Before Negotiation Comes Self-Trust: Camila Greenberg on Teaching Girls and Women to Ask for What They Want

Excerpt

Why do some women confidently advocate for everyone except themselves? Sovereignty Coach Camila Greenberg explains why self-trust comes before negotiation and how girls and women can learn to ask for what they want without fearing the answer.

Introduction

A woman can be perfectly capable of negotiating for a client, defending a colleague, or speaking up for her children, yet struggle when the person she needs to advocate for is herself. That hesitation can show up in a salary discussion, when quoting a price to a new client, when a customer asks for work outside the agreed scope, or even in everyday situations where stating a preference feels somehow uncomfortable.

Camila Greenberg, Sovereignty Coach and founder of SOULSPACE, believes the issue begins even earlier than learning how to negotiate. In her view, negotiation is “downstream of sovereignty”: before girls can confidently ask for what they want, they need opportunities to figure out what they actually want, trust their own judgment, cope with disappointment, and understand that another person’s disapproval does not automatically mean they have done something wrong.

>> READ: Negotiation Skills for Women Entrepreneurs: How to Ask for More, Price Confidently and Set Better Boundaries

There is research suggesting that the dynamics women encounter in negotiation are more complicated than simply telling them to “ask for more.” A large meta-analysis of negotiation outcomes found that gender differences were highly dependent on circumstances, including experience, information about the bargaining range, and whether someone was negotiating for herself or another person. Another meta-analysis examining who initiates negotiations found that women were somewhat less likely to initiate negotiations, but the difference was small and strongly influenced by the situation. Research summarized by the Harvard Kennedy School Gender Action Portal has also found that women can face different social reactions when negotiating for themselves.

That makes the conversation especially relevant for women entrepreneurs. Women owned approximately 14.2 million U.S. businesses in 2023, generating $2.8 trillion in receipts, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. For these entrepreneurs, self-advocacy is not an abstract confidence exercise. It can affect what they charge, which clients they accept, how firmly they enforce agreements, whether they ask for the sale, and how comfortable they are saying no.

At WomenHomeBusiness.com, we have seen the same theme emerge in conversations about women’s leadership and building confidence, speaking with greater authority and visibility, and the lessons women entrepreneurs learn while building their businesses. PowerHomeBiz also offers practical guidance on pricing a small business for value and profitability and setting clear client boundaries.

In this conversation, Greenberg explains why she believes girls should learn self-trust before negotiation, how “good girl” conditioning can follow women into their careers and businesses, why some women negotiate more comfortably for other people than for themselves, and how adults can begin practicing self-advocacy in surprisingly ordinary situations.

Most importantly, she argues that becoming a stronger negotiator does not mean expecting to get everything you ask for. It means becoming willing to make the ask, hear the answer, evaluate your options, and trust yourself enough to decide what comes next.

Key Takeaways

• Negotiation starts before the negotiation. Greenberg believes girls first need opportunities to identify what they want, develop self-trust, and learn how to express preferences.
• Being cooperative and being self-advocating are not opposites. Women can care about other people’s interests without automatically sacrificing their own.
• Fear of appearing “difficult” can influence business decisions. It may contribute to underpricing, excessive concessions, weak client boundaries, or reluctance to make direct requests.
• Research does not suggest that women are inherently poor negotiators. Gender differences in negotiation tend to be relatively small and depend heavily on context, information, experience, expectations, and the specific situation.
• Low-stakes practice matters. Saying what you prefer, correcting a mistake, asking a question, or making a small request can help make self-advocacy feel more familiar before the stakes become much higher.
• Girls also need experience hearing “no.” Greenberg argues that confidence grows not from always getting what you want, but from learning that disappointment and failure are survivable.
• Parents, coaches, teachers, and mentors can reinforce self-trust. Praising courage, effort, curiosity, resilience, and independent thinking can send a very different message from rewarding girls primarily for being quiet, easy, or agreeable.
• For entrepreneurs, boundaries are part of running a business. Prices, contracts, payment terms, availability, revisions, and project scope all require the ability to communicate what you will and will not accept.

