Give and Take: a revolutionary Approach to Success pdfdrive com

relational account
—an explanation for a
request that highlights concern for the interests of others, not only oneself. When
women ask for a higher salary, they run the risk of violating expectations that
they will be “other-oriented and caring, giving rather than taking in character,”
Babcock writes with Hannah Riley Bowles. Whereas women may be uniquely
worried that assertiveness will violate gender norms, givers of both sexes worry
about violating their own reciprocity preferences. If they push too hard, they’ll
feel like takers, rather than givers. But when givers are advocating for someone
else, pushing is closely aligned with their values of protecting and promoting the
interests of others: givers can chalk it up to caring. And by offering relational
accounts, givers do more than just think of themselves as agents advocating for
others; they present themselves as agents advocating for others, which is a
powerful way to maintain their self-images and social images as givers.
This reasoning proved relevant to Lillian Bauer when she decided to stop
letting clients treat her like a doormat. “I want to be generous, and I build trust
with clients, but that doesn’t mean they can walk all over me,” Bauer notes. To
decline requests from clients that fell outside the scope of a project, she used a
combination of advocacy and relational accounts. Starting with advocacy, Bauer
began to think about herself as an agent for the consultants on her team. “Givers
have a protective side. In negotiating with a client, I feel a lot of responsibility
for my team, and it makes me more willing to draw a hard line.” Then, she
developed a habit of articulating this responsibility to her clients: “When a client
makes an unreasonable request, I explain that it’s going to stretch my team, or
kill them working crazy hours. The client knows I will bend over backward to do
what’s right for them, so when I do push back, it has a lot more impact: there’s a
good reason for it.”

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