At many points in our lives, we encounter ultimatums in negotiation. Sometimes an ultimatum truly represents a final offer—but often, it does not. Regardless of its legitimacy, an ultimatum can feel like a serious and stressful roadblock. The good news is that there are effective ways to respond that can help you move beyond the impasse and keep the conversation productive. To explore these strategies, we spoke with Professor Deepak Malhotra, who shared practical insights on how negotiators can handle ultimatums with clarity, composure, and confidence.

Q: A counterpart recently made a “take it or leave it” offer during our negotiation. I wasn’t ready to accept the offer, but I didn’t want to walk away, either. Any advice on how to respond?

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Determining the best reponse to an ultimatum in negotiation

A: In my recent book, Negotiating the Impossible, I look at the many ways in which negotiators can break deadlocks and resolve conflicts, even when they don’t have “money or muscle.” One issue I address is how to handle hardball tactics, including ultimatums.

Ultimatums in negotiation can come in many forms: “Take it or leave it!”; “We will never . . .”; “You must . . . .” These absolute statements seem to leave no room for negotiation. My response to any ultimatum—regardless of the type of negotiation or how the ultimatum was delivered—is usually quite simple: I completely ignore it. I don’t ask the person to repeat what he said or clarify what he meant. Instead, I pretend he never said it and move on to other issues.

Why? Many ultimatums in negotiation are not true deal breakers. If you ignore an ultimatum, it will be easier for your counterpart to back down later because you have not engaged with or legitimized the ultimatum. A week, a month, or years from now, the other side may realize that what she said she could never do, she must do to get the deal done or should do in her own best interest. When that day comes, the last thing I need is for her to remember her ultimatum (or to remember my having heard the ultimatum)—because if she does, she will not be able to change her mind without losing face. Too often, negotiators will escalate commitment to an ultimatum and even sacrifice their own best interests if that’s the only way for them to save face.

If ignoring an ultimatum in negotiation is not possible or you can’t comfortably move on to other issues without acknowledging it, there is another option: reframing the statement as a non-ultimatum before continuing with the conversation.

For example, if someone says, “I will never do this,” you might respond: “I can understand, given where we are today, that this would be very difficult for you to do.” This gives the person two ways out. First, you’ve pointed out that acquiescing would be “very difficult” but not impossible. Second, you’ve situated the negotiator’s reluctance “given where we are today” but perhaps not forever.

Of course, there is always a possibility that the ultimatum was a real one—that the other party’s hands are truly tied and her demands really are non-negotiable. What if you ignored the ultimatum and it was real?

Even in those cases, opening by ignoring or reframing the ultimatum is a sound approach. If it is a real ultimatum, don’t worry: The negotiator will repeat it over and over again in countless ways in future conversations. At the appropriate time, based on your evaluation of the situation, you can decide to take it seriously.

In my experience, however, many “ultimatums” are not true deal breakers. Sometimes people are simply feeling emotional, are trying to assert control, or are using strong language in an attempt to gain some tactical advantage. In such cases, if you have ignored or reframed their statements, you may have done both sides a favor.

Have you ever encountered an ultimatum in negotiation? Do you think the advice above would help you in future negotiations?

Claim your FREE copy: Negotiation Skills

Build powerful negotiation skills and become a better dealmaker and leader. Download our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

Experienced negotiators understand that they should reject any deal on the table that is inferior to their best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or BATNA. At an auto dealership, for example, you shouldn’t buy a used car if you are pretty sure you can get a better deal on a comparable car elsewhere. Yet in the heat of the moment, people often accept options that are inferior to their BATNA, professor Ece Tuncel of Webster University and her colleagues found in a study published in Psychological Science. Negotiation mistakes such as this can lead us to squander our resources. They can also trigger regret and disappointment months and even years down the line. 

Documenting Negotiation Mistakes

In one of the experiments in the study, participants were told they were being paired online with a person whom they did not know and would not meet or deal with again. (In actuality, there was no such person.) Participants were asked to divide a fixed number of points between themselves and the other party nine times; each time, one party’s gain would be the other party’s loss.

For each of their nine choices, participants were asked to select between an option that gave them fewer points than their counterpart and an option that gave them more. In the “framed” condition, the former option (fewer points for themselves) was labeled “Agreement,” and the latter option (more points for themselves) was labeled “Impasse.” In the control condition, the former option was labeled “Option A,” and the latter option was labeled “Option B.” 

