Hands-on Workshop – Ji Eun (Jamie) Lee

Category: Hands-on Workshop (page 1 of 2)

Avoid the 3A Trap 😬😔😡

Yours Truly Speaking at Baystate Health Women’s Empowerment Summit

Every time I talk about negotiation, I encounter the 3A trap.
What I mean is, someone in the audience invariably describes the 3A Trap — as defined by William Ury in The Power of Positive No — as her experience of negotiating in the workplace.

The 3A’s stand for:

Accommodate: You give in.

You say yes when you don’t want to. You take on the extra workload, but without the recognition or reward. You don’t speak up to address your needs, because you’re afraid of upsetting your boss, your partner, or your colleagues. You accommodate out of fear of losing the validation and approval of others. This is a trap I personally have a lot of experience with.

It’s the path of least resistance when you want to make sure they still like you, even when you hate yourself for having undervalued yourself.

Avoid: You put up walls.

You avoid having the awkward and difficult conversation altogether. It upsets me when other people do this to me. For example, have you ever had an important discussion postponed, only to be postponed again…and again? “Yeah, sure, we can talk about compensation next quarter / next review cycle / next year.” (Might as well be next lifetime!) Or have you ever sat in icy cold silence at the table after a topic of contention was mentioned, only to be ignored?

It can be as convenient to avoid as it is to accommodate. Why brave a difficult conversation, when you can easily hide behind a wall?

Attack: You lash out.

Should You Negotiate for the Sake of Negotiating?

March 26, 2016 / jieunlee / 0 Comments

Earlier this week, I had the delightful privilege of leading Negotiation Prowess workshop for women grad students at Columbia University.

It was fun, and I dare say a success!

The individual questions from attendees were specific and challenging, and I’ve been mulling on them ever since.

Which made me see that there were two key recurring themes. Allow me to explain…

1. Should you negotiate for the sake of negotiating?

No and yes.

Let’s start with no. Don’t negotiate for the sake of negotiating. Don’t negotiate because I told you to. Don’t negotiate because your friends or parents tell you to.

Which might sound bonkers to you, especially if you’ve heard me talk or have been reading this newsletter where I stress how YOU SHOULD ASK FOR MORE.

If work is ubiquitous, then what is a workspace?

February 21, 2015 / jieunlee / 3 Comments

What is a workspace and what makes it ideal?

For the self-motivated, the workspace is an environment where you find yourself with access to a smart device and high speed internet while you have the drive, focus and creativity to make sh!t happen. Think airports, coffee shops, bathroom stalls and couches. Home and away. Wherever you go, there you are in your portable workspace, planning your work and working your plan.

DailyWorth covers Hands-On Negotiation Workshop

December 12, 2014 / jieunlee / 0 Comments

Love this recap article by Koa Beck, Senior Editor at DailyWorth. DailyWorth is a leading online publication focusing on women’s financial health.

When you negotiate, remember that it’s a discussion.

Jamie Lee reminded us that when negotiating anything, both parties have their objectives. While it’s imperative to prepare for negotiations, the point is not necessarily to blurt out a rehearsed script and then clam up and wait anxiously for your prize. Negotiation is about listening as much as it is about being clear on what you came for — but pivot appropriately based on the response.

Remembering that negotiating is a conversation is also helpful if you stumble into some pushback. “No” doesn’t necessarily mean no until the end of time. “No” is not a rejection of you, Jamie says. Sometimes it simply means “not right now.”

#BullCon14 Workshop Recap: Savvy Negotiation for Bigger, Bolder and Better

November 30, 2014 / jieunlee / 0 Comments

First day of #BullCon14, I’m checking in at the Surfcomber, and the friendly hotel staff behind the reception desk points to the Bullish banner and asks, “What’s that?” So I tell him, “Oh, it’s a conference for ambitious and feminist women. And that’s the brand logo. The founder co-opted the male symbol of power and put a unicorn horn on it to represent feminist unicorns” And he says, “Wow, I mean…just the bull itself is frightening enough.”

One of the things I’m most grateful for and proud of in 2014 was successfully negotiating a return to Bullish Conference by Jennifer Dziura. Dubbed a Powerful Summit for Ambitious Women, Bullish Conference is a glorious and busy weekend spent learning and rubbing sun-kissed elbows with an impressive assortment of astute businesswomen — or gentlewomen in Get Bullish parlance — at the vividly colorful Surfcomber Hotel in Miami.

