Boris is the wise ol’ CEO of TNW who writes a weekly column on everything about being an entrepreneur in tech — from managing stress to embracing awkwardness. You can get his musings straight to your inbox by signing up for his newsletter!

I know these are tough times, and a lot of people are struggling with being locked at home. I also hear a lot of people worry about how difficult it is to care for families, or run companies remote, and dealing with all the anxiety that comes with it. However… I also hear another important story.

A few parents I spoke to recently quietly admitted that their children are also really appreciating all the time they’re getting to spend with their parents. Sure, we’re confined to small spaces, and sometimes bored or scared, but dinners are more relaxed and seem to take longer, and the children often are more relaxed and patient.

Again, I don’t want to ignore the stress a lot of families are under, but it’s important to be aware and nurture this one positive aspect of these current dark times: More attention for the people close to us.

Now here comes the challenge: Replicating that for your company. Your co-workers, partners, and employees also want your love and attention. This is easier said than done when you’re remote.

Normally an understanding smile and nod at the end of a meeting, a friendly tap on the shoulder, or a casual chat near the elevators would show the people you work with that you cared about them and valued them. But all these things are gone for now, and will be sorely missed.

But it’s up to you to keep this going during lockdown, so my advice is: Just reach out. A smiley over text, a photo via email. A selfie, a link to a book you read, even just a “how are you holding up?” is good enough.

Personal contact doesn’t have to be intense and prolonged. Sometimes, one small gesture is all it takes. Now go and say hello to a random acquaintance, send a funny clip to your coworker, hug your kids, and pet your dog. Or send them a reply with only your favorite emoji. I’d ❤️ that.

Can’t get enough of Boris? Check out his older stories here , and sign up for TNW’s newsletters here .

5 confidence-boosting tips for your next salary negotiation

This article was originally published on ult by James Q. Quick . . cult is a Berlin-based community platform for developers! We write about all things career-related, make original documentaries and share heaps of other untold developer stories from around the world!

You just got done with an interview and you nailed it. You ride out that high until the following day when someone from HR calls and asks the dreaded question, “What are your salary requirements?”. And you pause…

You don’t want to ask for too much, and you certainly don’t want to ask for too little. So, how do you find the sweet spot to negotiate appropriately? Don’t worry. In this article, we will cover five tips you can use to negotiate with confidence.

Advocate for yourself

Let’s start by thinking about who has the negotiating power: the employer or the candidate? Well, in 90% of the cases, it’s the employer, and they will not hesitate to yield this power.

Companies with a modern culture are typically more transparent in their negotiations (and focus more on pay equality).

On the flip side, it’s your responsibility to advocate that you are the right candidate for the job. If you can strongly advocate for yourself, you take a little bit of the power away from the employer.

To advocate for yourself, think about what makes you special? What do you have to offer that other candidates do not have?

Here are some areas to think about for yourself:

Do you meet all of the role requirements (believe it or not, this rarely happens)?

Do you have a strong set of skills that aren’t required for the role but would be desirable (strong leadership skills, speak a different language, etc.)?

Did you have good results at a previous company that you can talk about?

Are you coming from a top university of a well-respected company?

Do you have side projects that show your proficiency and passion?

Spend some time thinking about what makes you unique. You’ll want to leverage any advantage you have over other qualified candidates.

Do your research

The reason negotiating can be so intimidating is that the burden typically falls to you to make the first move. There’s the old cliche, “never make the first offer”, but it’s hard to avoid during this process. Regardless, the key is to be prepared.

Prepare yourself by doing your research and having a solid understanding of what your relative value is.

Employers typically have the power in negotiations, but doing your research will help empower you

This first crucial step begins (ideally) before any actual interview takes place. Many people lack confidence in negotiating because they can’t articulate their value effectively. By doing sufficient research, you can remove emotion and make it a matter of fact conversation.

The secret to negotiating is making it a fact-based conversation and not an emotional one.

Here are a few things to consider when doing your research

Cost of living in your area

Position and company (there might be several companies you apply for)

Years of experience

Level of role

I would suggest spending a few hours researching salary ranges (and other benefits) for the position that you’re applying for in combination with those other factors. Here are a few websites to start with.