The results showed that participants in the framed condition chose the Agreement option 24.55% of the time, while those in the control condition chose the equivalent Option A only 3.99% of the time. That is, participants’ bias toward reaching agreement (and/or not reaching impasse) often led them to make negotiation mistakes—choices that left them worse off than their counterpart. This was true despite the fact that they knew they would not be building a long-term relationship with the other party.

In another experiment, MBA students in a negotiation course bargained face-to-face, and their outcomes were linked to their grades in the course. Participants in this study also made negotiation mistakes: They often preferred to reach a deal that was economically suboptimal for them personally rather than reach an impasse. In about 75% of the pairs who reached agreement, one party settled for a deal that was detrimental to their economic interest in the negotiation and their course grade.

Claim your FREE copy: Negotiation Skills

Build powerful negotiation skills and become a better dealmaker and leader. Download our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

Agreement Attraction or Impasse Aversion?

The researchers noted that it’s worth looking at why participants made these apparently common negotiation mistakes. Did they agree to subpar deals because they felt psychologically compelled toward agreement or because they felt a strong desire to avoid impasse? 

Consider that negative events (such as impasse) tend to affect us more strongly than positive events (such as agreement), a phenomenon that Roy F. Baumeister of Case Western Reserve University and his colleagues dubbed the “bad is stronger than good” effect in a 2001 paper. For example, if you suddenly lose $1,000, you are likely to have a stronger reaction than if you suddenly receive the same amount of money. Based on this effect, Tuncel and her colleagues theorized that for most negotiators, the motivation to avoid impasse—a negative event—is likely stronger than the motivation to seek agreement—a positive event.

Indeed, that is what the researchers found in another of their experiments. Specifically, when making monetary allocations between themselves and a partner, MBA students were more likely to choose the personally disadvantageous option when it allowed them to avoid impasse than when it allowed them to reach agreement. So-called impasse aversion was the main explanation for their negotiation mistakes.

Overcoming Negotiation Mistakes: Becoming Comfortable with Impasse

In our own negotiations, how can we overcome this predisposition toward impasse aversion, which can lead us to accept an agreement that’s worse than our BATNA?

Awareness of the tendency could help motivate us to make fewer negotiation mistakes by more thoroughly comparing the option on the table with our alternatives away from it. In addition, simply avoiding the words “impasse” and “agreement” entirely during our business negotiations may help avoid stirring up the strong motivations associated with these terms, the researchers suggest.

Working as a team can help us avoid several negotiation mistakes, including this one. Researcher Taya R. Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University and her colleagues found that teams of negotiators were more likely than individual negotiators to reach impasse when impasse was the rational choice. Therefore, to avoid impasse aversion, you might consider working as part of a team or enlisting advisers to help you evaluate your options in negotiation.

Do you think you have experienced impasse aversion in your negotiations? What advice do you have for avoiding such negotiation mistakes?

QUESTION

A counterpart recently made a “take it or leave it” offer during our negotiation. I wasn’t ready to accept the offer, but I didn’t want to walk away, either. Any advice on how to respond?

ANSWER

In my recent book, Negotiating the Impossible, I look at the many ways in which negotiators can break deadlocks and resolve conflicts, even when they don’t have “money or muscle.” One issue I address is how to handle hardball tactics, including ultimatums.

Ultimatums can come in many forms: “Take it or leave it!”; “We will never . . .”; “You must . . . .” These absolute statements seem to leave no room for negotiation. My response to any ultimatum—regardless of the type of negotiation or how the ultimatum was delivered—is usually quite simple: I completely ignore it. I don’t ask the person to repeat what he said or clarify what he meant. Instead, I pretend he never said it and move on to other issues.

Why? Many ultimatums are not true deal breakers. If you ignore an ultimatum, it will be easier for your counterpart to back down later because you have not engaged with or legitimized the ultimatum. A week, a month, or years from now, the other side may realize that what she said she could never do, she must do to get the deal done or should do in her own best interest. When that day comes, the last thing I need is for her to remember her ultimatum (or to remember my having heard the ultimatum)—because if she does, she will not be able to change her mind without losing face. Too often, negotiators will escalate commitment to an ultimatum and even sacrifice their own best interests if that’s the only way for them to save face.

If ignoring an ultimatum is not possible or you can’t comfortably move on to other issues without acknowledging it, there is another option: reframing the statement as a non-ultimatum before continuing with the conversation.