Guest Post from Talley Henning Brown: What I Learned from ‘Improv Your Way To Negotiation Prowess’

October 12, 2014 / jieunlee / 0 Comments

Talley Henning Brown works as Editor at Daggerwing Health. She attended Improv Your Way to Negotiation Prowess workshop and was kind to share what she learned from the experience in this excellent guest post:

Philosophies abound about how women should approach the many difficult angles of “empowerment in the workplace.” It’s 2014, so at this point, the entire female workforce has grown up in the age of “women’s studies” and every perspective that movement has birthed. What I have found in my adult life is that most of those perspectives are just a little too limited — and thus limiting.

How to Ask for More at Work

July 19, 2014 / jieunlee / 0 Comments

Three years ago, I had some friends over for a casual get together on a summer evening. There were introductions, the usual small talk, wine, and snacks. The conversation turned to work.

A friend complained, “I’m totally getting burned out at work. And I know I’m getting underpaid, but I don’t know what I should do. Should I look for another job? Ugh, a job hunt feels so daunting, like so much extra work.”

To this, another friend, a really smart and ambitious woman I looked up to, made a comment that lit a light bulb in my head.

She said it rather nonchalantly. She said, “You know, you could ask for more. If you’re good, there’s always room in the budget. You can always ask for more. But you gotta ask well.”

Negotiating Sooner Than Later at Athena Leadership Center

March 9, 2014 / jieunlee / 0 Comments

On February 25th, I had the pleasure of reprising Negotiating Sooner Than Later workshop at Athena Leadership Center at Barnard College.

On the heels of last October’s hour-long workshop, February’s workshop was extended and improved, with mock negotiation sessions that addressed the here, now, and later of negotiation for college students. I addressed negotiation as a life skill directly applicable to academic life as well as useful in professional life — more specifically, for conflict resolution and for salary negotiation.

Barnard students practiced negotiating with a partner for mutually agreeable solutions in three different scenarios:

1) negotiating with a classmate to resolve time conflict while working together on a class presentation

2) negotiating as an intern to establish their value to a potential employer

3) negotiating an an employee for compensation

Each round was punctuated with open discussion on specific negotiation frameworks. Students took away specific tactics and word-for-word scripts for negotiating for mutual win outcomes.

I really enjoy facilitating workshops with college students and look forward to doing more in 2014.

Negotiation Prowess at Inaugural Get Bullish Conference in Miami

December 1, 2013 / jieunlee / 2 Comments

I woke up this morning dreaming of palm trees and a Miami sunrise along my jogging path. Had I dreamed it all?

Nope.

This weekend I spent a delightful 24 hours in Miami, where I led the seventh iteration of Hands-on Workshop for Negotiation Prowess at the inaugural Get Bullish Conference, produced by the impressive Jennifer Dziura. #BullCon blogger Emily Brown covered the event here.

Here’s a short video of yours truly, explaining what Negotiation Prowess means.

When we hear the word negotiation, the most common knee-jerk reaction is to think of money. And money is a sensitive issue, because we associate it with personal worth. Every time I speak on the topic of negotiation, I try to widen the scope of thinking around negotiation. In reality, we negotiate nearly every facet of our lives. Every day, we set and reset boundaries by negotiating conflicting desires and interests that we encounter in ourselves as well as in other people.

On the flight to Miami on Friday, I was reading “A is for A$$hole: The Grownup’s ABCs of Conflict Resolution” by one of my negotiation mentors, Victoria Pynchon. She defines negotiation as a

resolution of a problem by way of communication, and communication is not simply the language of words, but also of feelings, hunches and intuition…[and the] constant enemy of clear communication is fear.

I bookmarked this page, because it encapsulates the heart of my message in Negotiation Prowess. The message being, of course, that we need not let fear talk us out of taking action on asking for the things we desire.

Fear blinds us into thinking we are more limited than we actually are. The intent of mock-negotiation sessions in Negotiation Prowess is to overcome fear through action, by practicing the ask in a safe space and being open to feedback for improvements. At #BullCon yesterday, the attendees and I had the great pleasure of engaging in mock negotiations at the pool-side cabanas of the Surfcomber Hotel. Not a bad way to grow the negotiation muscle.

