Having a frank talk about money—feels awkward.
Thinking about having a discussion about your salary with your boss—feels terrifying.
We all feel this way at some point—aka you’re not alone.
But, what is it that makes talking about money so friggin’ scary? 🤷🏽♀️
REJECTION. (Or, to be a little less scary, just: rejection.) Or you know, the fear of it.
And, that’s totally normal. Rejection is one of our deepest human fears, and a big part of it lies in our fear of experiencing hurt and pain.(1) We so deeply don’t want to feel bad, that we’d rather just not express ourselves. We’d rather abort the whole thing than give someone the chance to reject us. We decide that talking about our salary “isn’t that important” or that “it can wait.” But what we really mean is: we’re about to sh*t our pants because “OMG, what if I’m told I’m not worth X dollars?”
The thing is, we’ve all been told “no” before and, as it turns out, we’re not dead or hiding in our rooms thinking it’s the end of the world.
Why not? Because it’s the way it happens that matters. It’s how the discussion goes that matters. It’s how we feel throughout the whole process that matters. Sure, the outcome is pretty important—everyone deserves to be compensated fairly. But we, believe that the process is actually way more important than the outcome.
So why should you trust me, Audrey, with this super uncomfortable topic? Well, actually before I wrote this article I couldn’t really give you a solid answer to that because: I had never, not even once, negotiated my salary with my boss! And now you're probably thinking: how could I have written this blog post about it then? How could I help people prepare for something I’ve never gone through myself?
As Head of Culture & People at gaiia, I know what the perfect salary discussion looks like in my mind. I know what I want it to feel like for our team members and our managers. I know that it should be an humble, open-minded, transparent, empathetic & honest discussion. Those are all part of our core values—the ideals we live by at gaiia—and that’s how I and everyone at gaiia wants all of our interactions to be. But, is that really how it goes?
That’s what I did, and wow was I not prepared for their answers. I knew gaiia wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t realize that our people felt so uncomfortable talking about their salary with their managers.
***It was just the worst experience for me! It was horrible because I was not prepared for it. I did not know how to go about discussing my salary with my manager.
I was pretty shook, but I was excited to talk about it. I knew talking about it was the only way we could get people to change how they feel about discussing their salaries. You know, sitting down, or in gaiia’s case, hanging out online and listening to the good and the bad they experienced when they talked about money with their managers.
If I am being honest with you (and I will be, because being honest and transparent is a big deal for everyone here), I was about to tell you that there’s no wrong way to ask for a raise. But, as I was sitting in my favourite coffee shop, looking through the window, thinking about it, I realized that this just isn’t true. There are, obviously, a few wrong ways to ask for a raise, just like there are wrong ways to deny someone a raise! These wrong ways are the reasons why a chat about your salary might go south.
However, I didn’t want the focus of this blog post to be about how to not ask for a raise. I wanted to take a stab at walking you through how to prepare for it, so that when you’re ready, it all goes as smooth as silk.
Alright, now let me revisit five words I used a few paragraphs ago: humble, open-minded, transparent, empathetic, and honest.
Of course I didn’t plant those for no reason, who do you think I am?! (Joking, joking. But seriously, they’re important.)
As I was having these conversations with our people at gaiia, I realized that all of their salary discussion stories were missing a good chunk of our core values. They were missing the most important ingredient: the gaiia culture.