The Secret To Asking For A Pay Raise (Mika Brzezinski)

Doing It Anyway with Katty Kay

Katty Kay interviews Mika Brzezinski to discuss strategies for asserting professional value and building confidence. The conversation covers

Key takeaways

• Mika Bruneski advises against apologizing when asking for a pay raise, as it undermines the negotiator's position.
• Effective negotiation requires tracking concrete data and accomplishments, essentially building an 'A through Z' list of achievements.

Main topics

• Negotiating pay raises
• Overcoming the 'good girl' trap

Notable quotes

You have to know your value even when your stock is down.

Conclusion

The episode serves as an empowering guide for women to move from passi

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:08) Hello and welcome to my brand new series, Doing It Anyway. I'm Cathy Kay. I've been fascinated by the subject of confidence ever since I first realized how much a lack of it was holding me back in my work and in my personal life. I've spent years studying the science and the art of confidence, writing books about how we can close the confidence gap between men and women and talking to younger women about how to pass it on. I've wanted to do this series for a long time because one of the things I found is that confidence means taking a risk, getting outside of your comfort zone, acknowledging your fears and doing it anyway. In this series, I'm going to be speaking to psychologists, business executives and female leaders to unpack how you can grow your confidence and ultimately change your life. Today I'm joined by my friend and colleague Mika Brzezinski, who's best known for anchoring Speaker 1 (1:04) MSNOW's weekly morning show, Morning Joe. Speaker 2 (1:07) Mika and I are old friends and colleagues and we've both written books about women and that whole thorny world of work. And I've always seen Mika as somebody who's never afraid to ask hard questions. Things like, why is it so embarrassing to ask for a pay raise? What do I do when I have a setback at work? And why do I have that niggling feeling that... I'm undervalued by the people around me and perhaps even by myself. If those are the kinds of things you wrestle with, stay with us. This conversation is for you. Speaker 2 (1:40) This episode is presented by Vanguard. When it comes to investing, many of us feel totally out of our depth and we just don't know where to start. And we can't be blamed for that. A lot of us simply don't have the time or the confidence to take the first steps. And that's where Vanguard can help. With their managed ISA, Vanguard's experts do the hard work for you. They'll match you to an investment plan that feels right for you. and then they'll handle the rest. No second guessing, just smart professional management. So stop wondering how to start investing and start making your money work harder. Search Vanguard Managed ISA to find out more. When investing, your capital is at risk. Tax rules apply. Speaker 2 (2:25) Mika, I'm so glad to be having this conversation with you. Speaker 1 (2:28) It's so great to be here, Katty. Katty's been like, well, we're just really OGs. I'm just saying that before these messages were out there, we were screaming from the rooftops. You were screaming bank confidence and I was screaming know your value and stop apologizing. And we're still at it some 20 years later and there's still a lot of work to do. Speaker 2 (2:54) Right. I mean, I sometimes think, wow, has it really been my first book came out in 2008. Your book, Know Your Value, Women, Money and Getting. What You're Worth was published in 2011. And sometimes I think, have we really not fixed all of this yet? Do we still need to be putting these messages out? But I really think we do. We do. And I feel like actually we Speaker 1 (3:15) were making headway and then there's been some backsliding. And, you know, a lot of it has to do with the landscape that, at least in the States and the state of the world, even the political landscape, you know, Roe, all these things that. impact our sense of value have, I think, kind of impacted confidence and the sense of knowing our own value. So I'm actually blaming others. And I Speaker 2 (3:44) think you're right. I think this is actually a conversation that is now needed more perhaps than it... was even a few years ago. So let's start at the beginning when you wrote Know Your Value, which then launched a whole global movement for women about understanding their value in the workplace. What was it, Mika, that made you want to write that book and put those thoughts out there? Speaker 1 (4:07) Well, I mean, for me, I was restarting my career after a pretty successful career that ended in being fired, unsuccessful end, but a really good career and a fulfilling one. And Morning Joe had started and I thought I was pretty good at my job. But you know what? Part of the job is being able to get a great deal for yourself. And I kept contracting that out to other people. Speaker 1 (4:39) than maybe trying to be the ringer but not doing a great job on it. And when you are working in a certain industry, your job is not just to do the job well, but to make sure you take care of yourself just as well. And I didn't get that part of the equation. And I remember I was given a contract to host Morning Joe. I was a year out from having been fired and looking for work for a year. So my confidence was low. And I didn't use the skills that you teach in the confidence code and now that I teach in Know Your Value. And that is that you still have to know your value even when your stock is down. You have to have something to say. And actually, at the point that I was at in signing the Morning Joe contract, the show was really taking off. And they needed us. That includes me. And why would I get any less than