For example, if someone says, “I will never do this,” you might respond: “I can understand, given where we are today, that this would be very difficult for you to do.” This gives the person two ways out. First, you’ve pointed out that acquiescing would be “very difficult” but not impossible. Second, you’ve situated the negotiator’s reluctance “given where we are today” but perhaps not forever.

Of course, there is always a possibility that the ultimatum was a real one—that the other party’s hands are truly tied and her demands really are non-negotiable. What if you ignored the ultimatum and it was real?

Even in those cases, opening by ignoring or reframing the ultimatum is a sound approach. If it is a real ultimatum, don’t worry: The negotiator will repeat it over and over again in countless ways in future conversations. At the appropriate time, based on your evaluation of the situation, you can decide to take it seriously.

In my experience, however, many “ultimatums” are not true deal breakers. Sometimes people are simply feeling emotional, are trying to assert control, or are using strong language in an attempt to gain some tactical advantage. In such cases, if you have ignored or reframed their statements, you may have done both sides a favor.

Deepak Malhotra
Eli Goldston Professor of
Business Administration
Harvard Business School
Author, Negotiating the Impossible:
How to Break Deadlocks and
Resolve Ugly Conflicts (Without
Money or Muscle) (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2016)

As he approached the June 23 National Basketball Association (NBA) draft this year, top prospect Jaylen Brown, a student at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, made the unusual yet logical decision to participate in the draft process without the aid of a sports agent. Brown, the 2016 Pac-12 Freshman of the Year, likely decided he didn’t need an agent for the draft because, under current NBA rules, prospects have little room to negotiate salary with teams. Brown might save at least $150,000 in agent fees by negotiating his first four-year deal on his own, estimated Adrian Wojnarowski and Bobby Marks of The Vertical podcast.

But that doesn’t mean Brown prepared for the draft unassisted. In fact, he assembled a broad and impressive roster of informal advisers. First, he recruited the National Basketball Players Association to help him negotiate his contract, a service that comes with his annual union dues. Next, Brown carefully built a trusted team of confidants, as reported by Marc J. Spears on the website The Undefeated. Hashim Ali, a UC Berkeley alumnus and former club basketball player who is currently earning his doctorate in education at the school, was in charge of managing Brown’s meetings with NBA teams. Ali also introduced Brown to NBA Hall of Famer Isaiah Thomas, who quickly became Brown’s mentor. Brown’s other advisers include an academic chairperson, a top-ranked basketball trainer, and a successful entrepreneur.

“I’ve got great resources, so I use them,” Brown told The Undefeated. “I’ve got people on the inside who are my eyes and ears. People who understand the NBA, who played in the league for 10 to 15 years, who understand what I need and what I don’t. . . . They help put me in place to orchestrate things the way I want them to be orchestrated.” The careful orchestration paid off: The Boston Celtics chose Brown as the third overall pick in the draft.

Negotiators often seek help from advisers—not just traditional agents but also more unorthodox experts and mentors. In an article in the April issue of the Negotiation Journal, Tufts University professor Jeswald W. Salacuse explores the range of roles that advisers can play in negotiation, based on his survey of European government policy advisers. Salacuse recommends that negotiators consider several elements when choosing and using advisers, five of which we overview here.

1. Type of adviser

Advisers can be formal (in the case of a lawyer or an agent) or informal (such as a relative or a coworker). Most commonly, like many of Brown’s informal advisers, they provide expertise based on their special knowledge about the process or substance of the negotiation. But negotiators can also use advisers to provide validation, notes Salacuse. For example, if you are leaning toward a particular position on an issue, you might consult with an adviser for validation of your plans.

2. Advisers’ interests

Keep in mind that your advisers’ interests won’t always be perfectly aligned with your own. Even an adviser who has your best interests at heart, such as a spouse, may have motivations that conflict with yours. Similarly, paid advisers may have financial or career incentives—such as a desire to maximize their earnings or to work for your counterpart down the road—that could color the advice they present. Advisers can inject new, useful ideas into a negotiation, but they can also engage in unjustified interference for self-serving purposes. Carefully examine your advisers’ motives before following their advice.

