Working Women; 201

Oh. There's a cartoon with the big boss addressing the little guy. A raise is out of the question Hicks. But I will move you up a notch in the pecking order. Poor little guy. Getting for a stage when what you really wanted was money is no laughing matter. But according to our guest Sherry chest pain it's often our own lack of negotiating skills that keeps us from getting the money. We'll get some tips from her and also discuss investment planning. For those of you who have money socked away and we'll meet Norma Stern the director of a maximum security prison for men. So join us on working women. Working women is brought to you by a general support grant from J.C. Penney serving America's working women from coast to coast. Welcome to working women. It's 3:00 a.m. at the state pen. Suddenly the

alarms go off and Jimmy Cagney holds himself up in cell block 13 with three other inmates. Let me see the warden he snarls. A guard places the call that the warden yells the sergeant as he loads his gun. Then out steps the warden who ultimately gives the order to gun CAGNY down. What Hollywood have ever cast a woman in this role. Probably not. After all a woman would go all soft on the contacts a woman might even try to talk to them. Use psychology rehabilitation. But having a woman director is exactly what has turned Patuxent institution from what Jessica Mitford called a nightmarish snake pit into a bastion of rehabilitative hopefulness with a recidivism or prisoner return a rate of 10 to 15 percent the national average is three times that high. And the director's name is Dr Gluck Stern. Dr Norma Gluck Stern. When I heard that it was going to be a woman director

was very disappointed. We were disappointed because we felt that this was a very tough job that she was coming into. We felt that it took a really tough man to do. I would feel that it is stronger now than it is ever been and we have it here. I think Liam asked a question how I think the inmates proceed here. It's hard to know. Maybe you're getting my perception but I think maybe a social worker whatever that needs. And this was this nice lady who take care of us and give us anything we warn you images. I would say she commands respect and it makes this far as my own personal spec for go she has my respect. Before she came here. There was no contact with the head of the institution as far as inmates go. And that was one of the. Drastic changes here which. Is for the best.

She does communicate with him but. I did not get into corrections because of the inmates are running corrections because I believe that if you can manage a system properly then you would do right by me and. She's done better than manage a system properly. She recently was named the state administrator of the here managing Patuxent means managing an 11 million dollar budget. Four hundred employees and seven hundred eighty inmates. Does she see herself as a woman mastering a man's role or a new kind of woman. I think at this point. I'm gender blind. I think that I can make pasta very arrogant in this world as well as any man I think. Understand the area. I think what I don't understand there are people I could ask so that I would get the answers properly. So I feel quite comfortable in that role. I think sometimes and I am amazed that I still have qualms about is this feminine. My biggest problem is seeing myself

as as the boss. If the power is the director as the leader I still struggle with that and that still troubles me now again it may be that the fear that I grew up in somehow if women were not in a leadership role. And so that may be something that I still struggle with were some of the younger women coming up like my own daughters would not be struggling with that and I still struggle with what it was traditionally brought that I way I was brought up. But I will say that I think the number one thing that I have going for me is energy. I think that a woman has to be higher energy to do a job like hers and then I can. This is a highly physical part of the world and then I do generate strength and power even as a woman. Normal wasn't always so in touch with her strengths. She started out life to be a good wife but marrying a Ph.D. in physics pushed her to get an education and having that she pushed herself to get something more. I moved from just the thought of having a job to having a career and there was a

significant difference. I. Probably begin to. Recognize my success in corrections as I found myself being able to provide leadership in a way that I never thought of or mine before in providing in getting the respect getting the job done. And I think I began to recognize that I had some natural ability and some natural leadership and that I was not going to be content to be an assistant to the rest of my life which is basically up until then when I was. On camera is the thing that I think is lacking and I think a lot of women if they get into administration. Is the technical skills. That I did not. And I'm talking about legal skills skills and maintenance skills in the new technology of computers. Good to have a handle on what budgetary problems are and I think that that I came to the job of a lot of natural human relations skills but deny the technical skills and that's a strength that I think.

