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Why Pushback?

Picture someone who challenged you to stretch what you could do. Did they vouch for your skills? Put an opportunity on your path that made a difference? Encourage you to think bigger than before?

I can vividly remember a time when someone encouraged me to be my own best advocate, and it made all the difference. I was an MBA student in 2008, and I was lucky enough to direct some of my own research. And I knew *just* what I wanted to do! Interview C-level women across industries to learn their biggest leadership lessons.

The problem: I didn't know a single woman in the C-suite, and I didn't have any connections to them either. I felt desperate, discouraged, and on my own.

The solution came unexpectedly: One of my professors at Johns Hopkins—Dr. Lindsay Thompson—said, “Selena, I'll approve your research on one condition: you have to go after the giants. Go after the women you think will say no.”

*Gulp*. Until that point, I had only considered interviewing some of the manager-level people in my immediate network. But, taking Lindsay's advice to advocate for more, that's exactly what I did. And you know what? A huge number of top-level women said yes—30, to be exact! Those interviews transformed me, and I knew what I'd learned could help others. That research became my first book, which became my business and life's mission: to propel early- and mid-career women into top echelons of leadership and help organizations retain and engage their female workforce. That act of asking opened up door after door.

Often, behind every powerhouse is a team of people who have their back. That's where your confidence mentors come in. To understand how women leaders have negotiated their career success, I sought out specific data, turning to a set of 20 women leaders in the top echelons of their fields. I had the pleasure of sitting down with these women in hour-long mentoring sessions, to hear in their own words about the learning, mistakes, observations, and successes they'd experienced with self-advocacy.

Women Leaders Get There by Asking

In interviewing these leaders, I learned that women who achieve leadership status don't wait to be noticed. They challenge long-standing beliefs. They pushback on the “good-girlisms” with which they grew up: “be seen and not heard,” “always be nice,” “take just enough,” and “don't be too outspoken.” They don't take “no” as a final, damning answer, nor do they allow rejection to create a deeply personal wound. On the contrary, to survive in a top role, women executives ask for what they want. They're flexible on areas they care less about, and they're firm where it really matters. They don't accept what's unacceptable. They speak and maneuver with unapologetic power.

I started each interview by defining the term pushback to be certain we had the same foundation of understanding. The word is often used to mean resistance. I explained that I was using it more broadly—and more positively. In the context of those interviews and of this book, pushback represents the group of skills that allow us to take a stand, be firm, or advocate on our own behalf. It also encompasses our willingness to advance a cause, make a request, and persuade others of the merits of our view. We can use it to go after what we want, and we can use it to defend what is ours and what we need.

We're called on to pushback when:

• We're asked to chair an event. We want to say no, but our reflex is to answer yes.
• We're told that there are two paths for advancement at our job: option A and option B. We're interested in the nonexistent option C.
• We're interested in expanding our small business internationally, and we'll need to get our business partners, all of whom are satisfied with the status quo, onboard.
• We've had a strong year at work, hitting all of our targets, but we've just been notified we'll be receiving a 2.5% raise.
• We're shuttling our kids to their fifth doctor appointment in two months and fuming that we don't share this responsibility with our partner.
• We're being talked down to in a meeting, when in fact we have a master's degree in the subject at hand and 10 years’ experience in the field.
• We spend $250 on a long-anticipated meal for a special occasion, only to experience an evening of rude waitstaff and cold soup.
• We've just been assigned another administrative project when what we really want is to manage a client account.

Pushback is not always a formal process, as you can see from the previous examples. Sometimes a simple switch in the way we view our role can be enough to drive a negotiation or debate in a favorable direction. Seeing the other person in a non-deferential and a more equal, peer-to-peer way matters. Because the last thing you want to convey is that the other person is doing you a personal favor. Or that they're important—and you're not. If anything, you want to signal, “I 400% belong at this interview, in this boardroom, or at this meeting.” You can respect another person without making yourself small. That helps your confidence, your performance, and your outcomes too.

Self-Advocacy Matters Everywhere

A study of 136 women receiving care at an ultrasound clinic examined women's beliefs about their role in medical encounters with their physicians. Women who reported repeating information when they felt their doctors did not hear them, asking their doctors to explain information they did not understand, or reminding their doctors about screening tests were more likely to receive needed diagnostic tests than those who reported using these assertive behaviors less often. Interestingly, women who behaved assertively were more likely to view physicians as advisors in their health care and less likely to view their physicians as experts.1

And you know what? Pushback is not always about a grand issue or dealt with on a large scale. Each scenario, large or small, requires similar skills. If you're tackling a negative experience with a store manager or looking to challenge your boss, you'll need a firm voice, you'll want to be ready for a different range of reactions, and you'll have to be crystal clear about your main message. It's important to know where you won't give an inch and where you're open to considering alternatives and options or hearing their side. Ratchet this up to the top level—to Middle East peace negotiations, let's say—and you'll find that our world's leaders have to summon a similar mindset. See, pushback skills can be called on by anyone, anywhere, in any debate situation.

In my interviews for this book, I asked women questions about preparing for negotiations—navigating and communicating your way through them. I asked how they physically carried themselves in a tough conversation. I asked about the nuts and bolts of pushback how-to and about the inside dish—the stuff no one tells you about in the corporate world but that you need to know in order to thrive in it. I learned about how to gain self-worth, how to engage in office politics positively, and how engaging allies can drive the outcome of a pushback situation. I also probed the women about how they manage relationships after a tough conversation or when they're called on to hold repeated negotiations with the same person.

What caught my attention most in analyzing my data was the answer to a numerical question. I asked these women leaders, “Assuming a woman's career success equals 100%, what percentage is accounted for by her effectiveness in negotiating and pushing back?” Of the dozens of responses I heard, the answer was compelling. The executives I met with felt, on average, that a full 60% of a woman's career success hinges on her pushback skills. That's huge—think about how much opportunity there is in 60%! One interviewee said, “Pushback and being firm is a large part of your career. You have to operate like you're a shareholder and like you own the company.” Although technical skills, academic or business pedigree, and people skills are necessities for those who want to lead, command of your own voice and ability to advocate, according to successful women executives, ranks higher. You can assess for yourself how important pushback is in your particular industry and work environment, but the longer you spend in the corporate world, the more you'll find that 60% figure to be rather convincing.

After interviewing more than 50 women executives in writing my columns and books, instead of seeing negotiating and other pushback skills as one part of women owning their power at work, I've come to see it as the most important tool at women's disposal. What's more, it's a tool that the top women leaders I interviewed developed through practice, through experimentation. By committing to the art of asserting themselves and taking risks, these successful women became skilled at learning to negotiate, advocate, stand firm, and pushback. And so can you. This book will show you how.

The Sour-Sweet Taste of Negotiating

I'll never forget querying a room full of hundreds of women in a negotiation workshop with a...