3. Adviser’s role

Your relationship with an adviser is likely to follow one of three basic structural models, according to Salacuse. First, in a structural model that Salacuse refers to as “the adviser as director,” the adviser takes control of the negotiation process, directing you on how to behave in order to succeed. Second, and polar opposite, in the “adviser as servant” model, you fully control the negotiation and may limit your adviser’s participation in responding to specific questions and issues. Third, and somewhere in between, according to the “adviser as partner” model, you may choose to conduct your negotiation jointly with your adviser or advising team, managing the process and solving problems together, while still retaining responsibility and decision-making authority over the negotiation. Turning to Brown, he seems to have wanted to structure the advising relationship so that he was the director and those he chose would play more of a servant role, notes Salacuse. The fact that he had several agents who served in an unofficial rather than official capacity underscores his director position. In the usual sports-agent situation, by contrast, the agent is more often the director of the process.

4. Signals sent to others

Your choice of advisers may send positive or negative signals to others. For instance, if you choose a legal team that assisted an adversary of your counterpart in the past, you may send the message that you plan to take a competitive approach in your negotiation. To take another example, U.S. presidents have sometimes deliberately included or excluded members of the rival political party from their cabinet. Choosing an adviser who can build bridges with your counterpart may communicate that you wish to take a collaborative approach. Brown may have achieved this goal with NBA teams by working with informal advisers instead of negotiating through a sports agent.

5. Other party’s advisers

It also can be useful to know who is advising your counterpart. Are those advisers likely to support or oppose your positions and interests regarding the issues at stake? How prominent a role will the other party’s advisers have in the negotiation? Might you be able to make inroads with the other party’s advisers, enlisting them to provide information or to make your case to their client? Your knowledge about the other party’s advisers can help you make wiser decisions in your negotiation.

As he approached the June 23 National Basketball Association (NBA) draft this year, top prospect Jaylen Brown, a student at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, made the unusual yet logical decision to participate in the draft process without the aid of a sports agent. Brown, the 2016 Pac-12 Freshman of the Year, likely decided he didn’t need an agent for the draft because, under current NBA rules, prospects have little room to negotiate salary with teams. Brown might save at least $150,000 in agent fees by negotiating his first four-year deal on his own, estimated Adrian Wojnarowski and Bobby Marks of The Vertical podcast.

But that doesn’t mean Brown prepared for the draft unassisted. In fact, he assembled a broad and impressive roster of informal advisers. First, he recruited the National Basketball Players Association to help him negotiate his contract, a service that comes with his annual union dues. Next, Brown carefully built a trusted team of confidants, as reported by Marc J. Spears on the website The Undefeated. Hashim Ali, a UC Berkeley alumnus and former club basketball player who is currently earning his doctorate in education at the school, was in charge of managing Brown’s meetings with NBA teams. Ali also introduced Brown to NBA Hall of Famer Isaiah Thomas, who quickly became Brown’s mentor. Brown’s other advisers include an academic chairperson, a top-ranked basketball trainer, and a successful entrepreneur.

“I’ve got great resources, so I use them,” Brown told The Undefeated. “I’ve got people on the inside who are my eyes and ears. People who understand the NBA, who played in the league for 10 to 15 years, who understand what I need and what I don’t. . . . They help put me in place to orchestrate things the way I want them to be orchestrated.” The careful orchestration paid off: The Boston Celtics chose Brown as the third overall pick in the draft.

Negotiators often seek help from advisers—not just traditional agents but also more unorthodox experts and mentors. In an article in the April issue of the Negotiation Journal, Tufts University professor Jeswald W. Salacuse explores the range of roles that advisers can play in negotiation, based on his survey of European government policy advisers. Salacuse recommends that negotiators consider several elements when choosing and using advisers, five of which we overview here.

1. Type of adviser

Advisers can be formal (in the case of a lawyer or an agent) or informal (such as a relative or a coworker). Most commonly, like many of Brown’s informal advisers, they provide expertise based on their special knowledge about the process or substance of the negotiation. But negotiators can also use advisers to provide validation, notes Salacuse. For example, if you are leaning toward a particular position on an issue, you might consult with an adviser for validation of your plans.

2. Advisers’ interests

Keep in mind that your advisers’ interests won’t always be perfectly aligned with your own. Even an adviser who has your best interests at heart, such as a spouse, may have motivations that conflict with yours. Similarly, paid advisers may have financial or career incentives—such as a desire to maximize their earnings or to work for your counterpart down the road—that could color the advice they present. Advisers can inject new, useful ideas into a negotiation, but they can also engage in unjustified interference for self-serving purposes. Carefully examine your advisers’ motives before following their advice.

