How to manage emotions that can sabotage you during salary negotiation

On the surface, salary negotiations seem to be about money and benefits, and most of us approach them that way. We limit ourselves to thinking about what we want in terms of dollars, perks, and packages. 

But as a negotiations professor and coach for almost 20 years, I know that for most of us, salary negotiations are mostly about our core identity: our worth, our impact, and our place in the world. 

Think for a moment about the people you’re closest to. While you may know the most personal details about their lives and relationships, you probably don’t know how much money they make. We have messaged as a society that our compensation is some kind of judgment on our self-worth, and therefore too intimate to share. 

DON’T MISS: The ultimate guide to negotiating a higher salary

Our jobs are an important part of our core identity. For most of us, they’re where we spend the majority of our waking hours, and they’re often the way we identify ourselves to others. So when we sit down for a salary negotiation, emotions tend to rear their (sometimes ugly) heads. 

Here’s what you need to know to gain control of your emotions in negotiations — and how to make those feelings work for you. 

I see two core, unacknowledged emotions that almost all of us bring into salary negotiations — and which can sabotage the process: 

1. Fear: It’s common to get scared when we’re interviewing for a job. You might wonder, “Is this the right opportunity for me? What impact will it have on my future career? What if I don’t get a good number with the initial offer? Will I have to negotiate? What if I’m getting taken advantage of?”

   These and dozens more questions that come from places of anxiety can leave us trapped in a cycle of “What if?” and keep us on unsure footing as we negotiate. 

2. Guilt: Most of us tend to believe we haven’t actually done everything we needed to do to deserve what we’re asking for. So we think things like, “If only I had worked harder, or spent more time on a skill, or done something differently, then I would be more deserving of this position or this salary.” 

Both of these emotions can trip us up in negotiations. Fear because it’s paralyzing. And guilt because it leads us to believe that we don’t deserve the position or package we’re demanding.

Imagine yourself getting hot with anger or embarrassment, feeling tears well up beyond your control, or hearing your voice get high and squeaky.

Emotions and their accompanying physical sensations can push you off your best negotiating stance — you may accept bad deals or walk away without pushing as hard as you could. 

But those outcomes aren’t inevitable. Here are a few steps that can help: 

1. List out your feelings in advance

You don’t want to be surprised by your emotions at the negotiation table. Suddenly, you’re spending a good portion of your mental energy trying to control them and their physical manifestations instead of on the negotiation itself. 

As you prepare, examine what you’re feeling around these conversations. Most of us don’t really know. We might say we’re nervous, because that’s an accessible and common word in these situations, but we don’t realize that beneath “nervous” is “scared” or “guilty,” for example. 

Write down a long list of every emotion you might be feeling. This requires time and a bit of quiet — dig deep. Doing this exercise in advance will help prevent surprises at the table that could derail you. 

2. Sort the emotions

Look at your list of emotions and ask yourself: Which of these are positive, like happiness or excitement, and which are negative, such as anger, sadness, or guilt?

This step can help you parse what can be a confusing mix of feelings. Plus, when you’re prompted to think about what positive emotions you have, you tend to come up with more positive emotions. Likely, you do have some! Realizing that can help pump you up. 

3. Decide if you want to share

It’s very possible you don’t want to share any of these feelings in an interview — that’s totally fine. We’re often fearful that if we give away our positive emotions, we’ll overplay our hand.

But there can be real power in sharing when you’ve decided, thoughtfully, that it can be useful. 

At the end of the day, no one wants to hire someone who isn’t excited about the job. So you might say: “This opportunity is extremely exciting for me, and even walking through the door today to come meet you made me happy. I’m looking forward to seeing how we can make this package work for me.”

4. Imagine what the other party may be experiencing

You might assume that the person across the table — whether that’s a recruiter, a human resources professional, or your future boss — is dispassionate. You may think that, to them, this is just business, all in a day’s work.

But finding the right person to present to the rest of the team and work with day in and day out is stressful. So ask yourself: What emotions might they be experiencing?

When you let the other side know you understand where they’re coming from, it builds trust. And it helps you stop focusing only on yourself.

The best thing you can do in a negotiation is to be aware and attuned to the other party. 

5. Name the awkwardness

Salary negotiations are almost always awkward and uncomfortable. Those feelings can flood your brain, overtake some of your rational decision-making ability, and lead you to shy away from asking difficult or direct questions.

Naming the awkwardness at the outset can take away its power. You might say: “I’m excited to sit down with you, but I wanted to acknowledge this can be a tough or awkward conversation.”

The things that take up a lot of space in our brains are the ones we’re trying to conceal. Once you put it out there, you’ll have room to focus on everything else. 

Michelle Greenberg-Kobrin is a law professor at Cardozo School of Law and Columbia Law School and a negotiations coach. She is an instructor in CNBC’s online course How to Negotiate a Higher Salary.

Want to earn more money at work? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Negotiate a Higher Salary. Expert instructors will teach you the skills you need to get a bigger paycheck, including how to prepare and build your confidence, what to do and say, and how to craft a counteroffer.