anyone else on the show? And why would I? settle for that. I didn't know my moment to take it. I think a lot of women often underestimate themselves. They feel so lucky to be there. They sign at the first piece of paper that's handed to them because they just want that stability and they want the uncomfortable part to go away. That uncomfortable part, it is your job to drag that uncomfortable part as long as you can. Drag it out as long as you can to get the most that you can out of the negotiation. And I just didn't know to do that. Had you Speaker 2 (6:12) never had to do it before? Was it that you came in with your confidence low? You had two young kids. You were just that feeling. I think that so many women have had is like, I'm just lucky to be there. I don't Speaker 1 (6:24) want Speaker 2 (6:24) to rock the boat because I'm there by the grace and favor of these employers. God forbid that I ask for anything Speaker 1 (6:30) else. How quickly can I sign? You know what I mean? Like, yeah, that was me. And I had that. The thing was, that was really a trigger to like write the book and figure this out and then share it with everyone. The trigger was when I signed the Morning Joe contract and it was far less than everyone else. And quite frankly. I had no one to blame but myself. No, I worked for a great guy who needed me to kick his butt and to hold him to it. But what company is going to say, hey, listen, you don't know your value. Let me remind you and pay you tons more. Speaker 2 (7:05) That's not how it works. Please let Speaker 1 (7:06) us pay you more money. That's not how it works. They're not going to be nice. They're not going to say, oh, she's so great. I've noticed she's working so hard. No one's going to be watching you. You have to look at what you're doing. You have to make sure you keep track of the data about yourself, what it is that you bring to the table. You have to be sure you can articulate it effectively and stand by those words. And so I realized way back then that I had done it again. I had signed a contract too soon. I had lurched for stability as opposed to waiting. for the moment to be right because it was my moment to ask for more and I missed it. And so I thought, my gosh, if I can't do this. I grew up with multilingual parents who came here as refugees. One became the National Security Advisor of the United States of America and the other became a globally renowned sculptor, artist, who makes pieces that are two to three stories high. and several tons. I love your mom's work. My Speaker 2 (8:14) mom Speaker 1 (8:14) worked with a chainsaw on her art. She's so cool. What is it about me that I can't do my job fully, which includes the part of taking care of myself? And so I set out to find out more about this. And when I wrote that first book, you wouldn't believe. I had the former chair of the FDIC. I interviewed women from the highest heights in every industry, and they all struggled with it. And I realized I was really tapping into something that was quite universal across all ages, stages, places in life, women who have made it despite themselves, women who can't get in the door. This book was for everyone and still is. And I did it because I wanted to figure it out for myself, and I wanted to pay it forward for other women. Because once I did figure it out, I was like, my God. These are simple techniques that take confidence to put these skills into play. But once you do, the results are magnificent. Do you always get the money you're asking for? No. But you get that muscle and then you ultimately will get that money. And the more you put yourself through it, the easier it is. It's a muscle. Speaker 2 (9:30) It's like building. Speaker 1 (9:30) It's Speaker 2 (9:31) like going to the gym. It's kind of boring. You have to do it and you have to develop that muscle. You know your value in the context of a... pay raise, Mika, but do you think there is, when you started doing the research for the book and talking to people, is there a broader value discrepancy, do you think, that women and perhaps particularly younger women have compared to young men? Does it reach beyond money? Speaker 1 (9:58) I love this question because I really want to focus on how know your value at this point as we have grown. and developed on a number of levels here in the United States, but also abroad. It is not just about your career. The career is really just the example. Knowing your value and the skills that you use to get value back at your job can be transferred literally to every relationship in your life. Getting value back, whether it is a spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, your kids. Every single relationship in your life, you need to know your value. And if you don't, they will own you. Okay, those kids are going to own you and they'll see it in your eyes. And I struggled with that with my girls as well because I didn't know my value all around. I was dancing for everybody and trying to be the person who, you know, made everyone feel good in the room. I was like trying to make sure everyone knew I was nice. I had all my priorities wrong because I wasn't commanding in my relationships, respect back, value back. That's why Know Your Value is about way more than careers. It's about living a full life and being fulfilled by your relationships, getting that value back and knowing that you deserve it and knowing that it is a standard that you have for yourself, commanding respect, not fighting about it. It's just there. That was something that I really struggled with and I realized a lot of other women did too. And that it's something you really have to work on with yourself every single day. If you're apologizing your way into conversations, if you're undermining, if you're being self-deprecating, if you can't look in the mirror