3. Adviser’s role

Your relationship with an adviser is likely to follow one of three basic structural models, according to Salacuse. First, in a structural model that Salacuse refers to as “the adviser as director,” the adviser takes control of the negotiation process, directing you on how to behave in order to succeed. Second, and polar opposite, in the “adviser as servant” model, you fully control the negotiation and may limit your adviser’s participation in responding to specific questions and issues. Third, and somewhere in between, according to the “adviser as partner” model, you may choose to conduct your negotiation jointly with your adviser or advising team, managing the process and solving problems together, while still retaining responsibility and decision-making authority over the negotiation. Turning to Brown, he seems to have wanted to structure the advising relationship so that he was the director and those he chose would play more of a servant role, notes Salacuse. The fact that he had several agents who served in an unofficial rather than official capacity underscores his director position. In the usual sports-agent situation, by contrast, the agent is more often the director of the process.

4. Signals sent to others

Your choice of advisers may send positive or negative signals to others. For instance, if you choose a legal team that assisted an adversary of your counterpart in the past, you may send the message that you plan to take a competitive approach in your negotiation. To take another example, U.S. presidents have sometimes deliberately included or excluded members of the rival political party from their cabinet. Choosing an adviser who can build bridges with your counterpart may communicate that you wish to take a collaborative approach. Brown may have achieved this goal with NBA teams by working with informal advisers instead of negotiating through a sports agent.

5. Other party’s advisers

It also can be useful to know who is advising your counterpart. Are those advisers likely to support or oppose your positions and interests regarding the issues at stake? How prominent a role will the other party’s advisers have in the negotiation? Might you be able to make inroads with the other party’s advisers, enlisting them to provide information or to make your case to their client? Your knowledge about the other party’s advisers can help you make wiser decisions in your negotiation.

Experienced negotiators understand that they should reject any deal on the table that is inferior to their best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or BATNA. At an auto dealership, for example, you shouldn’t buy a used car if you are pretty sure you can get a better deal on a comparable car elsewhere. Yet in the heat of the moment, people often accept options that are inferior to their best outside alternative, professor Ece Tuncel of Webster University and her colleagues found in a series of experiments.

In one of the experiments, participants were told they were being paired online with a person whom they did not know and would not meet or deal with again. (In actuality, there was no such person.) Participants were asked to divide a fixed number of points between themselves and the other party nine times; each time, one party’s gain would be the other party’s loss.

For each of their nine choices, participants were asked to select between an option that gave them fewer points than their counterpart and an option that gave them more. In the “framed” condition, the former option (fewer points for themselves) was labeled “Agreement”; in the control condition, it was labeled “Option A.” In the framed condition, the latter option (more points for themselves) was labeled “Impasse”; in the control condition, it was labeled “Option B.” The results showed that participants in the framed condition chose the Agreement option 24.55% of the time, while those in the control condition chose the equivalent Option A only 3.99% of the time. That is, participants’ bias toward reaching agreement (and/or not reaching impasse) often led them to make choices that left them worse off than their counterpart. This was true despite the fact that they knew they would not be building a long-term relationship with the other party.

In another experiment, MBA students in a negotiation course bargained face-to-face, and their outcomes were linked to their grades in the course. Participants in this study often preferred to reach a deal that was economically suboptimal for them personally rather than reach an impasse. In about 75% of the pairs that reached agreement, one party settled for a deal that was detrimental to his or her economic interest in the negotiation and his or her course grade.

Agreement attraction or impasse aversion?

The researchers noted that it’s worth looking at whether participants agreed to subpar deals because they felt psychologically compelled toward agreement or because they felt a strong desire to avoid impasse. Consider that negative events (such as impasse) tend to affect us more strongly than positive events (such as agreement), a phenomenon that Roy F. Baumeister of Case Western Reserve University and his colleagues Ellen Bratslavsky, Catrin Finkenauer, and Kathleen D. Vohs dubbed the “bad is stronger than good” effect in a 2001 paper. For example, negative emotions and feedback have more impact on us than positive emotions and feedback. Consequently, Tuncel and her colleagues theorized that the motivation to avoid impasse, a negative event, should be stronger than the motivation to seek agreement, a positive event.

Indeed, that is what the researchers found. Specifically, when making monetary allocations between themselves and a partner, MBA students were more likely to choose the personally disadvantageous option when it allowed them to avoid impasse than when it allowed them to reach agreement.

Becoming comfortable with impasse

In our own negotiations, how can we overcome this predisposition to avoid impasse and accept an agreement that’s worse than our BATNA?

