This is a question I get asked often, mostly by women. I think information about women not asking and the fact of the gender gap in wages have contributed to the idea that women don’t negotiate well. So let me answer this question with a story.

While teaching law students at university one of the other teachers, an executive from an aeronautics company, told me after my lecture that I had solved a puzzle that had confounded him for some time. The lecture had been on situational gender triggers – situations that research has shown consistently result in gender differences in negotiated outcomes. The puzzle involved a female manager whose salary was the lowest of all the plant managers. She had negotiated it. In direct contrast her team, for whom she also negotiated, had the highest salaries of any team. If she was such a great negotiator, why was her salary so low?

The gender trigger that unlocked the puzzle for him was the fact that women negotiate better for others than for themselves. They do better than men in situations when they are negotiating for others. Women report to me that they feel personally empowered when they negotiate for others — they can push harder and keep their aspirations high when helping others.

So women are definitely good negotiators – when they negotiate for others. However, this negotiation prowess does not come to the fore when women negotiate for themselves. Even if women are great negotiators for their companies, families or teams, they can stumble in negotiations when asking for themselves. And this stumbling is most often related to gender blind spots that play a factor in the gender wage gap. To be clear, the focus in this blog on women’s blind spots in negotiation is in no way meant to ignore the fact that women across all professions and industries tend to get offered lower wages than men or to downplay the systemic bias that supports the gender wage gap. Rather this information is provided to allow women to mitigate the wage gap in ways they can control. To use their awareness and skills to advocate successfully for themselves.

Here are some of the suggestions I make in my new book Understanding Gender at Work for women to become the best negotiators they can be.

• Understand how to prepare for and negotiate salary when starting a new job. There are bear traps during salary negotiations that need to be anticipated and dealt with effectively.
• Be aware of any personal gender blind spots in negotiation. If you overvalue relationship and want everyone to be happy after the negotiation, be aware of this so you don’t sacrifice outcome in negotiations that are only about getting the best outcome.
• Know when and how to initiate a negotiation. Men initiate negotiations four times more than women. Women assume that negotiation is not possible in most situations and when told that it is, negotiate the same outcomes as men.
• Understand the different types of negotiation strategies, including when and how to use them. The most effective and sophisticated strategy – collaborative negotiation – is a natural fit for most women and aligns with the gendered expectations of others.
• Learn the rules of competitive negotiation so you can deal with negotiators who use it. Women are amazed at how transparent the process is once you understand the mindset and goals of competitive players.
• Discover different ways to ask based upon the characteristics and interests of the person you are asking. I call these audience-focused asks. As with persuasion, getting the “yes” is all about the audience.
• Learn to harness the power of gender triggers that favour women and use other people’s gendered expectations to your advantage.
• Recognize gender bias in negotiation and employ counter tactics to deal with it.

Gender triggers can provide a huge advantage for women when negotiating and by increasing awareness of any assumptions and personal blind spots that may be holding us back, women can go from good negotiators to truly amazing.