I recognize and appreciate that. The job of somebody that like myself is to get other people to do your job and that depend on having a strong staff not being threatened by a strong. Using them. Sometimes better than you do and not be afraid to Harvard you know everything. I think that that again I think part of if I'm successful as I've been able to put in a strong staff but I've also been able to use. My gift of the word maybe that was accurate because that's come up with standards. We're going to ask you about that one. Manners. My interaction in terms of going on the tears and talking is not as much I do not do that as I did in the earlier years. Partly I feel that I know the institution I think they know. However I feel that there is a need for me to walk and that I do frequently. Actually

I am trained as a psychologist. I found myself missing one with a sense of what it's doing is a triggered situation is to actually get involved in that kind of can see inmates in treatment kind of yourself. My greatest joy with position is Ives. I set a few goals for the one I wanted to accomplish and used to show I started four years ago and some of them are actually are coming to fruition now and that I was able to sort of anticipate and I have the ability to wait the proper time. An example of that is that I was committed to having a research developed at the talks and within four years it has in fact begun to develop is just about four years. But I sort of planned for anticipated. I have a theory of management it's called him be oh man should buy opportunity. And but I I sort of have this long range

plan and then when the opportunity comes I have a sense of where to go and went in there number of little there and I've been a number of times where my sense of timing of knowing this is now I can move on this has foreign fruit and I think that that's probably gives me some satisfaction. And you can see why. It's tempting to think that people like Norma are born not made. Except that it's very clear from her history. The Norma Gluck Stern made herself. She could have told herself after she interviewed for the Patuxent job well gee I'm only a university lecturer I shouldn't feel bad if I don't get it. Instead she remembers saying Stern the only way you're going back to jail is as the boss. Well she got the job but she didn't know. She learned what she thought of. She tried. Management by opportunity career life and otherwise. Next on Norman's list is a book. It's obvious the only limits on Norma are the one she sets on herself in.

It's also the kiss of death for whatever money you've saved. Well a sock full of callings hidden under the bed may be very comforting. The only way to make money grow is to take it out and risk investing it. And luckily Susan break Phil Fulton is here to advise us on how to do that intelligently. Susan welcome workingmen. Thank you. Now when we're planning what to do with our money there's something called the pyramid investment strategy. Can you explain the philosophy behind the philosophy behind that is that what we want to do is risk our money intelligently as well as as take some risk with it earn money and so what we say is that we're going to start by forming a very strong base and we're going to take the money. The first money we get and we're going to put it into investments that are. You have a reasonable rate of return and have strong safety of principal but also that are in the in the trade we call a liquid that we can get it to quickly. And I also like to put IRA's in there because I think liquid cash and I was of the two first things you should do

and if we take a look at that amount of money probably we're talking about maybe the first but maybe three months living expenses anyway in that first tier in case something should go wrong. That's what you can get your hands on. Sure if you have most in most cases for it as we've talked about disability if you were to be disabled in most cases you're going to it's going to take about three months for Social Security or other benefits to kick in so that you're that your emergency money. So if you have the three months you're going to mediately move into the second strata. Well then you have to take a real investment philosophy all really has to do with your own emotional make up but then you're probably going to want to move into things that give you a little higher return on your money and one of the reasons don't give you a little higher return is because you commit them for a longer period of time. So we still pick secure vehicles but we get a little higher return because we pick things like CDs or bonds or. Or Treasury bills where we're talking up our money for a year or two years and so we get a slightly higher return on our dollar. It's a pretty safe investment we just can't be sure I did and we're still looking at security so we're still building a very secure stable base. Then at the

third step we get a bit more risky. You know what we say then is well I've got myself a good base if something were to happen I could take care of myself I want a little bit higher rate of return and we might for instance look at blue chip stocks we might say well an Exxon or an IBM a return me a 5 or 6 or 7 percent dividend. And I think it's a good company and it also might increase in value but we also recognize then that it might decrease in value so we take some risk with our with our principal. And the risk is that you might lose it shortly for parents you know you're taking a little more chance of losing it. And then we get to the fourth and fifth step and then we you know either the pyramid we get a little heavy you know and what we say is we move into our fourth step usually our income then has reached a point where we have a reasonably high taxable income so we may want to take some of our dollars and shelter them and as you remember we talked about the government gives you tax deductions for taking risks so we take a little more risk that way perhaps or we may want to go into growth stocks that don't give us the dividend but we hope have higher potential for gain and we may want to go into real estate where we don't have

the market ability easily but we have the opportunity for growth and then finally we may want the top if we have the ability and we are able to build a big enough pyramid a high enough pyramid to go into commodities or options or or venture capital or more speculative. Not everyone gets through all the steps you want to and not all the pharaoh's finished their pyramids. That's great. Now what happens when you get what I call the windfall profits. Someone hands you a huge check and you think oh I didn't have this yesterday so what is it and I would still say that we want to build a pyramid. Because I I really believe that one of the things you want is to have some of your windfall later so you want to say to yourself sure this gives me an opportunity to do some speculation. But I also want to make sure I take care of myself. So you want to be conservative and not skip steps. The other thing I really want to stress I had a situation the other day were someone sat down and talked to me and they were said oh by the way my roommates really negro she's got her first five hundred dollars collected what do you think she should do with it. Well she should keep it in the money market fund because she really needs that money liquid. You really need to think