Awareness of the tendency could help motivate us to make smarter choices and more thoroughly compare the option on the table with our alternatives away from it. In addition, simply avoiding the words “impasse” and “agreement” entirely during negotiations may help avoid stirring up the strong motivations these terms bring, the researchers suggest.

And in related work, researchers Taya R. Cohen (Carnegie Mellon University), Geoffrey J. Leonardelli (University of Toronto), and Leigh L. Thompson (Northwestern University) found that teams of negotiators were more likely than individual negotiators to reach impasse when impasse was the rational choice. Therefore, you might consider working as part of a team or enlisting advisers to help you evaluate your options in negotiation.

Resource: “Agreement Attraction and Impasse Aversion: Reasons for Selecting a Poor Deal Over No Deal at All,” by Ece Tuncel, Alexandra Mislin, Selin Kesebir, and Robin L. Pinkley, Psychological Science, 2016.

In December 2014, leaks of data hacked from Sony Pictures revealed pay inequities between men and women, both actors and studio executives. The revelations drew attention in Hollywood and beyond about the lingering salary gap between men and women. In particular, the news that American Hustle stars Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams were paid less than their male costars—Bradley Cooper, Christian Bale, and Jeremy Renner—opened up a conversation about why women continue to be paid less than men for equivalent work.

Many, including Lawrence, attributed such inequities to women’s reluctance to negotiate forcefully on their own behalf, lest they face a backlash for doing so. Men and women alike tend to be penalized socially and financially for engaging in behaviors that violate traditional gender stereotypes. When asking for higher pay, women are acting against stereotypical expectations that they will be accommodating and communal. And, indeed, as we’ve reported in past issues of Negotiation Briefings, women—but not men—who negotiate their salaries do risk being perceived as less likable and as less appealing colleagues than women who don’t ask for more, Harvard Kennedy School professor Hannah Riley Bowles, Carnegie Mellon University professor Linda Babcock, and Tulane University Lei Lai found in their research.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and others have suggested that women might avoid such a backlash by framing their requests for a higher salary as communal in nature: “By asking for more for myself, I’m hoping to contribute to promoting a culture of fairness for all women,” one might say, for example.

Women might also benefit financially by breaking the common workplace taboo against discussing salary with colleagues. When pay inequities become public, male and female employees alike may feel galvanized to advocate for more egalitarian treatment.

Relatedly, men and women working at a similar level might choose to negotiate jointly with the goal of promoting equity. Cooper, calling Adams’s relatively low earnings for American Hustle “almost embarrassing,” told Reuters he had begun to team up with his female costars to negotiate salary as a means of doing his part to encourage equal pay.

In the past year, several prominent actresses have drawn attention to the gender pay gap in various ways. Their stories suggest several other methods that women both inside and outside Hollywood might employ to negotiate for more while avoiding a backlash.

Advocating for others

When accepting her 2015 Academy Award for her role in the film Boyhood, Patricia Arquette, motivated by the revelations in the Sony leak, delivered an impassioned plea for income equality across professions. “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America,” she declared.
Speaking in April 2016 on a Tribeca Film Festival panel of female filmmakers, Arquette elaborated on the inequities she has experienced as a woman. “I always knew I was paid less than men,” she said, as reported by the New York Times. The actress said she had been told in the past, “‘They’re paying the guy, so they don’t have any money’—they would say things like that.”
Following the Sony leak, Arquette says, she began negotiating more assertively on her own behalf. At Tribeca, she said she recently had turned down a role in an independent film because those in charge refused to grant her as much back-end participation, or profit sharing, as the male lead. She had agreed to a lower salary than the male costar, who had a larger role, but, she said, “because you’re basically donating your whole normal salary, and your name value and your everything” in low-budget filmmaking, “if it does succeed, you should participate in the success of that.”

Arquette also said she had lost jobs because of her Oscars speech. “But I’m OK with that,” she said, according to the New York Times. “Sometimes when you’re in a position to make a difference, to be a part of that story is a great thing.”

It seems Arquette’s Oscars speech has made a difference: Lawmakers in California cited it during their successful efforts to secure stronger fair-pay protections in the state. Those positive changes made any lost roles worthwhile to Arquette. “At my age, it’s a time in my life where I want to do things that make the world a better place for everyone to live in,” she said. “They talk about the gender pay gap not closing for another 40 years. I mean, who’s got 40 years? I don’t have patience.”

