In a world where women still face systemic barriers at the negotiating table, the challenge is often not a lack of skill – it's a matter of the story we tell ourselves. Dr. Beth Fisher-Yoshida, a globally recognized negotiation expert, executive coach, and Columbia University professor, has spent decades researching the intersection of narrative, identity, and negotiation.
An Interview with Dr. Beth Fisher-Yoshida
Columbia University Professor, Executive Coach & Author of New Story, New Power: A Woman's Guide to Negotiation
In a world where women still face systemic barriers at the negotiating table, the challenge is often not a lack of skill – it's a matter of the story we tell ourselves. Dr. Beth Fisher-Yoshida, a globally recognized negotiation expert, executive coach, and Columbia University professor, has spent decades researching the intersection of narrative, identity, and negotiation. Her landmark book, New Story, New Power: A Woman's Guide to Negotiation, offers women a practical, deeply researched roadmap to reclaim their voice and rewrite the internal scripts that hold them back.
In this conversation, Anna Cajot, the N-Conference Director, sat down with Beth to explore how female executives can harness the power of narrative, navigate organizational culture, build strategic networks, and step fully into their power – one conversation, one negotiation at a time.
Anna Cajot: Thank you for joining me, Beth. This year, I am channelling a great deal of energy into the "She's the Negotiator" initiative, with one clear mission: to help as many women as possible step confidently into their negotiator role, whether at work, in the boardroom, or in everyday life. Your contribution to that mission has been invaluable, and we are very much looking forward to welcoming you both at our upcoming webinar and at the N-Conference 2026 in October.
I'd love to dive straight into the work you're doing. Your latest book has been resonating deeply with women at every stage of their careers; and I think one of the reasons is how honestly it addresses something most of us don't talk about enough: the voice inside our heads. You explore at length how our internal narratives shape the way we show up at the negotiating table. So let me start there – how can women executives harness those narratives to actually strengthen their negotiating position?
Beth Fisher-Yoshida: Pleasure to be here, Anna. The first thing we have to do is identify and become aware of what these narratives are, and then differentiate between the ones that are limiting – that hold us back, make us feel less than, or prevent us from showing up the way we want to – as compared to the ones that are more empowering and generative. The empowering narratives are the ones that really support us in being able to be assertive, to ask for what we want, and also to hear rejection – not as rejection, but as an opportunity for a different kind of conversation.
The story that holds us back might sound like: "I really can't ask for that because what if they say no? I don't want to be embarrassed. I don't want to seem too pushy or too greedy." So we don't ask, and we lose the opportunity we might have had.
The empowering version of that same story would be: "I can ask. The worst they can do is say no. And if I hear a no, I can think: what else can I do to reframe this in a way that I can still get what I want, without taking advantage of the other party?" It's a simple flip, but it changes everything.
Once we identify what those different stories are, we have to figure out how to strengthen the ones that work for us and rewrite or, if we can, delete the ones that are not working because they're holding us back. It's worth exploring: why are they holding us back, and how can I reframe them?
I use the concept of "Fail Forward" in one of my classes. Failing carries a very negative connotation "Oh no, I failed." And women have a great reluctance to fail, as most people do. But if you think about it, if you don't fail, you don't have an opportunity to learn. If everything goes smoothly, you don't grow. Failing also means doing it more often, with smaller stakes, which means you don't wait for a big collapse – you make the little mistakes and keep refining your approach. The same logic applies to the stories we tell. How do I just tweak and tweak and tweak until I have something that truly empowers me?
Anna Cajot: Do you believe that effectively internalizing these new stories requires a significant amount of psychological work?
Beth Fisher-Yoshida: I think some of it is psychological, yes – because we all have fear that gets in the way of being more assertive, or feelings of incompetence. So there is a psychological component. But it's not entirely psychological. When we ask ourselves what specifically in this story is holding us back and we tweak it, something tangible can shift. We may actually be reframing what we're asking for and how we're asking for it; and that creates real, concrete results, not just a mental shift.
Anna Cajot: You also highlight the importance of reframing. What practical steps or framework could you share to help women shift their limiting beliefs?
Beth Fisher-Yoshida: In my book, New Story, New Power: A Woman's Guide to Negotiation, I go through the different tools you can use in much more detail, because there are different ways of unpacking the stories we carry. A lot of times we don't even realize we're carrying these narratives until we encounter a moment that confronts us or challenges our assumptions.