Q & A with Camila Greenberg

1. You argue that negotiation is a skill girls should begin learning long before they enter the workforce. Why is it important to start that early?

Camila Greenberg: I actually don’t argue that negotiation is a skill girls should begin learning early — but I do believe sovereignty is.

It’s incredibly important for girls to learn during their formative years how to know what they want and advocate for it, rather than automatically living according to the pressures of society, parents, school, or whatever external expectations have been placed on them.

And it’s important to start early because childhood is when so much of our subconscious blueprint is being formed. The beliefs and patterns we develop during those years can shape the decisions we make as adults — and ultimately our quality of life and level of fulfillment.

So to me, negotiation is almost downstream of sovereignty. When a girl learns early that she’s allowed to know what she wants, trust herself, and advocate for herself, negotiation becomes a natural extension of that.

2. What messages do girls commonly receive about being agreeable, accommodating, or not too demanding? How can those messages affect their behavior later in life?

Camila Greenberg: Girls are often taught that being agreeable, accommodating, and not too demanding is how they get to be loved, accepted, and approved of. And that can be incredibly harmful.

The problem with teaching girls to be “good” instead of sovereign is that good girls learn how to read the room before they learn how to read themselves.

Later in life, that conditioning can turn into people-pleasing and caretaking, where women become so focused on other people’s needs that they consistently put those needs ahead of their own.

That can look like saying yes when they really mean no. It can look like making decisions that create comfort for everyone except themselves. It can mean avoiding challenging conversations or opportunities because they’re afraid of disrupting the peace.

And ultimately, it can stop women from really going for what they want. Instead of asking, What do I actually desire?, they learn to take what they can get or what feels acceptable to everyone else. And, of course, that can lead to resentment, unhappiness, and a profound lack of fulfillment.

3. How does this conditioning show up when women enter the workplace or start their own businesses?

Camila Greenberg: You cannot build a sovereign business while needing everyone to approve of you. Entrepreneurship and success require you to sell, be seen, ask for the money, set boundaries, and occasionally disappoint people.

We’re taught to be sweet and likable, but entrepreneurship and success in business require a certain amount of audacity and self-trust. If you’ve spent your formative years being rewarded for accommodating everyone else, those qualities can be incredibly difficult to access.

I’ve seen this with plenty of clients before we work together. They’re over-serving and under-receiving. They’re pricing their services or products far below their value. They’re afraid to set boundaries with clients or employers because they don’t want to disappoint anyone.

And eventually, that can take a mental and emotional toll. I’ve also worked with women experiencing significant physical symptoms while living in these patterns of chronic stress and self-abandonment. People-pleasing and suppressing our needs can cause conditions like autoimmune disease or gut disorders. When you’re constantly overriding yourself and your body to accommodate everyone around you, there can be a very real cost to your well-being.

I’ve seen this with plenty of clients before we work together. They’re over-serving and under-receiving. They’re pricing their services or products far below their value. They’re afraid to set boundaries with clients or employers because they don’t want to disappoint anyone.

Editor’s note: Chronic stress can affect immune and digestive function and may contribute to or worsen some health problems. However, research does not establish that people-pleasing itself directly causes autoimmune disease or gastrointestinal disorders. For additional information, read the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health and the American Psychological Association’s overview of stress and the body

4. Many women are comfortable advocating for other people but struggle to advocate for themselves. Why do you think that happens?

Camila Greenberg: Because so many women were taught as girls to put other people first.

The “good little girl” trope is massive here. Be nice. Be helpful. Take care of everybody. Don’t cause problems. Don’t make anyone uncomfortable.

So women can become incredibly skilled at advocating for the people they love while simultaneously self-abandoning in order to do it.

There’s a reason phrases like put your own oxygen mask on first or fill your cup before you pour into someone else’s resonate so deeply with women. Most of us were conditioned to do the exact opposite.