A public complaint

In May 2015, during a press event for their Netflix comedy Grace and Frankie, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, the show’s leads, revealed they had learned that they were earning the same salary as their male costars, Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston.

“That doesn’t make us happy,” said Fonda, as reported by the entertainment website The Wrap.

“No,” added Tomlin. “The show is not Sol and Robert [the names of Sheen’s and Waterston’s characters]. It’s Grace and Frankie.”

The remarks prompted the actresses’ fans to launch an online petition asking Netflix to remedy the pay disparity between Tomlin and Fonda and “their male supporting actors.” With Netflix under fire, the actresses tried to tamp down the controversy with a public statement saying that their remarks about pay rates on Grace and Frankie had been taken out of context.

A year later, during an event sponsored by the Tribeca Film Festival, Tomlin and Fonda confirmed that they are still being paid the same amount as Sheen and Waterston—but revealed that they, and not their costars, now have a back-end deal.

A carefully thought-out threat

At a Rockefeller Foundation event in New York this May, actress Robin Wright, who stars as First Lady Claire Underwood in the hit Netflix drama House of Cards, revealed that during salary renegotiations with Netflix, she asked for the same salary as her male costar, Kevin Spacey, who plays President Frank Underwood. Wright had learned that Spacey was earning more than she was, despite the fact that the two share equal billing.

“I was looking at the statistics, and Claire Underwood’s character was more popular than [Spacey’s] for a period of time. So I capitalized on it. I was like: ‘You better pay me or I’m going to go public.’ And they did.”

In negotiation, a threat is typically a risky gamble. But Wright, who is also an executive producer and director of House of Cards, correctly calculated that she was indispensable to Netflix and that the network would be eager to avoid another public controversy over gender pay disparities like the one it had faced with Grace and Frankie.

3 strategies for more equitable pay

Let’s review the strategies these actresses used to address pay inequities:

1. Advocating for others.

Arquette used her Oscars speech to attract attention to the issue of income inequality—a decision that she says triggered an industry backlash against her but contributed to broader societal change. Those who feel called to advocacy should be prepared for the possible personal risks of speaking out.

2. A public complaint.

Fonda and Tomlin felt compelled to backtrack from criticism of Netflix’s salary structuring on their show. However, the actresses’ public comments may have led Netflix to sweeten their contracts with back-end profits. Keep in mind that going public with negotiation complaints comes with the significant risk of escalating tensions and souring relationships.

3. A carefully thought-out threat.

Wright savvily did her homework, identified Netflix’s vulnerabilities, and threatened to expose the network if it didn’t equalize her pay. To successfully pull off this type of high-risk threat, be sure you can make a convincing case for your position, as Wright did, and, if possible, argue for your demands on ethical grounds.

In December 2014, leaks of data hacked from Sony Pictures revealed pay inequities between men and women, both actors and studio executives. The revelations drew attention in Hollywood and beyond about the lingering salary gap between men and women. In particular, the news that American Hustle stars Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams were paid less than their male costars—Bradley Cooper, Christian Bale, and Jeremy Renner—opened up a conversation about why women continue to be paid less than men for equivalent work.

Many, including Lawrence, attributed such inequities to women’s reluctance to negotiate forcefully on their own behalf, lest they face a backlash for doing so. Men and women alike tend to be penalized socially and financially for engaging in behaviors that violate traditional gender stereotypes. When asking for higher pay, women are acting against stereotypical expectations that they will be accommodating and communal. And, indeed, as we’ve reported in past issues of Negotiation Briefings, women—but not men—who negotiate their salaries do risk being perceived as less likable and as less appealing colleagues than women who don’t ask for more, Harvard Kennedy School professor Hannah Riley Bowles, Carnegie Mellon University professor Linda Babcock, and Tulane University Lei Lai found in their research.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and others have suggested that women might avoid such a backlash by framing their requests for a higher salary as communal in nature: “By asking for more for myself, I’m hoping to contribute to promoting a culture of fairness for all women,” one might say, for example.

Women might also benefit financially by breaking the common workplace taboo against discussing salary with colleagues. When pay inequities become public, male and female employees alike may feel galvanized to advocate for more egalitarian treatment.

Relatedly, men and women working at a similar level might choose to negotiate jointly with the goal of promoting equity. Cooper, calling Adams’s relatively low earnings for American Hustle “almost embarrassing,” told Reuters he had begun to team up with his female costars to negotiate salary as a means of doing his part to encourage equal pay.