Glassdoor

LinkedIn

Salarom

Talk to people you trust

While doing your research, one additional source you may not have considered is the people around you. Do you have friends, family, or coworkers that you are comfortable enough to talk to? Here are a few ways they might be able to help.

Mock Negotiating

Regardless of how much preparation you do, negotiating is tough. Don’t let the phone call with the employer be the first time you talk out loud about negotiating. Just like any other skill, you need to practice. Find a friend that can practice the conversation with you beforehand.

You can rehearse negotiations just like you would for an interview, speech, etc.

Honest Feedback

Good and trusted friends are ones that can give positive AND constructive feedback.  Share the research you’ve done, and see how they respond. With the right person, they will be honest about whether or not they agree with your findings. As with anything else, it never hurts to get different opinions.

Compensation

In special cases, you might even ask close and trusted friends about their compensation. This can be a very sensitive subject, so make sure it’s the right person.

One of the things I appreciated most about one of my mentors was his openness in sharing his compensation package (we’ll talk more about this in the next section). This helped me have a better understanding of what to expect for myself based on my relative experience.

Ask what others think

If you have an offer in hand, talk to your trusted network about it and see what they think. Would they ask for more money? Would they ask for other aspects of compensation (again, more below)? How would they approach this situation?

Consider negotiables other than salary

Salary is what we typically look at first when considering an offer, but don’t forget there are other items to factor in when looking at overall compensation.  Here are a few:

Benefits (healthcare, 401k match, etc.)

Vacation/sick time

Stock options/grants

Yearly bonus

Signing bonus

Relocation bonus

There is much more to consider with overall compensation than just salary.

Let’s consider two different hypothetical scenarios:

Young, single, and renting

People in this situation might be more open to a ‘high risk, high reward’ compensation package. Maybe this means less guaranteed salary, but a higher potential bonus percentage or more stock options or grants.

Married with kids and a mortgage

If you have a mortgage, spouse, kids or other similar responsibilities, you’re probably less likely to gamble on higher bonuses and stock. Don’t get me wrong, those things still factor in, but the guaranteed salary might become the most important piece.

Additionally, time off is probably extremely important. You want to make sure you have plenty of opportunities to see your kid’s recitals or sporting events and take those family vacations.

Figure out which aspects of compensation you value most.

All in all, don’t let these two specific hypothetical scenarios define how you respond. This is a very personal decision, so spend time figuring out which are the most important based on your situation. Know that you have the power to negotiate any combination of these items.

Prepare yourself for different types of offers

With all of the research you’ve done and the conversations you’ve had with friends and family, now it’s time to put it all together. Again, the goal is to take emotion out of the equation. You’ve decided on your salary requirements, you’ve considered what the most important factors are in overall compensation, and you’ve talked to your friends and family for advice.

You should have a general idea of how you would respond to different types of offers. Here are a few scripted answers that you might find useful:

Low offer

If the offer is too low, you can share your research to say that, on average, others in similar positions are making more.

Average offer

If the offer is on par with average, use your research and specific skill set to advocate that you are worth more than the average person.

High offer

If the offer is high, well… go celebrate! But take some time to consider it before giving an official response.

Don’t ever say “Yes” on the spot. Always take a day or two at least to consider it. Don’t make a hasty decision.

Here’s how I would respond to this:

You might be tempted to negotiate regardless of the offer being higher than expected. Personally, I don’t feel the need to do so. If an employer exceeds my expectations, then I think they have treated me fairly and I will do the same in return. Again, this is just my personal take, but keep in mind, sometimes you simply don’t need to negotiate.

Bonus — take notes

As you execute the five tips we’ve discussed, take notes! Don’t expect to be able to regurgitate your strengths or salary requirements on the spot. It’s easy to get flustered during a conversation, so write down everything you want to communicate.

Final thoughts

Negotiating can certainly be a tough thing to do, especially for those of us that feel uncomfortable in doing so. Just know that it is your responsibility to advocate for yourself because most companies won’t do it for you.

How the new age spirituality of #manifestions can make companies toxic

Manifestation is the latest viral trend on social media, presented as a way to create – or physically manifest – your own reality through carefully monitoring thoughts, beliefs and feelings.

