Linked: You Need to Negotiate Your Lifestyle
Scott’s post is something I’ve tried to explain to people about some of my own career choices over the years, because sometimes it’s not about climbing the ladder, it’s about something completely outside of work:
“For a lot of people, they never step back and really ask themselves what kind of career they want. Instead, they act like ambitious rats in a Skinner box, pushing the right levers to get short-term career rewards, without asking whether they want to be in that box in the first place.”
For me, there have just been times we needed to move to another part of the country, or I needed to be home more, or wanted more flexibility, etc. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it does take, as Scott says, some career capital, and a willingness to negotiate for it.
When someone tries to negotiate, or look elsewhere, for more money, we hardly raise an eyebrow about it, but somehow we don’t feel like everything else is negotiable. It is, but you may need to be willing to make a change to get it.
Are you?
And are you willing to negotiate in order to keep good employees, or just continue to watch them leave over things that you could easily change, that might require a bit more work on the organization’s part?
