Donna Goodhand Click here to see full sized version.

“Have you got a couple of minutes? I won’t take much of your time, I just thought we might take a look at this.”

Women often use this kind of minimalizing language — and for women lawyers, it can undermine their ability to effectively negotiate.

The solution lies in learning the strategies necessary to develop a persuasive presence.

At a Women’s Law Association of Ontario seminar recently held in Toronto, Donna Goodhand, a leadership communications specialist, shared her ideas on how to achieve this goal. “People respond more to the person representing the cause than they do to the cause itself,” Goodhand said, emphasizing the importance of image. “If we want to be seen as leaders in our realm, if we want our ideas to be credited and our voices to be heard, then it’s essential that we take a persuasive presence into our encounters.”

Women lawyers need to develop their vocal presence, Goodhand said. She deliberately lowered her powerful voice to show the audience how a soft voice diminishes presence, effectively making her point. “We have been taught to use our indoor voices,” Goodhand said. “Girls in school are taught to silence themselves....  it’s good to be quiet.”

The use of soft voices hinders women’s presence and effectiveness in negotiation. To overcome this, Goodhand said, women should reach down into their bellies and their breath to speak, to reach people at a further distance.

“Most of the women I coach who think they’ve got a vocal presence only get about a third of the way down the boardroom table,” Goodhand said. “If I get them up to the full table, and that’s not even doing the whole room, they think they’re yelling.”

Goodhand also recommended avoiding a few gender traps, such as “undermining openers.” These include expressions such as “I guess what I’m trying to say,” “It’s probably just me,” “in my opinion,” or “I’m sorry” when you’re not. Diminishing endings, also a problem, include “isn’t it?”, “right?” or “you know what I mean?” These expressions should all be dropped, Goodhand said.

She explained that the use of these strategies is contextual. If undermining openers and diminishing endings are used in a rapport-building social encounter, they’re absolutely right. If they’re used in a competitive encounter such as legal negotiations, they’re deadly.

Context is critical when determining which bargaining style to use in a negotiation, said Delee Fromm, a negotiation coach as well as a lawyer and psychologist who offers presentation and negotiation coaching services to women together with Goodhand.

Negotiations can range from discussions about compensation to determining an agreement for a client to getting children to do their homework.

“There are five different bargaining styles. To be a really good negotiator requires that you learn to use all five, and how to use them appropriately,” Fromm said.

The first of the five is avoidance. This involves letting the other side come up with the solution. Fromm gave an example from her own practice, where she ignored a lawyer’s bluff in negotiations, resulting in the lawyer simply not raising the issue again. “Avoidance is letting someone else take responsibility for you,” Fromm said. “It avoids the escalation of conflict.”

Accommodation is the second bargaining style. “If you’re in a major negotiation and you’ve got multiple items (to deal with), you put the least contentious ones first, the ones you can give in on, to get momentum and build goodwill,” Fromm said. You give in on the items that aren’t important to you. Then, as you continue, you can start drawing on the goodwill to get the things that you do want, Fromm said. She noted that using accommodation all the time means that you never get everything you want.

A third style is compromise, known as ‘let’s make a deal,’ Fromm said. “If you have a contentious, competitive negotiation that’s been going on for months, when you get really close to the end, you say, let’s split it down the middle,” Fromm said. “It saves time and it saves effort. However, neither party gets exactly what they want.”

The competing approach, “my way or the highway,” is the fourth bargaining style. Donald Trump has made this style his own, Fromm said. “This is what most people in North America think bargaining and negotiation is,” Fromm said. “It is far underused by women in the general population. They feel very uncomfortable using it. But some of the best competitive (legal) negotiators I’ve seen are women.

We do tend to differ in that respect. We don’t like the gamesmanship involved with it, we find that personally offensive, but we can hold our own professionally.”

Fromm noted that this style tends to get overused by men. If women use it too frequently, there can be a backlash. Fromm said to soften an overly competitive approach, women can attend a school in California called the “Bully Broad School,” — drawing laughter from the audience.

The final style is collaboration, a natural fit for women, according to Fromm. “We’re hardwired for empathy and being interested in the other party, and this is the one where that works,” Fromm said. “With competitive (style), you know what you want... You lower the other side’s expectations about what they’re going to get. But with collaborative, you actually go in and you want to find out what’s important to the other side. Once you find out about those interests, you brainstorm, you come up with options...The agreement ends up being mutually beneficial.”

To become a really good negotiator requires that you learn all five styles and when to use them appropriately, Fromm said.
Janet Hoyt, director of professional development at Torys, regularly retains Fromm and Goodhand to coach women at her firm. The feedback has been phenomenal, Hoyt said. The one-on-one coaching leaves women “way more comfortable in their skin and with their presentation and the way they project.” Hoyt enjoys seeing women blossom under their tutelage.

“(Women need to) turn up the volume,” Hoyt said. “Women are polite, we want to do the right thing, we don’t want to step on toes, it’s how we all were raised.”

“The message here is not to become more like men,” Goodhand said. “Trying to do that will backfire, you’ll be down in California at the Bully Broad School.... There are huge disadvantages to not understanding the differences in gender. That does not mean less than, it simply means difference. If we respect that difference, we gain power.”