The hashtag #manifest has over a billion views on TikTok alone. In these posts, advice is offered on manifestation as the mechanism to achieve the life you want, whether it is money, happiness, the body you desire, or exam grades. Techniques to manifest involve imagining something has already happened, visualizing it, writing it down, and using positive language such as “I have” rather than “I want”. To be successful at manifestation, belief and positivity are key.

For those that believe, manifestation makes everything achievable, and social media users have plenty of advice about how to do this. Popular examples of these techniques include the 369 method where, by writing down a name three times, an intention six times, and an outcome nine times, it is possible to manifest someone back into your life.

This idea of manifestation is based on new age philosophy dating back to the early 19th century. Its influence is found beyond TikTok – it has entered many workplaces under the guise of self-help.

#Manifest the life you want

Manifestation draws on a long-favored new age philosophy of universal inter-relatedness : the belief that everything in the universe is related in a network without a deity at the centre. This gives rise to the belief that with positive thoughts and visualization, people can create their own reality through the laws of manifestation, where an external force – the universe – responds to these thoughts.

The idea is that if you are negative, you invite negativity into your life. But if you desire something, by writing it down or visualizing it as if has already happened, you can make these dreams a reality. As bestselling author Louise Hay explains : “I believe that everyone, myself included, is 100% responsible for everything in our lives … we create our experiences, our reality and everyone in it.”

Manifestation is more popularly referred to as the law of attraction , which gained a wider audience in the self-help book and associated film The Secret . Now, it has become part of a wider trend within organizations requiring people to see mental, physical and spiritual well-being as a prerequisite to successful leadership, whether through mindfulness, meditation or active visualization.

Chip Wilson, founder of the aspirational yoga brand Lululemon , for example, has written that The Secret is “the fundamental law Lululemon was built on”. Employee training at the company incorporates aspects of the law of attraction, and its merchandise uses slogans promoting self-empowerment through yoga and spiritual enlightenment.

Neoliberal spirituality

Network marketing organizations, sometimes referred to as direct sales or multi-level marketing, are companies where freelance distributors sell products direct to the consumer. The most well-known would be companies like Amway, Herbalife or Avon. We were interested in this form of organization as they tend to be dominated by women, and the industry is notoriously precarious. Most distributors fail to make a living wage . To be successful, they must both sell volume and recruit other distributors to their teams.

We have been researching one such network marketing company and found that law of attraction was ingrained in its organizational culture. It was used at training events; where distributors were warned that negative thoughts would send out energy into the universe, subsequently attracting poor sales. It was also used by distributors who sold via social media platforms. On social media, the Law of Attraction was explicitly mentioned. People shared how they had manifested sales or new people into their lives, whom they could sign up as distributors.

Distributors were told by their seniors that by being kind and grateful, the universe would reward them. Success was attributed to hard work combined with sending out the right type of energy as a frequency to attract back success. Any negative thoughts in the workplace were discouraged.

We see this as a form of neoliberal spirituality. Under neoliberalism, responsibility moves from the state to individuals, who are held responsible for their own success or failure. Under the law of attraction, individuals – or employees – are held solely responsible for the ability to manifest the future they want.

The message in the network marketing company was clear: if you aren’t achieving success, you are not manifesting hard enough. This obscures structural inequalities and, in the company we studied, the reality of precarious labour in network marketing.

Personal culpability

The law of attraction represents a powerful set of “rules” about how to behave and think. This operates as a form of self-surveillance and control, and shifts the blame for lack of financial success away from the employer and on to the employee. But suppressing negativity and being positive means that employees are not able to call out any realities and challenges of their work.

While the law of attraction can, on one level, be seen as a way to maintain wellbeing through encouraging positive thoughts, it also has a toxic side-effect of spiritual rules and self-blame.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a sense of anxiety and instability. There has been a massive increase of mental health issues, particularly for generation Z and millennials.

For TikTok users, believing they can #manifest their goals represents a way to gain control. But if subscribers to this philosophy are unable to manifest their dreams, they fail both in their goals and spirituality through being unable to harness the universal laws. These forms of spirituality are hard to challenge, and as we saw in our research, those that did try were labelled as being negative and toxic.

This article is republished from The Conversation by Melissa Carr , Senior Lecturer in Leadership Development, Bournemouth University and Elisabeth Kelan , Professor of Leadership and Organization, University of Essex under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .