I'm a recovering Overgiver.
At the age of 29, I knew it had to stop! I remember specifically when it hit me too.
I was a Senior Seminar Leader for a global consulting company sitting at the most beautiful mahogany board room table I had ever seen. There were 11 other facilitators sitting around the table with me preparing to facilitate a Sales Training for Sony the very next day.
When in comes the Director and she says we have an issue – the French management team from Sony would like one session in French and one in English. "Do we have any volunteers for French?"
J. Victor
USAA
"Corine Wofford is SMART, ENGAGING and RESULTS ORIENTED—all while making advanced concepts easy to understand and enjoyable to learn. I highly recommend her as an Instructor and Executive Coach.”
You could have heard a pin drop in that room...
But all I could hear was MY HEART BEATING SO LOUD it was about ready to burst out of my body!
I could hear the voice in my head saying...
Whatever you do Corine don’t tell them you speak French.
Wait do they know I speak French?
They don’t know I speak French!??
What if they know I speak French?!
Then it happened...my head was saying No and my hand was saying Yes!
I heard myself say, I’ll do it.
Oh my good Lord what just happened? Here comes the Director with the French English Leader’s Guide in hand
And that’s when I heard them laughing to my right.
3 Facilitators calling me a rookie and saying She probably didn’t even know she could have gotten more money for that.
Next came the sucker punch – they were discussing their rate of pay and I sat there with my heart sinking as I realized they were all making double what I was.
They were getting paid for the same content to the same level audience and I WAS DOING IT IN FRENCH!
I gathered up my things and headed back to my room – the whole time I was saying there you go again will you ever learn – How about saying No!
Nancy De Luca Stempel
The Learning Community International
“THANKS TO CORINE’S GUIDANCE, I just signed a lucrative contract with the Ambassador of Paraguay! The time I spent with Corine Wofford on negotiation was nothing short of LIFE CHANGING! Her expertise helped me with the clarity and confidence I needed to negotiate with all of my international clients.”
When I got to my room I made 2 decisions –
1st I was going to Serve at the Highest level and knock this French workshop out of the park.
2nd I was going to find out about how these per diems worked and figure out how to negotiate a higher rate of pay.
So that’s what I did.
The session was a big hit with the French entourage and then I had a conversation with the VP of our region about per diems.
At first, all we talked about was being Italian and worldwide travel. Then I wanted to understand first how the per diem schedule worked. It was very unclear.
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I recommended a system where all facilitators could clearly navigate a higher rate of pay based on the programs they were certified in. He liked it and soon
we had the program in place for all facilitators.
I negotiated an increase in my per diem moving forward and he offered a bonus based on my Sony project.
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None of this would have been possible if I didn’t ask for what I wanted!
As a women entrepreneur over 30 years I’ve since done a body of research around how men and women negotiate differently.
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The # 1 reason men said that they failed at negotiation was because they failed to develop the relationship first.
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The #1 reason women reason women cited as the reason they failed in negotiation was because they didn’t ask specifically for what they wanted.
Now as a business mentor to women entrepreneurs I know that women around the world believe that learning how to be better negotiators will make them stronger business leaders.
I believe it’s important to teach women Negotiation skills because when women make more money, they’re more willing and able to Give more back to their families, their communities and the workplace.
Negotiation is simply a skillset and a mindset you can learn so you can stop avoiding, caving in or giving up profits when you negotiate.
And ultimately with the confidence that comes from knowing when and how to negotiate, you will create better outcomes at home, in the workplace and the world. As an added bonus you become a better leader in the process!
And isn’t that what we all want? Stronger Business Leaders for a stronger world?