Book Origins and the Ongoing Journey

Book Origins and the Ongoing Journey

By Beth Fisher-Yoshida

New Story, New Power: A Woman’s Guide to Negotiation, took a few years to research and write, but it was a lifetime in the making. I have been working in the area of negotiation for more than 30 years, with its origins in my experience in intercultural communications. I lived and worked in Japan for 13 years, and being an independent, New York woman, meeting this very different culture head on was a rude awakening. Those encounters naturally led to my interest in cross-cultural conflict, partly from my own personal experiences and partly from observing what was around me. I put gender in the classification of being a culture.

Cultures socialize those born into them about how to be in that world. We are socialized to be a certain way, with a particular set of values and beliefs, habits, and ways of thinking and behaving that create the stories by which we live. We have our family stories that we carry and we have our own personal stories that guide us over time. Some of these stories are generative and lead us to where we want to be and others get in the way of us progressing. I was curious to know more about why some women carried stories that helped them at the negotiating table, while others carried stories that inhibited them, caused them stress, and got in the way of being effective negotiators. I wondered about the specific origins of these stories and how they influenced women negotiating?

As a scholar-practitioner, a large part of my world is in the academy and there is an orientation to grounding what I have to say in evidence-based research. I support this in the world of practice, as well: the difference is in how we gather data, what we are looking for, and how we use what we find. I interviewed hundreds of women, to find out more about they bring the stories they carry and by which they live to the negotiation table: women from across industries, with one study being solely focused on women in the STEM professions; women who were junior in their career, with five or less years of experience; mid-career women with 10-15 years of experience; and women who had more than 25 years of experience.

The findings from these studies matched what I was seeing in my coaching sessions with women and in the workshops I conducted on negotiation, leadership, and communication. Some of the findings showed that women carry stories from when they were very young to present times and these stories influenced how they prepared for and conducted themselves during their negotiations. I became curious about why some stories stuck with them more than others and how they manifested in their particular behaviors at the negotiating table, in their everyday interactions, and in their career advancement.

I also wanted to explore beyond the workplace and see how these stories appeared in their families, in their interpersonal dynamics with friends and romantic partners, in their everyday interactions. For me, research and practice inform one another, so that what I discover in research I apply in practice, and what I see showing up in practice I explore through research.

And I am certainly not immune to these same stories! I often say that I was born over confident and I have been managing it ever since. I grew up hearing stories about how I could be anything I wanted to be and I took those stories to heart. However, there were also stories of not being good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, and so on, that dampened the confidence-building stories. Even while writing this book, every now and then I would stop and question myself about whether I had the knowledge, experience, and credentials to be writing it. Then I would take a step back, fascinated that I was experiencing the same things I was writing about. Our narratives are so strong!

That meta-awareness amused me and helped me recalibrate. I reviewed the sources of the information I gathered from hundreds of women, many research studies, my own observations, and reassured myself I could and should continue. I was sharing with others what a collective of women find useful. Sharing this information and having otters learn, practice, and make it their own is the value. It builds confidence, while developing negotiation skills.

There are many wonderful research studies out there about women and how they are situated in the world of work. One challenge is that some of the findings are contradictory in that women are advised to advocate for themselves and to assert for what they want. Then other studies show that there is still backlash in some situations, because the systems in the workplace and other colleagues are not ready for this behavioral shift. There are advantages to bringing diverse perspectives and attributes into the mix, but the perception of sharing power is not often welcome.

There isn’t one story to guide all women in all situations. However, what this book can do is provide women with a road map of how they can better prepare for, conduct, and follow-up to secure their negotiations. Knowing there are tangible steps to take to become a better negotiator, even if it means just showing up, is empowering in itself. That was the purpose in my writing this book. Over the years I have continued to learn, grow, and notice what works and what doesn’t work, and that information is shared in this book.

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 BETH FISHER-YOSHIDA, PH.D., CCS, is a global expert and educator in intercultural negotiation and communication. She’s the program director of Columbia University’s Master of Science in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, a negotiation consultant for the United Nations, and the CEO of the consulting agency Fisher Yoshida International. She works in the U.S. and worldwide, conducting workshops on leadership, culture, workplace conflict, and negotiation, and boasts a client list that includes Fortune 100 companies, nonprofits, military and security forces, governments, NGOs, and educational institutions. Her new book, New Story, New Power: A Woman’s Guide to Negotiation (Bold Story Press; January 23, 2023), helps women of all ages make successful negotiations a reality. 

Find out more about Beth on her website https://bethfisheryoshida.com/

New Story, New Power: A Woman’s Guide to Negotiation

Most people internalize what they have been told about who they are and what they should want, not realizing how strongly it influences their decision-making. For women especially, it could inhibit their ability to successfully negotiate their relationships, careers, and futures. Carrying around cultural baggage of mixed messages, women are told in the same breath to go out and ask for what they want, but at the same time not be too assertive. These contradictory narratives, Fisher-Yoshida demonstrates, lead many women to wonder: Am I good enough? Do I have enough experience?

Yet, women continue to break the mold as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and representatives at the highest levels of government. What makes the difference? After interviewing more than 100 women at different stages of their careers about how they negotiate, in and out of the office, Fisher-Yoshida concluded that negotiation outcomes are often decided before getting to the table. The self-talk women engage in is one of the best predictors of their outcomes. In addition to personal insights and firsthand accounts, Fisher-Yoshida shares no-nonsense steps for disrupting negative self-talk and instead using that inner voice to channel better outcomes. With greater self-awareness women can change the stories by which they live and negotiate.

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing