Salary negotiations – why they make us feel so uncomfortable

I have always felt terrible at prospect of negotiating my salary. The first time I had to do it, I felt that my identity was attacked, like I had been ripped open and completely worthless. I couldn’t explain why, as it was more a talk than a real negotiation and – from a rational point of view – there was no evidence my boss was trying to screw me over.

“Being screwed over” was the key concept that hit me: While I usually am a trustful person, always giving people the benefit of the doubt, when it comes to salary negotiations I become the opposite. I distrust the other person and firmly believe that he/she will try to screw me over.

Where does this feeling come from? I hadn’t had so many bad experiences with this kind of negotiations. In fact, I had none. Maybe it is because we are generally taught that we have to negotiate really hard to avoid being screwed over in salary negotiations. Nobody teaches us to tell our employer to stop playing games if they want to have loyal employees. We are taught to play along, requesting a higher salary than what we can reasonably get, hoping that in the end we will get a fair offer.

To me, the reason why we feel so bad playing this game is because we dread being screwed over, not because we want to leave with the highest salary we can possibly get.

I have come to realize that my distrust in salary negotiations is unhealthy because it comes automatically and it is not based on real evidences. We can see this kind of distrust in people who have been cheated on in their relationships. Most people, when they discover an infidelity loose trust in relationships in general, and have a hard time recovering.

The problem with unhealthy distrust is that you can’t rely on your gut feeling because in these situations your emotions are blinded by default. When it comes to human interactions, however, gut feeling is essential because it comes from your subconscious , which can process information much quicker than your conscious thinking. When your gut feeling is blinded, however, you run the risk to misjudge the situation and make bad decisions.

Knowing why salary negotiations make me feel so uncomfortable is already an improvement. This awareness might help me retrain my gut feeling, enabling me to set my own rules because I prefer to put my cards on the table instead of playing games.

Written by Julia Heuritsch | Uploaded on 25th June 2018