about it to think of it as a progression and not skip steps not to skip steps. Make sure that you're building them one step at a time and not to worry if you don't get to the top of the pyramid. Sure. Thank you very much. Well I mean a woman's face recently was printed on an undersized silver dollar but it didn't help us get our hands on it. A woman still earns only 59 cents for every Susan B Anthony Amanda. But getting your hands on money means for most of us men included getting a handle on negotiating for a salary. Most people are reluctant to demand what they are worth when it comes to salaries. Many don't even recognize that there is room to negotiate. The company certainly does. They want to negotiate the lowest possible figure they can and ignoring that fact is no way to win the salary game. With us now is Sherry chest

pain author of a book by the very same name a book which reviewers have called a solid no nonsense guide to salary negotiations. Sherry thank you very much for joining us thank you Fran and women. First I'd like to ask you why you wrote the book. Well it certainly grew out of my own inadequacies I found that like many women I was going through getting jobs and then finding out I wasn't being paid as much as I should and came to a point in my life that I realized I was allowing myself to be victimized. And the incident that brought that home to me so clearly was my boss took me to lunch one day to discuss my raise. And he said Sherry you're so valuable to the staff but I can't give you a raise this year because things are so tied. And he says the only way I can give you a raise is to fire somebody. Do you want me to fire somebody so you can have a raise. And if so you name the person to be fired. And that being a negotiator I just says Oh please don't do that for me. And then I was remember leaving the restaurant was walking

down the street almost like a light went on in your head you realized that I had allowed myself to be victimized. And at that point I started doing research on negotiating and I haven't been victimized. So I don't know if you think a man he would have said the same thing to a man in the first place. Probably not. But you know maybe another ploy that I don't I think men are a little more geared into these things that it's more likely to work on women than men because we just aren't you know geared in to negotiate. You think women are so so reticent about negotiating. Well it's so. It's in our culture you know we're just not used to haggling like other cultures are and especially women. There's sort of a taboo about talking about money it's this is something that you don't talk about. Well men understand that you don't talk about it maybe publicly but you do privately. But women just seem to have lost the private sense of discussing money. What sorts of things should you know before you go in to negotiate your salary. Well you kind of homework and you certainly should know what you're worth. And I think too many women fail

to know what they're worth on the job market they go in that out and they wait for the employer to tell them what they're worth and of course you as you discuss are going to get the lowest possible salary. And what you do to find out what you're worth First of all is keeping abreast of what's going on in your trade journals because they frequently publish salary information and then a lot of salary surveys are available in libraries public libraries and on college campuses. And I think the best source that women are overlooking. In terms of finding out what their worth is through all these networking groups that are coming up and one of the best functions they could be performing for one another is actually getting salary information and sharing salary information with one another and that's what I always encourage as I travel around the country women to a certain extent you have to do some snoop. Yes. And what do you have to do to research and it still must be a little bit difficult I guess because women don't want to talk about money and because they think it's tacky to ask someone how much they're making and we have to get over that. Yes we do. We have to get over it because it's defeating us.

What sorts of things do you look to negotiate for aside from the salary itself. Well there's perks you know the cards and credit cards and membership to clubs or whatever. But I I want women to concentrate on cold hard cash. I really I think that's the number one thing. And then of course you know you should always inquire what kind of benefits are available in this company other than the salary. And I think too many women again fail to even ask this question and then once you're on the job you've got to keep your eyes and ears open because so many times you know women end up looking around and finding out the guy that's doing the same thing has a car or has a number of other things that she doesn't have. You said the best time to negotiate is when you go in to get the job. That's when you get your biggest raise when you change jobs you can get as much as 20 to 30 percent more. Then you've been earning. Once you're on a job is that Earth figure you should look for when you go into this is not cheating if you necessarily look for what that's what you you

can expect to get from 20 to 30 percent more in many cases not all cases but many. But once you're on a job the average raise ranges from 7 to 13 percent so you can see about negotiating hard going into a job you're going to be more valuable than you are at any other point. Then you're going to you know you'll That's when you get your biggest raise should you be the one to bring up the subject of salary or should you wait for the boss to bring up the question of salary. The interviewing ins when you're fairly certain you have a job offer and that's when it's time to talk about money. And so if the subject of money is brought up before you feel your job offer is imminent. Then you say Well before we get into salary Tell me about your goals and how my role would fit in with your plans. And so by delaying the money talk you can emphasize your accomplishments what you can do to make life easier for the other person so that when the time comes to discuss money you're actually worth more than you would have been in the beginning.