In the past year, several prominent actresses have drawn attention to the gender pay gap in various ways. Their stories suggest several other methods that women both inside and outside Hollywood might employ to negotiate for more while avoiding a backlash.

Advocating for others

When accepting her 2015 Academy Award for her role in the film Boyhood, Patricia Arquette, motivated by the revelations in the Sony leak, delivered an impassioned plea for income equality across professions. “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America,” she declared.
Speaking in April 2016 on a Tribeca Film Festival panel of female filmmakers, Arquette elaborated on the inequities she has experienced as a woman. “I always knew I was paid less than men,” she said, as reported by the New York Times. The actress said she had been told in the past, “‘They’re paying the guy, so they don’t have any money’—they would say things like that.”
Following the Sony leak, Arquette says, she began negotiating more assertively on her own behalf. At Tribeca, she said she recently had turned down a role in an independent film because those in charge refused to grant her as much back-end participation, or profit sharing, as the male lead. She had agreed to a lower salary than the male costar, who had a larger role, but, she said, “because you’re basically donating your whole normal salary, and your name value and your everything” in low-budget filmmaking, “if it does succeed, you should participate in the success of that.”

Arquette also said she had lost jobs because of her Oscars speech. “But I’m OK with that,” she said, according to the New York Times. “Sometimes when you’re in a position to make a difference, to be a part of that story is a great thing.”

It seems Arquette’s Oscars speech has made a difference: Lawmakers in California cited it during their successful efforts to secure stronger fair-pay protections in the state. Those positive changes made any lost roles worthwhile to Arquette. “At my age, it’s a time in my life where I want to do things that make the world a better place for everyone to live in,” she said. “They talk about the gender pay gap not closing for another 40 years. I mean, who’s got 40 years? I don’t have patience.”

A public complaint

In May 2015, during a press event for their Netflix comedy Grace and Frankie, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, the show’s leads, revealed they had learned that they were earning the same salary as their male costars, Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston.

“That doesn’t make us happy,” said Fonda, as reported by the entertainment website The Wrap.

“No,” added Tomlin. “The show is not Sol and Robert [the names of Sheen’s and Waterston’s characters]. It’s Grace and Frankie.”

The remarks prompted the actresses’ fans to launch an online petition asking Netflix to remedy the pay disparity between Tomlin and Fonda and “their male supporting actors.” With Netflix under fire, the actresses tried to tamp down the controversy with a public statement saying that their remarks about pay rates on Grace and Frankie had been taken out of context.

A year later, during an event sponsored by the Tribeca Film Festival, Tomlin and Fonda confirmed that they are still being paid the same amount as Sheen and Waterston—but revealed that they, and not their costars, now have a back-end deal.

A carefully thought-out threat

At a Rockefeller Foundation event in New York this May, actress Robin Wright, who stars as First Lady Claire Underwood in the hit Netflix drama House of Cards, revealed that during salary renegotiations with Netflix, she asked for the same salary as her male costar, Kevin Spacey, who plays President Frank Underwood. Wright had learned that Spacey was earning more than she was, despite the fact that the two share equal billing.

“I was looking at the statistics, and Claire Underwood’s character was more popular than [Spacey’s] for a period of time. So I capitalized on it. I was like: ‘You better pay me or I’m going to go public.’ And they did.”

In negotiation, a threat is typically a risky gamble. But Wright, who is also an executive producer and director of House of Cards, correctly calculated that she was indispensable to Netflix and that the network would be eager to avoid another public controversy over gender pay disparities like the one it had faced with Grace and Frankie.

3 strategies for more equitable pay

Let’s review the strategies these actresses used to address pay inequities:

1. Advocating for others.

Arquette used her Oscars speech to attract attention to the issue of income inequality—a decision that she says triggered an industry backlash against her but contributed to broader societal change. Those who feel called to advocacy should be prepared for the possible personal risks of speaking out.

2. A public complaint.

Fonda and Tomlin felt compelled to backtrack from criticism of Netflix’s salary structuring on their show. However, the actresses’ public comments may have led Netflix to sweeten their contracts with back-end profits. Keep in mind that going public with negotiation complaints comes with the significant risk of escalating tensions and souring relationships.

3. A carefully thought-out threat.

Wright savvily did her homework, identified Netflix’s vulnerabilities, and threatened to expose the network if it didn’t equalize her pay. To successfully pull off this type of high-risk threat, be sure you can make a convincing case for your position, as Wright did, and, if possible, argue for your demands on ethical grounds.