Stories help us live. That's how we learn to function in the world. We get them from our families, schools, communities, and the media. Especially now with social media, we are absorbing so many narratives. We may reject some, but others go so deep inside us that we don't even realize they're operating. So we can't just delete them, we have to replace them with something. Otherwise there's a gap, and something else will fill it.
Neuroscience shows us that our stories leave a kind of physical groove in the mind. You can't just take a groove away; something else has to fill it. So you want to make shallow the grooves of stories that are not working for you, and deepen the grooves of the stories that do work, so that your mind automatically goes there.
The reframe is about taking the part that's not working and rewriting it. If I say "I don't want to be embarrassed," I change the word to something like "encouraged" or I reframe the whole idea: "I want to be in partnership. I want to be in relationship." That changes the entire physical, mental, and emotional disposition we bring into the negotiation.
Anna Cajot: There's a gap we keep observing: many women are highly skilled negotiators, yet claiming visibility, standing up and saying "I want a seat at this table," feels like an entirely different challenge. How much of that gap comes down to how women build and leverage their professional networks?
Beth Fisher-Yoshida: This connects to something important about how women network and build relationships. It's fairly common knowledge that women are good at building networks but we build them with a different purpose. Men, generally speaking, build a network with a deliberate career objective: how can this network help me advance? Business schools understand this: about 50% of what they teach is content, but 50% is designed to build a network. When you leave a business school or a firm like McKinsey, you have a network you can activate at any time.
Women tend to network for friendship and connection, not necessarily with an explicit career purpose. There's a wonderful example I heard: a woman spent a year playing on a softball team, had a wonderful time and only realized afterward that many of her teammates were C-suite executives at different organizations. She just never knew it. Every man on that team knew exactly where everyone else stood professionally.
Women need to network not only to make friends, but to build friendships with mutual benefit where you're adding value to someone and they're adding value to you. That's not using people; that's career advancement. Almost all of my consulting work comes through my network, not through cold calling.
Anna Cajot: Our work with negotiation executives is very much centred around the question of power and power imbalances. At a recent event with women leaders, a question came up that really stayed with me: "What kind of power signal can I, as a woman, show?" — and it opened up a much broader conversation about the different types of power, from presence and listening, to "power over" versus "power with," to how leaders need to flex their style depending on the situation. When you work with female leaders, how do you approach that question with them?
Beth Fisher-Yoshida: Being truly present and listening and responding from that place is powerful. When you let people feel heard, you connect with them. You're saying: you matter, you're important, I'm here for you. And from that place of genuine connection, you can ask because it becomes a mutual exchange. Power doesn't have to be unidirectional. Physical presence is also a form of power. When some people walk into a room, you feel them. You know they're there. Others are so quiet they blend into the wall. Presence and confidence, that's a kind of power, too.
Most of the women I speak to don't naturally gravitate toward "power over" – the controlling kind. However, the more senior women, those with 25 to 30 years of experience, have nothing to fear. And they know that sometimes they need to take a firm, decisive stand, and in those moments they will use "power over" because the situation calls for it.
Leadership has been defined in many ways over the years, but the core idea is: be appropriate for the situation. Different stages require different styles, and if you can't flex your leadership, you're less effective. Women who are truly successful know they need to be a certain type of leader in certain situations and they flex that ability. As the expression goes: if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. You need a wide variety of approaches, because every person requires a different way of being motivated.
Anna Cajot: Nearly every negotiation expert I speak with names fear as the single greatest obstacle and when I talk to women directly, it always comes back to the same things: "My ask would have seemed ridiculous," "I didn't want to embarrass myself."
You mentioned that more senior women tend to carry less of that fear. How significant is fear in negotiation and what actually drives it for women?
Beth Fisher-Yoshida: If fear holds you back, it becomes a real obstacle. We should all have some awareness of our limits, that's healthy. But there's a specific fear I keep hearing in the research I'm currently doing. I've been conducting short interviews with women about what keeps them up at night around negotiation. And one recurring theme is a fear of uncertainty: not knowing the boundaries. What if I ask for too much? What if I don't ask for enough?
If you're a leader who has experience, who has flexed and adapted, you've built up a tolerance for that uncertainty. But I think there's always some element of fear. The difference is whether it incapacitates you or simply makes you a little more cautious. The latter isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's when fear overtakes you completely that it needs to be addressed.
Anna Cajot: Seniority clearly builds a kind of negotiation resilience over time. But for women at the beginning of their careers without that track record to lean on, the stakes can feel impossibly high. What is your advice for them?
