Is It The Time To Speak To Your Manager About Money

No matter how much close we are to our manager speaking about money is always on our least priority list. This may not be true for some but for majority when it comes to talking about money to the manager people just take a back step. We tend to believe that things would get resolved on its own with time but this seldom happens. We wait and wait till the time it is either forgotten or gets prioritized by some other thing. The end is sad but irony is that we seldom even realize what we have lost in life and how this would impact our future.

An article Nice Guys And Girls Earn Less recently published by consumerism commentary says that nice girls earn 5% less than highly disagreeable women and nice guys earn 18% less than highly disagreeable men. The figure amount to $10,000 less for nice guys and my fair guess is that its incremental loss can be much more over years. The article simply asserts that you need to speak up for yourself once in a while. You need to be assertive no matter what other think simply because the benefits it accrue to you over a period of time are very high. Most important, you won’t get them at all if you don’t speak up for yourself.

There is some great human psychology that works behind this. We as a human being avoid the situation of confrontation. This is reasons when mangers gets confronted or questioned they tend to behave in a manner that such situation arise less in future. Given the same productivity and performance levels, managers always keeps those people in mind for hikes who they think would create some level of noise in future. Even if they don’t do anything they atleast get prepared to face uncalled situations and frame reasons for their actions. This ideally means that they would get prepared to justify their actions and answer your questions too.

Most people forget that our managers are like us only. The more you avoid talking to them about your own self, the more easy it becomes for them to forget you. If you don’t talk to them about money or your growth chances are that you won’t be treated above the rest. People who rise up in life are the people who know how to ask. It is important to understand that

1. There is absolutely no harm in asking for you.

2. In order to be considered you have to first ask.

3. At best the manager can explain you or can say no

4. Even if the manager says no you have atleast registered your dissent

5. The problem can go on for one or two cycle but for not long

6. Persistence and assertiveness is your main weapon

7. Even if you get things don’t hesitate to ask for more if you think you deserve it

Just throw the view out of your mind that Manager would think bad about you or would fire you. They won’t. Asking for yourself is infact a blessing in disguise for you. Not only it will put more confidence in you but would also promote firmness in your mind.

The last time I faced this situation was a year back. I was denied a decent hike for 2 straight years because of crisis and downturn in global markets. While I avoided this topic for few months but one fine day I talked about it clearly with my manager approximately 3 months before the current pay rise. Not only that I ensured to talk again a week before my manager would have worked on the salaries. It worked for me and I got a decent hike way above the average. The hike was average for all others but certainly not for some people who had the courage to speak up for themselves. Do you think this would now stop me to talk to my manager about next hike or bonus? Certainly not. I am getting prepared to talk to my manager about the bonus that was given to some members in our organization but not me.

Call me disagreeable and I would be happy to say I am.