And I believe that conditioning feeds into a larger patriarchal system in which women have historically been rewarded for being accommodating and self-sacrificing rather than self-directed.

5. How does the fear of being seen as difficult or pushy affect women when it comes to negotiation?

When a woman is more afraid of being called difficult than she is of abandoning what she actually wants, she will negotiate against herself before the conversation even begins.

Negotiation requires confidence. It requires self-trust. And sometimes it requires the audacity to risk another person being disappointed with your request.

If you’ve been conditioned to prioritize everybody else’s comfort, you may enter a negotiation thinking, How do I make sure everyone walks away happy? Instead of, What do I actually want, and am I willing to advocate for it?

There’s even interesting research around gender and reward processing suggesting that women may experience greater neural reward responses to prosocial behavior, such as sharing, while men in some experiments have shown relatively stronger responses to self-reward. But biology isn’t destiny, and social conditioning matters enormously here too.

Women are often socially rewarded for giving, accommodating, and prioritizing others. So when it comes time to negotiate for themselves, they may not just be fighting fear of rejection — they may be pushing against years of conditioning about what it means to be a “good” woman.

6. For women entrepreneurs specifically, how can these patterns affect pricing, asking clients for what they’re worth, enforcing contracts, or saying no to unreasonable requests?

Camila Greenberg: For female entrepreneurs specifically, these patterns can lead women to price their offerings and products below their value, become overly lenient with contracts and boundaries, and say yes to every request a client makes.

This is classic self-abandonment, and it takes women further away from their sovereignty. In trying to please everyone, they end up pleasing no one — especially themselves.

When you’re building a business, or simply building a successful life, the number one opinion that matters is your own. We often think pleasing others is how we get fed — how we get the client, the approval, the opportunity, the success. But the truth is that standing firmly in our values and holding our boundaries is how we not only respect ourselves, but teach other people to respect us.

As an entrepreneur, it’s important to lead by example. You have to be the embodiment of the result you’re asking your clients to believe is possible. Staying true to yourself, your values, and your boundaries is one of the most powerful ways to do that.

7. How can parents teach girls to negotiate without making them feel that every interaction has to become a battle, or that they should always get what they want?

Camila Greenberg: The first thing I would encourage parents to teach their girls isn’t actually how to negotiate — it’s how to know what they genuinely want.

So many of our desires as adults were programmed in childhood. We pursue what our parents wanted for our lives, what society told us success should look like, or even what the latest TikTok trend tells us we’re supposed to want.

One of the foundations of creating a successful and fulfilling life is being deeply connected to yourself. That means developing self-trust, self-respect, confidence, and self-esteem — and a huge part of that comes from knowing what you actually want versus what you were taught to want.

The other side of that is developing enough self-trust to know that if you don’t get what you want, you’ll still be okay. You’ll recover. You’ll find another way.

And that comes from allowing girls to fail over and over again. Let them attempt challenges and take risks early in life. Let them try out for the team even if they’re scared they won’t make it. Let them start the lemonade stand when they have no idea what they’re doing. Let them ask for the bike for their birthday even if it seems wildly outside the family’s budget. Asking doesn’t guarantee receiving and that’s part of the lesson.

The goal isn’t to raise a girl who believes she should always get what she wants. It’s to raise a girl who isn’t afraid to ask for what she wants… and knows she’ll be okay if the answer is no.

It’s through failure, disappointment, and learning how to move through both that we develop the self-trust and confidence required for success.

8. What are some everyday situations parents can use to help girls practice negotiation, decision-making, and self-advocacy while they’re still young?

Camila Greenberg: Give them options without immediately influencing the answer. Let them choose what they want to wear. Give them freedom within appropriate boundaries. With structure and safety in place, let them explore, create, experiment, and try new things.

Another massive piece is helping children develop a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset. That means validating their effort and the process they’re going through instead of focusing exclusively on the outcome.

When we primarily praise children for getting good grades, being quiet, pleasing other people, or producing the “right” result, they can begin to internalize the message that achievement and agreeableness are what earn them love and approval.