Beth Fisher-Yoshida: It always comes back to: what is it that you really care about most? What do you want from this negotiation? For some people, just the fact that they're showing up is a significant achievement; because the alternative would have been to avoid it entirely. Even if you don't get everything you want, showing up is itself a win.
You have to frame small wins so they build the confidence to pursue something more challenging. Don't take a workshop and then immediately go head-to-head with the most difficult person on the most difficult issue. You won't succeed, you'll feel like a failure, and you won't be able to learn from it because the emotional weight will be too heavy.
Manage your expectations, but don't underestimate yourself either. More junior people often go one of two ways: they underestimate what they can accomplish, or they overestimate and ask for something that simply won't happen. Learning to calculate that risk balance is hard without experience, which is exactly why starting small and building up is so important.
Anna Cajot: Many experts I have spoken with find it far more effective to reframe negotiation as communication and it does make sense, given how much of negotiation is rooted in listening, language, and psychological understanding. Do you think the word "negotiation" itself places too much pressure on women and becomes a barrier before the conversation has even begun?
Beth Fisher-Yoshida: Absolutely. There is something about the word "negotiation" that just freaks people out. I hear it all the time: "I can't negotiate," or "I'm not good at negotiation." But the same person says, "I'm a great communicator." And I think: well, communication is negotiation. It's an interaction.
I used to tell my daughters and other young women: when you go to a job interview, it's just a conversation. If you frame it as "an interview for this big job," you panic. But if you frame it as a conversation and go in with curiosity, everything opens up. You're there to learn about the other person, and in that process of mutual discovery, you figure out how to move forward together.
The word negotiation carries associations that can be very triggering. So sometimes I don't use it at all. I might talk about outcomes instead – how do you get the results you want? Nobody resists that question. But "negotiation"? For many people, that word is a wall. The reframe matters.
Anna Cajot: Beth, if you could share two or three key principles from your book that women in leadership could start implementing immediately in their everyday business lives, what would those be?
Beth Fisher-Yoshida: The first: truly understand the stories you carry, both the ones that limit you and the ones that empower you, and actively address them. Grow the empowering ones. Rewrite the limiting ones.
The second: invest seriously in preparation before any negotiation. There are many different ways to prepare, and I don't think you can over-prepare, unless it leads to analysis paralysis and keeps you stuck. You won't be able to anticipate everything, but the more thoroughly you've prepared, the better you'll be able to pivot in the moment.
Third: in every conversation, in every relationship, there is an opportunity both to gain and to give. That mutuality, that spirit of exchange, is at the heart of every negotiation. Lean into it.
And I'll add because I'm genuinely excited about it; I have a new book in development. One of the things I've learned over years of teaching is that not everyone is an incidental learner. Seeing an example doesn't automatically mean you extract the lesson. For some people, learning needs to be explicit and personally relatable. So in my next book, I've created eight detailed profiles – eight different women, at different career stages, in different industries – and I analyze their experiences from a negotiation perspective. The goal is that readers will see themselves in those stories and draw the learnings in a more grounded, personal way. That's where I am now, and I can't wait to share it.
About Dr. Beth Fisher-Yoshida
Dr. Beth Fisher-Yoshida is a negotiation expert, executive coach, and Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University's School of Professional Studies, where she has directed the Master of Science in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution for 15 years. Her career spans Fortune 100 companies, the United Nations, government agencies, NGOs, and universities worldwide. Before joining Columbia, she spent 13 years in Japan – including a pivotal stint as Training Manager at McKinsey & Company Japan – where she developed deep expertise in cross-cultural dynamics, workplace conflict, and intercultural negotiation. She holds a PhD in Human and Organizational Systems from Fielding Graduate University and certification as a Clinical Sociologist(CCS).
Her Book: New Story, New Power: A Woman's Guide to Negotiation
This book tackles the core reason women struggle at the negotiating table: not a lack of skill, but the stories they tell themselves. Drawing on years of interviewing professional women, teaching negotiation at Columbia University, and coaching executives globally, Beth's framework guides readers to identify which internal narratives are limiting them; and replace them with empowering alternatives that create real behavioral change.
The book is structured with practical tools, real-world cases, and frameworks that women at any career stage can apply immediately; from reframing a fear of rejection to building the confidence to ask for a seat at the table.
Join us at the Negotiation Conference on October 22–23 in Zurich to learn from Beth and other negotiation experts.
Register here: https://www.n-conference.com/conference/zurich