Advice For Building The Confidence To Ask For A Pay Rise

Regardless of why you want a pay rise, you need to have the courage to ask. And that’s why building confidence in a practical way is so important. Here’s my best intelligent advice for building the confidence to ask for a pay rise.

Transcript

Hey lovely,

It's Lata Hamilton,

Change Leadership and Confidence Expert and I wanted to share my most intelligent advice for building the confidence to ask for a pay rise.

One of the biggest things that I see holds women back from asking for a pay rise is lack of confidence.

They don't believe in themselves,

Their skills and experiences and their worth to ask for what they truly know they deserve.

Sometimes you may have been burned by past experiences or where you've tried to ask for a pay rise and failed,

Being there,

Done that.

Perhaps getting embarrassed or bullied or walked over in the conversation such that you never want to try again.

In other cases you might actually be doing higher duties or stepping up in a role and have been for months but your pay never went up and you just don't know how to broach the situation.

And in other cases you might just feel like you deserve a pay rise.

Regardless of why you want a pay rise you need to have the courage to ask and that's why building confidence in a practical way is so important.

Here's my best intelligent advice for building the confidence to ask for a pay rise.

Calculate the costs.

In my five-step career change formula the first step is calculate the costs and the costs are financial,

Personal,

Spiritual.

Obviously there's a financial cost to you doing the work but not getting the remuneration or the compensation.

However it might be to do more with the personal side or the spiritual side about what that means to you and how that makes you feel and how that emotionally affects you.

Because you might feel you're being disrespected,

Undervalued,

Overworked,

Not being compensated,

They don't care about you or your well-being.

So what does that mean to you?

And often those are the things that are actually more painful than the financial side.

The financial side is your symbolic marker of those other things.

When you earn more and get paid more it's a symbolic marker of okay cool,

They respect me,

They value me,

They appreciate the work that I do,

They see the value that I bring to the table.

We think about our money or our income,

Salary,

Day rate,

Whatever it is for you as simply a symbolic marker of self-worth,

Rightly or wrongly.

It's just the society that we're in.

I'm not saying that it is your self-worth,

I'm just saying that symbolically in our society that's what we link together.

So you've got to calculate the cost,

You've got to have a reason to want to have the good fight and ask the question.

Because if there's not enough skin in the game for you,

If there's not enough pain for you,

Why would you put yourself on the line?

You have to really think about what it's costing you deep down.

And yes the financial is one aspect but there's a few other aspects and I go through this in more detail.

Remember your worth.

The next step of my five-step career change formula is remembering your worth and that's where you go over positive feedback from the past.

That's where you look at all your skills and experiences,

That's where you reflect on where you were two years ago and how much you've shifted and changed,

Where you were seven years ago and how much you've shifted and changed,

Where you really boost yourself up and really pump yourself up internally.

Calculating the cost and remember your worth are the mirror opposites of each other but they both need to work together almost like yin and yang to be able to boost your confidence to go for the pay rise or to ask the question.

The whole five-step career change formula has three other steps after that so yeah there's more to it.

But those are the two foundation ones where you're getting clear on what it's costing you and then remembering the value that you bring to the table as your foundation to go and have that conversation in that.

Start with a script.

When you start with a script you can use that script as inspiration of how to word and message your request.

It gives you a conversation guide starting point for you to actually go and have the discussion and I've actually had students use that script to get a pay rise successfully.

Surround yourself with a positive community.

Another thing that you can absolutely do to boost your confidence is to surround yourself with a positive community of like-minded,

Ambitious,

Motivated,

Courageous women.

Joining the calls and participating in the community is a great way to easily absorb energy boosts and confidence without extra effort or work and that's why a lot of my students keep coming back to calls month after month.

Focus on your goals and lifestyle.

Another practical tip is to do goal setting and really get connected to what you want for your career and for your life.

When you revisit calculating the costs and realise not getting the pay rise is preventing you from being able to live the life and achieve the goal that you actually want,

It can be a great boost of confidence and commitment to have the conversation.

Prime yourself in advance.

Lastly,

You can absolutely prime yourself and anchor your confidence.

Simple but scientifically proven practices like inspirational music.

I like When You Believe from the 90s which was sung by Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey.

Doing power poses or listening to empowering meditations like my free confidence to ask for a pay rise meditation on insight timer take just a few minutes but can transform your energy from the inside out to prepare and prime you for a pay rise conversation.

The important thing is to do this stuff every day.

Doing these things regularly and building these anchors up for yourself is critical because confidence doesn't just happen.

You can feel great in a moment but that's just a spark of motivation and then it's over.

Real confidence builds over time.

It's almost a habit by switching your mindset and changing the way that you think about yourself and your self-worth over time and building that foundation.

That's why I've spent the last 15 years actively building my confidence.

Now it's second nature to me but because I'm naturally an introvert contrary to what most people would expect but actually I'm naturally an introvert I had to really work hard at the beginning to build that confidence up.

I just kept practicing it and practicing at it and use those tools that work for me and my personality.

So try these different ideas out and do some things that are more mindset and emotional like calculating the cost of remembering your worth and then doing some real practical stuff like goal setting or priming and just start doing it now.

Do it well before you plan to have the conversation because you've already got the idea and the inkling in your head.

There's so many tools out there and it's just about finding what works for you and what you enjoy doing.

So how do you feel about asking for a pay rise now?

Pop a comment below and let me know.