Instead, praise their tenacity. Praise their effort. Praise their willingness to try something new. Praise the fact that they raised their hand, took the risk, or tried again… even when it didn’t turn out the way they’d hoped.

We don’t just want to raise girls who know how to succeed. We want to raise girls who trust themselves enough to survive failing.

9. What role should schools, coaches, mentors, and other adults play in helping girls develop these skills?

Camila Greenberg: Schools, coaches, mentors, and other adults have an enormous opportunity to reinforce these same lessons.

We have to be careful not to disproportionately praise girls for qualities that can reinforce people-pleasing and self-abandonment — being “good,” agreeable, quiet, easy, or endlessly accommodating.

Instead, we can intentionally recognize the qualities that build self-trust and confidence: courage, curiosity, resilience, effort, independent thinking, appropriate boundary-setting, and a willingness to go for something even when success isn’t guaranteed.

The adults around a girl help teach her what parts of herself are safe to express. If we consistently celebrate her for being easy to manage, she learns one lesson. If we celebrate her for thinking for herself, taking healthy risks, speaking up, and recovering from failure, she learns an entirely different one.

And that second lesson is one she’ll carry into every boardroom, relationship, negotiation, and decision she makes as an adult.

10. What advice would you give an adult woman who realizes she never learned to negotiate confidently and now wants to become better at it?

Camila Greenberg: The first question I would ask her is: Why do you want to become better at negotiation? What are you actually negotiating for?

If the answer is ultimately that she wants to become better at asking for what she wants, then I would encourage her to start doing exactly that — all day, every day, in small ways.

If a restaurant gets her order wrong and her instinct is to just eat it anyway because she doesn’t want to be difficult, let the server know and ask for what she actually ordered. If someone asks where she wants to go and she has a preference, say it instead of automatically responding, “I don’t care.” If she needs something from someone, practice actually asking for it rather than hoping they’ll figure it out.

These seemingly insignificant moments begin to calibrate the nervous system to tolerate the discomfort of advocating for yourself. You don’t suddenly become the woman who confidently asks for $20,000 more in the boardroom. You become her in the hundred tiny moments when you stop abandoning what you want to make somebody else comfortable.

The more she practices in low-stakes situations, the more familiar self-advocacy becomes. Eventually, asking for what she wants in a meeting, negotiation, or other high-stakes environment no longer feels so overwhelming.

11. Is there a simple negotiation framework or exercise someone can begin using immediately when they need to ask for a raise, set a price, establish a boundary, or request an opportunity?

Camila Greenberg: Before entering the negotiation, I would invite her to sit down and answer five questions:

• What do I actually want if I believe anything is possible?
• Why do I want it, if I knew every reason I have is valid?
• Why is this important to me?
• What happens if I don’t get it?
• How could getting what I want benefit both me and the other person?

That last question is particularly important because negotiation doesn’t have to mean one person wins and the other person loses. You can advocate fiercely for yourself while still understanding the person sitting across from you.

But you have to know your own position first. It’s very difficult to advocate for what you want when you haven’t given yourself permission to want it in the first place.

12. What is the one belief about negotiation that you wish more women would stop believing?

Camila Greenberg: That it’s their job to make everyone happy. It’s not.

I believe that what’s in highest alignment for you is ultimately in highest alignment for everyone involved. Self-abandoning, overworking, and people-pleasing may create temporary harmony, but over time they can create resentment, bitterness, anger, and frustration. And none of that creates greater success, abundance, or healthy relationships.

Our external reality is a direct reflection of our internal belief systems, and I believe part of our work as women is to challenge the collective conditioning that tells us we’re not worthy of receiving what we truly desire.

Every time a woman speaks up for herself, asks for what she wants, holds a boundary, negotiates for more, or advocates for herself, she’s doing more than changing that one interaction. She’s changing her relationship with her own worth.

And she’s showing the women and girls watching her what’s possible. That is sovereignty.