Ted Audio Collective.

I have one of those people that feel responsible for all their people's feelings, which is terrible.

And I just made up all these things in my head about how people would respond if I would ask for things.

So I'm a people pleaser.

This is Grace Song. Her drive to make others happy makes her one of the nicest people I know.

But it's also occasionally made her a little timid.

I was a person where I'd go into shops and people would convince me to buy clothes and I would just buy them because I would feel bad.

And then return them later.

Wow, that is a whole new level of agreeableness.

I just was always afraid to kind of ask and just have the person be angry or upset.

When she finished college, she was grateful to land a great marketing job at a good company.

Grace was consistently a star performer in her department.

She got promoted five times over five years.

But one day she learned something upsetting.

Somebody told me that I was the lowest paid employee in my department of 250 people, even though I was the highest rated performer within my band levels.

And I was promoted consistently every year but just never asked for a salary increase.

How many years looking back were you underpaid?

It was six years. Six freaking years.

Some people avoid negotiating. Other struggle at it.

And even good negotiators have bad habits. It's time to change that.

I'm Adam Grant and this is WorkLife, my podcast with Ted. I'm an organizational psychologist. I study how to make work not suck.

In this show, I'm inviting myself inside the minds of some truly unusual people because they've mastered something I wish everyone knew about work.

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