And what happens if he brings that up for us what if he quotes or she quotes a salary to you. And it's too low. As as I said just sort of brushing off her before we get into that a let's you know let's talk about it a brush off. What if you're then faced with someone saying this is exactly how much we're going to pay no more. Well once it's time to discuss you know the subject comes up then I encourage women to make take the initiative to name a high figure because you've done your research you know about what they're going to be throwing out at you anyway you know the range. I say take the initiative to name a high figure first intern at the name at first because what you do it's a psychological edge. You got them thinking of you up here where other than than way down here. And the thing about negotiating is to remember remember that you can always back down from a high figure but it's next to impossible to bring yourself up from too low of a price tag. I know I know I hate to press you on this except that I feel that there are situations out there where

there are limits to how much you can make on a particular Genovese may be less money than you were making before but for various reasons it's something you'd really like to do and you're sort of caught in a bind at what point do you stop the negotiation I guess and either give in or say you're not going to take the job or exactly what happens at that point well and can't budge them any further. The thing about negotiating is that you don't have to do everything right then and there you can see that you can hear what they have to say and then you might say could I think about what you've said to me and you know I'll come back on Thursday at 2 o'clock and we'll continue this after I've had time to think over and during that period you can decide whether is this job is it really worth it is it going to lead to things in the long run that makes it worth the maybe going in it will lower salary than you really wanted. So you weigh all those things and then coming back. You may have the person in a different mood he may have gotten up on the air. In a better frame of mind than he did the day before so you could try again you know to see if you can pressure

point and then say well if you can't pay me what I think I'm worth right now. Could we start out with the sour you say and then at the end of six months after I've demonstrated my worth to you could you meet my salary expectation as opposed to a year which is when. Well if you want to sell your I'd say six months you know to demonstrate my worth could you then meet my my expectations are you could say could we broaden the job description so that I could assume more duties that would be commensurate with with what I think I should earn. As always look for alternatives and to try to get around. Is this also a good time to start to bring in the perks to say well if I can't get this in cold hard cash then can I get a company car or can I get work at home. Could I do. Can I take a vacation every Christmas that are whatever. Everything anything just important to you at that point I have an office that looks out over the river or whatever you believe that's all there is. Anything that's important to you at that point it be sure you know that's the time to do it because at that point you're worth more than

you'll ever be again. If you're already in a job and you're going in to renegotiate your salary or increment of it what should you do. What are the steps to take that are the way to estimate my time that I can suggest to women the best technique is to prepare a memo and tell them what you've accomplished in the past few months how you see your job developing and what you anticipate on the future of your job and by doing this little memo before they review your salary and give you a raise or whatever you're actually conditioning that person to want to reward you. After all they don't sit and look over your shoulder eight hours say they don't know what you do. Most of the time so you have to talk to them in terms of what you're doing to improve profits what you're doing to increase productivity what you're doing to improve effectiveness and efficiency. And by talking to them in those terms in your memo you're actually conditioning them to want to reward you and it's just a little technique that I think could help many women. Cheri is there any correlation between where you are on the corporate ladder and the room you have

for negotiating a salary. Yes almost every salary is negotiable from a few dollars to many thousands but it's true that the higher up you go the more latitude there is to negotiate. But that doesn't mean you should negotiate if you're in clerical work or at the lower part of. The latter because even if it's you're getting $50 more that's $50 more than you would would have if you had negotiated at all. How do you account for that occurring that it's easier to negotiate you have more latitude you have more latitude you have more options you have more. There's just the job descriptions are broader based and there's more there's more flexibility with a lot of lanes need you more about the time you get that high up on the ladder. Well I think your Again your job is defined in broader terms which allows for more latitude in the term and what one portion would be worth as opposed to another portion so there there is that latitude whereas at the lower level jobs or they can be described in much more succinct terms.

Very quickly tell me what do you think is the most common mistake women make when they're negotiating for salaries. Well clearly the most common mistake is women just not knowing if they can negotiate. They just think they have to accept what the employer says or just you know decline the job altogether. And they've got to learn and understand that these things are not you know written in stone that there is room for any of her negotiating there is flexibility there. And if they must negotiate. Thank you very much sherry. Being strong when it comes to negotiating salaries or running a prison doesn't mean acting like somebodies idea of a man it means being secure in a sense of your own worth. I'm talking from there. For most of us that's hard to do but someday maybe it will be seen as a natural part of being feminine. What are your thoughts about it right. Care of working women. Owings Mills Maryland 2 1 1 1 7. That's working women 2 1 1 1 7. Let us hear from you. I'm Fran Dorn for working women. Working women has been brought to you by a general support from J.C. Penney serving

America's working women from coast to coast. The.