Women in Leadership training in ZurichWomen’s Leadership in the Canton of Zurich: How Can Negotiable Resources Be Clarified Before Accepting an Assignment?
In the canton of Zurich, banks, insurers, tech companies and European headquarters of international groups create an environment where teams often work in English and at a fast pace. For SHR’s “Women’s Leadership” programme, this raises a practical question: how can the resources for an assignment be discussed before its scope is treated as settled?
What the literature establishes: ambiguity matters
Hannah Riley Bowles, Linda Babcock and Kathleen L. McGinn (2005, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) show that gender differences in negotiation depend in part on features of the situation. Their research identifies ambiguity about what is negotiable as a condition that can leave greater room for gender effects. It therefore does not describe a fixed female or male ability independent of context.
A second mechanism: the social cost of asking
Hannah Riley Bowles, Linda Babcock and Lei Lai (2007, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes) examine responses to the initiation of salary negotiations. Under some experimental conditions, women who negotiate encounter less favourable social reactions than men. Reluctance to ask therefore cannot automatically be interpreted as a lack of confidence.
The premature conclusion: women simply need to be bolder
It would be reductive to conclude that training should merely teach women to ask for more. Preparing a request remains useful, but organisations also need to specify which parameters are open to discussion and which criteria guide decisions. Applying this proposal to the resources for an assignment is a managerial extension, not a finding directly established by these studies. (our executive and employee training programmes)
The limits: from salary to project resources
These articles concern neither the canton of Zurich nor the international teams based there that work in English. A salary negotiation and a request for technical capacity on a project involve different stakes and counterparts. A shared working language can facilitate discussion without ensuring a shared understanding of what may legitimately be negotiated.
A practical check in Zurich
Consider a hypothetical example: a manager at a European headquarters in Zurich receives a cross-border technology rollout assignment without explicitly reserved technical capacity. One possible exercise in the “Women’s Leadership” programme is to prepare a brief in the working language that distinguishes confirmed resources, parameters to negotiate and the person authorised to decide. For every new assignment over one month, check before acceptance whether each resource request has received a written response — approval, a reasoned refusal or a deferred decision with a deadline — and calculate the proportion of requests documented in this way. This indicator checks the traceability of the discussion, not, on its own, the fairness of the decisions. To go further: explore the Women in Leadership training in Zurich in the canton of Zurich, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
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