining the heartbeat of horses) if I didn’t see the world as possible for me?

When Diane Crump took the pole as the first female jockey, I turned my sights to another sport most similar in my mind – race car driving! That looked like fun! Remember, I was twelve. I didn’t have a drivers licence, or even a motorcycle, yet. Until a woman stepped into that pole position, I figured it could be me, or it had to be me. So someone else would know it was possible, damn it, to be what I wanted to be.

These FIRSTs, these women who did it First – they are critical to all of those girls and women who are hungry to be ALL that they can be. It’s not “irrelevant” to name and honour these FIRSTs.

And now we actually see women who could be on that famous U.S Army commercial (circa 1981): Be all that you can be…

Side note: I almost went to the RMC – Royal Military College, partly as a result of that commercial. I WANTED to be all that I could be! Plus, I might have thought I would please my father, who fought in WWII as part of the 1st Special Services Force. But I doubt it would have; he hardly ever talked about those years, he’d seen too much.

These FIRSTs are HEROES. To get to the starting pole, they must endure more than any other competitor, or leader. Diane Crump needed a police escort to push through the mayhem at her first professional race, past shouts of “Go back to the kitchen and cook dinner!” 

As Michelle Payne, first female jockey winner of the 2015 Melbourne Cup said:

“I want to say to everyone else, ‘get stuffed’, because women can do anything and we can beat the world.”

Cue Beyonce.

#YouAreEmpowerment

Jody Wilson-Raybould

On Luck, Justice and Firsts. #YouAreEmpowering

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Sometimes amazing opportunities drop in your lap. You might even call it luck. And other times, amazing opportunities come your way because you’ve worked hard your whole life, powered by a vision and passion and sought out the best people to work with and the best environment to realize your vision and passion.

The first happened to me serendipitously this Saturday. I showed up at 10 am for the CoRe Writers’ Group at the UBC Alumni Centre, where we planned to find a quiet spot to write for two hours. Those plans were immediately jettisoned when we learned about a gathering upstairs, to hear the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Jody Wilson-Raybould, share her plans and priorities with Allard Law.

What luck!

Indeed, what luck to hear her speak, openly, powerfully and inspiring. What luck to catch a brief moment of her time after her private reception with a group of students. What luck for her to step into Canada’s most important lawyer!

Scratch that last one. That one is not due to luck.

This is that “other time” when amazing opportunities come your way. The Honourable Minister of Justice and Attorney General Wilson-Raybould is where she is today due to her own hard work, and hard choices, seizing an opportunity to run when her vision and passion was tested (in a watershed conversation with Stephen Harper). And to the hard line of PM Trudeau that his cabinet would be the first gender-balanced cabinet in Canadian history.

Wilson-Raybould is in the land of Firsts.

First and foremost, she is a First Nations leader and formerly the British Columbia regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN). “Puglaas” is Wilson-Raybould’s We Wai Kai name, which means “woman born to noble people.” It is also her twitter handle.

She is THE First-ever indigenous Justice Minister and Attorney General of Canada. That means she is also THE First indigenous woman to hold the office of Canada’s top prosecutor.

She is one of only two indigenous cabinet members, another First for Canada. (Inuk MP Hunter Tootoo, a former speaker of Nunavut’s legislative assembly, is Minster of Fisheries and Oceans and the Canadian Coastguard.)

One of 15 women cabinet ministers, a First ever gender-balanced federal cabinet.

Member of the First group of cabinet ministers tasked with transparent accountability to Canadians. 

As we celebrate International Women’s Day 2016, and the Pledge for Parity, it is so important to recognize those Firsts. The ones who make it possible for others.  Who lift others as they climb. Who look different, so others see themselves represented, and still others experience the value in diversity.

Among the many things that make Jody Wilson-Rabould different from her predecessors is her message of reconciliation.

Reconciliation for indigenous peoples in Canada, the disproportionately high rates of incarceration for indigenous women (41% of female inmates) and men (25% of male inmates), as well as for the families of the murdered and missing First Nations women.

And reconciliation within the processes of the court system, especially the criminal justice system. Her message on Saturday at UBC was the strongest I’ve heard on the potential for a clear role for Restorative Justice.

Wilson-Raybould’s track record with consensus-building gives hope for her success here, as well as within parliament as a whole working toward consensus instead of pugnacious partisanship. And seeking consensus driven approaches with other federal cabinet ministers to find the “best” answer on issues such as assisted dying.

“We like to believe every voice counts; not just the voices of fear.”

Listening to Wilson-Raybould, I was overwhelmed with hope. Hope for reconciliation. Hope for civility. Hope for integrity.

I also felt proud. Proud to be a lawyer. Proud to witness what to me is the best in being a lawyer – shaping the way peoples are in community. With each other.

She’s definitely a First in my books.

 This is my Canada on IWD2016. #YouAreEmpowering

Contract Negotiation Basics for IT Consultants

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I was interviewed recently by Insureon for my contract negotiation tips for IT Consultants.  I was impressed by the listening skills of my interviewer, Joshua Scott, as  he captured my comments accurately. Here is the article posted on Insureon’s blog:

Client Contract Negotiation Basics for IT Consultants

Insureon Blog

Talking with people can be scary. Talking with business people over an important contract can be really scary. But you don’t have to be a cutthroat, high-powered, $1000-suit-wearing type to excel at the art of negotiation. In fact, the average IT consultant should be able to wheel and deal well enough to secure good contracts throughout their career.

Don’t know how?

Carrie Gallant (@GallantLeader), negotiation expert and president of The Gallant Leader and Gallant Solutions Inc., offers advice for how IT consultants can better negotiate a fair and beneficial contract with their clients. One benefit of getting better at negotiating? You’re less likely to need to make a claim on your IT consultant insurance.

When Negotiating IT Contracts, Clarity is Key

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