back with disappointing news from HR: they weren’t able to grant either request. At that point,
Sameer felt the urge to back down. He wanted to be a giver toward his boss, and he was worried that
getting more money would harm his boss’s performance or compromise his budget. But Sameer had
massive debt from student loans, and he felt responsible for his family first. He asked again,
convincing his boss to lobby HR for the bump in his salary and signing bonus. He ended up getting a
$5,000 salary increase and a $5,000 signing bonus increase. By that time, his $10,000 signing bonus
had expired. Sameer asked for that too, and got it. His boss assured him that this was the best he
could do.
Sameer was already up $20,000 in the first year alone, not to mention the dividends that the base
salary increase would accrue, but he wasn’t done yet. He still wasn’t receiving tuition
reimbursement, so he was determined to find another way to support his family. He had plenty of free
time during his last semester of school, so he negotiated a consulting arrangement to work for the
company part-time. The company agreed to pay him $135 per hour, which would net Sameer another
$50,000 in the span of a few months. At that point, he signed the contract, having upped his total
compensation by more than $70,000. “Being able to keep pushing, a large part of that was being an
agent,” Sameer says. “If I don’t push now, what’s going to happen when I get another promotion? I’m
going to be that guy who has three kids and gets pushed around. Thinking of myself as an agent
motivated me to keep going. It gave me some extra cojones.”
Although advocating for his family helped him succeed, Sameer was still concerned about how it
would affect his reputation at the firm and his relationship with his boss. When the negotiation was
finished, his boss shared a surprising sentiment: he admired Sameer’s assertiveness. “It was part of
why my boss wanted me,” Sameer says. “He respected that I wasn’t going to be pushed around
anymore.” Givers, particularly agreeable ones, often overestimate the degree to which assertiveness
might be off-putting to others. But Sameer didn’t just earn respect by virtue of negotiating; his boss
was impressed with how he negotiated. When HR initially rejected Sameer’s request, he explained
his family’s circumstances. “I don’t just have to worry about paying rent now. I have a family to
support and loans to repay. Can you make this more palatable for me?” By asking on behalf of his
family, instead of himself, Sameer was maintaining an image as a giver. He showed that he was
willing to advocate for others, which sent a positive signal about how hard he would work when
representing the company’s interests.
Babcock and colleagues call this a relational account—an explanation for a request that
highlights concern for the interests of others, not only oneself. When women ask for a higher salary,
they run the risk of violating expectations that they will be “other-oriented and caring, giving rather
than taking in character,” Babcock writes with Hannah Riley Bowles. Whereas women may be
uniquely worried that assertiveness will violate gender norms, givers of both sexes worry about
violating their own reciprocity preferences. If they push too hard, they’ll feel like takers, rather than
givers. But when givers are advocating for someone else, pushing is closely aligned with their values
of protecting and promoting the interests of others: givers can chalk it up to caring. And by offering
relational accounts, givers do more than just think of themselves as agents advocating for others; they
present themselves as agents advocating for others, which is a powerful way to maintain their self-
images and social images as givers.
This reasoning proved relevant to Lillian Bauer when she decided to stop letting clients treat her
like a doormat. “I want to be generous, and I build trust with clients, but that doesn’t mean they can
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(Michael S)
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