The caliber of attendees really impressed me. They hailed from all over the country and from careers in academia, international development, technology, and media. They are future leaders, founders and CEOs, who are serious about growing their negotiation skills.

At mock-negotiation session, I partnered up with a woman who initially thought she had very little bargaining power and was unsure how she could articulate her value to a prospective employer. But once we dug deep for her value, she found she had a lot to offer and great negotiation skills to boot.

“I’ve worked ten years in this field, starting from the very bottom and I’ve done just about everything at the company,” she said. “I know the median salary is X, and I would like to ask for the top end of the range, but I don’t know how to ask for that.” So I probed her a bit further, to see if she could back her value proposition with specific details, facts, and figures. “My role in account management is very hard to quantify,” she said.

So I asked her to tell me a story in which she played a crucial role in saving an account. She realized she had a great story to tell, of how she once saved one of the most widely recognized luxury brands from leaving the agency. She accomplished this through her calm demeanor and relationship management skills. She realized she could articulate her value by qualifying her skills, tying them to a specific benefit her employer received from them (i.e. saving a huge global account), and projecting confidence.

In the beginning of our session, she thought she couldn’t negotiate for herself. Once we got into the mock negotiation, however, she surprised both of us with how well she actually did. After countering my initial offer, she leaned back into her seat and calmly said, “well, I appreciate the offer. I’d like to think this overnight.” To which she later added, “Tell me about the company’s employee benefit program. Is there room for improvement in my vacation package?” From the perspective of a hiring manager eager to fill a position, the first statement creates a sense of urgency, and the second statement brings to the negotiation table non-monetary compensation.

I’m deeply grateful for many who made the Miami workshop possible. I’m really grateful to Carol Frohlinger, another great negotiation mentor who connected me to Jen Dziura. I’m grateful to Gwen Taylor, my collaborator and mentor who gave me the encouragement I needed to say yes to this wonderful opportunity.

2013 Fall update

October 27, 2013 / jieunlee / 0 Comments

Starting this month, I now work as Director of Business Operations at TreSensa, NYC-based mobile tech startup that leverages HTML5 to distribute game content across various platforms. TreSensa has been a consistent and generous venue sponsor for several of my equity classes and negotiation workshops in the past. It also happens to be where my life partner Charles Parra works as a SVP of Product. We are blessed in that we don’t mind spending about 23 hours out of 24 hours in a day within 10 feet of each other. I first started doing contract work for TreSensa back in May, translating games into Japanese. Over time, the scope of my work eventually increased to financial management, administration, and now content distribution. I went from working part-time to full-time. I feel very fortunate in that I’m able to use the full range of my skills — linguistic, analytical, and operational — in this new position.

I continue to hold workshops and speak on the topic of workplace negotiation for professional women. Two weeks ago, Hands-on Workshop for Negotiation Prowess, a follow-up to August’s workshop was held at Sapient Nitro. It was a great event featuring guest speakers Heather John, attorney at Reitler Kailas & Rosenblatt, Kim Baird, IT recruiter with Connections of New York, and Kim Rudolph, recruiter with Google.

Kim Baird, Kim Rudolph, Heather John, and Ji Eun (Jamie) Lee at 10/16/13 Workshop

Kim Baird, Kim Rudolph, Heather John, and Jamie at 10/16/13 Workshop

My goal for the workshops is to create community learning experiences, where knowledge is shared and skills developed through interaction among professional women.

It takes bravery to strike up a conversation with a complete stranger. And courage to negotiate, or even mock-negotiate, for yourself. At this workshop, the attendees impressed me with their bravery, courage, and action.

Audience engaging in mock-negotiation 10/16/13 workshop. Yes, men are welcome, too!

I have a number of speaking engagements coming up. Next week, I’m leading the inaugural Athena Leadership Lab workshop on negotiation at Barnard College. The following week is a webinar on workplace negotiation for the Smith College Alumnae Association. Later in November, I’m leading another hands-on workshop for GetBullish conference in Miami.

Blessed with the abundance of work.

Ji Eun (Jamie) Lee

Professional Speaker & Negotiation Trainer